In an era of ‘fake news’ Microsoft’s Word Researcher tool is the perfect weapon

Kareem Anderson

As Facebook and Google ended 2016 combatting fake news, Microsoft is looking to highlight its Office 365 Word Researcher feature as a tool for the average consumer to utilize to help avoid spreading potentially misleading information.

In mid-2016 Microsoft’s Office 365’s Word application gained two new features to help teachers, students, writers, and journalists produce credible and reliable written documents in Researcher and Editor.

Now, when writing papers or producing written work, users can in-line bring up relevant and perhaps more importantly, accurate information and drop it into documents.

With Researcher, anyone can search for and incorporate reliable sources and content, including properly formatted citations, all within a few clicks and without having to leave the document.

“It’s really bringing the library to the students and enabling them to be good researchers,” says Aron Early, research technology specialist at Sammamish High School in Bellevue, Washington. “Being able to research sites, collect and curate your information all in one program is kind of amazing.”

For anyone donning Office 365, Word’s new Researcher and Editor features have or should be enabled via a software update that’s been rolling out to users for the past few months. To try out the new Researcher feature, head to the Office Ribbon in Word for Office 365 and search under the Review Tab. If Researcher is not there yet, users can also head to the Word apps store to install the add-in as well.

Let us know what your thoughts are on how Microsoft has incorporated the research and collaboration tool.