Workshop 3: Margreet de Roo
Making the best, most optimal use of MS Word
Summary: MS Word is an immensely powerful tool – if you know where to find its often hidden strengths. Rather than use it as an upgraded typewriter, why not automate the parts of your work process that free you up to focus on the more interesting and rewarding aspects of your job? In this workshop, you will learn some ways to tweak MS Word so that the functions you use most often or regularly are a lot easier to find. You will also discover the incredible power of macros and learn where to find many, many of them. And you will be introduced to PerfectIt, an add-in that was built with writers and editors in mind and that will save you tons of time and brainpower.
Purpose: This workshop aims to teach participants to use Word more efficiently and effectively so that they can spend their valuable time and energy on the more interesting elements of their job and leave the simple, repetitive tasks to the tools that are good at them – macros and PerfectIt.
Description and structure: The workshop is divided into three parts:
- tips and tricks on using MS Word at its optimal best
- an introduction to PerfectIt
- an introduction to macros.
Who should attend? This workshop is targeted at writers, editors and translators at all levels who work with MS Word on a Windows computer, but who need to exploit its time- and labour-saving strengths. Mac users are welcome to attend, of course, but the focus will be on Windows. (PerfectIt for Mac is in the beta stage of development.)
Materials to bring: Laptop
Outcome skills: By the end of this workshop you will have been made aware of and be able to use a variety of tools that make the use of MS Word more efficient and effective. You will be able to automate certain parts of your work process and will therefore have more brainpower left for the interesting stuff!
Pre-workshop information: PerfectIt: http://www.intelligentediting.com/
Macros: http://www.archivepub.co.uk/macros.html
About the facilitator
In what feels like a previous life Margreet de Roo used to be a German teacher until she moved to Nairobi, Kenya, with her husband in 2003. They returned to the Netherlands in 2012, where Margreet set up her editing business, Maneno tekstredactie. She mostly works as a copy-editor and proofreader and is learning how to do developmental editing. Every now and then she translates a book from English or German into Dutch.
In the Facebook groups for editors that she joined, she quickly discovered that there are many tools that can make an editor’s life easier, and she enjoys using them. In 2016 she started sharing her knowledge with fellow editors and translators through her workshop Handigheidjes Word and that reminded her of why she likes teaching so much: seeing the smiles when students realize that they have just learned something incredibly useful.
Margreet lives in Zwolle with her husband, two daughters and two cats.
To register for this pre-conference workshop click here.