Text Effects in Word 2010 and Word 2013
Make eye-popping headlines in Word Word 2010 and Word 2013 have a greater range of text effects than earlier versions of Word. There’s an array of color, outline, shadow, reflection and glow options. Enough to satisfy most people and also enough for most people to make horrible design choices. Text effects start with a gallery […]
Editing Office documents with Evernote
Evernote for Android now comes with the ability to edit Office documents. Our favorite notemaking system, Evernote, now has the ability to edit Office documents within their Android version. Yes – we very much prefer Evernote over Office Onenote. Evernote runs very well, syncs seamlessly and completely across all popular platforms and devices. Evernote has […]
Office for Mac’s dirty little secret
Microsoft makes Office for Mac compatibility harder by omitting an important feature. In the feature list of Office for Mac is one vital omission, one that Microsoft definitely doesn’t like talking about. It effects anyone trying to operate in a ‘mixed’ Office Windows/Mac environment. In theory, a document made on Office for Macintosh can be […]
More buzzwords or less – your choice
Contrary advice – how to add more buzzwords to your documents or remove them! Firstly, new guidelines from the UK government in an effort to reduce jargon in press releases. Some of the rules are pithy in themselves deliver – unless it’s a pizza or post drive – unless it’s cars or cattle foster – […]
Keep Calm it’s a boy
Even Office-Watch can jump on the royal baby bandwagon To celebrate the birth of a son and heir to the Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge, Office-Watch.com is delighted to add a limited* edition sign to their popular ebook Keep Calm with Microsoft Office This one of a kind sign can adorn your home or office […]
iPhone blocked spellings in Word
Does Microsoft have a list of blocked words like Apple does on the iPhone? One of the more amazing examples of over-control by a software maker is the news that Apple has a ‘Kill List’ of words that it won’t spell-check. It seems that iOS v6 devices have a list of ‘sensitive’ words that the […]
Language and Dictionaries in MS Word
A quick look at your dictionary options in Word Even if you, like me, only speak one language there are still some powerful language and dictionary options in Word to keep in mind. All copies of Microsoft Office (recent versions anyway) come with English dictionaries. ‘Dictionaries’ plural because there’s many variants supplied. You’d expect English […]
Why is an eighth grader smarter than Microsoft Word?
Because the kids can spell words that Word can’t! The 2013 Scripps National Spelling Bee in the USA got us wondering how Microsoft Word would cope. So we fired up Word 2013 with the latest English (US) dictionary as supplied by Microsoft. We selected 30 words used in the final rounds of the spelling bee, […]
The battle over ‘GIF’ pronunciation – what does Word say?
Microsoft Word has it’s say on how to pronounce ‘GIF’ Steve Wilhite really set us geeks on fire this week. As the creator of the popular GIF image format he revealed that he preferred the soft-g pronunciation ‘jif’ (as in ‘jiffy’ or ‘gin’) not the commonly used ‘gif’ (with a hard G like ‘graphic’). You’d […]
Word 2013; ‘New from Existing …’ disappears
Why did Microsoft remove a useful feature from Word 2013? In Word 2007 and Word 2010 there’s a nifty little feature called ‘New from Existing …‘ which quickly made a new document based on an existing one. Why was it removed from Word 2013? ‘New from existing …‘ wasn’t just removed from the File | […]
Word’s ‘New from Existing …’ feature
A useful Word 2007 and Word 2010 feature – but not Word 2013? A common way to make a new Word document is to use an old document at the starting point. Word has a few ways to do that quickly. Why do it? Often you want to make a letter, proposal or other document […]
New from existing document .. the alternatives
Other ways to make a new document based on an existing one … There’s more than one way to get a similar result as ‘New from Existing…’ that are worth keeping in mind. They apply across all recent versions of Word as well as Excel and Powerpoint too. You can just open the source document […]
Disappearing comment lines in Word 2013
How to restore the line from the comment to the exact point in the document. Word 2013 has changed, yet again, the way comments are displayed in documents. It appears that the old line between the comment box and the place in the document has been removed – but it can be easily restored. Word […]
Markup View quick switch in Word 2013
A fast way to switch Markup views in Word 2013. Word 2013 has a new ‘Simple’ markup view that’s intended to make it easier to read a document without the screen clutter of every change being fully shown. You can change the Markup view from the Review tab | Track Changes. An easier way to […]
Office Mobile Apps coming soon
Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint will soon be on mobile devices. One interesting snippet generally overlooked in the Office 365 Small Business announcements was the mention of Office Mobile Apps. There’s been plenty of talk about Microsoft Office coming to mobile devices, especially non-Microsoft devices but the Office 365 announcement was the first time Redmond […]
Watermarks in Word using VBA
Just one example of VBA users being shortchanged in Microsoft Office An obvious way to apply watermarks in Microsoft Word would be via VBA. For example some code to print a document multiple times – once with an ‘Office Copy’ watermark and other showing a ‘Customer Copy’ watermark. Or using VBA to programmatically insert document […]
