True Teleprompter options for PowerPoint
Microsoft is taking liberties with their new “Teleprompter View” in PowerPoint because it’s not a true Teleprompter with text that scrolls as you speak. But there are options for a true Teleprompter/Autocue professional effect. A real Teleprompter (aka AutoCue) displays the speech text in front of the camera so the speaker appears to be talking […]
White Right backhand pointer 👉 in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook
Type the White Right backhand pointer 👉 into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. It’s officially called “White Right Pointing Backhand Index”. White Right Pointing Backhand Index 👉 symbol is great for signs, simple hand graphics in slides or an alternative bullet in lists. There’s also […]
Changing Word’s Text Box Gallery to suit you
The Word Text Box Gallery gives you a head start on nice document effects. Under the Insert tab in Word is the Text Box gallery, a selection of pre-set options to jazz up your document. It’s the easy way to put in fancy design elements you see in books and magazines like side-bars or ‘pull […]
New look file browsing in Office for iPhone and iPad
There’s a new “File Card” look coming to the Office ‘all in one’ app for iPhone and iPad which shows document thumbnails and other information. File Cards use the document thumbnails that are in most, but not all Office documents plus PDF files that are stored on OneDrive. Microsoft says there’ll be support for locally […]
Make thumbnails for Office documents with extra tricks
Adding thumbnail or preview image for Word, Excel or PowerPoint Office documents is easy, though you won’t find the choice anywhere obvious. We’ll dig into how thumbnails work for some nerdy extra detail. Thumbnails are the small images that appear in File Explorer and elsewhere instead of the standard icons for Word, Excel, PowerPoint etc. […]
Black Right Pointing Backhand Index 🖝 symbol in Office
insert the Black Right Pointing Backhand Index 🖝 into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. Black Right Pointing Backhand Index 🖝 symbol can be used as a creative bullet symbol in lists or to point a direction on a sign. It’s the lesser known complement to […]
Playing one song after another in PowerPoint
To play a selection of different audio tracks, one after another is surprisingly clumsy even in Microsoft 365 PowerPoint. For example, you might like to have multiple tracks from a single album or several movements from a symphony. We expected that a simple Animation would work with the second music track set to play ‘after previous’ […]
Add music for the whole PowerPoint presentation
A common request is for music to play throughout a PowerPoint presentation. Handy for automatic and kiosk slideshows. That’s easy in PowerPoint these days. Insert the audio then look on the Playback tab. There’s a choice ‘Play in Background’ that does the job in one click. ‘Play in Background’ is just a way of turning on three existing settings: Play across […]
Almost Equal ≈ symbol in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook
Almost Equal sign ≈ can be typed into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. The Almost Equal symbol ≈ is commonly used within Mathematics to indicate two values are roughly equal, but not exactly equal. Or use it whenever you need horizontal wavy lines! How Almost […]
Google Font recommended pairing for Word and Office
Here’s how to choose good looking font pairs for your Word headings and body text or PowerPoint titles and text. We’ve shown you how to use Google Fonts in your Office documents. The Google Fonts site itself is little help but others have curated suggested pairings. Most of the suggested Google Font pairs are for […]
Using WOFF fonts in Microsoft Office
WOFF are a new-ish type of font that you might have seen mentions or downloads. Here’s how to use them in Microsoft Office; Word, Excel or PowerPoint. WOFF is Web Open Font Format designed to be compact and easy to download. WOFF is for web sites and mobile apps, not desktop programs like Office. Despite […]
Up Down Arrow with Base ↨ symbol in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook
Type Up Down Arrow with Base or underline ↨ into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. How Up Down Arrow with Base ↨ looks in different fonts. Here’s some examples of how Up Down Arrow with Base / Underline ↨ looks in common Office fonts. Up […]
Turn on or off the new look Office 365 for Windows
The new look Office 365 (and Office 2021) is coming. For the moment you might have the option to try it or not. Here’s how. Look for the megaphone If a megaphone appears on an Office app title bar, you can try the new look Office for Windows. Click on the icon to open the […]
2001: A Space Odyssey and font kerning
We’ve looked at design and typography in 2001: A Space Odyssey and how to use the ‘2001’ look in Microsoft Office. Two readers asked about some curious kerning in our version of the title font.Maybe you’re not interested in the fine detail of the text in a fifty year old film? Fair enough. We’re going […]
Grabbing audio only from online sources like YouTube
There are many ways to add common sound effects and background music to your PowerPoint videos. But what if you wanted audio from an online source like YouTube? You can copy from online to an audio file, save it to your computer then link into a slide deck. There are many tools to ‘rip’ a video with audio from YouTube that’s against the YouTube terms […]
Up Down Arrow ↕ symbol in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook
Type the Up Down Arrow ↕ into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. Up Down Arrow ↕ symbol is a vertical line with arrowheads on both ends, pointing up and down. How Up Down Arrow ↕ looks in different fonts. Here’s some examples of how Up Down Arrow ↕ looks in common Office fonts. Up Down Arrow ↕ codes These are the […]