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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Personal Internet radio isn’t just for the young folk. Personal Internet radio services seem great for young people with their rock and roll music so it’s been a pleasant surprise to discover it works for all generations. The idea is simple, you choose an artist or genre and the service
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
To search PDF’s on a 64-bit machine you need a separate download. The Adobe PDF Reader software isn’t enough on 64-bit Windows computers. If you’re running a 64-bit version of Windows (any release) you’ll probably find that Windows Search doesn’t find text inside PDF’s. Only file names are searched but
How to copy a table from Wikipedia to Word or Excel. Standard web tables can be copied from a web page to Word or Excel, but not many tables on Wikipedia pages. Office-Watch.com shows you how to do it. Even if you’re not copying from Wikipedia, we’ll show you some
Despite Amazon promises, Word DOC files aren’t read directly by the Kindle Fire. Amazon has been a little shifty when it comes to mentioning document compatibility for the Kindle and especially Kindle Fire. The official list includes two file types that DON’T work and omits an important file type that
How to get a list of files in a folder into Microsoft Word. As long as there have been word processors, we’ve seen the question of how to get a list of files into a document. It should be simple bit it isn’t. Here’s how … You could write or
A personal selection of favorite Android apps. Everyone has a recommended selection of apps for their smartphone and Office-Watch.com is no different. We’ve been using Android devices for some time and these apps are always loaded. Most of them work both online and offline. It annoys us when developers assume
Finding a true Print Preview in Word 2010. Hank S. writes: “Is there any way to remove the approximately left half of the screen (File/Options display) so a print preview may be seen at full size? The new print pane is really handy, but there are times when I want
