Inserting Videos to Documents in Microsoft Word 2013

Now that Word 2013 is on its way with the Microsoft Office 2013 package Microsoft are allowing us to preview its tools.  These are available in both windows 8 and windows 7, but of course to get the most out of the software it will be best to use Windows 8.  The interface as mentioned in the review feels very much like the one used in Office 2013 but there are some additional extras made available.

One of these additions is the ability to add videos into documents.  These documents will be online documents of course, as the video itself won’t print out on paper, obviously.  What it does offer though is a way to add the video to a document that could be viewed on either a computer or a tablet, allowing the video to be viewed as part of the reading process.

Inserting a Video to the Document

The big selling point of this new insert option of course is that it’s meant to be easy to do and from testing of the preview version this is the case.  Strangely enough though at first attempts Word wanted to give me the compatibility version documents for compatibility to previous Office versions, but when I finally created a document that allowed for the new functionality I was able to test it out.

To add the video it’s a case of simply clicking on INSERT on the option ribbon at the top of the screen and choosing “Online Video” if you are using the correct document a dialog will then open up allowing you to search for a Bing video or embed a code.  A YouTube option is available but at the bottom of the dialog for some reason, which does appear to push the user into using Microsoft’s options.  Once YouTube is activated it’s simple to search for the video you want, I chose “Resident Evil Trailer”. 

When the search takes place the results are shown in the dialog itself and you can easily select the option you want.  You also get some formatting options.  The ribbon at the top of the screen also defaults to format so that you can format the image in more detail.  All together this makes it an easy way to get the video looking right within your document.

There are a few niggles in the User Interface itself when getting the video onto your document but other than that the process for inserting videos is nice and easy, and formatting it is as simple as possible.  This is quite an impressive and interesting addition to the interface, which if you have need for videos in your document will obviously be welcome.

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