Using Office 2010 has been an entirely new adventure for me. While finding new features, I’ve found some handy ones that have been in older versions of Office but I missed them. Today, I came across two features in Office 2010 that are new to Office. Till Office 2007 one needed a 3rd party add-on to enable Read-Out-Loud functionality, something a lot of us have wondered as to why Office hasn’t had it despite Windows having Narrator. Anyway, with Office 2010, you have built-in Read-Out-Loud capability but for some reason Microsoft decided to hide it. Office 2010 is big on collaboration via the Internet and as such language plays an important role, for this Office 2010 has a Mini Translator that allows quick translation of highlighted text. Enable Read Out Loud & Mini translator:
Add Read Out Loud To The Ribbon:
- File –> Options –> Customize Ribbon
- Under Choose Commands from, select Commands Not in the Ribbon
- Scroll down to “Speak”
- Select a Main tab where you want to add Read Out Loud
- Click New Group –> Rename it
- Press Add
Screen shot:
To add Read Out Loud to the Quick Access bar:
- File –> Options –> Customize Ribbon
- Choose Commands from –> select Commands Not in the Ribbon
- Scroll down to “Speak”
- Add
Screen shot:
Mini Translator:
Another neat addition to Office 2010 is regarding language translation. Once you enable Mini Translator, on selecting some text, Office 2010 will show a small dialog box with the text translated to the language you’ve set. Screen shot:
To enable Mini Translator:
Review –> Translate –> Mini Translator
The first time you try this option it’ll ask you to choose a language. You can change this later from:
Review –> Translate –> Mini Translator –> Choose Translation language
Screen shot:
NOTE: If the Mini Translator icon is enclosed in yellow, it means that Mini Translator is enabled.
January 14th, 2010 at 1:23 pm
Neat … I’d never noticed that before. Though, even with older versions of Office, if you had Windows Vista or newer you could use Windows Screen Reader which would do the same thing (in fact, I assume that this feature in Office is powered by Screen Reader). Also, the translation feature is halfway there in Office 2007 … activate Translation ScreenTip, and you get a tooltip popup with translation when you hover over a word.
Still, I may have to dig through the optional features to find more “hidden” gems!
January 14th, 2010 at 3:27 pm
Yes, even I believe that “Speak” uses Narrator which I avoided using since it read out commands as well. agreed, i accidentally came across these features so I guess there is a lot that the Office team isn’t telling us just yet