Word 2010 - Reveal Formatting

Introduction
Sometimes working with a document in Word can be a real pain! Things happen and you just don't understand why. Well of course usually this is because of a style or some other formatting that's crept into your document. The worse situation is when you need to edit a document someone else has created, all manner of odd things can occur.


Solution
Word has a great feature called Reveal Formatting. Here's how to switch it on:

1. Select a word in your document
2. Press Shift-F1

Yes it is that easy!

As you can see in the screen shot opposite, the font and other properties of your text is displayed. This can be invaluable in understanding your document.






Also
Instead of press Shift-F1 you can also open the Reveal Formatting window by clicking the following boxes as shown in this diagram:

It's interesting to open it this way because along the way you can see the other tools available to help you work with styles and formatting. the Style Inspector for example, it's very useful when you want to check styles and what additional formatting has been added.


Show/Hide Formatting Marks 
This is also very important:


Click

In your document you'll see spaces, tabs, paragraph marks, etc. This helps you see double spacing or where tabs are missing and more.


Conclusion
Don't forget Shift-F1!