MOMETEK's Guide: Microsoft Office

Showing posts with label Microsoft Office. Show all posts

Friday, June 2, 2017

Make Sure Your Angry Rant is Grammatically Correct

Grammar automaton (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Did someone make you so mad on Facebook that you cannot spell straight? Blogged a wall of text but when editing, you realize you are too tired to double-check your grammar?

You might want to check Grammarly. This addon is a step up from the standard spellcheck found in browsers.

The free version checks mostly spelling and some basic errors (like commas, etc.). It also has a premium version that makes you question your ability as a writer.

There are two ways to get premium access. You can either pay for it at low as $11.66 per a month, if you pay for an entire year at once, or if you invite people and they sign up for free and get this: you and the person that signs up gets a free week of premium.

Yeah, I'll get a free week of Premium if you sign up.

You can only see the advanced issues with premium.

I wouldn't be posting on it though if I didn't like it. To be honest, I've had some problems with Grammarly and Firefox up to about a week ago. It's why I hadn't posted it until now.

You can also download and install the Grammarly app, which allows you to copy-paste or import articles to edit. If you don't have Microsoft Office Suite, then it won't work in One Note. There's no plug-in for LibreOffice either. It also doesn't work on some sites like Twitter and Patreon.

I use the app for a lot of my posts on my story blog as it's easier to keep it all in one place on One Note. Eventually, I will be expanding on the story, and I will have a book to sell, soon.

In the meantime, install the app, and give it a shot. Don't let your anger make you look like an illiterate. Keep the Grammar Nazis from detracting from your point and the opposition on less thing to criticize.

Posts for this blog, Elusive Retrospection and related Patreon posts.

This post already corrected except for the "advanced issues". I usually use the plugin that works with Blogger but this makes a good example. FYI - I seem to love, the, comma, a, little, too, much.

Edit: I got my brother to sign up so that I can have a week to test premium. The good news is that I updated this article with the corrections. The bad news is that I didn't realize how bad my writing was until now.

I also used it for my book blog. The only shortcoming is that when you write someone's speech, some people speak grammatically incorrect. Grammarly cannot tell the difference. Fortunately, there is an ignore link.

Monday, January 27, 2014

Free Publishing Software

I typically use Microsoft Publishing ever since my husband was able to acquire Microsoft Office for only $10 from his old job, but it won't be long when it's so out of date that the latest Windows won't run it.

I'm not quite sure if Office 2010 will work with Windows 8 and I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't. So lately, I had been checking out some alternatives. LibreOffice is similar to OpenOffice, except it runs much faster and it's a pretty decent substitute as it's much easier to install both in Linux and Windows.

Neither have a decent publishing app.

A few weeks ago, I had been setting up my new memory stick with portableaaps and I came across the portable version of Scribus.

Typically, I have a bias towards free software, but Scribus is a distant substitute for MS publishing. I decided to try to make myself a basic business card, and I still haven't been able to change the text color. Granted, it may be there, staring me in the face, but would it have killed them to put a color option in the right-click menu? You know, right click > color then a dialog appears with the color wheel.

I don't expect Scribus to be exactly like Microsoft office, but there's a lot of people who need software like this who don't have the time to read an entire manual just to change the text color. And I don't need a complete college course on typography just to design a simple business card.

That said, it does seem to have a lot of potential. When I get the chance, I can learn it and it's probably a very useful program.

If you are interested, you can check it out here at scribus.net

I've added the link to my Free Software page.

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Free Microsoft Office Stuff?

Windows Live SkyDrive (Photo credit: 阿國)

My mother's computer is old and probably could not handle Microsoft Word 2010, which is unfortunate, since some of the writing contests that she really wants to enter require a Microsoft Word compatible document. OpenOffice is a great program, but sometimes converting it to MS Word does not work out so well.

So, I decided to look into SkyDrive, again.

The last time I was on SkyDrive, I could not edit my documents online. So I had decided just to use it as a backup drive only. Handy, as I know full well what happens when you don't have a backup. I was fortunate enough that my husband had bought an adapter for laptop hard drives, allowing me to move my documents to the desktop. So when I heard of "SkyDrive" from Microsoft and how at the very least, OneNote can synchronize with the drive, I was elated.

I've switch computers twice since then (once from a netbook to the desktop, then from the desktop to my new laptop) and it was nice that I didn't not have to worry about my office documents.

After I had the discussion with my mother, I thought about trying SkyDrive again because I heard that they added new features that allow you to not only view your documents, but to edit them. I was not disappointed.

Now, you can create (or edit) a Word document, Excel workbook, PowerPoint presentation, One Note (my favorite), and an excel survey. The web version is missing some features, but for basic Word documents (such as typing up the next American Novel) or a paper that's due tomorrow.

For the purpose of the blog, I did a "test" word document and just typed up a paragraph. I was surprised on the fact that the look and feel was similar to Word 2010, it didn't lag at all, in spite of the fact that I have a lot of background programs running. Typically, I have to shut a few down to go onto Facebook.

I haven't used it enough to give a decent review, but I thought it was good enough to mention now as I do know there are plenty of people who cannot afford to shell out $100 for Microsoft Office, especially, in this economy. You will be hearing from me on SkyDrive again.

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