MS Word 2010 (or earlier) won’t provide a tabbed interface. There exist Word Add-ins that will cover this, but with side effects or faults. A way to handle multiple Word documents is letting them all appear in the Windows Taskbar. If you are after a cleaner desktop, you might prefer to have only the currently activated document appear on the taskbar, but then how are you going to jump to other open documents?

Pressing Ctrl+F6 will activate automatically the next open Word document. Pressing the same shortcut several times will let you locate the document you need, cycle between all open documents, etc.

Another way, especially useful if you have 3 or much more documents open, is to press a shortcut to display a list with all open documents. Then using the arrows you can select the one you need and activate it with Enter.

The command that will do this is called “WindowList”. Go to File > Options > Customize Ribbon > Keyboard Shortcuts and select the WindowList command under the View Tab section. Define a convenient shortcut and you are done!

Being yourself an author or student you will perhaps appreciate especially this feature, that the very structure of the book will teach you how to work. The book contains even chapters on how to prepare a document for professional publishers such as Amazon. Reading Steven Adams' Writing a book or thesis in Microsoft Word you are surprised realizing it makes you want to work -- to think, write, use Word and be creative!