Microsoft Word vs. Spelling Bee champions 2014
Microsoft Word does badly against the National Spelling Bee joint champions.The Scripps US National Spelling Bee is over for another year with unprecedented joint winners Sriram Hathwar and Ansun Sujoe. Congratulations to both winners who were commendably gracious while sharing the trophy. Like last year, we were interested in seeing how the spell-check dictionaries supplied […]
Making Word compatible with George R. R. Martin
How to change Word so it’s more to the Game of Thrones author’s liking. George R. R. Martin, author of the Game of Thrones series among other wonderful books* has revealed that he uses an old DOS program (WordStar 4) on a standalone computer to write. That’s great for him but the rest of us […]
Get your Word for Windows source code
Microsoft’s gift to history Microsoft has released to the public domain the source code and documents for an early version of Word, Word 1.1a for Windows, as well as DOS 1.1 and 2.0. The Word for Windows has both C source code and some documentation. The documents are in original format which means that Word […]
Office 2010 SP2 adds a bug
Sometimes Office Service Packs add bugs as well as fixing them. The assumption by Microsoft and the hope of Office customers is that Service Packs for Microsoft Office will fix bugs on the software. Some of those bugs have been disclosed by Microsoft, others they’ve kept secret from customers. Problem is, Service Packs are really […]
Word for iPad – a tour
A quick look over the Word for iPad features, Here’s a look at the major features in Word for iPad, looking over the four main tabs. The buttons will be familiar in most cases though the underlying menus/galleries are different and limited compared to Word for Windows or Mac. Shameless plug:Office for iPad: The Complete […]
‘Pickup where you left off’ isn’t working
Why are some Word 2013 users not seeing ‘Welcome Back’ messages. As we’ve been mentioning, Word 2013 has a feature to put you back at the last place you were reading in a document … a little flag appears like this: That registry key will only store details for documents that Word 2013 wants to […]
Stop ‘Pick up where you left off’ in Word 2013
How to block the ‘Welcome back’ message in Word 2013. Last week Office-Watch.com told you about how Word 2013 document details are saved without disclosure in the Windows Registry. Many readers asked how the feature can be turned off. A reasonable request in the circumstances but not according to Microsoft. Despite the privacy implications there’s […]
More hidden document traces
The more we dig, the more places we find trace of your Office document history. Recently we told you about some places where Word stores details of what documents you’ve opened, often much longer than you’d expect and with no direct way to remove these details. Yet another location is where ‘Trusted Documents’ are recorded. […]
Office ScreenTips in other languages
A free way to show Microsoft Office help in other languages Office Screentips is a way to show tooltips for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and other programs. This free addon from Microsoft doesn’t interfere with how the programs work or the wording of the tabs and ribbons. Only the tooltips that appear when you hover […]
Getty images in presentations
Can you use the free Getty images in your PowerPoint presentations? 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. […]
Word 2013: document details not deleted from the registry
Your document actions are still stored even after you’ve told Office 2013 to remove them. 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 […]
More privacy exposure in Office 2013
Your document activity shows up in the registry in more places than expected. 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 […]
How do they know ‘Where you left off’?
You’d be surprised how Office 2013 knows ‘Where you left off’. 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. […]
Helvetica’s Godfather dies
Farewell, Mike Parker who brought Helvetica to the mainstream but alas not to Microsoft Windows or Office for Windows. 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, […]
Picture problems in Office
How to find your pictures to insert into an Office document. Even a simple thing like adding a picture to an Office document or email has subtleties and annoyances. When you choose Insert | Picture in recent versions of Office, it opens, by default, in the Picture Library. That seems sensible, at least to Microsoft. […]
Kardashian in Office 2013
Why is the word Kardashian in the Office 2013 dictionary? I could happily live without knowing anything about the various Kardashians. I’m informed they are ‘personalities’ of some sort and that I really don’t want to know anything more. But someone at Microsoft seems to think the Kardashians are more worthy because they’ve been added to […]
