Excel Fans: New Functions Alert! 📢

Nothing is more exciting than new functions in Excel, and if you agree with me on this, I have two pieces of good news for you today.

One is called GROUPBY and one is called PIVOTBY, and I think you are going to fall in love with both of them.

Microsoft 365

One word of caution: you will need to be using Microsoft 365 to have access to these functions. Unfortunately, these are not available in older versions of Excel.

Exercise File

If you would like to try out these functions on the data example I am using in my screenshots, I will include a workbook below. That said, there are many potential uses for these functions, so I am hoping this also inspires you for your own workbooks!

Exercise File: GroupByPivotBy

There are three sheets in this workbook: one sheet contains a space for you to try out these functions, and the other two contain the solutions for you to check your work.

GROUPBY

Excel’s new GROUBY formula will allow you to summarize a data set by category; most commonly this could be a sum of values, but you are not limited to this: you could just as easily use another function for calculation, like average, or count.

Here is an example with some data you were introduced to in Excel Pivot Tables sessions: a fictional student list.

From this list, I wanted to summarize the scholarships by college, so I built a simple GROUPBY function to accomplish this task:

Here is a closer look at that GROUPBY result:

Construction

The official syntax of this function is:

GROUPBY(row_fields,values,function,[field_headers],[total_depth],[sort_order],[filter_array],[field_relationship])

With these new functions there are always copious options, so don’t let yourself get overwhelmed by the potential number of arguments in this function.

My Example

In this example, I built the formula with only the first three values: Row, Values, and Function. You can click on this image for an enlarged view.

I built the function in cell F2 (yes it lives in one cell, more on this in a moment): =GROUPBY(B2:B40, D2:D40,SUM)

This translates to:

B2 to B40: row fields
D2 to D40: the values to calculate
SUM:the function I want Excel to perform with those values.

From Microsoft

Here is some additional guidance from Microsoft. Note that only the first three fields are required. The rest are extras (although also worth checking out): GROUPBY function – Microsoft Support

PIVOTBY

PivotTables will always have a place in our hearts, but sometimes you prefer (or need!) to work with a formula. Now you can pivot without the table with the PIVOTBY function.

Here is that same starting data again:

Here is a PIVOTBY Function, with “college” set for rows and “sports team” set for columns:

Here is a closer look at that function result: a PivotTable without the table! 😲

Construction

The official syntax of this function is:

PIVOTBY(row_fields,col_fields,values,function,[field_headers],[row_total_depth],[row_sort_order],[col_total_depth],[col_sort_order],[filter_array],[relative_to])

My Example

I built this function in F2: =PIVOTBY(B2:B40,C2:C40,D2:D40,SUM)

Notice how it starts similar to GROUPBY but has an additional argument for column.

This is how this translates:

B2 to B40: row fields
C2 to C40: column fields
D2 to D40: the values to calculate
SUM: the function I want Excel to perform with these values

More detailed explanation of each potential argument can be found here: PIVOTBY function – Microsoft Support

As is the case with GROUPBY, not all fields are required. For instance, I only completed the first three in mt example: Row, Column, and Values.

Reminders/Tips for Working with New Functions

Here are a couple reminders for working with new or unfamiliar functions.

Function Arguments

After you create your function, but before you have entered values, go to the function arguments key (signified by “fx” next to your formula bar):

This is a great tool to walk you through unfamiliar fields, or just to allow you to explore the full field options. With both GROUPBY and PIVOTBY there will be a scroll bar with additional options.

Array Functions and #SPILL

Both GROUPBY and PIVOTBY are array functions, so you build them in one cell (F2 for instance), but they will spill into surrounding cells.

This means that, if something is in the way where Excel needs to spill content, you will see a #SPILL error. Deleting the content that is blocking the array to spill will resolve this error.

New Functions: Training Available

If this has inspired you to learn more about the new functions available in Excel 365, visit myTraining and look for a new course called Excel 365: New Functions.

This asynchronous course covers the new 365 functions XLOOKUP, UNIQUE, SORT, SORTBY, FILTER, and TEXTJOIN. It is designed as a supplement to the Excel: Advanced Formulas live sessions that are also listed in myTraining.

Check it out and let me know what you think!

Simplify Scheduling with Microsoft Bookings

Bookings: Your Personal Scheduling Assistant

If you ever wished you had a personal assistant to help you with booking and managing meetings, or if you are currently using a third party app like Calendly to help you manage meetings, you will definitely want to hear about Microsoft Bookings.

Faculty, you might think about this as an option for creating bookable office hours with students; this would work for both virtual or in person meetings, depending on how you set up your meeting types.

You can find Bookings in your Microsoft 365 app launcher:

In Bookings, you can set up a personal Booking Page with one or more meeting types. These meetings will display specific, predetermined times for people to book appointments with you.

When your colleague selects a time, this triggers an Outlook invitation to both you and the person booking with you. If you have configured this to be a Teams meeting, a Teams meeting link will automatically be generated.

Scheduling a meeting in Bookings

Bookings will also manage the meeting from there: either you or your colleague can cancel or reschedule this meeting through Bookings.

Booked meeting with options to cancel

Take a look at the video below for more detailed information and to learn how to set up your Bookings page and create different types of meetings for your colleagues.

Note: If you are having trouble viewing the embedded video, hover your mouse over the video and click on the title to see the content at the source.

PowerPoint: Help with Immovable Shapes in the Designer Templates

Selection Pane: The control room of your slides

It is possible that you have been creating PowerPoint presentations for years and still never encountered the Selection Pane.

That said, if you use PowerPoint’s Designer feature frequently, I bet you have encountered some frustration with immovable shapes and designs… Why can’t you move or delete some of these shapes? Is there a way that you can you recolor or reshape them by hand like you can with content you insert yourself?

Allow me to introduce you to your Selection Pane! This feature will give you access to every element in your slide… even content that seems to be impossible to access. Think of the Selection Pane as the control room of each slide.

Video: Help with Immovable Shapes in Designer

Watch the quick video below to learn about the Selection Pane, and to see how to use it for a simple fix for common frustrations with Designer templates.

(Note that if the content of the video is too small on your monitor you can hover your mouse over the video and click on the link at the top of the video to open in a larger screen.)

Thoughts?

Does this solve any of your PowerPoint Designer woes? I would love to hear from you!

Generate Captions from a Video with Microsoft Stream 📽️📃

If you have been working with videos and recordings recently, you may have been asked to generate captions, or procure a “vtt” file with captions for a video. There are services, like rev.com, that you can hire to create these caption files… but before you do that, you may want to check out this option that you already have in your Office 365 suite in an application called Microsoft Stream.

Note: For WSU Faculty and staff: you can also utilize Panopto to export captions. Contact the Office of Instructional Resources for more information.

Before we jump in, thank you to Rebeca for her question about this and for inspiring this Byte!

Warning: AI Ahead

This application uses Microsoft’s AI (Artificial Intelligence) to generate captions; it is the same software you use when you use captions in PowerPoint or Teams.

If you have ever used this feature in those applications, you may have noticed that the translations are not always perfect, and sometimes, unfortunately, Microsoft has trouble generating captions at all… long story short, be sure to double check the file that is generated from this process for accuracy.

Microsoft Stream

1. To access Microsoft Stream, first log into your Office 365 account. There is a shortcut in the upper right of your myWSU screen:

2. Once you have logged in, click on on the waffle at the upper left…

3. And find Stream in the app list. If you don’t see Stream here, click on More Apps at the bottom of the dropdown.

Upload a Video

1. In Stream, in the ribbon at the top, select the My Content dropdown, and Videos.

2. Look at the upper right of the screen for options to either click and Drag the videos into your stream, or Browse your machine.

Important: the default for videos you upload is to make them Public to anyone at WSU. If you would like the video to be private, toggle the Permissions arrow, and deselect Allow everyone in your company to view this video.

3. Your video will take several minutes to process, and you will receive an email notification once this process is complete.

Downloading Caption File

1. Once your video has finished uploading and processing, click on the Pencil next to the file name to access details of the video.

2. On the right side of the screen, under Options, and Captions, select Download File.

3. This will generate a VTT file for your video, and an excellent starting place for your caption file. You can double check these for accuracy and make alterations, as needed.

4. Now… how to apply the VTT file to your video will vary depending on your video application, but look for a symbol that looks like a word bubble or the letters “cc”. Below is where the feature lives in Window’s free video application.

Playing the Video in Stream with Captions

It is worth mentioning that you can also play your video within Stream with these captions applied.

Revisit My Content, Videos and select your video from the list to play it.
You may have to toggle on the “cc” button at the lower right for the captions to appear on the video.

Thoughts?

I would love to hear how you use this feature! Are the captions fairly accurate for you? Did this save you any time or money? Feel free to drop me a line.

Word Editor Tools: Refine Essays and Check for Similarity to Online Sources 📃

Hey the semester is almost over! Whether you are a student working on a final paper, or a professor about to read one (or twenty), you might want to check out Word’s improved Editor Tools.

About Office 365

You will need Office 365 to have this feature, and even within 365 there are various update schedules, so the feature may look a little different.

Here is a hack: if your desktop application of Word does not have the Editor tool, or it is pared down from what I show you below, try uploading the document to OneDrive and opening it in your browser, or if you can alternatively upload the document to Teams and open within the Teams application to see the full feature.

Editor

You can find the Editor tool on the right side of the Home tab and on the Review Tab.

When you select the Editor, a menu will appear on the right side of your document.

In addition to the old Spelling and Grammar checks that you know and love, there are a ton of new goodies to help you refine your document. Scroll down to look at refinement suggestions, like Clarity and Formality.

Speaking of Formality, you can set the level of writing to Formal, Professional, or Casual, to see varying suggestions.

Details and Settings

Select the suggested Refinements to see further explanations and choose to change or ignore the suggestions.

While reviewing refinements, you can also change Settings and ask Word to check (or not check) for specific Refinements.

Check for Similarities to Online Sources

There is a new ability to check the similarity between a Word document and content on the web.

In the Editor pane, scroll down to the Similarity section. Select Check for similarity to online sources.

The document below, for instance, has some potentially problematic text.

Review the similarities to see where Microsoft has found similar content online.

Document Stats

One more feature worth mentioning in the Editor tool is Document Stats.

Take a look at the Document Stats to see Readability Statistics, like counts, averages, reading grade level, passive sentences, and Flesch Reading Ease.

Thoughts?

Are you planning to use the new and improved Editor tools? I would love to hear from you! By the way, this is a feature you will want to keep an eye on; there will be more to come in future updates. Until then, have a fantastic end of semester, and happy writing!

Top 5 Microsoft Office Tools for Students 💻

As a Microsoft trainer who is also a returning adult student, I have been meaning to write about this topic for ages… Here are my top 5 favorite tools in Microsoft Office for students. These are in random order, because there was no earthly way to pick a favorite!

1. AutoSave Important Documents

Have you ever spent hours typing a paper without saving? Sometimes we get away with this sort of thing, and other times… Word, or your computer, might “encounter a problem,” leaving you stranded, with nothing to show but lost time and effort.

Consider using the AutoSave feature in Word by saving your paper to OneDrive.

Open up an Office file (for example Word). You will notice an Autosave slider at the upper left of the screen.

When you toggle that on, you will be prompted to save your file to OneDrive.

Once you do this, your document will constantly save automatically every time you make a change.

Also, by saving your document to OneDrive, you will be able to access your file from any computer or mobile device. Win Win!

2. Dictation Tools

Think about those classes where you have to do a lot of reading and are trying to simultaneously take notes while reading.

Take a look at how quickly I was able to take notes for my fictional CARB101 class, below:

Here is how you can try out this feature, and one caveat, you will need Office 365 for this one:

Open up a Word document (or some versions of OneNote). On the right side of the Home tab, click on Dictation.

As you are reading your textbook, read out loud the passages that you would like to include in your notes.

Pro Tip: there are commands within the dictation tools for punctuation, moving to the next line, and so on. If you want to see those, click on the question mark next to your Dictation tools:

3. OneNote: Organize Class Notes and Documents

There are so many ways you can utilize OneNote as a student. In fact, I had so much to say about OneNote that this was difficult to summarize, but here goes:

Note Taking: Most obviously, OneNote is an excellent way to organize your class notes:

Files: You may also find OneNote to be a handy place to organize class handouts, syllabi, and so on. Try inserting content as a File Printout (Insert Tab):

This will serve to attach a file to your notebook, with the addition of a handy readable printout within the note itself. Here is my fictional syllabus, as an example:

Printout File Options: This printout method will work with Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF files. Maybe your professor has shared a series of PowerPoints, for instance. Insert as a printout!

Search Features: OneNote has robust Search features, particularly the Windows desktop version of OneNote.
- Bonus: when you insert documents as a printout, the content within the attachment is also searchable. Search tools are either found on the upper right of your OneNote screen, or on Mac and online versions, at the upper left via a spyglass.
- OneNote also has OCR technology, meaning it can search the text within pictures.

There is much more to say about OneNote, but this will get you launched!

4. Word: Citation Manager

You may have heard of EndNote and Zotero, but did you know that Word has a built-in citation manager? Word’s citation manager will allow you to save sources, cite sources in a variety of formats, and also create an instant Works Cited/Bibliography in a variety of styles.

Bibliography dropdown

I have an entire entry on the Citation Manager in Word here: Word: Citations and Bibliography.

Fair warning: You do still have to double check yourself for typos!

5. Word: Style Sets

Will you be writing copious papers for one class, with specific formatting guidelines that will apply to all of these papers? For instance, “all papers must be in Times New Roman, 12 point font, double spaced.” You could set up each paper with these settings one by one, or you could utilize Word’s Style Sets so that you can apply all these special settings to future papers with a click of a button.

Step 1: Changing Existing Styles

Open up a blank word document. Instead of changing text by hand, in the Home tab, Styles group, right click on the Normal style.

Select Modify.

In the popup screen that appears, make the various font customizations: in this case, Times New Roman, 12 point font, double spaced.

Note: you can do more advanced formatting in the Format dropdown in the lower left.

… like hanging indents, spacing, etc.

Step 2: Save the new style

Go to the Design tab, Document Formatting group, and click on the arrow at the lower right.

Select Save as a New Style Set.

Choose a name (perhaps the class name), and click Save.

Step 3: Access the style

Going forward, you can apply these exact font settings to a new Word document:

Go to the Design tab, Document Formatting group, and click on the arrow at the lower right.
You now have a Custom section with your presets ready to apply to the new document.

In other words, with just a couple clicks, you can jump right in to typing your paper with the exact prescribed formatting.

Thoughts?

Do you think you will use these tips as a student? Or even as a non-student? I would love to hear what you think!

Congratulations, Power Users!

Congratulations to our newest Power Users! For the full gallery, and more information about the WSU Microsoft Office Power User Program, please visit: wichita.edu/poweruser

Deana Beek

Daniella Blair

Cheyenne Dealy

Janise Eck

Shelly Ellis

Word: Translation Tools

Do you need to translate a document in a hurry? You might check out Microsoft’s translation tools… you have an array of languages at your fingertips. Let’s take a look.

How to Translate a Word Document

Here I am looking at a fictional syllabus for my fictional class. The syllabus is written in English, and I would like to translate it into Vietnamese.

1. Start in the Review tab of the ribbon. Select the Translate dropdown. You will see options to either translate a selected portion of your document, or the entire document. Here I chose Translate Document.

2. The Translator menu will appear on the right side of the Word screen. Here you can select your starting language (or allow Auto-detect to determine this), and then your translation language.

3. Once you have selected languages, click Translate.

A new word document will appear in front of your original document with your translated content.

Note: No translation is perfect, particularly machine generated translation, so it is possible there will be some mistakes or imperfections in the results.

More Applications

You will see these Translation tools in your other Microsoft Office applications, like PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams. This is an incredible tool to help enhance communication.

Thoughts?

Do you think you will use these translation tools on your Office documents? I would love to hear from you!

Congratulations, Power Users!

Congratulations to our newest Power Users! For the full gallery, and more information about the WSU Microsoft Office Power User Program, please visit: wichita.edu/poweruser

Mumenah Burnshire

Outlook: Generate a Link to a Calendar Event 📅

With growing numbers of virtual conferences last year, there is little wonder that iCalendar links are more popular than ever. The idea behind these special files/links is to create a seamless experience for your end users to add an event to their calendar by simply clicking on a link.

Perhaps you want to post a series of links on a conference webpage so attendees can easily sign up for sessions, or maybe you just enjoy the ease of emailing links to a large recipient list rather than sending individual invitations. Let’s explore how these work.

But first, thank you to my friend Carolyn for inspiring this Byte with this excellent question. 😊

About iCalendar Links

The word “iCalendar” might remind you of an application made by Apple, but this is actually something different. iCalendar is also a media file type that can transmit information about events; like date, time, and location. This file can be opened by others and be used to communicate scheduling information to a wide variety of calendar types; including Outlook, Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, Yahoo Calendar, and many others.

The steps lined out below will cover how to accomplish this with Outlook Desktop Applications.

1. Create a Meeting

Start by creating a New Meeting in your Outlook Calendar. Be sure you select New Meeting, not appointment.

Select the time and date as you would like it to appear on someone else’s calendar. Because you have selected Meeting, rather than appointment, this event will automatically adjust to the end user’s time zone. Add any comments that you would like them to see, including Zoom links.

Even though you have no recipients, you can click Send on this invitation; this will save it to your calendar without attendees.

2. Save the event in an iCalendar Format

On Outlook for Windows/PC

Double click on the newly created meeting in your calendar to open it back up. Go to the File tab

On the left menu, select Save As.

Save to your desktop (or somewhere easy to find). Be sure that Outlook is saving this as an “ics” or iCalendar Format.

The file will appear on your Desktop, or whichever save location you selected in the previous step.

On Outlook for Mac

This process is even simpler for Mac users.

Find the event on your calendar, and click and drag it to your desktop.

For Mac users, the click and drag feature will create an .iCalendar file automatically.

3. Upload the iCalendar Event

Now you just need a place to store this file. Your steps may vary from here, depending on the location where you are storing it. Treat this file like you would any other file you are uploading to share on a webpage, like a document or a download.

In my case I uploaded it to my WSU Omni webpage.

…I did this just for the purposes of generating a link. From here, I could right click and copy the link for use in other locations, like web pages, or emails.

Note: You may also chose to store your iCal file in OneDrive, or SharePoint, or any other location where a public link can be generated to an uploaded file.

Incidentally, if you are a WSU employee and are interested in learning more about how to create Omni pages or upload documents, Media Resources has some very helpful trainings and information.

The End User Experience

In my example, I inserted the link to my iCalendar file into a conference webpage. Maybe you would choose to do this for each of the conference sessions…

When your end user clicks on this link, they will be prompted to open the file with their default mail program (most support iCalendar events).

This will open as a meeting to be accepted. Although your name will be on this event as the creator, you will not receive notification when they accept this meeting.

The event will now appear on their calendar with all the details you created.

Thoughts?

What do you think about this trick? Do you think you will create iCalendar links for your events? I would love to hear from you. Feel free to drop me a line!

Congratulations, Power Users!

Congratulations to all our Power Users! For the full gallery, and more information about the WSU Microsoft Office Power User Program, please visit: wichita.edu/poweruser

Kristen Watts

Excel: Custom Dropdown Dashboard List with New FILTER Function 📊

Have you heard about the fantastic new Functions for Excel in 365? XLOOKUP, SORT, FILTER, UNIQUE, to name a few. Speaking of unique… a particularly unique case came up recently presenting the opportunity to create a dashboard of sorts using Excel’s new FILTER function. I had to share this with you, because this was a very cool setup. We ended up with a sleek custom list on one sheet that, prompted by dropdown selection, pulled data from the source into an array formula. Read on for more information…

Before you do, I want to thank Brittany for this question (along with her patience with several tests and fumbles) for inspiring this byte.

Download Workbook

Here is a copy of the workbook used throughout this writeup: FILTER Function Example Workbook

There are three sheets in this workbook:

Favorite Color: filters source list by favorite color
Interest: filters source list by interest: this one searches a list of values within the cells
Source Data

Source Data: The Background

This case involved a sheet of Source Data that contained student data: names, details, etc.

We needed to give end users the ability to isolate a list of student names by a specific student interests. A filter or slicer would not work in this case, as there were multiple potential values for “interest.” A student could list one, or several. We wanted to create a dashboard sheet with a dropdown list that would allow users to select an interest and generate a list of results.

I have also seen this sort of situation occur with exported Qualtrics survey results, if multiple responses are allowed. So if you are a Qualtrics fan, you will want to know about this!

Data Validation

Start with the dropdown selection that the unique list will reference:

Click into the cell where you would like the dropdown to appear. In our case, A2.
In the Data tab, select Data Validation

In the Data Validation popup, change Allow to List, and either list the items you would like to appear in the dropdown, or select cells that contain your list.
- In this case, type the list out, separated by commas.
- Be sure the spelling matches the source data. This will be important for the formula step.

And voila, there is the dropdown list! On to creating formulas…

By the way, you can read about some more cool Data Validation tricks here: Dynamic Dependent Dropdown Lists.

Also, we talk about Data Validation in more detail Excel Advanced Formulas training, so I would love to see you in a session if you want to learn more about this feature.

=FILTER Function

The =FILTER Function is new with Office 365. This is an array formula, so it will fill into the cells to the right and below where you build the function.

As an introduction, start with the Favorite Color sheet, a more straightforward example.

The formula is built in C2. If you have the example file, click into C2, and take a look at the formula bar.
The anatomy of the =FILTER Function is: =FILTER(Array,include,[ifempty])

- Array is the cells you want to return if the conditions are met. In this case, Columns A through E in the source data.

- Include is the filtering statement. Where would you like Excel to look, and what value is it looking for? In this case, the source data sheet, “Favorite Color” column should equal the value in A2, where Data Validation lives. For the example file it looks like this: “Source Data”!D:D=’FavoriteColor’!A2
  - - Note: because the source data is in a table, the range is named “Favorite Color”, instead of being a column name.

- The last step is the easiest. If empty: what value would you like to appear if there are no filter results? Perhaps “No Students Listed”, or even empty quote (“”) to leave blank.

Notice how, although we built the formula in C2, it extends into the cells beyond. The beauty of array formulas!

And thanks to Data Validation, adjusting the =FILTER formula will be easy.

If you are interested in reading more about=FILTER, here is what Microsoft has to say: Microsoft’s Writeup about =FILTER.

Special Case: Search/Filter by Text that Contains a Value

I mentioned previously that there was an additional complication with our case, as the results appeared within a column, with multiple values listed for “interest.” So a simple filter would not have yielded results…

One excellent source for Excel dilemmas like this is the site ExcelJet. They had an excellent solution to this quandary that I will explain more below, but here is their article: Source: ExcelJet

Solution

Their solution was to nest =ISNUMBER and =SEARCH into the =FILTER function. They explain in fantastic detail in their article above, but this combination of functions will effectively ask Excel to search if a value exists in the contents of the cell at all, even with other values present in the list, as in our case.

Here is the formula for our situation, built in C2 of the Interest sheet.

=FILTER(‘Source Data’!A:E,ISNUMBER(SEARCH(Interest!A2,’Source Data’!E:E)),”No Students Listed”)

The generic formula is:

=FILTER(rng1,ISNUMBER(SEARCH(“txt”,rng2)))

See the Interest tab in the Workbook Download above to see this formula live and in person.

Contending with Zeros

If you have worked with array formulas before, you may have noticed that, when there are no results, a “0” is returned. For instance, if the address cell is blank in the source data, it will look like this in the =FILTER result:

You can employ a custom number format here if you would like the 0s to display blank.

1. Select the entire column.

2. Under Number formats –> More number formats, select Custom

3. Under Type, insert this code: 0;-0;;@

Much better!

Thoughts?

What do you think about this trick? Do you think you will find a use for this combination of features and the new =FILTER function? I would love to hear from you. Feel free to drop me a line!

Congratulations, Power Users!

Congratulations to all our Power Users! For the full gallery, and more information about the WSU Microsoft Office Power User Program, please visit: wichita.edu/poweruser

PowerPoint: Presenter Coach (📢New Feature)

Do you ever wish you could obtain some objective feedback on a presentation before the big day? PowerPoint’s new Presenter Coach feature might not be exactly like rehearsing with a real live human… but, incorporating Microsoft’s increasingly impressive AI features, it is quite possibly the next best thing. Let’s take a look.

Presenter Coach

The Presenter Coach is currently only available for people using Office 365 (both Windows and Mac versions).

To Rehearse with Coach, visit the Slide Show tab, left of center, in a new group called Rehearse.

When you select this button, you will be taken to a presentation view, with an option at the lower right to Start Rehearsing. Here you can also toggle on or off real-time feedback.

Real Time Feedback

In an endeavor to show you a wide variety of real time feedback prompts, I provoked my coach with a plethora of bothersome speaking tendencies.

The coach warned me when:

I was speaking too quietly…

I was using too many filler words…

I was speaking too slowly…

Or too quickly…

Report

You can rehearse as long as you would like: you don’t have to rehearse our entire presentation; maybe you only want to examine a portion of your presentation.

When you escape out of presentation mode, you will be taken to a Rehearsal Report.

This report will tell you information like:

- Total time and number of slides
- Your use of fillers
- Your use of sensitive phrases
- Average words per minute
- A graph with the average pace of speech
- “Originality,” or how much you added to the text printed on the slide

You also might be revisited by information that the coach prompted you with during your rehearsal, like my overusing of filler words, below.

If you are interested, here is a more all encompassing list from Microsoft on what the Presenter Coach is analyzing:

Suggestions from Presenter Coach

Thoughts?

I can’t wait to hear what you all think of this new feature! Drop me a line, and let me know what you think.

Congratulations, Power Users!

Congratulations to our newest Power Users! For the full gallery, and more information about the WSU Microsoft Office Power User Program, please visit: wichita.edu/poweruser