Microsoft Word has long offered artistic effects to add to your headings, but we welcome the new Text Effects as they make them easier to apply and also don’t convert them into some fancy graphical format – which means you can search on the words, just as with any text within your document.

The effects themselves won’t have Adobe Illustrator users fainting in awe, but they’re strong enough to add a bit of impact to newsletters or even the funkier company report. As ever, use sparingly.

This is the screen you’ll see in the Microsoft Word 2010’s Backstage view if you click on the Info tab. Think of it as a glorified version of the File Info dialog you currently access if you click Properties, but with a much nicer layout and more power – including the ability to recover unsaved items.

The idea is that you might want to revert back to a previous version of the file, or – worse still – you might close a file you’ve been working on and accidentally choose not to save your changes. In the past, the only solution has been to swear a lot and take out your frustration on your spouse or junior employees, but Word 2010 will automatically save your draft.

The easiest way to rescue it is to launch Word 2010 again and click on the File menu then Recent. This will bring up a dialog very like the one you see below, with the topmost entry being your unsaved entry.

When you open the draft, you’ll be asked if you want to restore it or compare it side-by-side with the previously saved version. It’s all very neat.

There are a number of things I like about this dialog, which is what you’ll see if you press Ctrl + P or click File |Print, where File is the new-style Office icon that sits at the top-left of the Word window.

And prime among them is the automatic print preview feature.

Previously, you’d have to click an extra button for this, and as most people don’t bother they won’t notice that they’re accidentally printing in landscape when they meant to print in portrait, and vice versa.

It also makes it incredibly clear which printer is being used, and makes it easier to collate multiple copies and select one-sided or duplex printer options.

If you scroll down the window, you’ll see the rest of the options. You can quickly select different margin options, different paper sizes (I don’t want Letter, for instance) and how many pages get squeezed onto each sheet of paper.

Choosing the different options is a simple matter of clicking on the dropdown arrow and selecting the relevant choice.

There’s little to criticise, certainly on first sight, but one area Microsoft could still improve is the print preview. In particular, the preview should be showing that the HP LaserJet I’ve chosen doesn’t support colour, so the blue hyperlink will be printed out grey.

Aside from this, though, Word 2010’s print dialog is a big improvement on what any previous version of Word has to offer.