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Look into Microsoft Word’s deep brown eyes

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I was writing a scene in Word describing a cup of coffee and noticed that the words “dark brown” had a dotted underline. When right-clicking on “dark brown” there were suggested alternative choices of:

  1. Deep brown
  2. Mahogany
  3. Chestnut brown

This happened because Word now checks for vague adjectives and clichés as part of the Grammar options. As a review, here are the non-printing marks Word will put under your text as default editing suggestions:

  1. Spelling – red squiggly
  2. Grammar – double blue
  3. Vocabulary choice – dotted chestnut-brown

To change Grammar options right-click on text underlined with dots, and choose Options for Vocabulary Choice. Alternatively,  choose File>Options>Proofing, then in the Grammar section, click the Settings button. (p.s. I have Office 365 – Word 2016 version 1706, the latest update.)

New Views in Word

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If you have the latest updated version of Word 2016 (Office 365), click on the View tab and you will notice a new group on the Ribbon called Page Movement.

1.     Click Side to Side and you can scroll through your document by using the Horizontal Scroll bar which runs horizontally at the bottom of the Word window.

2.     Two tools over you can click on Thumbnails and you will see the small thumbnail pages of your document. Click on a page to go to that page. You must be in Side to Side view to see the Thumbnails tool.

3.     To switch to the usual vertical scrolling click on the Vertical tool.

Office 365 Treats

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Office 365 (Office 2016): What’s in it for you?

  • A cloud called OneDrive, that allows you to create or edit documents no matter what device you are on. I own a Windows 10 PC, MacBook Air, and an iPhone. I can edit the same Office 365 document on all of these. Cell phone mode makes your document easier to read on the smaller smartphone screen.
  • Teams can collaborate on documents since they are on the OneDrive cloud.
  • Spell Check in Word: When you right-click (or command click on a Mac) on a red underlined word, you get a list of definitions of the different words being suggested.
  • Excel has a Tables feature that allow you to uniquely name each table (formerly called lists) within your document. Formulas are easier to create because you can refer to a table and field (column of the table). When you create a formula, Excel will prompt you, by showing you a list of Table names.
  • In Tables you can also turn a totals row off and in. Add new information to a row at the bottom of a  table and then turn the total row below that on. (You can still insert a new row anywhere in your table).
  • If you add a new column to a table, for example with the column header named cost and then enter your formula in the cell below that (price x quantity), Excel will flash fill that formula all the way down to the last row in your table.
  • Excel has some great new charts
  • PivotCharts have filters built right into the chart.
  • Slicers are a new way of filtering Pivot Table data by using floating palettes of the choice(s) for filtering. With a quarters slicer you could click on Fourth Quarter to see only that data.

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