Set Microsoft formats as default
Open settings and save new files as .docx. Native .wps is fine for a personal archive and hostile for anyone else. This single change prevents half of “my professor cannot open it” tickets.
Styles beat spacebar layout
Heading 1, Heading 2, and a Normal style survive a round-trip to Word. Five empty paragraphs to push a title down do not. If a resume explodes on another PC, look for spaces-as-tabs and manual line breaks inside justified paragraphs.
Fonts that travel
Calibri, Arial, Times New Roman, and the default WPS fonts are the safe set. Decorative fonts must be embedded or converted to PDF. Linux users should install the missing Windows symbol fonts before writing equations — see Linux fonts.
Track changes and comments
Review tools exist and round-trip reasonably with Word comments. If a legal department lives in Word’s compare feature, do not be the person who last saved the contract in a different suite the night before signing. Export PDF for the freeze copy.
Mail merge
Writer can merge a sheet of names into letters or labels. Keep the data file as XLSX, not CSV with mystery encoding, if you write in Arabic, Russian, or Chinese. Save a test merge of three rows before you print 400 envelopes.
When Writer is the wrong tool
Book-length projects with master documents, heavy citation managers, or locked enterprise templates may still want Word. Writer is outstanding for reports, letters, homework, and most CVs — especially with WPS’s template gallery (some packs are Premium).
Recovery steps live in recover unsaved documents.
Page setup that survives Word
Set margins, paper size, and header/footer once. A4 versus Letter is still the quiet international bug. If a heading sits on the last line of a page in Print Preview, it will sit there on the other person’s printer too. Use a real page break (Ctrl+Enter) instead of a stack of empty paragraphs when you need a new chapter.
Tables, captions, and figures
Insert a table as a table, not as tab-separated text. Give pictures a caption below, not a text box floating on top of the image — those boxes drift in Word. Compress images before a 40 MB thesis becomes unmailable. Cross-references to figure numbers survive better than typing “see Fig. 3” by hand in twelve places.
Headers, footers, and page numbers
Different first page, then Arabic numbers from page two, is the usual campus pattern. Section breaks are how you stop the number from appearing on the title page. If the number restarts at 1 in the middle of chapter two, you have an extra section break — show formatting marks and delete the stray one.
Find and replace without wrecking the file
Replace double spaces after periods if your department hates them. Do not global-replace a hyphen that lives inside equations. Save a copy first. For a mail-house letter, test three rows in mail merge before you print 400 envelopes.
Related handbook pages
Keyboard shortcuts · Templates · Word to PDF · Languages and RTL · Comments and sharing