Have you ever gotten stuck trying to think of a different word to take your sentence to the next level? There’s no need to struggle anymore! With DigiTip 37, learn how to use the synonyms function in Word. View step by step instructions below or watch the short video to learn more!
Simply:
Right click on the chosen word
Hover over ‘synonyms’
Select a new word!
Still not seeing an appropriate word? Select thesaurus and view more!
There may be times when someone has sent you an email, and you’d like to acknowledge its receipt without sending another reply. A great feature to use in this case is the reactions feature in Outlook, which works similarly to those in MS Teams or on various social media platforms.
To react to an email, click on the smiley face button on the top of your screen. You can then choose from six emojis, ranging from a thumbs up 👍 to a sad face! 😥
Have you ever been in an MS Teams meeting where you’ve needed to send a quick list that’s easy for others to read? There are actually two quick ways to create bullet points or numbered lists in any MS Teams chat.
Option 1
You can either click on the format icon in the chat, and you can easily create bullet points or a numbered list from here.
Option 2
Or, if you’re in a Teams chat:
Press – and then the space bar to start your bullet points
Press 1. and then the space bar to start a numbered list
Next week will be the return of DigiTips, our once-a-week tip or trick to help you with your Digital Skills! You can view the DigiTips that were posted last year here and find out which 5 were the most popular in this blogpost. Remember to keep your eyes out for this year’s DigiTips by subscribing to the blog!
Blogpost by Shân Saunders (Digital Capabilities and Skills Development Coordinator)
In September 2023, the Digital Skills Team began DigiTips – a weekly blogpost to highlight a useful tip that you can use to make your daily digital life easier. Below are the top 5 DigiTips from 2023/24.
Are you working on one screen and struggling? Are you tired of swapping between two windows? Did you know that you can split your screen to view two things at once making it much easier to view two windows at the same time. This means that you can work on documents, tabs and much more side-by-side.
Most of us will be more familiar with using emojis on our mobile phones 📱, but there will be times when we’ll want to include emojis when using our laptops or computers💻. Instead of googling for the emoji you need, why not access it directly from your keyboard!?
Are you struggling to concentrate on your work? Are you procrastinating on social media? Do you need to limit your scrolling time? Did you know you can now limit your Instagram scrolling time through the Instagram settings.
Have you ever copied and pasted content from a webpage or another document into a new Word document and found that it completely messes up your formatting? Luckily, there are additional options outside of the basic pasting option (ctrl+v) which can help solve this!
Sometimes, you may need to set some time aside to concentrate on a particular piece of work, but how can you show other people who are also online that you’re busy? Microsoft Teams allows you to set your status to Do not disturb, meaning that you won’t be interrupted by Teams notifications or calls (unless you choose to receive these from specific people), but it can be too easy to forget to turn this status off once you’re finished.
Here is your final DigiTip for this academic year but you can catch up on all of our previous DigiTIps from this page. We hope that you’ve found our tips useful, and we’ll be back in September ’24 where we’ll continue support your confidence with technology, one DigiTip at a time!
Do you sometimes struggle in larger meetings to know who is currently speaking? …..“was that Ffion or Bethan?!” Maybe you’re working in a loud environment and are struggling to hear others in the meeting speak? Perhaps you’ve joined a meeting where the language spoken isn’t your first language? Or perhaps you appreciate the accessibility of having subtitles?
If any of the above are true for you, then you will likely find the functionality to enable live captions in MS Teams useful. Watch the video below to learn how to enable live captions:
It’s worth noting a couple of things if you’re using this feature:
Live captions are only visible to those that have enabled the feature within the meeting, meaning that if you switch them on, they won’t automatically appear for everyone!
Live caption data is permanently deleted after a meeting, so no one will have access to this information.
Visit this webpage for further support and guidance in using MS Teams.
Notifications and messaging with friends and family can often distract you from the time and keep you awake. Did you know that you can set a “Do Not Disturb” schedule so that you are no longer alerted to incoming notifications or calls although they are still received.
You can do this by going to:
Settings
Focus
Do Not Disturb
Set a Schedule
You can also personalise the ‘Focus’ to allow certain calls or notifications from key contacts.
There are also other forms of focus such as driving.
View the short clip below to see how to set up the schedule.
Each week we’ll be posting a useful DigiTip to help you make the best use of technology. To follow our DigiTips, subscribe to our Digital Skills Blog. Or alternatively, you can bookmark this webpage, where a new DigiTip will be added each week!
This is a very quick tip, but hopefully a useful one! There may be occasions where you need to minimise all the open windows and apps on your laptop or desktop screen. Perhaps you are just about to start presenting and want to remove all open windows? Or you may just want to remove all clutter and get back to your desktop?
You can press the Windows key + D to minimise all open apps and windows and will take you back to the desktop. If you want to reopen all windows and apps, just press the same keystrokes again!
Do you often get swept up with the amount of clutter and unused apps that keep building up on your phone?
With DigiTip 30, we can have a look at how to create folders on your phone and categorise your apps by types to help keep you organised. Example folder categories could include travel, finance, lifestyle, entertainment, social media and many more!
Let’s have a look at the videos below for a brief demonstration:
N.B. The videos will include an example for IOS devices and an example for Android devices.
