Microsoft Office Gives Grads a Leg Up in their Future Endeavours #Giveaway 06/15 US/Canada $200 ARV

When we’re looking to get things done, whether it’s to organize a trip, budget our expenses, or write an article—we fire up Microsoft Office. And because it helps us with so many things around the house, we think it’s a perfect gift for Moms, Dads and Grads—that’s why we’re happy to host a giveaway for Microsoft Office: Home and Business 2010! 

Almost all of us have used Office at one point or another in our lives—whether in our school’s computer programs, or whether we use it daily at work—it’s so common-place that it’s easy to take what it does for granted. But, the truth is that Office runs deep—providing features and integration that other word-processing and spreadsheet solutions don’t have—and desktop publishing features they envy.

Microsoft Office: Home and Business is made up of several different software pieces, including Outlook, OneNote, and of course Office’s two powerhouse applications, Word and Excel. Also included, and especially useful for those recent graduates who will be heading off to college in the fall, is Powerpoint. I know I had to use Powerpoint for classroom  presentations several times per semester, but now that I’ve graduated I’ve also needed to use the program in the workplace. We tested out the Microsoft Office for Mac, and look forward to returning to school if only to take advantage of the software package!

1) Templates: Word has literally hundreds of templates—and they’re about more than just making a document look good. For example, business letter templates are both properly formatted and easy to integrate with contacts databases from Outlook—this makes both business correspondence, and the annual Christmas letter a breeze! Also, templates help you use all of your printer’s functionality, making it not-impossible to print labels, envelopes, and CD covers. Our only wish: That Word had more ugly, but standard, templates for things like manuscripts and academic papers—the good news, you can find them online!

2) Footnotes, Endnotes, and Tables of Contents: Whether you’re writing your masters thesis, or putting together pitches and media kits for your blog, having an application that does both footnotes and endnotes possible makes life easier. This feature is surprisingly scarce in other applications, and it’s an example of Word’s sophisticated engine that it makes these a breeze.

3) Tables, Charts, Text Boxes and Pictures: Word is maybe the easiest software program to stick anything into, whether you want a table and chart to track your savings, or to stick pictures of your kids into a frame. We also turn to Word when we want to write mad-sciency things with formulas in them, Microsoft’s Equation Editor is a true gift to nerds the world over.

4) Tracking Changes: If you are ever in the position of working on documents in a collaborative environment, Word’s track changes feature is something I wish ever piece of software had—edits to the document are accompanied by the name of the changer, and a record of the changes made. With multiple wordsmiths in the house, Tazim and I use this feature to run things by each other, as well as professionally with editors. It’s also a great way to help your kids with their English homework, you can use track changes to make suggestions to correct their text.

5) Grammar checker: It’s true that it’s not absolutely perfect, but one of the very best things about Word is it’s grammar checker. Just like spellcheck, there’s no replacement for reading over your own text—but especially when it comes to business correspondence, it’s helpful to avoid things like sentence fragments and wrong words (something that anyone who’s ever “assed a question,” or misused their theres can appreciate).