The features your toolbar never mentions.
Small, specific tricks for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Canva — the kind that are only ever discovered by accident.
Today's tip —
Pastes text with none of the original formatting — works in Word, Excel and PowerPoint alike.
Recently uncovered
Type a table into existence with three keystrokes
Type a row of pluses and hyphens and hit Enter — Word quietly turns it into a real table.
XExcelThe feature that finishes typing your data for you
Flash Fill spots the pattern in your first two entries and fills in the rest of the column itself.
PPowerPointAn eyedropper that matches any color on your screen
Not just inside your slide — anywhere on the display, including other open apps.
CCanvaResize an entire design to a new format in two clicks
Magic Switch rebuilds your layout for Instagram, print or presentation without starting over.
WWordThe Format Painter shortcut almost nobody touches
Ctrl+Shift+C copies formatting, Ctrl+Shift+V pastes it — no clicking the little paintbrush at all.
XExcelSelect an entire table with a single shortcut
Ctrl+Shift+8 grabs the whole current data region — no dragging, no missed rows.
The transition behind those impossibly smooth slide moves
Morph doesn't animate objects — it recalculates the shape between two slides for you.
CCanvaDraw your own alignment guides across the canvas
Smart guides snap your elements into place — and custom ones can be pinned exactly where you need them.
WWordGet back a document you closed without saving
The AutoRecover pane holds unsaved drafts far longer than you'd expect — if you know where to look.
XExcelTurn a plain number into a tiny bar chart, in the cell
Data bars from conditional formatting draw straight into the cell — no separate chart needed.
PPowerPointThe Slide Master shortcut that saves hours of reformatting
Change one master layout and every slide built from it updates at once.
CCanvaDuplicate and nudge an element in one motion
Hold Alt while you drag a copy — no separate copy-paste step at all.