Would that it were so simple. The problem is that you know what you want to do, the difficulty is finding out what the application calls it.
Yes and no. To begin with it's not that difficult to make an informed guess as to the top-level menu item below which the function you are after is likely to reside. For example: 'File' menu child functions are usually concerned with operations that work on the document 'as a whole' ...such as 'New', 'Save', 'Save-As', 'Import', etc... 'Edit' menu child functions are usually concerned with making changes within a part of an existing document ...such as 'Copy', 'Paste', 'Find', 'Format', etc... 'Insert' menu child functions are usually concerned with adding new content to sections of an existing document ..such as 'Date & Time', 'Image', 'Object', etc... OK, so this tends to get less logical and more application specific as one progresses across the top-level menu items. But it only takes a few seconds to scan the cursor across the full-range of the top-level menu, and with practice you'll find the functions you are looking tend to 'jumps out' at you. Why? Because your mind soon learns to automatically ignore the unwanted functions that are already familiar to you, allowing you to quickly target the one you are after. Furthermore once you have mastered a few applications using this standard method of accessing their functions through the drop-down menu system, then when you start to work an a new application you'll quickly discover you already know how to access perhaps 80% or even in excess of 90% of it's basic functionality. Recognising the great similarities between supposedly different applications also provides the user with a huge psychological boost. For this serves to convince their all-powerful sub-conscious mind that every application is in essence basically the same. This sets in motion a 'virtuous circle' whereby any incongruity is quickly noted and dealt with on a sub-conscious level, which turns this similarity into a self-fulfilling prophecy. This is why old-timers such as myself are able to master new applications (that roughly conform to a standard drop-down menu format) so quickly and with such comparative ease. However this skill is not unique to those with years of experience, who usually got to work this way through trial and error (mainly error!). It can also be implicitly taught and quickly, in much the same way one can teach an modern-foreign language.
The help file is often worse than useless because it uses the application specific vocabulary.
Personally I don't believe this to be true, or rather it's usually possible to pick up the gist of how an application functions extremely quickly just from scanning the help system in the right way. Once you understand how a standard help system is laid out, then drilling down to a detailed explanation of the functionality you are after is 'easy peasy'! But I'll leave this lesson for a future posting... David Bowles TeacherLab / Education Support