While watching a recent repeat of the panel show QI one of the questions related to the Bayeux Tapestry. An accompanying photograph showed the word hAROLD, and it set me thinking. We have all at some point accidentally pressed the Caps Lock key and, after holding down the Shift key at the start of a sentence, continued typing in capitals, with the initial letter in lower case because of the reverse action of holding down the Shift key when the Caps Lock was already on. How on earth they managed to make the same error on something as painstaking as a tapestry, however, is beyond me.

I have a problem with this because, despite many years spent clacking away at a keyboard, I still have to watch my hands and not the screen. If I have inadvertently pressed the Caps Lock key, I can type half a paragraph before I notice that I am not writing, but shouting.

There are two separate issues to address here: the first is how to convert my capitalised text into lower case without having to re-type it, and the second is to question the value of having a functioning Caps Lock key at all. After all, it is extremely rare that we are asked to type in capitals.

First of all we shall deal with the issue of converting text into lower case. Those great minds at the Microsoft development lab clearly understood that there are still people out there who cannot watch the screen as they type. They are aware that there are still some of us who use the slow but steady 'hunt and peck' method of typing, which requires our eyes to be focused on the keyboard and not the screen. This leaves us vulnerable to bouts of unintentional capitalisation but the development team have inserted a feature in Word that will transform capitals into lower case in a flash.

The solution is so quick and easy, it is like having a ray gun that blasts capitals back into lower case letters in an instant. Just select the block of capitalised text and press Shift + F3, and the offending capitals will be transformed in the blinking of an eye. One point to remember here though is that if you have selected the entire block of capitalised text it will all be converted into lower case and therefore you will need to reinsert capitals at the start of your sentences.

Incidentally, if you repeatedly press the Shift + F3 combination, you will see that this will also transform lower case into capitals and it even offers a third option, where each word starts with a capital letter, as used in headlines or film titles, for example.

The old saying tells us, however, that prevention is better than cure, so how would you go about disabling the Caps Lock key permanently to stop unwanted capitalisation from happening at all?

Unfortunately this is a far more technical task than the cap-zapping shortcut above. It is possible to disable the Caps Lock entirely, or turn it into a third Shift key, but this requires some adjustments to the registry, which are perhaps a little too technical for an article on Microsoft Word. If you feel that you have no use at all for the Caps Lock key, then it would definitely be worth checking out how to disable it and there are several walkthroughs on how to do this available online.

A close relation of the Caps Lock key, and one that can be equally frustrating, is the Insert key. There can't be many people out there who haven't accidentally hit this bothersome button when typing in the middle of a document and then typed over their text. Disabling this key also requires going into the registry but again, if you feel you will never have the need to type over existing text, then it might well be worth switching it off.

There have been many times that I have accidentally typed in capitals and, on realising, deleted and re-typed the whole lot - and all because I was unaware of a simple procedure that would rectify my mistake at a stroke. Proof, if any were needed, that the more you learn about Microsoft Word, the less time you waste when using it.