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When you have a multi-lingual Word document, there’s no obvious way to know which language is currently set for the paragraph or text.
There is a way to display the current language. It’s not a very good option but it’s all that Microsoft gives us.
You can add a language selector to the Quick Access Toolbar (QAT) like this:
You can use this as a pull-down list to change the language setting in parts of a document. We mostly use it just to check, at a glance, that the right language setting is already set.
The problem is the fixed width of the toolbar item. As you can see from the above Word 2013 example, you can can’t see whether the setting is English (United States) or English (United Kingdom)! Other language setting also fall off the edge of the narrow view.
In Word 2010 and Word 2007 that specific problem doesn’t occur because the language options were labelled ‘English (U.S.)’ and ‘English (U.K.)’. Office 2013 changes the label to a longer form (e.g. ‘English (United Kingdom)’) which doesn’t fit in the standard width allowed for the Language selector. Microsoft expanded the language labels without considering all the consequences.
... click here to read more at Office-Watch.com ...Over on Slate there’s a nice little slideshow about making PowerPoint presentations that don’t bore your audience into a coma.
In short, the advice is to make your slides incomprehensible.
Well, not quite. The idea is that the slide content should complement or support what you are saying; but not repeat it.
If you’re reading out the same words that are on the slide, then people will focus on the slide and that’s the fast track to a comatose audience.
PowerPoint has the presenters view with plenty of space for speakers notes to complement each slide.
Use the speakers notes to remind you about what to say that works with the slide.
>... click here to read more at Office-Watch.com ...
Getty Images, has announced that 35 million of their images are now available free. Does that mean you can use them in your PowerPoint presentations or Word documents?
Sadly, no
Getty Images is now allowing free embedding to some images in their vast collection. That means you can only use the images on web sites and even then only using their special ‘Embedded Viewer’.
The exact terms of the ‘free’ use are:
Embedded Getty Images Content may not be used: (a) for any commercial purpose (for example, in advertising, promotions or merchandising) or to suggest endorsement or sponsorship; (b) in violation of any stated restriction; (c) in a defamatory, pornographic or otherwise unlawful manner; or (d) outside of the context of the Embedded Viewer.
Point (d) effectively excludes use in Word or PowerPoint.
... click here to read more at Office-Watch.com ...Go to the File | Open pane in Word 2013, right-click and choose ‘Remove from List’ will delete any indication that a particular document/s had been opened. Right?
Wrong – Office 2013 retains information about past documents that anyone can see. The Windows registry still retains recently used document information that’s not directly editable by users and most people would not realize was there.
It’s a clear privacy breach and means Microsoft has forgotten the basics of customer privacy as well as the history of Office development.
‘Remove from List’ was a feature that users asked Microsoft for many years and finally got it in Office 2010.
But that privacy hasn’t lasted long. In Word 2013 (including Service Pack 1), Microsoft has effectively restored the list of past documents opened and not made it editable by users. That’s because the ‘Remove from List’ action in Office 2013 doesn’t completely remove the Most Recently Used information.
... click here to read more at Office-Watch.com ...Jason Hale has done a nice job checking out where Office 2013 leaves footprints showing what documents you’ve worked on.
Office programs like Word, Excel and PowerPoint have MRU – Most Recently Used – lists that let you re-open a recently accessed document.
In the ‘olden days’ there was one MRU list saved in the Windows Registry. Office geeks could peek in the registry to see what documents had been recently opened.
Office 2013 and Office 2010, at least, you can right click on an MRU item and ‘Remove from List’ to maintain some privacy.
Starting with Office 2010 you could directly remove items from the MRU list. In Office 2007 and before you had to tinker in the Registry to remove your document footprints from a computer.
What Jason discovered is that the MRU’s have been expanded a lot in Office 2013. The integration with Microsoft Live Account logins mean that there’s a lot more information stored.
... click here to read more at Office-Watch.com ...One of the nice little features in Office 2013 is the ‘Welcome Back .. Pick up where you left off’ tag that appears when you re-open a document.
Click on that tag and you’ll move to the last place you were in the document. Very nice, though you could always use Shift + F5 in earlier versions of Office to do the same thing.
Most people would have thought this useful information would be stored in the document (the .docx file). After all it’s an XML file so it can contain all sorts of detail. You’d think that the document position, time accessed and the user ID would be saved there.
But no … it’s not. Microsoft has chosen to save it in the Registry instead!
Jason Hale has figured out that the ‘Welcome back’ details are stored at Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Word\Reading Locations in the registry. The document path and name are saved with the saved date/time and two numbers representing a position in the document.
... click here to read more at Office-Watch.com ...When you save a document to SkyDrive, Microsoft collects some more details than you’d expect but hasn’t bothered to tell its customers.
We’ve already told you about Jason Hale and his discovery that the ‘Welcome Back’ details when re-opening a document are not saved in the document itself. Instead they are saved, with the document name and path in the Windows registry. Microsoft should disclose that information to customers but it’s missing from their web site.
While checking out that discovery we noticed that there were no SkyDrive documents in the 50 Reading Locations saved. Yet if the same Microsoft account holder opens a Word document from SkyDrive on another computer they’ll get a ‘Welcome Back’ message.
Somehow the ‘Welcome Back’ information is being passed between computers and that isn't disclosed by Microsoft.
Again, the obvious place for that information is in the document itself. However our look inside a .docx could not find anything (maybe someone with sharper eyes can find it?).
... click here to read more at Office-Watch.com ...We recently told you about the Helvetica font in Windows and Microsoft Office – or rather it’s noticeable absence. Microsoft plays some strange font substitution tricks that got us digging further.
As we’ve noted, if you open up a document with Helvetica formatting, Office for Windows will show you Arial as a substitute. That’s not unusual because Mac computers have Helvetica but Office for Mac doesn’t support font embedding.
For example, here’s a document in Word 2011 for Mac with both Helvetica and Arial fonts. Notice the difference between the right down stroke on the capital R – it’s almost vertical in Helvetica and more of an angle in Arial.
Now open the same document in Word 2013 for Windows (or any Word for Windows) and check out the capital R – they are the same even though there’s two different fonts. That’s because Windows has, without warning, replaced Helvetica with Arial on the displayed page.
... click here to read more at Office-Watch.com ...We’ll show you how to capture or grab a proper, full size, high-resolution still image from a high quality video file then paste that picture into an Office document or Outlook email.
Why do this? Sometimes a video turns out badly but has some moments that would look good on their own. Or you don’t want to share an entire video but some images are easier to send around.
Microsoft Office users often want to insert images from video into Word documents, PowerPoint presentations or Outlook emails.
Many video editors and players have a ‘Snapshot’ function to grab a still image from a video. Unfortunately those features are limited to the screen size displayed as opposed to the true video size.
For example, if you take a still image from a 1920x1080 video using Windows Movie Maker you’ll get a much smaller image based on the preview pane size. Even VLC (the favored video player) will only grab a still image based on the current video window. That wasn’t a problem but these days recording a a high-resolution video is becoming quite common even in a modestly priced camera or smartphone.
... click here to read more at Office-Watch.com ...Mike Parker isn’t a household name but the chances are the every household has an example of Helvetica, the font he helped make popular. When he worked for Mergenthaler Linotype Co., Mr Parker added many fonts, including Helvetica, to the Linotype range and therefore made available to designers and printers around the world. While he did not make Helvetica (that kudos goes to Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann) he’s rightly called the ‘Godfather’ of Helvetica.
And boy did Helvetica spread around the world. You’ll see it in public signs from Vienna to Chicago and even in Earth orbit as the font on the side of NASA’s Shuttle. It’s a favorite of logo designers so you’ll see it use by McDonald’s, Motorola, Verizon, Lufthansa, 3M and many more.
Helvetica isn’t a font normally available to Windows or Microsoft Office users. To get it you’d have to buy a licence from Linotype or another authorized distributor.
... click here to read more at Office-Watch.com ...|
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