Language and Dictionaries in MS Word
A quick look at your dictionary options in WordEven 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 (US) […]
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 […]
Office 2013: the real startup guide
Our famous guide to Office, saving money, install and new features. Now for Office 2013. Many of you figured it was coming and now it’s here … Office 2013: the real startup guide is available now. “Things you need to know that Microsoft won’t tell you: saving money, installing, configuring and using Office 2013” Only $9.95 […]
Keep Calm with Microsoft Office
Make the famous WW2 poster yourself, and countless variations, in Microsoft Office. Make the famous WW2 poster yourself, and countless variations, in Microsoft Office Keep Calm with Microsoft Office is the latest in our series of practical ebooks for Microsoft Office users. We don’t just tell you how to use Office, we supply […]
Some letters don’t need AutoCorrect
Some common characters don’t need help from Autocorrect in Word. Our good friend and budding woodworker, Rose Vines adds her $0.02 to our AutoCorrect suggestions, especially for accented characters. This is something we’ve talked about in Office-Watch.com before, but is worth repeating. “There’s very simple built-in shortcuts for accented characters in both Word and in […]
AutoCorrect memorable shortcuts
Tips for making Autocorrect shortcuts that are easy to remember. Bob C writes: ” I use MS Word autocorrect to insert longer words of phrases that I’m too efficient.. OK,lazy.. to try to spell or type out completely, usually duplicating several leading consonants in the word or leading letters of words in a phrase. […]
Do you help Microsoft’s proofing tools?
When Word asks to send your words to Microsoft – should you do it? You may see a window like this pop up in Word.
Word document recovery
Office lets you recover documents lost but it can be hard to choose the right one. For many versions of Office you’ve been able to recover open documents that haven’t been saved before a system crash, but the details aren’t obvious. If Windows or Office unexpectedly stops, there’s a chance that Office can recover the […]
