I’m no Word Queen. I get by just fine typing text, inserting the odd table here and there, and mashing the keyboard when my floated images won’t stay in place. But occasionally I need a more advanced tool (like Convert Text to Table – a lifesaver!). I’m excited to dig into Word 2013 and see what’s been improved and what’s been added.

The first new feature that caught my eye was inserting online videos. Now, in the past, if you were up for the challenge, you could try doing this in PowerPoint. This new process for embedding videos is much less finicky.

So let’s try adding a YouTube video to a Word document!

Grab the embed code for the YouTube video

This process is easiest if you copy your video’s embed code first and have it ready. Go to YouTube and find the video you want to embed.

  1. Underneath the video, click the Share link.

  2. Click the Embed link.

  3. Optionally, choose the video size you want.
  4. Highlight the embed code and copy it (hit Ctrl + C on your keyboard).

Insert the online video into a Word document

Go to the Word document you want to insert a video into.

  1. Go to Insert on the Ribbon.

  2. Click Online Video in the Media group.

  3. Paste the copied embed code into the From a Video Embed Code box (hit Ctrl + V on your keyboard), then hit the arrow.

    You’ll now see something like this inserted into your document.

    To play the video, click on the play button. The video will pop up in an overlay.

    To close the video, click away from the overlay.

If you’re having difficulty. . .Online Videos won’t work in old Word documents that are in Compatibility Mode. If your Online Video button on the Ribbon appears grayed out, check the title of your document at the very top to see if it has [Compatibility Mode] after it. If it does, you’ll need to convert it to the newest Word document version.

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