Try These Top Add-Ins for Microsoft Word

Try These Top Add-Ins for Microsoft Word

You can beef up Microsoft Word with the right add-ins.

Microsoft Word packs a lot of features and functionality into one single application. But there’s always room for more. Perhaps you wish Word included a built-in dictation feature that converted your speech into text. Or maybe you’d like a Word feature that reads your documents aloud to you. Or perhaps you’d like a built-in translator that can translate your text from one language to another. Well, Word may not include these items, but you can tap into them by installing an add-in. Add-ins provide greater functionality and flexibility to an Office application so you can do so much more with the program.

You’ll find an array of Word add-ins through Microsoft’s online Office Store, but I’m going to highlight what I think are some of the top and most interesting add-ins to give you a head start. We’ll look at Dictate, an add-in that lets you dictate your documents directly into Word; TextAloud, an add-in that reads your text aloud to you; Read My Document; another add-in that reads your text to you; Translator, an add-in that can translate text in your document between different languages; Collins Dictionary; an add-in that offers a dictionary, a thesaurus, and a translator with audio pronunciation; and Wikipedia, an add-in that lets you access the online encyclopedia site without leaving Word.

Dictate

Windows 10, 8.1, and 7 already come with built-in speech recognition and dictation. But now there’s a new kid on the block. A Microsoft Garage project, Dictate is a free add-in designed for Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook. Tapping into the technology behind Cortana, Dictate uses speech recognition to convert your words into text. After installing this add-in, launch Word and you’ll see a new menu called Dictation. Click on that menu to display the Dictation toolbar.

Click on the Start button in the Dictate toolbar and begin speaking. As you dictate, you can see the text as interpreted by the Dictate add-in appear in the Response field next to the Start button. You can speak punctuation marks and other non-alphanumeric items, such as periods, commas, and quotes. You can say “new line” or “new paragraph” to move to a new line or paragraph.

The add-in supports 29 spoken languages and can handle real-time translation to 30 languages, so you can speak your text in one language and have it converted into the text of a different language. So, how did Dictate fare? Not as well I had hoped, at least initially. In my testing, Dictation got a fair number of words wrong and was no more accurate than Windows own Speech Recognition feature (which you can access from Control Panel). But the more I used Dictate, the more its accuracy improved. So, if you’re willing to put some time into training it, Dictate is definitely worth trying.

TextAloud

Here’s an add-in I’ve used for years to help me proofread and edit my documents. TextAloud reads your text aloud to you, so you can listen for any mistakes and hear how your documents sound. After you install TextAloud, open Word and click on the new TextAloud menu. From the TextAloud toolbar, you can opt to hear your entire document, the part starting from the cursor, or only selected text. You can pause, stop, and resume the speaking of your document. You can also alter the speed at which the voice speaks.

TextAloud isn’t free. The software by itself costs $29.95. If you want more natural sounding voices, you can add two AT&T Natural Voices for an additional $25. But if you need a reliable tool to help you listen to and verbally proofread your documents, TextAloud is worth the price.

Read My Document

Want a no-frills but free add-in that can read your documents to you? Read My Document fills that bill. Add Read My Document to Word. You have to trust the add-in and follow a few more steps. You then control it from the right pane and can access it by clicking on the Insert menu and selecting My Apps from the Add-ins button. Select the text you wish to hear or select the entire document and then click on the Read selected text button. You can pause or play the reading. The voice used by Read My Documents doesn’t quite have the smoothness of the AT&T Natural Voices but it’s not bad. It has a certain accent to it that makes it pleasing to the ear. You can’t switch voices or control the speech as you can with TextAloud. But for a free program, Read My Document is quite effective.

Translator

Using the power behind Microsoft’s own Translator app, the free Translator add-in can translate text in a document into a different language. After adding Translator, you’re prompted to open Word and trust the program. You can then access it by clicking on the Insert menu and selecting My Apps from the Add-ins button. The program pops up in the right pane. Choose the source and target languages. Select text in your document or select the entire document, and Translator displays the translation in the right pane. You can change the target language, and the displayed text automatically switches to your new language. Translator is a cool and convenient tool if you need to translate text on the fly.

Collins Dictionary

This helpful and free add-in provides a dictionary, thesaurus, and translator in one package, and can even pronounce words for you. Add Collins Dictionary from its page at the Office Store and then open it in Word. After you trust it, the add-in appears in the right pane. Select a word in your document, and the dictionary serves up a definition. In some cases, you can click on a speaker icon to hear the word spoken aloud.

Click on the link for the Thesaurus, and Collins offers synonyms for the word you selected. Then click on the Translator link, select a source language, and Collins translates the text into your chosen language, courtesy of Microsoft Translator.

Wikipedia

Yes, you can always access Wikipedia directly from the Web. But this free add-in provides access to the online encyclopedia within Word. After you add Wikipedia, the usual right pane pops up. Writing about a specific topic, and want to learn more about it? Just type a word or phrase in the search field and click on the search icon, or just select text in your document. The program displays the Wikipedia entry about your subject. Scroll down the pane and you’ll find more information and a link to expand the article to get even more details. Clicking on a link within the article brings you to a new article corresponding to the link, and all within the same pane. If you use Wikipedia as a source of information, you’ll find this a helpful and handy add-in.

Best Practices: Flash Cookies and How to Manage or Erase Them

So you want to get rid of all those browser cookies that track your every move online and result in annoying, targeted Web ads. So you open up your browser settings and delete all or some of the cookies that have accumulated. But the targeted ads keep coming. So what’s up?

What’s up is a little Flash quirk that allows sites to store bits of code called “super cookies,” “persistent cookies,” or “zombie cookies.” No matter how you refer to them, their source is Adobe Flash which saves its version of cookies independent of any web browser functions.

The possibly insidious nature of Flash cookies containing personal information and then directly or indirectly sharing it with abandon became quite the brouhaha in 2009 and 2010. Because Adobe Flash, too often needed for playing videos and audio, also became a favorite carrier of malware, Adobe was compelled to repeatedly patch and update to ward off real and potential security threats. So although the current versions have mostly cleaned up the malware intruders, Flash still permits sites to add tracking and other miscellaneous cookies.

Here’s a step-by-step breakdown in how it works, using common sites as real-life examples.

1. Let’s say Yahoo sells an ad to DoubleClick. This means when you open a Yahoo page with a DoubleClick ad on it, both Yahoo and DoubleClick save cookies to your browser settings.
2. Say Amazon sells an ad to DoubleClick. When you go to Amazon pages, Amazon may peruse DoubleClick to see if you have visited Yahoo. When it learns you have (via the DoubleClick cookie), an Amazon ad may appear on Yahoo pages.
3. Multiple this a thousand times over and you can see how your surfing information and other personal info can spread.
4. If any of these sites also use Flash code, its cookies can be baked into your system like a Girl Scout cookie campaign. Unlike regular cookies, Flash cookies save and share data like web browser-stored cookies, but are not controlled by your browser. Flash saves its ‘cookies’ as Local Shared Objects or LSOs.

Web sites still incorporate Flash code (.swf and .flv files) for multimedia playback, and Flash code is used for capturing and storing information for anyone who visits the site. And while a particular site might not have streaming media content of their own, advertising from third parties hosted on the particular site can still incorporate LSOs for their information collecting needs, and thus, are saved to be pass around like a spam convention.

Flash is considered antediluvian technology by coders today and it being replaced with the more compact and efficient HTML5 Web language. However, Flash today is still quite prevalent on a vast number of sites not yet updated with HTML5. Some sites with streaming media still need Adobe’s downloadable Flash application and require us to load the ever-updating versions of the Flash app or browser extension.

(Operating systems also still bend over backward to include Flash. In fact, Windows 10 includes the Flash app as part of the default installation of the OS. You can find controls for it in the Control Panel in Windows 7 to 10.)

Two Ways to Take Control of Flash Cookies

Conventional cookies which we can delete in our browser settings are specific to that particular browser and will not migrate to a different web browser. In other words, the cookies that load in Firefox won’t be found on Internet Explorer or Chrome. Flash cookies are not so polite: once they’re saved from one browser, they’ll insinuate themselves on any other browser on your system. That’s why we need a universal control to comb anywhere they might be.

We don’t have that, but we do have two different ways to get at those Flash cookies:

1. The aforementioned Flash controls found in Windows’ Control Panel can tame Flash cookies internally.The Flash settings found in Windows System and Security section of the Control Panel will work globally for all browsers on your PC, with the exception of Google Chrome. To  deal with Chrome’s handling of LSOs, you must use the Adobe Flash Player Settings Manager (see more on this below).
2. Accessing Adobe’s Flash Player Settings Manager externally through your web browser will let you be the master of your Flash maintenance with precision.

These two methods operate independently from one another. Doing one will not affect your ability to do the other.

Note: If a website video you want to view won’t run, you probably need to load the latest version of the Adobe Flash Player. (As of this writing, it is 26.0.0.131) When downloading, the update will by default probably be saved in your Downloads folder. Before downloading uncheck the boxes next to the McAfee Security Scan Plus utility and the Intel True Key add ons. Once downloaded, close your browser, go to the Downloads folder, double-click on the Adobe install file. Most people attempt to run the download file while their browser is open and this has been known to cause a failed install.

Control Method #1: How to Control Panel Flash Settings

Storage Tab: When you first open the settings manager in the Control Panel it defaults to the Storage tab, one of five in the control window. Here you can delete LSOs selectively by site or all of them, block all from the get-go or allow them to load but only after you offer permission as they try to load.

Camera and Mic tab: Some sites without notice may try to active your PC’s camera and microphone. On this tab you can limit this possible privacy intrusion by blocking this action completely or only after you are asked if it is okay.

Playback tab: This tab controls when peer-assisted network is allowed for chat sessions or where tech support might want to assist with troubleshooting. Your choice is to either block this totally or to allow after being asked permission.

Updates tab: This tab lets you check on the latest version of Flash, to allow automatic updates. Checking updates will normally load your default browser and take you to the Adobe Flash pages. It this tab is grayed out, the browser Flash plug-in are not installed on your system or the actual Flash Player is not installed.

Advanced tab: This what I call The Kill Switch.

Clicking the Delete All button eliminates all Flash information accumulated on all your browsers (except Chrome). If you decide to delete all you should still use the Adobe Flash Player Settings Manager as a double check. Let’s take a look at that now.

Control Method #2: Adobe Flash Player Settings Manager

The first time you visit this page, it might appear that the panel is a screen shot image. Nope, it’s the actual, interactive panel. Full, self-explanatory instructions and descriptions are on this page below the panel. Among the seven icon-style tabs the two which are most effective for controlling what Flash stores on your PC are the Global Storage Settings panel (second from the left) and the Website Storage Settings panel (second from the right). The Global Storage panel commands default storage settings for Websites you have yet to visit. The Website Storage panel is for sites you have already visited.

The other panels, also self-explanatory, control the same privacy settings found on the Windows Control Panel. If you have set them already in Windows, setting them here is only then necessary if you also use the Google Chrome browser which relies on this online manager exclusively.

Ostensibly most, if not all, LSO tracking cookies should be subdued after you have saved your settings in Windows and on Adobe’s online manager. However, if the Adobe LSOs are saved by sites for other operations such as game controls or media viewing, those sites may not work properly which would require loosening some of your restrictions.