Thanks for the emails showing your interest in the new Microsoft Office. We will look into it some more today. Last week we looked at the “Read Mode” and PDF conversion as well as editing options in Word 2013. Today we will look at some other features which are new to Word.
Another new feature I would not have thought of is collapsing headings. Think about this, you are reading a rather long document and you have finished a section. Now, with the new feature you can collapse or expand that section in the Word document. You create a section heading just as in the past by clicking a “Style” such as “Heading 1”, etc. However, now when you hover over that created section a small triangle appears to the left of the text. When you click the triangle the text under that header will “fold” up under it and show the next header. If it is already “folded up” or collapsed, click it again and it will expand to full size.
You could create a document with short summary lines for each area, collapse them, save the document and email it to someone else. When they receive it they could just click the section they are interested in and read that section. This is a very efficient tool.
At the bottom left corner of the window where earlier versions of Word indicated the page numbers and word count of the document you now have an additional icon which looks like a book. The book has either a check mark or an “x” on it depending on whether there are any grammar or spelling errors. If you click the icon a column opens up on the right side of the page. It has spelling or grammar errors listed with possible corrections. In the case of spelling it also lists synonyms, pronunciation and a speaker icon you can use to listen to the pronunciation. You can also find a link to download various dictionaries.
Another first-rate addition to Word 2013 is a bookmark like feature. If you are reading a multi-page document, close it down to reopen it. Later you will have another surprise. When you reopen the document a small box shows up on the right side of the document. It says, “Welcome back! Pick up where you left off,” and it shows you where you stopped reading. If you click on any of those words it jumps you to that location in the document and you can start reading where you left off. Word remembers where you were, even when you reopen an online document from a different computer.
Microsoft has built teamwork and sharing features into Office 2013 which includes Word and most of the other applications in Office 2013. It is similar to the cloud storage and sharing options found with Google Docs. The cloud storage area is called SkyDrive and has been available for a while. Although it has had several identity crises it has also been known as “Microsoft SkyDrive”, “Windows Live” and “Windows Live Folders”.
When you create a document in Word and go to save it you get the old “Save As” screen. It is indistinguishable from the previous version but instead of defaulting to your “Documents” folders, it defaults to the online/cloud SkyDrive folder. You can change this in Word’s options very easily but this is the new location for files. It is very convenient if you are using a different computer since you can pull the files from SkyDrive from anywhere you have an internet connection.
Next time we will take a look at a couple of Excel’s new 2013 features.
