New and improved ‘Pro’ fonts are a lesser known part of the April 2018 update to Windows 10. You can install, free, updated alternatives for Windows standard fonts like Arial, Georgia, Gill Sans and Verdana. Windows 10 now supports ‘Variable Type’ fonts where a single font file contains many variations like bold, italic, regular, condensed […]
Sharepoint hosted by Microsoft Office 365 continues to get more features with a few indicating changes coming to broader Office products. Changed Opening Pane The Office.com pane is changing with a ‘Recommended’ section that lists items that Microsoft’s Artificial Intelligence thinks you should see. Discover shows documents other staff are working on, including new documents […]
The North Carolina State Bar is proposing attorneys get an hour of computer training, including Microsoft Office, as part of their annual Continuing Legal Education (CLE). Only one US State, Florida, has a computer component of their current CLE. Amazing! In Florida, lawyers have to get three hours of technical training every three years. That’s […]
The upcoming Football World Cup (soccer) is a little more complicated than usual. There are 64 matches playing across three time zones in Russia which makes it hard to figure out what time the live broadcast will be for you. Outlook for Windows or Mac can help, combined with an online calendar of World Cup […]
Microsoft Word for Android devices has achieved a seemingly impressive milestone, 500 million downloads. Is that ‘half a billion’ number truly big when compared to the number of Android devices in use? We’re inspired by the wonderful More or Less program and podcast from BBC Radio 4 to ask the question ‘Is that a big […]
Here’s how to make the latest web ‘parallax’ effect in PowerPoint. Parallax effect is where a photo appears to move ‘out of the way’ as a new slide appears. You see it in modern web sites like this: See how the photo moves up, as the new slide also moves up? That’s the parallax effect. […]
Continuing our tutorial on making a parallax slide transition in PowerPoint. In Parallax Effect in PowerPoint, part one we setup the extended slide with the image and text boxes needed. We showed how to add text boxes outside the visible slide area, the vital selection pane, renaming objects so they are easier to identify and […]
It seems every other business is using the royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle as an excuse to sell something, so Office Watch has joined the bandwagon … with tongue firmly planted in cheek. Our book Keep Calm with Microsoft Office has sample Word documents and PowerPoint slides which have the original ‘Keep […]
It’s nice to see journalists used advanced Microsoft Word skills to keep government officials and politicians on their toes. CBC News, Canada received an early copy of a Manitoba government report on mental health. The final report was officially released a few hours later. The smart reporters at CBC compared the two reports to see […]
The so-called ‘Efail’ security bug affects Microsoft Outlook for Windows (among others) but only if you’re using a PGP encryption plug in like Gpg4Win and S/MIME. The bug means that messages that should be encrypted can, instead, be viewed in plain text. The current advice is to uninstall Gpg4Win. The EFF has instructions for disabling […]
This might rate as the most nerdy Microsoft Office news item of the year … Microsoft is changing the build number format for Office from four significant digits to five. Please try to contain your excitement … The current MS Office for Windows public release has a version/build like this: Version 1804 Build 9226.2156 – […]
Your deadline is in four hours, you’ve got pages to write and BAM! the ‘M’ key breaks on your keyboard …. What do you do? That happened to Colin Chambers, a University of Buffalo student when a drink spilled on his keyboard and as he put it: “The letter between “L” and “N” in the […]
Excel has three PercentRank() functions to give you the percent ranking of a value in a list of numbers. It’s different from the Excel rankings we’ve discussed before, because this is a percentage or percentile ranking Let’s start with a simple example. There’s a list of values from 1 to 29 on the left. Column […]
Here’s how to make a lookalike for the Law & Order TV show title card in either PowerPoint or Word. Last week we showed how to make the Law & Order opening screen image and how to use that look in slides or documents. Many readers asked why Office-Watch.com didn’t do the main title card. […]
You’ve been getting a lot of special emails from companies about the data and emails they send you. That’s all because of GDPR or General Data Protection Regulation that comes into force on 25 May 2018. We’ll explain a little about GDPR below but first we’ll explain what will change at Office Watch. No change, […]
There’s an amazingly simple but effective way to bypass some security scans used by Office 365 hosting and possibly infect a computer. Called BaseStriker, this trick is so simple. It’s amazing that any professional security software doesn’t check for it already. It hides a dangerous link from Microsoft’s own and other security scans, which allows […]
One of the recent security patches from Microsoft is being actively exploited by hackers hoping to trap people who don’t update their computer quickly. The security bug can use an Office document to infect your computer. The security hole is in the Internet Explorer browser and the VBscript engine. It affects Windows 7 onwards plus […]
Another month, another set of security bugs in Microsoft Office. It’s Microsoft’s version of Groundhog Day. The May 2018 dump of patches involves 102 updates covering: Office versions from Office 2010 to the latest Office 2016 Core Office features Word Excel Sharepoint and Project server. Most people don’t need to do anything. Windows and Office […]
The Microsoft Build conference has many promises and announcements of future technologies. They aren’t things you can use right now and some of them are familiar from Microsoft conferences in years and decades past. The demos are very impressive and looks really easy. The reality of development and use is often a lot harder and […]
The right-click menu is a powerful part of modern computers. It lets you quickly access options in Windows, Mac and Microsoft Office. Right-click is such a basic part of personal computing that it works even on devices without a mouse! We love ‘stupid’ questions because they’re rarely stupid at all. Yesterday Peter was asked a […]
One way to open a PowerPoint presentation could be to copy the opening of the Law & Order TV shows. Here’s how to get the same look in your PPT slides or Word documents plus the distinctive sound. The same formatting can be used in Word, maybe as a callout to highlight some text. But […]
Microsoft has announced upcoming new features in Office for Windows, Office 365. We’ll be looking at them in detail but here’s Microsoft’s summary. We’ll start with the important rollout information, these features aren’t in Office yet, they are coming to Insiders first and later to regular users. Here’s the Microsoft blurb …. Ink analysis in […]
In case you thought making a Word or Excel virus attack was hard, think again. The ‘Rubella Macro Builder’ will sell you a DIY kit with updates for just US$40 a month. The virus maker will take you through the steps to make a hacked Word or Excel document that can infect a computer and […]
Microsoft Outlook 2016 for Mac (Office 365) is getting some ‘new’ features or, at least, features that other Office users already have. Quick Reply The Reply/Reply all options in the reading/preview pane are promised ‘later this summer’. Time Zone support Outlook for Mac finally gets time zone support but, unfortunately it’s the same lame and […]
Microsoft is now previewing the next version of Office for perpetual licence/one-time payment customers. The changes in how Office is sold and updated mean this isn’t the big news it once was. We have info on what’s in Office 2019, release date and reduced support. Most people now buy Office as a ‘subscription’ or annual […]
It’s possible and practical to make ‘handwritten’ notes or edits direct on your Word, Excel or PowerPoint documents. Instead of printing them out and using a pen/pencil, do it on-screen with a digital pen. Here’s a real-world guide to how you can do it, leaving aside the hype and flashy demos. As always, inspiration from […]
Last week we showed you how to use Google Fonts in your Office documents. Here’s how to choose good looking font pairs for your Word headings and body text or PowerPoint titles and text. The Google Fonts site itself is little help but others have curated suggested pairings. Most of the suggested Google Font pairs […]
It’s easy to get mixed up between two seemingly similar Excel functions – Vlookup() and Choose() . Here’s how to, er, choose between the two. Choose( index_num, value1, [value2], [value3].. ) lets you select one item from a list within the function. For example: Choose(2, “High”, “Middle”, “Low”) will return the second list item; “Middle”. […]
In an entirely predictable move, Microsoft is dropping the full OneNote desktop program from their lineup. OneNote 2016 for Windows, the traditional Windows program is being killed. It’ll be a slow death but it’ll still be dead. OneNote 2016 for Windows will be supported with security patches until October 2025 but will get no new […]
It’s a simple question – How can I delete a blank page in Microsoft Word? The answer isn’t so simple because there are many reasons for Word to add another page and various tricks to getting rid of them. The most common type of extra page is at the end of a document. There are […]
An infected email supposedly from the UK government appeared in our Outlook Inbox. It’s a good example of what to be careful of in emails and how some Outlook settings protect you from harm. Here’s the message that got through our mail hosts checks and Outlook’s. Many things in this email are a ‘Red Flag’ […]
Empty or unwanted pages just after a Word table are especially annoying. Trying to select anything after the table can be difficult unless you know the tricks. Here’s the common problem in Word. A table goes to the end of a document or section but another empty page is added. Clicking Home | Paragraph | […]
Jeff Bezos doesn’t like PowerPoint or any other slideshow system at Amazon meetings. That’s what leapt out at us from his 2017 Letter to Amazon shareholders (published in April 2018). “We don’t do PowerPoint (or any other slide-oriented) presentations at Amazon. Instead, we write narratively structured six-page memos.” Those memos are read silently at the […]
Talk about being behind the times. Google is reportedly about to release an SMS Replacement called Chat. Chat is an attempt to modernize SMS beyond simple text messaging. It will have group texts, videos and images, typing indicators and read receipts. Chat isn’t an app, it’s part of the Android operating system replacing the current […]
A KPMG team in Florida, USA are embarrassed and lost an important client all because of a slip of the keyboard and Outlook’s email AutoComplete feature. Miami Today has the story of the proposed new Miami-Dade courthouse and a mistake by the courthouse consultant’s KPMG. A confidential proposal and evaluation was mistakenly sent by KPMG […]
Google has a wonderful collection of free open-source fonts available and, if you know the magic spell, they can be used in Microsoft Office, Windows or Mac. There are 877 Google Font families currently available at https://fonts.google.com Google Fonts are intended for use with web sites. The company has a open source for the font […]
In the UK there’s been a lot of laughs and some red faces about a money raising letter ‘signed’ by the Conservative Prime Minister to a ” Mr Youmustbe F*ckingjoking ” and sent to a pensioner. It’s easy to laugh but anyone who has done large mailings knows that it’s a case of “There but […]
Will Dormann in exposing the half-measure Outlook patch also shows that more complex passwords with mixed-case letters plus digits and symbols is better than a simple long password. The highest length of time to crack an 8 character password from NTLMv2 hash with a mere single mid-range GPU. Longer passwords are better but you don’t need […]
Kerning is a font setting that’s important in Word and PowerPoint. We’ll explain kerning and why you mostly don’t have to worry about it. Kerning adjusts the horizontal space between letters so they look right to the human eye. It’s necessary because letters take up different amounts of space and the letter shape can clash […]
Here’s how to use the font kerning settings in Microsoft Office, Word and PowerPoint. See our short guide to kerning to understand the settings and artistry behind kerning. Kerning letters makes a difference as the letters get larger so the setting is more important for headings and titles in Word and PowerPoint. Windows and Mac […]
