By combining some extremely efficient time management techniques and a healthy dose of artistic licence, I’ve been to the year 3000 and, as the Busted song says, not much has changed. Coronation Street is still going strong (and Ken Barlow is still in it) and Newcastle United still haven’t won a trophy. The latest version of Microsoft Office, however, has some features that we could only dream of today. To demonstrate the sheer enormity of these stunning new features, I shall place them alongside some pretty cool Office tips of today.

Word Today
The Find & Replace function in Word is commonly used to hunt down unwanted words or phrases and replace them with something new, but the capabilities of Find & Replace are not restricted to what you type. For example, you may have a document that contains a lot of highlighted words and you want to change the background colour. Doing this manually would be a laborious process, but fortunately it can be done at a stroke using Find & Replace.

Simply open the highlight tool and select the NEW colour you want. Press Ctrl+H to open up the Find & Replace dialog box. With the Find What box selected, click Format/Highlight. Now with the insertion point in the Replace box, again select Format/Highlight and click Replace All. And there you go, enough highlighting to make you a contender for Hairdresser of the Year.

Word 3000
Many of the regular features we are familiar with are still going strong in Word 3000, although they are far more powerful. For example, if you think the previous tip was an impressive way of using Find & Replace, then you should see what it can do in Word 3000. Of course it can do everything we expect of it today, but the Find function in Word 3000 can also locate lost car keys and TV remotes, and Replace can be used to dump a boy or girlfriend who has fallen from favour, and a new, more sporty model put in place.

Outlook Today
In a world that dances to a thousand different mobile ring tones, you can join the party by personalising your Outlook with different aural reminders for those appointments. In pre-2007 versions of Outlook, simply click the sound button when setting the reminder and choose a sound.

In Outlook 2007 click the expand arrow in Options. This will open up the sound dialog box.

Outlook 3000
Hotmail has taken on a whole new meaning as, at last, it is possible to send physical objects via email. So the joke of today, where a colleague mentions in an email that he is enjoying a bacon sandwich and you mail back asking him to send you one, has become reality. There is even a separate function for sending hazardous items, such as a scalding cup of tea, called Microsoft Look Out!

Excel Today
If you have many worksheets open and you are going to be moving between different ones frequently, a quick way to navigate between them is to hold down Ctrl and press Page Up to move towards the first sheet and Page Down to move in the opposite direction. Excel has ‘buffers’ in place at either end so that, when navigating in this manner, you can not shoot past the last sheet and into the first ones again, becoming hopelessly lost on the way.

Excel 3000
If the 17 billion available cells in Excel 2010 are not enough for your needs, the 3000 version should satisfy - it goes to infinity and beyond. But of all the amazing features that have been introduced into Excel 3000, my favourite is the edible pie chart.

Office 3000 is obviously way off in the future and so we must make do with the powerful, and very efficient versions that we have today. While using the Find function to locate your car keys may be a pipe dream, the Office tips for current versions are all worth checking out, and, indeed, the whole of this remarkable application should be explored. After all, when Office replaced its predecessors of pen, paper and typewriter, it was like the future had arrived.

Oh and by the way, if any of you are still around in the first decade of the next millennium, the winning lottery numbers for Saturday 22nd March 3000 are 11 19 23 29 37 41 and the bonus ball is 18. Good luck.