Microsoft adds the Ruble symbol to Windows 8.1 and we show you how to add it to earlier versions of Windows. Part of the Windows 8.1 August 2014 update is the addition of the new Russian Ruble currency symbol. All Microsoft will say about this change is “This feature adds new Ruble currency support for […]
Word: how to find the character code used for a particular letter or symbols. Last week we talked about the Unicode v7.0 symbols and how to use symbols in Word. With over 100,000 characters in the Unicode specification, it’s important to know the character code number for the symbol you want. That raises the question, […]
How can you get the new Unicode symbols in Office documents? There’s plenty of new symbols included in the Unicode 7.0 standard, here’s how to get them into your Office documents. Most fonts do NOT have all the Unicode characters, after all, there are over 133,000 of them. There are far too many characters so […]
Unicode adds more characters to an already large list. Unicode has added another 2,834 new characters in the Unicode 7.0 specification, mostly support for 23 new scripts. That takes the total to a whopping 113,021 characters! But we’ll have to wait for these new characters to appear automatically in Office, Windows and mobile devices. The […]
A guide to getting more life and value from your printer. The Guardian has a nice little guide to maintaining an inkjet printer and saving money. We’ve never had good experiences with recycled ink or toner cartridges and have always found their quality to be poor. But others swear by recycled/refilled cartridges so if you […]
An interesting font idea from Spain – handwriting of homeless people turned into fonts. HomelessFonts.org is a series of fonts based on the handwriting of homeless people. For example, here’s the Francisco font. There are five fonts at present with more promised. Priced per font at €19 Euros for individuals and €290 for companies The […]
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 […]
How to convert a PDF into a Word document, even when Word 2013 can’t do it. Since Word 2013 can’t properly convert ‘image only’ PDF’s or you don’t have Word 2013 at all, how can you convert PDF’s? There are many options available including free and paid online services, OCR software or even paying someone […]
Why won’t Word 2013 convert some PDF’s? Word 2013 lets you convert some PDF files into Word documents, but what about those it won’t convert to editable text? What’s going on? First a quick primer on two types of PDF. Image only Some PDFs are just pictures of pages. The PDF treats each page as […]
Windows and Office gives you Arial font when you ask for Helvetica. 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, […]
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, […]
How to update Microsoft Office with the new name, OneDrive, and remove the old SkyDrive name. Recent versions of Office have the name SkyDrive (with the extra capital letter) in the supplied dictionary. However the new OneDrive name hasn’t made it to the Office dictionary yet. Here’s what you’ll see in a default Word 2013 […]
An industrial dispute involving CAPS has ended. One of the most interesting industrial disputes of 2013 has now ended with a new agreement between staff and management of the Melbourne Fire Brigade in Australia. Being an emergency service, the administrative staff didn’t feel that a full ‘stop work’ strike was appropriate so they resorted to […]
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 […]
What can Office for Mac users do instead of font embedding? Since Office for Mac won’t let you embed fonts, what can you do instead? We’ll look at the options that Office for Mac users can try when sharing a document with Office for Windows. Going the other way (Office for Windows to Mac) isn’t […]
Full list of fonts available in both Office for Mac and Office for Windows The following fonts are available on both Macintosh OSX 10.4 with Office 2011 for Mac and Windows 8 with Office 2013 for Windows You can use these fonts in Office documents, knowing that anyone who gets the file – using Windows […]
Headline your next document with cats! Looking for something really different to headline your next document or presentation – why not use ‘Neko Font’ the font made out of cats. Strictly this isn’t a font you can download, instead you type text into a web page, choose the size (Large, Medium, Small or Tiny) and […]
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 […]
How to type the micron/micrometer symbol in Word. Stuart H has an AutoCorrect suggestion: ” I need to use the symbol μ for micron (1/000 mm) and use mu for this. ” The Micrometre / Micrometer is one-millionth of a meter. The μ character is the Greek letter ‘mu‘ which is the standard prefix for […]
Microsoft security patch causes new bugs. It has to happen some times a new Microsoft security patch has caused a new bug to arise in PowerPoint among other software. In the last set of security patches there was MS12-078 but the patch itself is faulty and will have to be replaced. The patch is to […]
A quick way to type a tick character in Word. Another great Autocorrect suggestion from Morris B. ” … the one that I have found the most useful is to replace ‘./’ with a tick (wingdings 252 – or wingdings 254) “ Using the fullstop/period is a clever Autocorrect prefix since that character isn’t usually […]
Readers suggestions for using Autocorrect with the degree sign and temperature Yehuda Z says: “I use (0) to auto-correct to the symbol for degrees ?. It makes things much easier. I also use ty and tyvm for Thank you! and Thank you very much! respectively. Little tricks like this save lots of time! “ If […]
Insert special characters into Office documents quickly. One of the eternal questions to Office Watch is about adding extra characters to a keyboard. The most common requests are for adding currency symbols like Pound £ Euro € or Yen/Renminbi ¥ but can also include the @ symbol which can, even these days, be missing from […]
How we might be editing Office docs in the future, try it today. One of the more interesting Windows 8 apps is ‘Onenote MX’ an experimental version to see how Office might look in a world of Windows 8 apps, formerly known as Metro. Part of OneNote MX is the touch control called the Radial […]
What is an interrobang and how to use it in Microsoft Word. Interrobang is a non-standard punctuation mark – a combination of a question mark and exclamation mark. In Word, interrobang looks like this: (Interrobang in some common Word fonts: Calibri, Cambria, Arial Unicode MS & Lucida Sans Unicode.) In the sixties, the interrobang was […]
The Comic Sans haters have risen again as a TV show is plastered with the hated Comic Sans font Stephen Fry’s latest TV show uses Comic Sans as its primary font, so the haters of the common font have risen in protest. We’ve talked about Comic Sans before. It’s not a bad font; in fact […]
Inside the Office feature of embedding fonts within documents. Font embedding is when the font details are stored in the document itself so that anyone reading will see the same text as the creator. Normally fonts are installed on the computer and used by whatever programs need them. If the font you want to use […]
Just because Office lets you embed a font doesn’t mean it will work. Word and PowerPoint have options to embed a font into the document, so why doesn’t it work? In theory you can select the ‘Embed fonts’ option for a document and all the necessary fonts will be included in the document. That means […]
Keyboard shortcuts for special characters that work outside Office and without special setup. After our article on Accent characters, some readers asked why we didn’t mention another method of entering characters using the Alt key. It’s possible to enter any character into a Windows program using the Alt key plus the number pad (usually on […]
How to enter accented characters, grave, circumflex, umlaut etc when they aren’t on the keyboard. Typing accented letters can be a chore and a mystery, especially for those of us unaccustomed to languages with the ‘extra’ letters. The keyboards don’t show accented letters and it’s not obvious how to type them. It’s good to get […]
Changing the font for all documents is remarkably easy. In Word 2010 the default font face is Calibri, font size 11 and style Normal. This might not be the ideal combination for many as different individuals have different font preferences. Making modifications to font style, size and font face to suit your requirements every time […]
Text effects in Word 2010 have wide range of options like applying shadow, reflection or glow to transform the appearance of text and give it an altogether new look. Text effects in Word 2010 have wide range of options like applying shadow, reflection or glow to transform the appearance of text and give it an […]
Making ordinary texts look extraordinary has been possible for many versions of Word. Alas, the features can make ordinary text look awful – if you’re not careful. Making ordinary texts look extraordinary has been possible for many versions of Word. Alas, the features can make ordinary text look awful – if you’re not careful. Word […]
An easy way to make headings with extra style and flourish in Word 2010. Microsoft Word 2010 supports OpenType Ligatures. Apart from Word 2010, OpenType Ligatures are also applicable in Publisher 2010 and, to a limited extent, Outlook 2010 since Word is used as the editor in Outlook. Behind the technical and typographical terms is […]
Type in many languages from one keyboard. Here’s how you can type in other languages using a single keyboard into any Window program including Microsoft Office. Google has added a virtual keyboard to its search pages. On some search pages like google.co.th and google.ru you can now click on a symbol to see a virtual […]
It’s too late for Christmas cards but not too late for a simple Xmas Email. We’re the first to admit that sending a Christmas email isn’t the most traditional method but it can be done with good cheer and grace. Here’s just one example from a friend and some tips from the writer and designer […]
Suggested fonts to teach writing recognition. Office Watch reader Wim V saw our article on Avoiding Comic Sans and wrote to us about a use for Comic Sans and other fonts used in teaching literacy. Some fonts can be used to teach people how to recognize and write different letters. Wim writes … ” Many literacy […]
Free alternatives to the overused Comic Sans font. The Wall Street Journal has a history of Comic Sans, the font that people love to hate, complete with an interview with its creator, Vincent Connare. It turns out that Comic Sans was born from the unlamented Microsoft Bob project with inspiration from comic books – hence […]
Windows 7 adds 43 fonts to the set supplied by Windows. There will be 21 new typefaces in Windows 7, a total of 43 fonts to the set supplied by Windows. Many of the fonts are for non-English languages like Hindi, Japanese and Arabic. For Latin and similar alphabets the Windows 7 additions are: Gabriola […]
Reasons why a document or email can look different on one computer than another. You get a document sent to you or maybe you’ve sent a document out and it looks different on the receivers computer, maybe quite unreadable. Why? Fonts Most likely it’s a font compatibility problem. The fonts you use in a document (Word, […]