It’s not necessary to convert MP3 audio to the better MP4 format for PowerPoint but, if you want to, there are various ways to do it. MPEG-4 audio (.mp4 .m4a ) is recommended by Microsoft for PowerPoint 2016 (Windows and Mac), PowerPoint 2013 and Powerpoint for mobile devices. MP4 audio gives you better sound and, […]
Shrill headlines talking about the ‘death’ of MP3. Here’s how Microsoft Office is affected (hint: not a bit but you might start moving away from MP3 to the better MP4). Audio and video support mostly applies to PowerPoint. Microsoft Office supports a range of different audio formats including MP3 but also other and far better […]
Microsoft is a slow learner. After seven years they’ve finally fixed an annoying emoji bug in Outlook and they’ve done it in a typically sideways fashion. Current versions of Office display an incompatible smiley emoji that often appears as the letter J – instead of 😊 If you’ve ever seen a message with a J […]
The makers of Wannacrypt made some quick money for a small investment. That means other’s will copy their success or take advantage of the fear and confusion. WannaCrypt has received a lot of attention but it’s important to remember that ransomware isn’t new. The global publicity about WannaCrypt changed how it was handled. It’s different from […]
There’s now a way to recover files locked up by Wannacrypt ransomware without paying the attackers a thing but there are some catches. Adrien Guinet at Quarkslab has developed Wcry, decryption code for WannaCrypt. At the time of writing it only works for Windows XP computers, even then, it needs a bit of luck. Windows […]
Microsoft overuses the term ‘exciting’ to describe their latest work but the new ‘Transform by Example’ for Excel looks genuinely exciting. However you get data for Excel, the common problem is ‘massaging’ it to fit your needs. Dates need changing to match Excel, addresses need splitting into address/state/zip and names separated into first/middle/last. Excel’s Get […]
Microsoft is joining the voice device market alongside Amazon’s Echo and Google’s Home with the enticing possibility of making Outlook speak to you via Invoke. Harmon Kardon will be releasing Invoke, a speaker and Cortana powered device. Details are few at this stage however it opens up the possibility of a device that will speak […]
Apple has announced a change to how third-party products, like Microsoft Outlook, connect to iCloud services. From 15 June 2017, you’ll need an ‘app specific password’ for Outlook and other programs to connect with Apple services. This makes two-factor authentication for Apple ID’s compulsory if you use external products. Two-factor authentication is a good thing. […]
A New York Times article raises our blood pressure and not because the paper is a mouthpiece for left wing bleeding hearts and fellow travelers.* In Ransomware Attack, Where Does Microsoft’s Responsibility Lie? accepts the standard line that Microsoft is doing its best to solve security problems as they arise. No mention that Microsoft made […]
Microsoft played a great PR game over the last few days. They managed to deflect responsibility for the WannaCrypt ransomware global outbreak and even make the company look like the victim. Make no mistake, the main responsibility for the WannaCrypt trouble lies with Microsoft. Some blame can be directed to the US Intelligence agencies and […]
Microsoft has released a patch for the latest security bugs in Office 2016 and 2011 for Mac. Three different memory corruption bugs are fixed. A hacked document tinkers with computer memory and tricks the computer into running an unauthorized program. We’ve seen these problems before and we’ll see more in the future. One memory corruption […]
Everyone is talking about ransomware now that the WannaCrypt has spread like crazy across the world. These nasty viruses target your documents and precious files including Microsoft Office files and Windows backups. This is a little embarrassing for us because Office-Watch.com has just released a new book that’s suddenly become very topical. Everyday BACKUPS – […]
Microsoft has moved quickly to block a security hole in their own anti-virus software, Windows Defender. We’re used to seeing email or instant messaging used to infect a computer when opening a document in Word or Excel, maybe an email in Outlook. But this is quite different and very worrying. The bug is in Microsoft’s […]
Coming soon is a new version of Windows, the Windows 10S. What does it mean for Microsoft Office users? The 10S is a stripped down and limited version of Windows 10. Some advanced features aren’t available while others are set to Microsoft’s preferences automatically. To buy 10S is cheaper than the Home or Pro editions, […]
There’s no doubt that the Microsoft Surface is a nice piece of kit but you pay extra for it and even more than that! Microsoft’s usual trick in promoting their Surface machines is to EXclude the price of the keyboard. That lets them promote a lower headline price which most media copy into their puff […]
Adding fonts into Microsoft Office is easy but the standard advice doesn’t always work. We’ll show you how to install a font and avoid the trap. Font installation has nothing to do with Word, Excel or PowerPoint. It’s all done in Windows. Firstly, download the new fonts. There are many fonts, free and paid around […]
Last week, Microsoft released the Dubai font to their Office 365 customers only. Now the city-state of Dubai has released it to everyone. Dubai is a new font which has both western and Arabic characters in the one package. It was created by the Dubai government with assistance from Microsoft. You have to hand it […]
At last the cries of eager Signal supporters have been heard – the latest releases allow secure transfer of Office documents, PDF and more. Signal is a well-respected, very secure and private messaging system. The makers of Signal licence their open-source encryption to other messengers like Google, Facebook and WhatsApp. Even better, Signal deliberately retains […]
A few Office-Watch.com readers asked if the Dubai font is really the first ‘city’ font. ” Hello? Geneva? Belfast? Casablanca? Gloucester? ” – Steve R. Probably Microsoft/Dubai are making a distinction between a font made specifically for a city (city-state) and a font named after a city. Back in February, Microsoft described the Dubai font […]
Sensepost has revealed an interesting way to hack your computer via Outlook. Microsoft’s public response has been to deny there’s a problem and put the responsibility on customers. The method hasn’t been used ‘in the wild’ and it’s not easy to infect Outlook. But we’ve heard that before (especially from Microsoft) and history tells us […]
Office-Watch.com has joined Instagram — the photo sharing site. The Instagram posts act as another way to get the latest Office news to you immediately. We’re @officewatch or https://www.instagram.com/officewatch/ A few readers have asked us to do this and we’re happy to oblige. We’re not entirely sure that Microsoft Office news is suitable to Instagram. Let’s face […]
The Dubai font inspired us to look at the currency symbol for the United Arab Emirates – the Dirham. A quick guide for those of us who don’t know any Arabic! There’s no direct symbol for the Dirham – unlike the dollar, Euro or Yen/Yuan. The usual prefix is DH or Dhs , just plain […]
Hyped as the first city to get its own font, Dubai and Microsoft have released the Dubai font. Office-Watch.com looks beyond the press releases for the details on the new font and Dubai font alternatives. Dubai is a sans-serif OpenType font available for Windows and Mac. It’s not a full-range Unicode font but enough for […]
If you can’t get the new Dubai font, there are many alternative fonts. The closest match we could find was FF Fago by Ole Schäfer. Among the fonts supplied with Windows/Office, the most similar is Lucida Sans. It’s on the drop-down list of fonts in Windows and Mac. Here’s Lucida Sans on the Office for […]
If you send an email to an invalid email address, that address will ‘stick’ in Outlook via the AutoComplete list. Here’s how to fix that. Let’s say you send an email to fence@fred.daggcom (misplaced period/fullstop). The email will ‘bounce’ with an error message. Despite that, the wrong email address still appears in the AutoComplete list. […]
Microsoft Publisher is the ‘desktop publishing’ part of MS Office. It has many formatting options not available in Word and is useful for making marketing documents like brochures, catalogs etc. Publisher was somewhat forgotten because it was only in the high priced Microsoft Office bundles. That changed with arrival of Office 365 ‘subscriptions’. Office 365 […]
Microsoft published a blog post about all the great things added to Office 365 in April 2017. Naturally, many overworked journalists took the bait and there’s been a lot of similar stories across the media. Microsoft’s PR department must be very pleased with themselves. So much free, unquestioning, publicity. It’s true there’s been interesting things […]
Microsoft puts corporate pride and weasel words ahead of their customers safety and security. Hackers take advantage of Microsoft’s patch release scheduled to release a virus as widely as they can in the days before fix was available. The Dridex security bug was known to Microsoft but they stubbornly stuck to their ‘Patch Tuesday’ schedule […]
Microsoft has announced reductions in service for customers who bought the ‘perpetual licence’ or one-off version of Office 2016 for Windows. Veiled? Some commentators are calling it a ‘veiled’ attempt by Microsoft to switch customers from the single-payment purchase to the annual ‘subscription’ system. The move is certainly aimed to do that but it’s hardly […]
We’ve all played Solitaire, it’s been part of Windows since v3.1 but how did it begin? Surely there was a team of Redmond developers dedicated to the task, beavering away day and night, powered by diet cola and chocolate bars? Nope. Solitaire was made by a bored intern at Microsoft who needed something to do! […]
The Washington Post tells of the troubles including less common languages like Icelandic in the next wave of technology. As Office nerds we immediately looked at how the Icelandic and other languages are supported in modern Office. There’s many language specific parts of Office, more than you might expect. Menus/Ribbon, Help, Spelling, Grammar, Thesaurus, Hyphenation, […]
Here’s how to add a YouTube video to any PowerPoint slide and the limitations of streaming in a presentation. It’s possible in any modern version of PowerPoint for Windows or Mac, whether it officially has YouTube support or not. Check out our earlier piece for an overview of PowerPoint’s Video Features. We’ll first show you […]
The preview release of Microsoft To-Do begs the question – what about Wunderlist? Wunderlist is a similar app which Microsoft bought only two years ago and continued to run. Wunderlist is on the critical list with no hope for recovery. Microsoft has announced that Wunderlist is going to ‘die’ when Microsoft To-Do has reached, if […]
Adding a video as the background of a PowerPoint slide is surprisingly easy. You might expect that it requires special features but it doesn’t. There are some tricks to know if the slide gets muddled up. PowerPoint defaults to adding video as a background or, strictly speaking, bottom layer of the slide. A true PowerPoint […]
PowerPoint videos have more options and work better if they aren’t streamed from an online source like YouTube. How can you copy an online video to a separate video file, saved on your computer? To download or ‘rip’ a YouTube video, you have to enter the world of YouTube downloading. It’s possible to save a […]
Microsoft has quietly released a new service To-Do with apps for Apple, Android and Windows devices plus a web interface. It’s in preview or beta. To-Do lets you make simple lists of ‘action items’. According to Microsoft what makes the service special is “With its intelligent Suggestions, To-Do removes all the clutter and empowers you to […]
The cheap, introductory pricing for Outlook.com Premium is now available until 30 June at us$19.99 instead of $49.99 but there’s some hidden ‘gotchas’ in Microsoft’s offer. The discount offer was to expire at the end of March but has been extended. Officially it’s because Outlook.com has been ‘so popular’ but it’s more likely that Microsoft […]
Proton Mail is a secure email service run from Switzerland. How does it compare with standard email using Microsoft Outlook for Windows? Proton Mail is an option to consider if you’re looking for secure email messaging but it’s not as easy to use as some instant messaging services available. Proton Mail is OK but nothing […]
There are several ways to add images into an Office SmartArt graphic; the official Microsoft way plus some others that aren’t usually mentioned. In the introductory piece, Much better lists with SmartArt , we looked at the SmartArt basics which are much the same in Word, Excel and PowerPoint. We converted a list of countries […]
This latest hack into Microsoft Office is called the ‘Dridex Banking Trojan’ in most reports. It takes advantage of a newly discovered security bug in Microsoft Office. Here’s the hard details that are often overlooked in many reports. Microsoft has released patches to close the security breach but not before the hackers were able to […]
