If your usage of Microsoft Word largely hasn’t changed much in the past few years even though you and/or your employer are upgrading to Office 2010 then there are some underutilized features you might be missing but could benefit your work.

Create PDFs from Microsoft Word

Licenses for the full version of Adobe Acrobat can be expensive to have everybody run Adobe Acrobat on their PCs especially when PDF creation requirements aren’t using more complex the outputting a document as a PDF.

Starting with Word 2007, you can create simple PDFs directly from Microsoft Word without the need of Adobe Acrobat or even an add-in.

Perform the following steps while working in the document you want to save as a PDF:

1. Click File to open the Backstage View. The Backstage View appears.
2. Click Save & Send. The Save & Send Page appears.
3. Click Create PDF/XPS Document. The Publish as PDF or XPS dialog box appears similar to the following. The filename of your open file should appear in the Save as Type field.
4. Click Publish to publish the document as a PDF. The PDF version of the document opens in the default PDF reader on your PC.

Save Documents to Microsoft SkyDrive

The integration between Microsoft Word and the Microsoft SkyDrive cloud storage service is another much-underutilized feature. In fact, linking Microsoft Office apps to the cloud seems to be an underutilized feature all over not just with SkyDrive. Perform the following steps save a Microsoft Office document in SkyDrive:

1. Click File to open the Backstage View. The Backstage View appears.
2. Click Save & Send. The Save & Send Page appears.
3. Click Save to Web.
4. Click Sign In, enter your Windows Live ID and password, and click OK.
5. Select a folder in SkyDrive and click Save As. Type a name for your file and click Save.

The document is now saved in SkyDrive. In SkyDrive you can give people permission to view and edit the contents of your folders. When you want to share a document, you send a link to the folder.

Customize Ribbons

When Microsoft Office went to using ribbons with the release of Office 2007, doing things the same way in Microsoft Office was thrown out on its ear. The new Ribbon interface was a definite game changer for end users and even help desk who always expected Microsoft Office apps to remain the same

To customize the Word 2010 ribbons:

1. Click File to open the Backstage View. The Backstage View appears.
2. Click Options. The Word Options dialog box appears.
3. Click Customize Ribbon.
4. Click New Tab and then select commands for it.
5.  Click Rename and then enter a more descriptive name for the new tab.

Make Microsoft Word Work In New Ways

The way people use Microsoft Word in their daily work have remained largely unchanged while Microsoft Word slips in new features as part of an overall strategy to make Microsoft Office apps more collaboration oriented .

What underutilized MS Word features do you use in your work?