Microsoft 365 top tips – F7

Professionalism is a key ingredient to running a successful business. It comes in many different forms; the most obvious of which is the clothes you choose to wear to work. If not a uniform, your work clothes should be neutral, fit to work in comfortably and appropriate for customers to see you in. But professionalism is also projected in ways that aren’t as obvious.

Using outstanding levels of grammar and formality in any and every written text within your business is essential. Poor grammar and formality have the power to undermine good quality work. As an example, your website is well equipped with a full portfolio of successful jobs with clients all over the country who are happy with the service you delivered, its layout is easy to use and its colour scheme is welcoming. A lot of effort has gone into its design and general vibe. However, the welcome page is full of grammatical errors with poor sentence structure, which makes it near impossible to read. All of that effort and money spent on designing an intuitive responsive platform has been wasted. Customers are choosing to leave the website from the welcome page due to – as they perceive – a blatant lack of care and attention to detail, before even navigating past the first step.

The forerunner

In the past we relied upon the standard tools that Microsoft have provided for years (e.g., right click, followed by a spelling recommendation). The tool had to change – it didn’t quite give you enough recommendations of what changes to make and only recommended grammatical changes and not formality, punctuation or vocabulary changes. It was also due to evolve, due to the growing use of tech worldwide and the amount of less literary capable individuals using hard-copy documents to complete their work. Microsoft now offers a new way of ensuring your text is as good as it can be.

The new kid on the block

F7 – the new tool introduced by Microsoft to ensure your documents are at as good a standard as possible. By F7, I am referring to the function keys along the top of your keyboard.

The ‘F’ stands for function. In basic terms, a function key’s purpose is as a key on a computer or terminal keyboard that can be programmed to perform a command within a certain application program, in turn performing an action.

Why is F7 so good?

F7 delves much deeper into the art of written text – it gives you near certainty that what you have written will read well and won’t be let down by silly mistakes like poor spelling, grammar or punctuation. It offers ‘suggestions’ and gives you an option whether you want to take the advice or not – for example, ‘let’s’ would have a recommendation to be ‘let us’, allowing your team to project a more formal or informal image to customers.

F7 – How to use it.

You have two choices when using the F7 function – either:

1. Press the F7 key before you start writing.

This will prompt the F7 editor to appear to the right of your screen, offering options as you proceed through the document. Or:

2. Press the F7 key when you have finished writing.

This will also prompt the editor to appear to the right of the screen but with the suggestions being recommended throughout the document as opposed to just the piece of text you’ve just written. This option is more popular as it allows you to write freely without the distraction of the editor updating every time you pause.

According to Microsoft, this document needs its formality reviewed on five different occasions. Once having clicked on ‘formality’ you will see the recommended changes.

As you can see, at the very top of the editor it will tell you how many recommended changes to formality remain, what the suggestion is and if you choose to ignore, it even says ‘Don’t check for this issue again’, which is particularly relevant when writing a name or a place.

This feature allows employees that are not as literary able to feel confident that the tools they’re using are going to boost their quality of work and in the long run – improve their skills exponentially.

The tech specialists! – 4TC

4TC take time to understand the daily challenges that your business faces – we then provide a cost-effective tech solution to these challenges that will help you save time, protect vital data, and be more effective with your time management. If you would like to find out more on how 4TC Services can provide affordable tech management, drop us an email or call us now for a full demonstration.