Business process charts like employee routines, document preparation, and approval, or online user navigation path on a website or a Web store are different from academic flows of algorithms. Usually, academic applications use a limited number of standard shape types, but in business, different shapes give a better look and simplify understanding. However, it is hard to decide which shape is appropriate for the specific block.

The Format tab of the Drawing Tools toolbar provides plenty of options for customization of the shape outline, background and text settings. Also, here you can change spacing, and size for multiple shapes at once.

Word 2016 has an option that allows to use Word document like a board to write some notes anywhere without positioning a cursor. This can help to easily format any kind of document on free style.

The simplest way to copy format from one character, word, paragraph, or other elements in Microsoft Word, is to use the Format Painter button (on the Home tab, in the Clipboard group). Still, with keyboard shortcuts, it is faster.

Word is heavily used by all Microsoft Office users and customization of menu, recent documents and start screen allow you to save a lot of time.

Microsoft Word continuously improves and polishes checks for grammar rules and orthography. There are many additional add-ons, utilities, and applications for checking style, spelling, etc., that can improve your writing, but Word itself provides enough hints for writing correct texts. However, for technical writers it becomes annoying at times. If you choose to use the grammar checker rather than turn it off completely, you can tell it which grammar items you want to check and which you don't.

If you use citations in your Word documents, you might need the bibliographic items for each source that you have referenced. Microsoft Word offers a useful tool to create a list of these bibliographic references, also named as bibliography, references or works cited, as a list of the citations added in the document.

Sometimes you need to see a word count statistics without obtaining readability information. For example, you have a limit on how many words a document can be for a particular assignment. Usually, journals, magazines, and newspapers restrict the size of the article.

When you first start most of the Office 2016 applications, you'll see a new feature called the Start screen.

In some cases it is needed to create a multilevel list with different features, for example to show numbers from right to left.