Microsoft Word had been around for a while now. In fact it is nearly forty years old. But there is a lot more to know about Word than that. We’ve collected together some interesting and fun facts that might surprise you.

1. Word was launched in 1983, around the time that wearing a seat-belt became compulsory in the UK, when it was called Multi-Tool Word.
2. It was one of the first word processors to have a What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG) interface. What appeared on the screen looked the same as what was printed. Before this, mark-up tags needed to be added to indicate different typefaces.
3. Like Excel, Word was released for the Apple Macintosh years before there was a version for Windows.
4. Early versions of word had interesting codenames, including Bill the Cat (for Word 1.1) and Spaceman Spiff (Word 2.0).
5. AutoCorrect was only included with Word 6.0 in 1993. Before that users had to correct their own typing, spelling and grammar mistakes!
6. There was a free download of Word released as a fail-safe against the much-feared Millennium Bug – Word 5.5. for DOS. (If you look hard enough, it can still be found on the company’s website.)
7. It is possible to include most kinds of Equations in Word. (-b±√(b^2-4ac))/2a).
8. There is a ‘Hidden’ option for text, so that it not only cannot be seen, it does not take up any space. You can still use ‘Find and Replace’ with hidden text, though.
9. There are shortcuts for selecting in Word. Two rapid mouse clicks will select a word. Three rapid clicks will select an entire paragraph and CTRL + Click will select a sentence.
10. It is possible to use Macros to automate Word. They are not just available in Excel.
11. Bonus Fact:  According to Microsoft’s latest figures, there are currently 1.2 billion Office users worldwide. If all of them typed just ten words, then it would take one person 110 years to read them all, at average reading speed.

There is so much more that Word is capable of doing. Infero offers Training courses at all levels to help get the most out of this remarkable piece of software.