

Even really simple ones like Bold are overlooked in Office for Mac. ‘Tell me’ also doesn’t help users learn keyboard shortcuts. That’s probably OK by Microsoft because the reliance on ‘Tell Me’ boosts the use of it and increases the amount of data they collect about customers. Rather than learning quicker and better ways to use Office, novices keep returning to ‘Tell Me’. ‘Tell Me’ lets the user quickly add a table and get on with their document, but it doesn’t show them that Insert Table is on the Insert tab (along with other insert options).

It’s great to help people get the immediate task done but that doesn’t teach those people where those features are on the ribbon or dialog box. Just going through all the existing features and settings to make sure that ‘Tell Me’ covers all the Office bases. Microsoft has focused on the promotable ‘natural language’ part of this new help system and overlooked the basics.
#Shortcut for thesaurus on word mac windows#
The same option isn’t ‘seen’ in Office for Windows either, in fact ‘Tell Me’ shows even less results! We tried ‘find’ expecting to see results for the Find and Advanced Find commands and maybe also ‘Replace’, instead we got nothing directly relevant.Įven typing the exact name of a setting doesn’t show that feature (‘Keep lines together’ is at Paragraph | Line & Page Breaks). We’re not talking about obscure settings either, one of the basic Office features is completely AWOL.
#Shortcut for thesaurus on word mac for mac#
There are way too many missing items from the Tell Me database for Mac or Windows version of Office 365.įor all the hype about Tell Me, Microsoft hasn’t bothered to put all the existing features of Office into the system. Things that you’d expect the system to easily handle but doesn’t. It’s not hard to find strangeness in Tell Me. Or the slightly different results for ‘make words bigger’ which adds Thesaurus into the results (in case the person means ‘ bigger ‘ not in size).

The new help uses Microsoft’s natural language so you can type human like phrases and it should show a relevant result even if you don’t use Office terminology. Anything you type is sent to their servers. In this case ask ‘add a table’ and the Add Table command appears with the flyout to set the rows & columns. Click on the Tell me result to do that action. Not just help but the actual buttons or menu items. Type in a phrase and Office will show relevant (hopefully) features. Look for the lightbulb and ‘Tell me’ box beside the ribbon tabs. However it continues to have the same limitations that are in the Windows version. ‘Tell me’ help box is now in Microsoft/Office 365 for Mac as a way to find features on the ribbon.
