Common software programs

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Software that's essential for your efficiency

You can't be efficient until you have a thorough knowledge of the following software applications. Spend some time learning them intimately - it will be worth it.

• Acrobat Professional – especially when you need to extract text (Select Tool) and images (Advanced ->export all images); track changes (Comments & Markup); or publish a smaller, unchangeable PPT as a PDF;
• Word – convert to Adobe PDF using an Acrobat plug-in; Track changes (ctrl+shift+E); email document as a draft for comment; add images; has hierarchical outline view
• Endnote – links to Word; does its’ own PUBmed searching, constructs a complete bibliography and dynamically formats your references while you write
• PowerPoint (PPT) – you can incorporate and edit web pages and images for presentations. And it's an easy way to construct protocol flow schemas
• Quosa – http://www.quosa.com/ connects automatically to PubMed and extracts full article PDFs if you are allowed to do so by your institutional license.