The full match schedule for the 2019 Rugby World Cup can appear in Outlook calendar. Internet calendars can be added to your regular appointments or placed in a separate Outlook calendar that can be viewed side-by-side or overlaid on your regular calendar. 2019 Rugby World Cup calendar First, find an online calendar in the webcal […]
The Home Use Program discount for Office 365 Home and Personal has now been confirmed at 30% on the regular price. It’s part of a major upheaval in the Office Home Use Program. The biggest changes to the program we’ve ever seen. We’re still unpicking the details and making a list of unanswered questions. Make […]
The current Home Use Program with Office 2019 sold for a mere $15 is about to end. If you want the perpetual licence Office 2019 for Windows or Mac, you’d better hurry. The full impact of the changed Office Home Use Program (HUP) is becoming clear. We’ve already noted that Office 365 subscriptions are becoming […]
2019 is the 150th anniversary for the Periodic Table of Elements. There are some great Periodic Tables available in Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint slides. There are many Periodic Table ‘documents’ on the net but most are PDF’s or images. We’re looking for editable documents that you can adapt, recolor or redesign to suit […]
Even by Microsoft’s standards, The Office Twins Challenge is a self-serving and annoying crock which treats customers like fools. Office 2019 ad to discourage buying it It’s not often (ever?) that a company doesn’t want to sell a product, but that’s what Microsoft is doing with their latest Microsoft Office ad. Office 2019 is the […]
The Microsoft Office Home Use Program (HUP) has officially been extended to include Office 365 Home and Office 365 Personal annual plans. Naturally there’s a catch, the rules have changed but the Microsoft department isn’t ready yet! UPDATES: Home Use Program details are dribbling out. You’d better hurry if you want discounted Office 2019 for […]
The latest Microsoft Office promotion is a rare example of an ad which shows how a product was deliberately crippled with less features. The ‘Twins Challenge’ is a series of very selective videos that are supposed to highlight differences between Office 2019 (single purchase, less profitable for Microsoft) and Office 365 (annual payment, highly profitable). […]
There are three different ways to change an Office icon or SVG graphic. The two official methods with their in-built limitations or some choices before inserting into Office. Within Office Limited SVG/Icon changes are available from the Graphics Tools | Format tab. In this article we’re using an SVG from Wikipedia which has the features […]
Some simple changes to SVG graphics can bypass some of the more annoying limits of SVG support in Word, Excel and PowerPoint for Office 2019/365. Here’s a simple SVG with three parts: the circle <circle> the rectangle <path id=”bar” …> letters are defined in other <path … > and <use …> statements. In this article […]
There are a lot more Office Icon or SVG graphics available than the ones in Office. Office 365 and 2019 has Icons which is Microsoft’s name for SVG graphics. You can find Microsoft’s gallery of SVG graphics at Insert | Icons. That’s just a fraction of what’s available. There are a lot more SVG’s available […]
There’s now a proper digital font version of the typeface used on US National Park signs. It’ll work with Office for Windows or Mac. The original signs were hand-carved with a router bit. At https://nationalparktypeface.com/ there are four options available: Light, Regular, Heavy and Outline. They are available as a free download under a SIL […]
Microsoft Office is showing an ‘Updates Available’ below the ribbon ‘message bar’. What to do? especially if you don’t want to update right away. “UPDATES AVAILABLE Updates for Office are ready to be installed, but first we need to close some apps. Update now ” It looks like you have only two choices, ‘update now’ […]
Many new emoji are now in the official Unicode list but we’ll have to wait for them to appear in Word or Outlook emails. After the Unicode Consortium ratifies additions to the vast character list, it takes some time for Microsoft, Apple and others to add the emoji to their fonts. The 2019 Emoji list […]
Here’s the list of the February 2019 bug fixes or ‘non-security’ updates for Office 2016, Office 2013 and Office 2010. They don’t apply to Office 365 or Office 2019 which use the ‘Click to Run’ install and update service. Many of the updates are preparing for the upcoming Japanese Era change. Office will be updated […]
Office 365 is getting yet another way to save a document and it’s not as bad as the advance publicity suggested. We’ve now had a chance to use the new Save dialog ourselves and it’s not another attempt to force customers to OneDrive. The change is now available for Office Fast Insiders and eventually all […]
Here’s a quick and easy way to totally erase file, folders or free disk space so there’s no trace of the original data. Also erasing an entire drive before handing over or selling. As you may know, deleting a file doesn’t really remove it from your computer. Even after deleting from the Recycle Bin, the […]
It’s the Chinese Year of the Pig and there are some symbols in Word, Excel and PowerPoint to mark the occasion in Office for Windows or Mac. The Unicode standard has three Pig related emoji, Pig, Pig Face and Pig Nose. Once you know the names or hex value, they can be found with the […]
Web based email is very common these days but it’s not the best way to handle your email. At worse, webmail can leave you stranded and out-of-touch. A lot of people now use webmail as the only way to access email on their computer, not realising, until it’s too late, that there’s a better way. […]
How can you tell if you’re reading email in a web browser or using email software like Outlook for Windows or Mac? This might seem obvious to some but many people use ’email’ without understanding the important difference between webmail and email programs. There are two ways to read and send emails: use software/apps like […]
Type or enter the ° Degree symbol into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Windows programs generally. Degree ° is a common symbol and should be available in most fonts. If not, try another font or one of the fonts with a very wide range of characters like Arial Unicode MS or Ludica Sans Unicode. Typing […]
If the Translation options in Microsoft Office don’t do it for you, try the Google Translate full document translation option instead. For a long time, Google has a word and text translation between languages. The app is a godsend to travelers around the world, and the locals dealing with them! Entire Office documents can also […]
Bitlocker is an important part of Microsoft Windows so why isn’t it in the Microsoft Word dictionary? Bitlocker is the drive encryption feature in modern Windows. It secures your drive if stolen or lost because the entire drive is unreadable without the password. Our books for Windows 10 and Windows 8.1 have chapters devoted to […]
There’s a simple Microsoft Word trick that lets you shrink the vertical space between lines. Reducing below single line spacing. To set less than 1 line space go to Paragraph | Line Spacing and choose ‘Multiple’ – yes ‘Multiple’. Sounds screwy but it works. Set the Multiple line spacing value to less than one eg 0.7 […]
We’re delighted to announce something new at the Office Watch bookstore. Beating Bots, Spies & Cock-ups is all about safely and securely sending files and documents. Keeping your personal and business information private on the Internet. suits Windows and Mac, Office 365, Office 2019, Office 2016 and earlier We all send personal information over the Internet. […]
The Facetime security bug is embarrassing for Apple but compared to other tech companies they acted decently and quickly. Here’s how to protect yourself. The Facetime bug allowed someone to eavesdrop on you without you knowing it. It activated the Apple device microphone even though the receiver had not answered the call. In effect any […]
Office 365 hosted customers in Europe are recovering from an outage of about two days. Affected customers should make sure Microsoft gives them the downtime discount they’re entitled to. The outage affected Office 365 email and other hosting in the UK and parts of Europe, like The Netherlands and Belgium for about two days late […]
What can you do when two Windows computers can’t ‘see’ each other for file sharing on a local network? It’s an old, old Windows problem with too many possible faults, but a smart Office Watch reader found one possible fix. File sharing is necessary to let you share documents and files between local computers. Microsoft […]
Apple and Microsoft have come to terms and now you can buy an Office 365 ‘subscription’ plan from the Apple App Store. Why do such a silly thing? We’ve seen a lot of hype about Office 365’s arrival in the App Store. Commentators almost hyperventilating with excitement including the phrase ‘rejoicing throughout the land’ apparently […]
Finding the right stock or index among the tens of thousands available in Excel’s Stock data type isn’t always easy. Here’s some stock search tips that might help with some advice about a changing situation. Stock data type is available in Excel 365 for Windows and coming to Excel 365 for Mac (currently only Insiders). […]
Outlook’s Clutter feature is going away in favor of the Focused Inbox. Both have the same limitation that Microsoft doesn’t talk about much. Clutter was a hyped Outlook/Exchange feature which shunted lower priority messages to a separate folder. Marketing emails, group messages etc could go to Clutter leaving, in theory, important emails only in the […]
Windows 10 Mobile will end support in December 2019, the latest in a long line of failed attempts by Microsoft to produce a smartphone version of Windows. Smartphones with Windows 10 will continue to work, of course. So will the Office apps for Win 10 Mobile. But there’ll be no more security patches, features or […]
NEW YORK, Jan. 10, 2019 – “PublishDrive is thrilled to announce the launch of their free ebook conversion tool that is available to the public for commercial use. With PublishDrive’s new conversion tool, users can instantly convert their manuscript into a ready-to-publish ebook. To use the conversion tool, users simply upload a Microsoft Word DOCX file. The file is […]
Now that Microsoft is changing the default Office 365 and Office 2019 install to 64-bit software from 32-bit software – which one do you choose and does it matter? Most people will not notice the difference between 32-bit Office and the 64-bit version. The latter is faster but not so much better that you’d realize […]
A Canadian man has been caught trying to hide assets from bankruptcy because the wrong fonts were used in documents. Gerald McGoey, the former CEO of Look Communications filed for bankruptcy over a year ago. He presented trust documents that appeared to shield two properties from his creditors. But there was a problem with both […]
We’ve seen many cheap Office 365 Home, Personal, University and other plans sold as ‘lifetime’, ‘perpetual’ or ‘never-ending’. It’s all lies. Lifetime Office 365 for under $3 … yeah right Some deals are obviously scams, like this one for just US$3 but others are more plausible. They are priced just under the regular street price […]
Getting a refund on an Office 365 plan isn’t easy but can be possible depending on the reason for cancellation and your local consumer laws. There’s a lot of misleading or out-of-date information on the web, including details from Microsoft itself. Here’s the hard information we’ve been able to find. A lot depends on: Who […]
Microsoft Project and Visio are expensive extras to Microsoft Office so it’s tempting to buy cheap versions from sites like Ebay but there are traps for the unwary. Visio software plans start at $15 a month up to a one-time price of $530 for Visio Professional. Visio Online only can be had for $5 a […]
Ads for cheap, illegal or maybe non-existent versions of Office 365 appear all over the place, including Facebook. Just like similar offers on Ebay or Amazon they look great but can’t possibly be legitimate. This one on Facebook mobile offers ‘Lifetime’ Office 365 for just $75. Since a single year of Office 365 Home costs […]
Many Word users are reporting Booklet printing options after the January 2019 updates to Office. No word from Microsoft but we have some suggested workarounds. All sorts of problems are being reported, mostly missing or blank pages in a booklet. The best workaround is using Adobe Reader which also has a Booklet printing feature with […]
Microsoft Word has a booklet printing option but there’s a simple alternative if it’s not working. Word’s Booklet Printing is done in the document (Layout | Paragraph | Page Setup | Multiple Pages | Book Fold. But that method might not suit you or Word isn’t booklet printing properly (as happened with the January 2019 […]