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
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.
As someone who uses Microsoft Teams every day for work, I’ve discovered a collection of useful keyboard shortcuts and tips that have helped me in navigating the platform more efficiently. Whether you’re a staff member jumping from one meeting to the next, or a student using MS Teams to collaborate on projects or attend virtual lectures, these tips should help you to make the most of MS Teams.
Keyboard Shortcut
Description
Ctrl+Shift+O
Turn off your camera
Ctrl+Shift+M
Mute your microphone
Ctrl+K
Create shorter hyperlinks
Shift+Enter
Start a new line in the chatbox without sending the message
Summary of the key keyboard shortcuts mentioned in this blogpost
Turn off your camera quickly
There are times when you need to quickly turn off your video during a call, it may be that your bandwidth is limited or there are distractions behind you. Quickly toggle your camera on and off by using the Ctrl+Shift+O shortcut.
Customise your hyperlinks
Instead of cluttering your messages with lengthy URLs, make use of the Ctrl+K shortcut. This shortcut allows you to customise the displayed text for your hyperlink, making your messages more concise!
Mute your microphone
Background noise can also disrupt meetings (I have two dogs that bark whenever someone rings the doorbell, so this is my most-used shortcut!) Use Ctrl+Shift+M to mute and unmute your microphone swiftly.
Refine your search results
Teams has an useful search functionality, but sometimes it can yield too many results! Make the most of the available filters to refine your search and to save you time.
Start a new line in the chatbox without sending your message
Typing messages in Teams can be tricky, especially when you want to add line breaks without sending the incomplete message. Use Shift+Enter to start a new line in the chatbox without sending the message prematurely.
Make quick decisions with the polling feature
Do you need to gather opinions or make decisions quickly? If you’re looking to create a poll once you’ve started your meeting, Teams offers a built-in polling feature.
Please note: We suggest that you use Vevox, AU’s polling tool, if you’re looking to set up a poll in advance of your online meeting or session.
Mark messages as urgent or important
Do you want to send an important message on Teams and are worried that it will get lost within a stream of messages? To solve this issue, you can mark any messages as urgent or important in MS Teams.
Do you have any other shortcuts or other general tips when you’re using MS Teams? If so, we’d love to hear from you! Share your tips and shortcuts in the box below ⬇
Whether you want to schedule weekly catch-ups with colleagues, bi-weekly project meetings, or monthly team meetings, knowing how to set these up using the recurring meetings function in Microsoft Outlook will save you a lot of time!
The below video demonstrates how to set up recurring meetings in the desktop app version of Outlook, but the process for setting these up on MS Teams or the web version of Outlook is very similar.
Once set up, your reoccurring meeting will now appear as a series in your calendar, and if you need to alter any details, you’ll always have the option of altering just a single occurrence or the whole series.
Have you ever worked on a large Excel document where you’ve scrolled down to find a figure, but then you’ve had to scroll back up to the top again to remind yourself of what the headings was for that column?!
There’s an incredibly useful function in Excel that can help with this issue, which enables you to freeze single or multiple rows and columns. You can access this feature within Excel by clicking View > FreezePanes.
Watch the video below to learn how to freeze columns and rows:
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!
Start by selecting where you want to paste your content and right-click with your cursor. You’ll then find several additional paste options (the options visible will be based on the type of content that you’ve copied).
Here’s a summary of what the most common 4 paste options will do:
Keep Formatting
This keeps the formatting of the text that you’ve just copied (be it from a webpage, another document, or another source).
Merge Formatting
This option changes the formatting of the text so that it matches the formatting of the text that surrounds it.
Use Destination Styles
This option formats the copied text so that it matches the formatting of the text where you’ve pasted your text
Keep Text Only
This option discards any existing formatting AND any non-text elements you have copied (e.g. images or tables).
Do you want to be able to save time using Outlook by running multiple tasks efficiently?
With DigiTip 19, we will be having a look at how to set up your Quick Step recipe. When an email comes through to your inbox, with just one click you can mark it as read, move it to a specific folder, automatically send a reply and many other options.
Are you a planner but struggling to be productive? Do you work better with a to-do list, but you want everything in one place? Introducing Microsoft Teams Task by planner!
You can create your own to-do lists, break these down into daily to-do lists and even view tasks that have been assigned to you in Microsoft Teams channels.
To create your To Do List:
Go to the Apps icon on the left-hand side of MS Teams
Search for and install the Tasks by Planner and To Do app
At the bottom of the planner, select‘+ New list or plan’
Enter any task, select the priority and due date
Once completed select the circle and the task will complete itself
To break down your to-do list to more achievable goals you can add tasks from your to-do list to “my day” which will refresh every day.
Watch the video below for a demo on how to use Microsoft Teams Tasks by planner.
