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 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. […]
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 […]
Select the wrong part of a MS Word table and the word count is wrong Benjamin B. writes with an interesting bug in Word 2013 that’s apparently been in Word for a few versions without acknowledgement from Microsoft, let alone a fix. It involves tables and the word count feature. The same bug is in […]
2014 looks like the year of long movie titles with colons – here’s how to save yourself some typing. More and more movies are sequels and that means longer and longer movie titles. Most have colons because the studios don’t trust us to figure out that a movie is a sequel. Coming in 2014 we […]
Epson’s new label maker is a far cry from the old ‘Dymo’ labeler. We’d all but forgotten about label makers but the new Epson LW-600P made us think again. This is a laser printer for labels that’s battery powered with apps for both Android and iOS devices to link via Bluetooth, as well as the […]
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 […]
How to number lines and paragraphs in Word. When you’re discussing a speech or other document ‘in progress’ you might want to number the lines or paragraphs for easy reference “Please change paragraphs 6, 7, 21 and 27”. Sure, these days there’s a lot of linking and online collaboration but there’s also a place for […]
Readers suggest some more uses for the Word/Office exclusion dictionary. As Office-Watch.com explained recently, the Office Exclusion dictionary can be used to take words out of the main dictionary. In other words, to ensure a word gets the red squiggly line. We had some suggestions for using the exclusion dictionary and our readers, bless you, […]
Why and How to remove words from the main Microsoft Office dictionary. Sometimes the supplied Office dictionary has words you don’t want or you’d like a warning about. Here’s how to put the red squiggly line under words that would otherwise be OK according to Microsoft. Why? Why would you want to remove words from […]
Checking the Google ‘bad’ word list in Microsoft Word. The latest release of Google’s Android has a list of blocked words that won’t show up as suggested autocomplete as you type. Back in July 2013 we told you about the ‘kill list‘ of words on Apple iOS devices. It’s a list of words which iPhone […]
It seems you can’t drag content from IE11 in Windows 8.1 into Word. As we mentioned recently, you can drag content from a browser to Word. In fact you can drag content between many applications. David K. has noticed an interesting anomaly with Windows 8.1 and Internet Explorer 11. You can’t drag content from an […]
How to copy an image from the web into an Office document. Getting an image from your web browser to a Word document is quite easy, though easier with some browsers than others. In your browser, right-click over the image you want and look at the options available. At the very least there’ll be an […]
Demystifying the many paste options in Word. There’s more to Paste in Word than just the shortcut. Like a lot of things in Word, copy then paste seems simple at first, but there’s a lot more going on that you can use to speed up your work. You can copy text and images from many […]
The Vatican’s latest mistake can be blamed on Microsoft … if you try hard enough. A good laugh can be had with this news from the Vatican: “A commemorative coins issued by the Vatican has been withdrawn because it spells the word ‘Jesus’ incorrectly”. You’d think that knowing how to spell the name of the […]
Charlie Stross unloads on Microsoft Word Author Charles Stross has dumped fully on Microsoft Word in a blog posting called ‘Why Microsoft Word must Die‘ and in case the title isn’t sufficiently clear he opens with: “I hate Microsoft Word. I want Microsoft Word to die. I hate Microsoft Word with a burning, fiery […]
How to get around your Word document. Once a document gets past a few pages, you need options for moving around that document quickly. Jumping from place to place as you refine your prose into something worth your name. Here’s some tips and shortcuts for moving quickly around a document – large or small. Word […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
The notes pane is the key to some useful Footnote and Endnote options Now that Print Preview is the main editing view in Microsoft Word, the Notes pane has been somewhat forgotten but it’s the key to the details of Footnotes and Endnotes. Get to the Notes Pane Change the Word document View to Draft. […]
There’s a small but important point about Microsoft Word with Footnotes and Endnotes. It’s so important we’ve made this separate little article. The footnote or endnote is stored in that little superscript character in the document text. Copy, move or delete that superscript character and the entire note goes as well. In other words, the […]
Hiding footnotes in Word triggers an annoying bug While looking into Footnotes and Endnotes in Word for Office-Watch.com we came upon a strange bug. Anyone trying to hide the footnotes in a document will strike it. Here’s the bug and a workaround. Start with some footnotes like this: Sometimes you want to hide the footnotes […]
Change the look of Microsoft Word footnotes and endnotes. You can change the look of footnotes and endnotes using their linked styles: Footnote Reference Footnote Text Endnote Reference Endnote Text The two ‘… Reference’ styles create the look of the numbers, usually just superscript positioning of the default paragraph font. Changing the style could radically […]
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 […]
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 – […]
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 […]
Getting started with Word’s footnotes and endnotes. Footnotes is one of those Word features that’s been around for a long time and so it often ignored in all the hoopla about new features. In this article we’ll have a close look at Footnotes and Endnotes. In Word there are Footnotes and Endnotes however they are […]
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 […]
What to do if you see one of those ‘square barcodes’. You see them in ads, signs and billboards – little square blobs like this: What are QR Codes and how can you use them? QR Codes are essentially a new-fangled type of barcode. Unlike the familiar UPC product barcode, QR Codes can contain text like a […]
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 […]
What is an RTF document and why is it still being used? “I’m looking for a job and many employers are asking for my resume in RTF format. How do I do that and why can’t I just use a Word document?” Ian G. RTF (Rich Text Format) is an older document format that’s been around […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 | […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Using a picture as the background for Word page isn’t as straight forward as it seems. You can add a background image to any page in a Word document instead of a solid color or pattern. Most of the time you’ll find a background image to be distracting to the main document text or you […]
