Microsoft has added another feature to the online version of Word. It's called Designer and is based on the tool of the same name that's been part of Powerpoint for some time. It's a partially automated way of improving the layout of your document by applying formatting from a template suggested by Designer.
Office Watch has an article that describes Designer and has some tips on how to get the most out of it. Based on the article, it sounds like Designer has some features that might make it easier for unskilled users to produce a clean-looking document.
In all our tests of Word Designer, the same dozen templates kept appearing. At the moment, Designer is merely a showcase for a very limited set of templates.
That makes it very different to PowerPoint Designer which takes the current content and suggests slide designs based on that content. There are underlying slide templates but there’s a least variation and machine intelligence involved.
No matter what we tried, all Word Designer offered were the same twelve templates.
Users have to apply their own structure (Headings, sub-headings and Normal text) for Word Designer to have any effect. The top line of a document is assumed to be ‘Heading 1’ but beyond that, styles need the human touch. Keep in mind with the impressive demos (that are sure to come) that the document needs formatting structure first.
Formatting Fixes is a good idea for enforcing structure and a welcome new tool.
Designer isn't yet available on my Word Online so I wasn't able to test it myself. I'll try it again at some point and will update this post or write a proper review.
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