Using the Tell Me feature in Microsoft Office

Tamara Bredemus wandered into my office yesterday and said “here’s a tip you might want to use…”, and she was right! You can ask the Tell Me feature in Microsoft Office to show you how to accomplish tasks without having to figure out the exact search terms or find the menu options. Here’s how it works…

To use the Tell Me feature, just type in a word or phrase in the search box at the top of the screen. In this example, I’m searching for “columns” in Microsoft Word:

It starts off by selecting the Best Action for what I typed in, as well as any variations on that request. Even better, it does the actual action for you!

After that, you can select Get Help on to find more information on the topic you entered if you didn’t get the exact answer you were looking for:

You also have the option to find the actual word in your document, as well as doing a more comprehensive search for the word or topic using search engines: