The Microsoft Word web app at the OneDrive website can do more than you might think and it has a useful facility for looking up definitions and researching topics. Here’s how it works.
If you have a Microsoft account for any Microsoft service, such as Outlook.com email, you have access to OneDrive online storage. At onedrive.com you then have access to the browser based Office web apps like Word and Excel Online.
You can create documents and run a ‘lite’ version of Microsoft Word within a web browser and research topics and information in Wikipedia, Bing and other places without leaving the app.
This is a great idea and it enables you to look up information without leaving your work. Of course, you could open another browser window, but unless you have a very big screen, it is isn’t possible to have two browser windows side by side so that you can easily see both. One tends to be half hidden by the other. You could open extra tabs, but then there is a lot of tab switching as you go back and forth between the document and research.
By using the built in Smart Look-up research facility in Word web app, you can open a panel at the side of the document you are working on and keep it there. You can browse the articles and read up on topics as you write.
Open a document with Word web app
Go to onedrive.com in your web browser or go to outlook.com, click the arrow to the right of the name and select OneDrive.
Create a document at OneDrive by clicking the arrow to the right of the OneDrive logo in the top left corner and select Word Online.
Open or create a Word document at the OneDrive website by clicking New juts under the blue bar at the top. To see how the Wikipedia research facility works, enter a few words about any topic you like, or select a word or two in the document you just opened.
Research a topic in Word
Let’s pretend you are writing a document and need to research some information or get definitions for terms. Double click a word to select it or click and drag over two or more words to select them.
A formatting palette appears above the selection it as soon as you do this, but what we want is in a menu. Right click the selected text to see it.
Select Smart Look-up to research the selected word or phrase, ‘artificial intelligence’ in this case. A panel opens on the right that contains several items.
There are two sections and at the top is Explore Wikipedia and below is Web search. Two items from each are shown, but click the More link beneath each one and the whole panel is filled with more items - more Wikipedia entries like related pages and content, or more web search results from Bing, depending on which More you click.
Click an item in the Smart Look-up panel to open it in a new tab and show the full web page. Switch to the tab to read it.
Copy from Smart Look-up
Sometimes you can see what you want in the panel without having to open a new tab.. Click one of the More links for example, browse the extra items in the Smart Look-up panel, and then click and drag over some text to select it. Press Ctrl+C, click in your document and press CTRL+V to paste it.
Get definitions in Word
Right at the top of the Smart Look-up panel are two tabs, Explore and Define. If you are not sure about a word or phrase, switch to the Define tab to see an explanation. You can even hear the word spoken by clicking the speaker icon.
Microsoft Word for Linux and Macs
Microsoft’s web apps like Word, Excel and PowerPoint work in the browser and so they work in Linux on the PC and macOS on the Apple Mac. They enable you to create and edit Office documents in by editing and storing them on OneDrive. The tip above works just as well in Linux and macOS as it does in Windows.
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