Tracy van der Schyff

#Office365Challenge Anyone who writes books, blogs, articles, whitepapers & create presentations will find this useful. So yes – pretty much most of us. The ability to create meaningful citations for bibliographies or references are extremely powerful in Word.

It seems like this was added to Word in the 2007 version (might be wrong), which means it took me close to 10 years to not only find it, but also start using it. Pathetic I know. But it also highlights why I have been so passionate about this specific blog challenge. Yes I know, a blog a day is crazy, and it has not been easy. Most of the blogs I wrote was not about the latest updates to Office, but rather about the hidden gems we’ve missed for so many years. And this is one of them.

The reason why I said “meaningful” citations in my description above, is that that content you add here is reusable. Now ‘reusable’ is definitely one of my favourite words as it also implies less work.

To add Citations you need to add the Source. This is only done once and can be reused many times, not only in the current document – but also in other new Word documents.

1. At the end of the sentence
2. Click on the References Tab
3. Insert Citation
4. Add New Source

Select the type of Source you are creating (Books, Book Section, Journal Article, Article in Periodical, Conference Proceedings, Report):

Complete the details based on the source you selected, click OK to save:

Below you’ll see the citations in my document:

Now this is the really cool part. Very similar to adding an index to your document, you can add the Bibliography, Reference or Work Cited table at the end of your document – it will automatically populate it based on the citations you’ve made:

As mentioned above, you can also reference your created resources in other documents.

Thanks Microsoft, I’m sorry I hated Word for so many years. It’s only because I didn’t know :-(.

Overview of my challenge: As an absolute lover of all things Microsoft, I’ve decided to undertake the challenge, of writing a blog every single day, for the next 365 days. Crazy, I know. And I’ll try my best, but if I cannot find something good to say about Office 365 and the Tools it includes for 365 days, I’m changing my profession. So let’s write this epic tale of “Around the Office in 365 Days”. My ode to Microsoft Office 365.
Keep in mind that these tips and tricks do not only apply to Office 365 – but where applicable, to the overall Microsoft Office Suite and SharePoint.