How to Choose and Use the Mobile Version of Microsoft Office

Eight Tips For Tweaking Your Word 2016 Experience

An ongoing challenge for every computer user is how to maximize their effective use of an application while minimizing the time spent getting to prime performance. A few time-tested methods: Making use of templates, finding ways to automate some tasks, and thinking of ways to eliminate repetitive tasks. In this article, we look at eight ways of refining your daily experience in Microsoft Word 2016.

Customize the Ribbon

One way to increase your productivity is to set up your programs with the settings you use most. Being able to customize the ribbon — or row of icons and customizable options at the top of the application — is a good place to begin.

For example: in Word 2016, you can find and customize the ribbon the Quick Access Toolbar. Go to File: Options. In the Word Options dialog box, click on Quick Access Toolbar. You can then select the formatting options you use the most.

Increase Security by Disabling Macros

As useful as Word is, it’s also the target of ransomware authors who use macros to sneak malevolent programs on to your computer. If you’re genuinely worried about this, disable all macros so they don’t launch if you are foolish enough to download and open a Word file from a sender you don’t know.

Here’s how to stop that from happening. Go to File: Options: Trust Center. Click on the Trust Center Settings button. Under the Macro setting area, set it to Disable all macros without notification and save your changes. A full explanation of the security options available in this version of Word is available here.

Tweak the Readability Setting in Word

This is a good feature to use when working with technical documents, to check them for how well they read. The Readability function is a step above the normal checking your get with Word.

To enable it, go to File: Options: Proofing and under the heading When correcting spelling and grammar in Word, enable the checkbox beside Show Readability Statistics and click on OK. Next, go to the Reviews tab and click on the Spelling and Grammar icon on the left. Potential errors in your document will show up in a pane on the right side of your document.

Turn Off Autocorrect Options in Word

There’s no shame in wanting to turn off the typo-preventing feature. Go to File: Options: Proofing, and in the dialog box that appears, under AutoCorrect Options, click on the AutoCorrect Options button on the far right.

This will bring up the AutoCorrect dialog box. Click on the options you want to change and click on OK.

Change the Hyphenation in Word

Although you can control hyphenation in your autocorrect settings, there’s another way of accessing it for finer control.

Go to Layout: Hyphenation, and set hyphenation to None.

If you want even more control, click on the Hyphenation Options heading. In the Hyphenation dialog box, you can choose to automatically hyphenate the document, Hyphenate words in CAPS, or none of the above.

Change the Location of Word’s Autorecover File

Is MS Word crashes, you’re quite often able to recover all or part of the file, but if you have a major computer problem and lose all your data, you could lose all your hard work if you’ve only stored it on the hard drive. A solution is to move the AutoRecover file off your computer to services such as Dropbox or Google drive. You can also choose an external drive.

To do that, go to File: Save. Midway through the window, there is the Autorecover file location option. Click the Browse button to select your preferred destination.

Quickly Create a Table of Contents

While not a new feature, this is something that can save you a lot of time. MS Word allows you to create a table of contents using several pre-defined options, but those can create problems. A better way is to customize a table of contents: Go to References, then click on the Table of Contents tab at the far left. At the bottom of the drop-down menu, click on Custom Table of Contents.

In the Table of Contents dialog box, you can choose to show the page numbers, right-align them, choose the format, and the number of levels. This controls how many table of contents headers will be displayed. This depends on how many headers you have used throughout your document.

In the case of the Table of Contents above, only two levels were used. The process took only minutes.

Browse the Web Within Word

You can conduct searches and look up information without having to switch applications.

To do so, go to References and click on Researcher.  This opens a pane on the right side of your document and you can do searches for relevant topics. When I did a search, it opened a list of topics. When I clicked on one, it filled the entire screen.

How to Choose and Use the Mobile Version of Microsoft Office

Interested in trying out the mobile version of Office on your phone or tablet? How do you know which edition to pick up and how to get it and use it? Read on.

Microsoft Office is first and foremost a desktop application for PCs. But it’s also a mobile app, or series of apps, accessible on Windows phones and tablets, the iPhone, the iPad, and Android devices. Beyond the various editions for each operating system, you can snag either a free or paid flavor of Office Mobile. But how do you know which flavor to pick, where to find it, and what you can do with it? Let’s see how you can snag the mobile software for different devices and what you’ll find in the program.

Geared toward smartphones and tablets, Office Mobile includes at its core Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. Microsoft also offers mobile versions of related apps, such as Outlook, Sway, OneDrive, and Skype. Versions of each app that allow for basic editing are free for devices with screen sizes smaller than 10.1 inches. So, you can edit documents on smartphones, on smaller Windows and Android tablets, and on the 9.7-inch iPad and the iPad mini. The versions geared for larger tablets, such as the 12.9-inch iPad Pro, allow you to open and view files in read-only mode, so you can’t edit them.

If you need a version of Office Mobile that provides editing on any sized device, you’ll have to pony up for an Office 365 subscription, which includes both the desktop and mobile versions of Office. At a cost of $69.99 a year, Office 365 Personal lets you install the apps on a single PC or Mac, a single smartphone, and a single tablet. For $99.99 a year, Office 365 Home lets you install the software on five PCs or Macs, five phones, and five tablets.

Keep in mind that Microsoft offers both Office Mobile and the desktop version of Office, namely Office 365 or Office 2016. How do you decide which one to use? Well, price is one factor. Office Mobile by itself is free. Office 365 or Office 2016 will cost you. But Office Mobile is a scaled-down version of Office, so it’s missing many of the bells and whistles you’ll find on its desktop counterpart. Finally, which version you choose depends on the device or devices you use. On a Windows phone or tablet, iPhone, iPad, or Android device, you’d go for Office Mobile. On a Windows laptop, hybrid, or desktop PC, you’d likely want Office for the desktop instead, though you can opt for the mobile version if you wish.

For the mobile version of Office, you’ll want a OneDrive account and storage space to save and access your documents and files. You can store and access your files locally on certain devices. But by using OneDrive as your repository, your files will be available anywhere. OneDrive comes with Windows 10 and 8.1. Windows 7 users have to download and install the OneDrive software. To use OneDrive, you’ll need a Microsoft account as well.

Okay, how do you snag the different editions of Office Mobile based on your device? Unlike the desktop flavor, which is available as both individual applications and entire suites, the mobile version of Office is generally available only as individual programs. So, you have to download Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and the rest of the pack separately.

Let’s look at Windows 10 first. On a Windows 10 tablet or phone, open the Windows Store app. You can try searching for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and any other Office apps you want. But Microsoft sneakily tries to steer you to Office 365 instead of the free versions. Here are the direct links to launch webpages where you can get the free mobile software from the Windows Store: Word Mobile, Excel Mobile, PowerPoint Mobile, OneNote. When the Store page pops up for each app, click on the Get or Install button to download and install the software.

For an iPhone or iPad, open the App store from your iTunes software. Search for Microsoft Word and the other apps, or use the following direct link to grab any of the Mobile Office apps for iOS: https://itunes.apple.com/us/developer/microsoft-corporation/id298856275.

For an Android device, open the Google Play store. The version you’ll want depends on your variety of Android. For phones running Android 4.4 or earlier, download Microsoft Office Mobile, which includes Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. For a device running a flavor of Android higher than 4.4, download the separate mobile editions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.

Okay, now let’s say you’ve downloaded and installed the correct versions of the Office Mobile apps for your phone or tablet. What will you find and how do you use the software? The mobile versions of each app basically work the same on a Windows 10 device, an iOS device, and on an Android device. So, if you master the software on one type of operating system, you can easily switch gears to a different OS.

Let’s open Word as an example. In Windows 10, if you’re already logged in with your Microsoft account, the app by default displays your recent documents on the left and templates on the right. In Android, you’ll need to add your OneDrive space as a file repository, after which you’ll be able to access your online documents. If you’ve already backed up and synced your documents to your OneDrive storage space, then you’ll be able to open any document from OneDrive. To open an existing document, you can tap on one of the recent documents or you can click on the Browse link in Windows 10 and the Open other documents link in Android to open a different document.

On an iPad, the initial interface is different in that a toolbar appears on the left with icons to create a new file, view recent files, or open an existing file. You’ll also need to add your OneDrive space to access your online documents. You can then tap on the Open icon and browse your folders to open a specific document.

The core menus are the same across Windows 10, iOS, and Android tablets – File, Home, Draw, Layout, Review, and View. Open each menu, and the toolbar changes just as in the desktop version of Word. But the commands and features are limited compared with those in the desktop edition. Assuming you’re using the version of Word that allows editing, you can tap anywhere in the document to add, delete, or revise text as the onscreen keyboard pops up or becomes available (assuming your device doesn’t have its own physical keyboard).

To create a new document, use one of the built-in templates or start fresh with a blank document. Any changes you make to a document are automatically saved by default. From the File menu, you can save a separate copy of the file, print it, and run other commands. Finally, you can view tweak certain settings by tapping on Settings from the File menu in Windows 10 and Android. On your iOS device, open the general Settings page, scroll down to the entry for Word, and you can see and adjust certain settings from there.