After Windows XP, Microsoft Office is the most popular piece of software on the PC. It's not hard to see why - it doesn't take long for Messrs Word, Excel, Outlook et al to become indispensable parts of your computing life. The beauty of Office is that it's incredibly easy to set up and get started with. The downside of this is that you're so quickly into using the program that you often end up missing out on many of its hidden features - Microsoft estimates that up to 90 per cent of all feature requests made by Office users refer to elements already integrated into the program.
   It's never too late to learn new tricks with your PC, though. We've dug out 250 of the finest tips for the core Office programs: Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint, plus highlighted a few of Office's hidden secrets, like the Picture Manager, Speech and Handwriting Recognition Engine and more.
   One of the beauties in writing this feature is discovering new tips and tricks ourselves - now we can build our own custom toolbars and menus with all our favourite options close to hand, or just quickly navigate to our favourite folders with a simple click in the Places bar of the Open/Save dialog. Crumbs, we're even letting Outlook organise more than just our email folders, tapping into its powerful calendar in an attempt to bring some order into our chaotic lives.
   The tips in this feature have all been tested on Microsoft Office 2003, but we know from experience that most of them will work in Office 2000 and Office XP too.
   Are you ready? If you thought Office was a pretty good tool before, you'll be blown away by what it's capable of after you read this. Go on, revolutionise your Office experience today...

For tips that apply to all Office components, click here (for part one), and here (for part two)
Click here for Microsoft Word tips
Click here for Outlook
Click here for Excel
Click here for PowerPoint