Welcome to the Corporate Finance Institute.

This is our course on Microsoft Word for Business Documents.

As a financial analyst, you often need to create professional looking business
documents, whether
it's a financial report, an internal working report, or a document for a complex
transaction.
In this course, we're going to show you how to build a proper Word document with
all the
tools available in Microsoft Word.
We're going to show you how to turn something ordinary into a beautiful, well-
structured,
and easy-to-navigate professional document.
Let's jump in and get going.
Let's review what we're going to cover in this course.
We'll walk you through the process of creating a confidential information
memorandum or SIM
for short.
This is a document that's used in mergers and acquisitions to convey important
information
about a business to a potential buyer.
It contains information about the business's operations, its financial statements,
its management
team, etc.
We'll discuss the design principles that will help you create the right type of
document.
We'll also show you some tips and tricks such as using line spacing, headings, and
indentation
to make it easy for readers to follow.
Additionally, we'll look into some built-in tools in Microsoft Word to help you
audit the
final product and make sure it's ready to be presented to the readers.
At the end of this course, you'll have the skills you need to create a super
professional
looking Word document for any type of transaction.
Design principles
In this section of the course, we have three main learning objectives.
The first is to look at the purpose of a document that we're going to prepare and
decide how
we're going to design the structure and style of that document.
The second is to review the key design principles to make sure the style of the
document is both
unique and easy to follow for the readers.
And third, we'll discuss the tools that we can use in Word to structure the
document in
a clear and concise way.
Let's jump in now and get going.
When you build a report, you have to think about the purpose of the document you're
creating.
Is this report going to be used for internal purposes where information and numbers
need
to be conveyed clearly but don't require as much elaborate formatting?
Or is this the type of document that's going to be distributed externally in a form
of
marketing material where background and layout and color and things like that
really matter
for creating an impression with a client?
These with different purposes have completely different designs.
If the report is informative, then you need a clear structure but you can keep it
simple
to convey the information.
If it's more like a marketing report, then you need to have more of a creative
process
by using things like headings, backgrounds, pictures and colors to really make the
document
come to life.

The higher the score is, the easier it is for users to read what's written in the
document,
so you want it to be as high as possible, ideally 60 or higher.
Similarly, the average grade is ideal when it is around 10.
That means a tenth grader can read the whole document.
Of course, it depends on the type of document you're writing.
A research paper, with no doubt, have a much higher grade level.
Similarly, because our confidential information memorandum is an internal document,
made
for viewing by people in the industry, the grade level can be higher.
If this were a document made for the public, it is a good idea to use a lower grade
level
by breaking off longer sentences into shorter ones and using less complex
vocabulary.
Let's look at another hinge related to word count.
You can click on the word count and it will pull up some details about the
characters and
some other information.
It also provides a built-in thesaurus for users.
You can either click the thesaurus under review ribbon or highlight a word and
right-click
on it to find synonyms.
Under the review ribbon, you can use the read aloud when you're proofreading.
Some words that look similar, like country and county, cannot be detected by the
auto-proof
reading and you might miss it when you're proofreading it yourself because the
words look
so similar, but they sound different so by hearing the document read aloud, you
will
more easily catch this mistake.
You can adjust the reading speed and the voice you want.
This is a very helpful way to proofread and error check your document.
When you ask other people to proofread for you, sometimes you are in a situation
where
they send back the document but you don't know where they made changes.
You can use two functions, track changes and compare documents to help you solve
that issue.
Before sending it off to your proofreader, turn on the track changes function.
Let's add a sentence here for example.
You can see that the changes made after you've turned on track changes are in red
and underlined
and when something is deleted, like this, it is also red but crossed out.
When you get your document back, you can right click on the parts that have been
changed and
either accept the changes which make them permanent or reject the changes and your
document will
be returned to its original state.
If you forget to turn on track changes, then you can use the compare document
function right
beside it.
You can locate the original document and the revised version and have word compare
them for
you to track the changes.
This way, it is a bit more difficult than track changes because for track changes
you
can simply accept or reject but when you have two different documents, you might
have manually
made changes in one of the documents.
This function is particularly useful if you're sending a document to another party
to sign
and you want to ensure before you countersign that they didn't make any changes.
By using compare documents, you can be sure that they did not try to sneak anything
past
you or make any unapproved changes to the document before you sign it.
One more thing you might want to learn is the mailing function in Word which can be
found
under the mailing ribbon.
The function is useful when you want to mail the document out to multiple people or
send
it through email.
It can create a customized greeting page for each individual recipient as well as
print
out the address needed for an envelope.
First, let's go through how to create a recipient list.
We can do this through Excel.
It's quite simple and there's no standard way.
Just type in the information that you have or might need.
To begin, you may want first name and last name.
Make sure you type the labels as an entire word, not spaces between them.
You might want the title, whether it's Mr, Ms or Mrs, for sending out emails the
email
column is important.
For postage mail, you would want their actual mailing address.
It's recommended to break down the address into city, state and zip code into
multiple columns.
This means Word can break them into multiple lines for the address label.
If you're reaching out to corporate clients, the company name could be added as
well.
And lastly, you might want to add phone number.
Now we are done setting this up and you could go ahead and fill in all the
information for
the actual list that you want to deliver it to.
Here I'll use a list of fake names and addresses to demonstrate how it works.
Your select recipients will then select use existing list and upload the list that
we
just produced in Excel.
You'll want to check that all the fields are matched up properly.
Click on match fields and make sure that the right field corresponds to the right
column
in the Excel spreadsheet.
Once you're confident that everything is properly aligned, we can click OK and
we're ready to go.
The next step is to create customized greetings that contain the recipient's name.
For demonstration purposes, let's create a new blank document.
When you're making a document, you may choose to insert a blank page in front of
the table
of contents.
You can use the function greeting line, which produces a commonly used greeting.
We can choose dear, Mr. or Ms. last name, or you can choose first name or a
combination
of first and last name.
Let's insert that.
Currently it shows as greeting line, but when you turn on preview results, you can
see that
the greeting line has changed to a normal greeting.
Another option is to create one yourself using the insert merge field.
Let's type hello and then select the first name, comma, enter.
You can see that we've created our own greeting.
You can flip through the recipient list here and see the effects.
Below in our letter, we might want to type something like this in our confidential
information
memorandum.
Please contact us if you have any questions.
If you want to include a customized note in each individual recipient, you can do
it in
your recipient list.
In order to edit your list, you need to remove the link between the files.
After start mail merge, you want to click normal word document.
Do the same when you are saving the document you're working on, or else next time
you
open the document, an error message will appear.
Open up the Excel file and in the last column, you can add a column for comments.
You may say something like your fee is overdue or please contact us regarding XYZ
issue.
Come back to the document and select recipient list again.
Now the greeting line and everything is updated to the new recipient list.
If you make any changes, it will automatically be reflected.
Now in the new line, insert the field comment.
And under that line, hope you have a nice day.
When you preview the results, you can see that the comments line changed with the
recipient.
And for a recipient that does not have a comment, the line is skipped.
Lastly, sign off the letter.
I wrote best regards, corporate finance institute.
Now we are done with our letter and it's time to finish and merge.
There are a few options.
You can have the merge into a single word document.
Note that the number of pages in the document you are emerging and the number of
recipients.
Because if you don't want the merge document to be too big and beyond the
processing power
of your computer, then you have to be careful.
When you perform the merge, Word will automatically apply your entire mailing list
to make all
of the letters in one very large document.
Unfortunately, there's no option to have the letters saved as individual files or
individual
PDFs.
There are people who created their individual piece of code to make this function
available,
so if you need to perform this function, you can search online to see instructions
on how
to install it.
Another option is to print documents, which will print exactly what you see here.
The final option is to send it as an email message.
A few warnings before using this function.
One is to make sure that the email account you are sending from is properly
connected.
You never want to send a work email from a personal email account, for example.
Word doesn't have a choice of choosing the email account you send it from.
Please test it by sending the email to yourself first.
The only way to make sure it sends from your work email is to remove all the other
email
accounts from the computer.
Another thing to be aware of is that long documents may be sent out as HTML, which
means
the entire document will be sent in the body of the email.
Although it may look okay, there may be some formatting issues that will be lost.
If you want to see how it will look on the recipient end, you can click on start
mail
merge and email.
You can also choose to have the document sent out as an attachment.
But word will not let you customize the body of the email and leaves a blank.
So the recipient will receive an email with nothing in the body but only the
attachment.
Your mailings function is very useful when you want to write the same or very
similar
letter to multiple people.
Instead of copying and pasting the letter over and over again, you can customize
parts
of it and let word do the rest of the work for you.
When you're sending out postal letters, you may want to print the delivery and
return
address on envelopes.
Open up a new file and select start mail merge envelopes.
The most important step is to select the size of the envelope you are using.
Remember to select your recipient list.
It may seem like nothing is there, but if you click on the center, there's actually
a text box where you can type in the delivery address.
You can use the address block function, which automatically generates the mailing
address.
You can type a return address in the top left corner if you want.
Turn on preview to see the results.
Lastly, finish merge and either save the merge document.
Remember to remove the recipient list or print it.
The label function works similarly.
It's meant to print those easy peel labels that you can stick on the envelopes and
sometimes
use as name tags for events.
You click on start mail merge labels.
Select the type of labels you are using according to the manufacturer and if you
can't find
it, create a new one yourself.
Once again, select your recipients.
This time you'll notice that next record appeared on your page.
This is words way of saying use the next recipient's info in the next cell.
You can use address block again and preview results.
Click on the update labels button and you can preview how the first page of the
labels
look.
If you want to change anything like the spacing, you can change the first cell and
update labels
to see the effect being applied to the other cells.
To add space above the address book, press shift plus enter.
Finally, the finish and merge function is the same.
Select or save it, but always remember to remove the recipient list before saving.