Some users consider dark mode a fad. Because of my deteriorating eyesight, I don’t have such a luxury: I can’t read dark text on bright/light colored background, be it on screen or on paper.
- Immersive Reader And Microsoft Word For Mac 2020
- Immersive Reader Word
- Immersive Reader And Microsoft Word For Mac 2019
Immersive Reader MICROSOFT LEARNING TOOLS. Word for Mac, iPad and iPhone learn more. Outlook Online learn more. Outlook Desktop learn more. Office Lens for iPhone. Aug 11, 2019 Image Source: Microsoft Immersive Reader Currently, the immersive reader is supported in Word Online, OneNote, Outlook, and PowerPoint. You can also use Office Lens to scan a printed text and place it in OneNote — the program will use text recognition to launch the immersive reader.
Microsoft 365 includes premium Word, Excel, and PowerPoint apps, 1 TB cloud storage in OneDrive, advanced security, and more, all in one convenient subscription. With Microsoft 365, you get features as soon as they are released ensuring you’re always working with the latest. Create, edit, collaborate, and share documents using Word for Mac. Microsoft is today rolling out a new update to its Immersive Reader product. Immersive Reader is integrated across OneNote, Word, Outlook, as well as Microsoft Edge. As part of today’s update.
Before dark mode was a thing, I was using a high contrast accessibility theme—which is great but also way too radical for my specific needs. Dark mode has given me the best of both worlds: a more or less ‘normal’ looking setup, only with bigger fonts, less eye candy and, well, darker colors.
So, how does Microsoft Word deal with dark mode? Very well, as long as you do not limit yourself to what the majority of guides will suggest you do, that is to use Office 365 dark mode. There is more to it, as you will see.
But let’s start with the obvious: activating Office’s dark mode.
Activate dark mode in Office 365
![Immersive Reader And Microsoft Word For Mac Immersive Reader And Microsoft Word For Mac](https://office-watch.com/fredagg/uploads/2020/08/image-6-473x279.png)
- Open Word, go to File->Options.
- In the sidebar, click the General tab.
- Locate the Personalize your copy of Microsoft Office and set Office Theme to Black. You guessed it, this will apply to all Office 365 applications, not just Word.
Let’s have a look at a test document in Word.
As expected, the user interface is dark but the document itself, our page, remains blindingly white. Not really what we were hoping for.
Word offers two ways to go beyond that. Which one to use depends on what you want to do: keep using the traditional page display mode, or not.
Change colors using the Page Color
In the Ribbon, go to the Design tab and then click the Page Color button.
Tip: use Word’s search field to quickly access any command or button: type what you’re looking for:
Once you have opened the Page Color settings, pick a theme in the Theme Colors. You’ve just picked a background color for your entire document, and Word will automatically change its text, using a contrasting color.
“But, I don’t want my page to print in dark and my text in white!”
It won’t. This theme applies only to the screen rendering of your document. Word is clever enough to remember that in general paper is white and text should be printed in black.
Help! My text stays black!
If your document was not created directly in Word or if you have defined a custom Normal style, it’s possible your text won’t update after changing the background color. Don’t panic.
![Immersive Reader And Microsoft Word For Mac Immersive Reader And Microsoft Word For Mac](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/dCAPOExjfb8/maxresdefault.jpg)
Right-click anywhere on the black text, a little pop-up should appear. Click the “Styles” button to list most used styles in your document. Then,right-click the Normal Style button and choose “Modify…”
A window opens--yeah I know, it’s not using dark mode… maybe in a next update?
This is where you modify your Styles. If you’re not familiar with Styles: every Word document uses a bunch of styles to define the look of everything on the page and on the screen. There are a lot of predefined styles that you can tweak, and you can create your own too. There are styles for headings, for foot-notes, for your paragraphs, for individual characters, and so on. Each style has many options—too much to list here. The one that we’re interesting in is the text color.
Next to the U button, the color drop-down list should be set to “Automatic”, yours is probably set to black, click the list and change it. That’s all.
Immersive Reader: turning Word into a text editor on steroids
Like all the other word processors I can think of, Word relies on the “page” metaphor—what you see on screen looks very much like what you will get once it’s printed on a sheet of paper. That is certainly useful when writing reports or stuff that will end up printed on paper, but it has nothing to do with what I write, or how I write.
I write and I read on a screen. I don’t need to turn pages or to see page borders. I scroll my text like I would in a web browser or any basic text editor. No margins, no page breaks, no headings or footers, nothing but my raw text. Except that I like to have some basic formatting too—I like being able to select the font I’m using, and a first-line indent is a must have for me, and so on. You know, personal preferences.
Word can give you both: the styling you need and the simplicity of raw text.
How? By using its Immersive Reader. Unlike what the name suggests it is not only a great reading mode, but it’s also a great editing mode. If you’re a long time Word user, think of the old Draft mode. Only much better and more polished.
This is the mode I use Word most of the time.
Go to the View tab and click the Immersive Reader button. If you don’t run the most recent Office 365 subscriber version, it may still be named Learning Tools but they share the same icon: an open book with a little loudspeaker on the right page—a loudspeaker because among other features to help students with disabilities, this mode includes a read aloud function.
Once activated, the page view is hidden: no borders or margin. you’re left with your content. One exdeption: drawing/inking won’t show up in Immerse reader, but images will be displayed, and all your styles too—a text editor on steroids.
Tip: The first time you activate the Immersive Reader/Learning Tools, your text will probably look oddly formatted. That’s because this mode was developed to help users with disabilities, and some tools are activated by default. But you can turn them off and Word will remember it the next time.
In the Immersive Reader tab, click the Text Spacing and the Syllables buttons to turn them off:
- Use the Page Color to select the black background. Very recently they added many other colors, but that doesn’t work as well as expected. I reported the bug and do not use it for the moment.
- Use the Column Width to set the width of your text on screen. It won’t change the way it is printed.
- You can zoom freely, from 10 to 500%. Zooming only changes the font on screen, not its actual size on page or printed.
- Another cool feature—even if I don’t use it—is the Line Focus that helps focus even more on the section of text you’re working on by diming all your document save 1, 3 or 5 lines around the active line:
Conclusion
Immersive Reader And Microsoft Word For Mac 2020
The Immersive Reader is the mode I use all the time, no matter what I’m writing: a book, a blog post, a short story, research notes, and so on. It turns Word into a comfortable app that suits so well my—admittedly very specific—needs while letting me access most of Word more advanced features I also need (styles, macros, and so on).
Is Word the perfect solution? No, of course not. It’s still a huge beast that takes time and efforts to tame. Some windows and controls haven’t yet been updated to use dark mode, and a few insist on using fixed font size and therefor can’t be resized. And you’ll need to subscribe to Office 365 to access all the latest features. And so on.
But if you haven’t used Word in recent years it’s impressive to see how it has changed, and it’s so encouraging to see Microsoft constantly improving it accessibilty-wise and, I’m kidding you not, in user-friendliness.
For example, one thing I did not mention at all that I use as much as the Immersive Reader is the ability to entirely customize the Ribbon—what tabs to show, and what buttons, and in what order—and the ability to quickly show or hide it, turning it into the most useful type of menu ever created, imo. Maybe that could be something for another post? ?
Edit: Here is a similar how-to for LibreOffice (it works bestunder Linux, but is useable too under Windows or macOS): LibreOffice Writer: Clutter Free Dark Mode .
Immersive Reader Word
This post is sponsored by Microsoft. All opinions are my own.
Have you seen the new Learning Tools from Microsoft? The team at Microsoft has developed a set of inclusive capabilities in Office and Windows to support all learners. Free for all users, the Microsoft Learning Tools will transform the way you think about using digital tools to create inclusive spaces for students.
I spend a lot of time in classrooms and talking with educators who are passionate about leveraging the power of digital tools. Earlier this year I connected with the team at Microsoft to get a firsthand look at their Learning Tools. These totally free tools are designed to support students with a variety of needs. This includes dyslexia, dysgraphia, ADHD, ELL, emerging readers.
In my book,Taming the Wild Text: Literacy Strategies for Today’s Reader, co-authored with Pam Allyn, we talk about the importance of using digital tools strategically in the classroom. Learners of all ages can benefit from increased access to technology. The Microsoft Learning Tools are a great example of how technology can transform reading and learning experiences for students.
Immersive Reader
If you haven’t seen the Immersive Reader from Microsoft, you are going to want totry this out! I was completely blown away by the ease and power of this tool. It is totally free and is an absolute game changer for students. You can use Immerisve Reader on the web on any browser and access it on an iPad, Mac, Chromebook, you name it! It’s also available on OneNote, Outlook and Word Desktop. With Immersive Reader, students and teachers can take any passage of text and set up students so they can hear it read aloud.
Immersive Reader And Microsoft Word For Mac 2019
As you can see in the screenshot below, Immersive Reader is more than just a tool to hear text read aloud. With this tool, students can highlight different parts of speech and increase the spacing to make it easier for them to read or listen to the passage read aloud. Immerisve Reader gives students the option to change the size of the text, switch the font and choose a theme. When students choose a theme, they are able to pick from a series of different colors. In Immersive Reader, students also have the option to break down syllables and access a Picture Dictionary.
As you can see in the image above, Immersive Reader helps students navigate text as it reads each line. You can copy and paste any text, or use this tool in conjunction with the Microsoft Edge web browser or other files like ePub or PDF. It also works in Office Lens for iPad/iPhone which you can check out here. In addition to using Immersive Reader in English, Microsoft Learning Tools are available in many different languages. You can view an entire list of available tools in each language on this page.
Microsoft Learning Tools in Action
Microsoft Learning Tools are transformative in the hands of students. In the video below (and linked here) you can see students interacting with the Immersive Reader. Students can get instant support as they read and build confidence as they interact with the new text.
In addition to the Learning Tools highlighted in the video, there are a handful of other powerful features you’ll want to explore. Dictation, word prediction, and Microsoft Translator are game changers!
Dictation
In addition to the fantastic Immersive Reader, both Office 365 and Windows 10 now have built-in dictation (speech to text). So when teachers or students open up these tools, they have the option to use their voice to dictate into their device. Office 365 and Windows 10 will turn speech into text. With this tool, a student who may have difficulty typing a response with a keyboard or completing a traditional piece of writing can use the dictation feature to capture and share their learning.
Word Prediction
Windows 10 also has built-in Word Prediction. Known as “Text Suggestions,” this feature will predict the next word a student will add to their sentence so they can add it to their writing. Word Prediction is a new feature so you might not see it on your device. All you have to do is update to the Windows 10 April 2018 update.
Microsoft Translator
Between the powerful immersive reader, the speech-to-text feature, and the ability to see word predictions as you write, there are so many exciting things happening within the Microsoft ecosystem for educators. If you are working with students and family who speak another language, including English Language Learners and families who are deaf or hard of hearing, there is one more feature to you’ll want to investigate!
In the video above, you can see Microsoft Translator in action. This feature makes it easier for all members of a school community to interact with one another. Microsoft Translator gives users access to live captioning and facilitates cross-language understanding. It can support multilingual casual conversations among students, educators and families.
Zoo empire for mac. Ready to jump into these powerful Microsoft Learning Tools? Click here to access the Microsoft Education page or use the links above to learn more about each feature!
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