Office 365 customers read about new and changed features in ‘Office 365’ but they don’t appear in the software they’ve bought. Where are these missing features? Microsoft loves announcing new stuff in ‘Office 365’ and, seemingly, can’t bring themselves to tell customers of any limitations. Even in a footnote. Just because something is announced for […]
It’s taken over a decade, but Office for Mac has taken a huge step towards true document compatibility. Font embedding was not possible until now and it’s been too long coming. This is HUGE Office for Mac news but it’s got almost no mention, with attention focused on the superficial ‘Dark Mode‘ instead. Font embedding […]
You can ‘go dark’ with Office 365 for Mac combined with the MacOS Mojave Dark Mode. MacOS Mojave release includes a system-wide Dark theme at Apple | System Preferences | General | Appearance. Compatible programs will switch to darker menus etc. Originally Office 365 for Mac did not change with Dark Mode but now it […]
Microsoft’s own Bing search engine was giving prominent place to a link which explains how to pirate Office 2019. It’s a curious display of algorithmic and corporate independence, All you had to do is search for ‘Office 2019 download’ on Bing to see information that Microsoft definitely does not approve of. First reported by Catalin […]
Musicians with Excel skills might like to try Excel MIDI an Excel file with a simple sequencer that plays MIDI music. Made by ruiseixas from Portugal, Excel MIDI is an Excel worksheet downloadable from SourceForge. It’s an .XLSM file so you’ll have to enable VBA content to let it work. We tried it on Excel […]
If you’re sending meeting requests or invitations there’s an important Outlook option to check. Normally, Outlook within a company, uses Microsoft’s own method for including meeting details. That’s OK ‘in-house’ where you can be sure everyone has Outlook. But you don’t know what people outside the organization use to manage email and calendar. Buried at […]
Switching paragraphs from Normal style to Body Text styles in Microsoft Word is a clever use of the Replace feature. We’ve talked about how savvy Word users have their main text paragraphs in the Body Text style instead of the standard Normal style. See also Modifying Body Text style in Microsoft Word That’s great for a […]
The default ‘Body Text’ style in Word needs some changes to suit your needs. Here’s some suggestions for things to alter or check to make sure they suit your, er, style. Can’t see a Body Text style? See Make Body Text style appear in Microsoft Word Body Text style can be different The default Body Text […]
By default, Body Text style in Microsoft Word is ‘hidden until used’. That seems like a Catch-22, its not visible until it’s used but you can’t use the style if it’s not on the style list! There are two ways to reveal or un-hide a hidden style. There’s the long-winded Microsoft approved method and the […]
There are good reasons to avoid the Normal style for the main text in a Word document and use the hidden ‘Body Text’ style instead. The standard Microsoft Word document structure has Headings (Heading 1, Heading 2) … with paragraphs of text in the Normal style. It sounds good but, as usual with Microsoft Office, […]
An embarrassingly simple security breach in Microsoft account logins (including Office 365) has been fixed but it took Microsoft way too long to do anything. It was possible for someone to take over the logins of Microsoft account users to get login details including passwords. There’s over 400 million Microsoft accounts including anyone with Office […]
The latest ebook from Office-Watch.com is a little different, it’s a heartfelt ‘Thank You’ to our Office Watch donors. Peter Deegan has been quite astonished and humbled by the generosity of readers to our first ever reader appeal. Both the money and kind remarks have been a considerable morale boost quite beyond the practical help […]
If you do enjoy the stuff we do here at Office Watch we’d really appreciate it if you’d chuck a few dollars at our first ever fundraising drive. We won’t bore you about how hard it is to stay afloat in the modern media (though it’s very true). The financial support of readers is the […]
Microsoft has many little ‘ads’ or suggestions that Office 365 users (Windows or Mac) join the Office Insiders program. Is it safe to become an ‘Office Insider’ and why is Microsoft pushing it so much? Office Insiders is the testing program for new Office features. It’s what used to be called ‘beta testing’ or ‘previews’. […]
Pantone has announced its Color of the Year for 2019 but before you run off to grab color swatches, here’s how to get it in Microsoft Office – Word, Excel, PowerPoint etc. The color of 2019 is <drum roll> ….. Living Coral … As usual what’s more amazing than the color is the description from […]
Icons are a relatively new part of Office 365 for Windows/Mac but can they be used in emails that go to people not using Office 365? SVG graphics are widely supported in web browsers but not all email programs know what to do with these new images. What do they see if you’ve used an […]
Meeting or party invitations don’t have to be plain, old white background emails, go for something a little more fancy or useful. Officially, Microsoft suggests using their Stationery themes to change the look of an email. But that’s not available for invitation emails. There are some formatting choices also missing from invitation emails. Whenever formatting […]
Sending out party and other non-business invitations is quite possible in Outlook. While the system is primarily intended for meetings in companies, individuals can use it too. All that’s in our article Easy Invitations with Outlook still applies today. Microsoft has tinkered with the look of Outlook but the fundamentals remain the same. Using Outlook […]
The long-standing Presentation Translation plug-in will be included in PowerPoint from January 2019. It will add real-time captions to slides for what you say, either in your language or translated to another language. Office Watch told you about Presentation Translator back in July 2017. It’s a Microsoft Garage test project that’s about to hit the […]
Office Watch reader, Meredith M. asks a question we’ve heard many times before. Why can’t you buy individual Office programs instead of paying for an Office bundle with programs you don’t need? “My issue: I need ONLY Word, Excel and Access–but I NEED them. I know that I cannot buy them separately but does anyone […]
Our article Track the largest companies Market Caps in real time got a lot more interest than we expected. Maybe because Apple and Microsoft are so close in value at the moment. So we’ve made the worksheet available for Real Time Excel readers. Market Capitalizations.xlsx also includes an example of the upcoming function Sortby() which automatically re-sorts a […]
It’s been five years since the Word, Excel, PowerPoint and other Office icons were given a new look. Now they’ve been announced and, frankly, we could not care less, except that there’s two missing! New look icons don’t make any difference to anyone’s daily use of Office. It’s like supermarket groceries that boast ‘New Packaging’ […]
Looking for some Christmas images, pictures or graphics? Microsoft Office has some in-built options for the festive tide of Yule. Add these images into Word documents, Outlook emails, PowerPoint slides or even Excel worksheets. Unsubtle Hint: Christmas Cheer with Office has a collection of festive cards, letters, gift tags, emails ready to open, edit and […]
It’s an old scam but apparently still profitable for criminals. Fake phone support pretending to be from Microsoft to ‘help’ fix virus or other non-existent problems with Office or Windows. They’ve been happening for years but seem to be getting a revival lately. What you need to know: Microsoft will NEVER show a message (screen, […]
The new Stock data type lets you track the largest companies market capitalization in real-time using Excel. There’s news about the changing #1 position between Apple and Microsoft. As stock prices change, the two companies switch positions. It’s strangely compelling to watch the market caps change by billions in the blink of an eye. Excel […]
Cyber Monday at Microsoft wasn’t a sales event so much as an embarrassment. Their Office 365 Exchange Server hosting went down, disconnecting Outlook software from the server. On this occasion, The Register reports that users could continue working via the web browser interface. Only the ActiveSync connection used by Outlook software was affected. Back in […]
Office 2019 is different in licencing and enforcement from earlier perpetual licence versions of Office. Your Office 2019 could be cancelled if Microsoft decides it’s a pirated or illegal copy. Software activation or authorization is now an ongoing process. From time to time, Office 2019 and Office 365 checks with Microsoft to ensure the software […]
Here’s three more Office 2019 scams to avoid. They are plainly illegal sales of Microsoft Office that might work but Microsoft can cancel the licence at any time. Two of them are on Amazon or Ebay, sites that customers should be able to trust and are supposed to prevent these bogus listings. These are examples […]
Microsoft can’t help itself from releasing a product or feature before it’s ready. They’ve done it again with a premature public release of Excel 365’s Stock and Geography data types. Excel 365’s Linked Data Types feature promises to be a great innovation. At long last there’s a simple way to get current financial information into […]
Dig a little into PowerPoint for some slide printing choices. They apply to printing slides only, slides with notes, outline or handouts. See also: Print part of a Word document Print selected pages or sections of a Word document in any order Print selection and other choices in Excel The choices are at File | Print […]
Excel has some useful options for printing less than an entire workbook. Printing a selection, active sheets or a table. As Office-Watch.com has discovered before, there’s a lot more available in Office than a quick look suggests. See Print options are at File | Print then choose the menu that starts with Print Active Sheets. […]
This is a good time to renew Office 365 Home with prices about as low as we’ve ever seen them. It’s possible to save $40 or 40%. There are also some good deals on Office 2019 packages. The official and automatic renewal price for Office 365 Home in the USA is $100 (well $99.99). You […]
It’s not specified in this press release but the announcement means a change in the financial data source for Excel 365’s Stock data type. ” 16 October 2018 Collaboration brings financial data to the masses with simple, direct access to trusted financial data within Microsoft Excel, MSN Money and Bing. Refinitiv, formerly the Financial and […]
We like Excel 365’s new Stock data type but it’s far from perfect. It’s vital that you make sure you’re tracking the correct stock and exchange by checking the ticker code. Microsoft has been having a difficult time ‘data wrangling’. They rely on outside contractors to supply the price and stock information from about 60 […]
Give Stock or Geography linked data types a try in Excel 365 for Windows. It really is a great innovation and will be better once Microsoft sorts out the data issues. Getting started At its simplest, type in the name of a company and click on Data | Data Types | Stocks Excel goes off […]
Excel 365’s new Stock data type has the potential to be really great. Here’s how to report problems to Microsoft so they can fix them. Real people read the bug reports, especially for a new and developing feature like Linked Data Types. The bug reports help Microsoft staff identify problems and also give them a […]
A truly interesting new Excel feature is now going public. Stock and Geography are the first two Linked Data Types (LDT) that bring stock prices and geographic info direct into Excel 365. Stock data type gives you information on stocks and indexes from over 60 global stock exchanges. No messing about with PowerQuery, ‘Get and […]
Microsoft Word has quite clever options for printing pages or document sections in any order you want. Last week we talked about printing a selection from a document. Print pages Word has options to print page combinations other than the default ‘Print All Pages’. Print Current Page Use the Print pane preview to scroll to […]
Changing the color of an image or graphic is possible in Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. It’s one of those useful Office tricks that’s hiding away. We did this in our article about inserting Prince’s ‘Love Symbol Number 2’ in Office documents. The image is available in various formats but always black, not purple. As […]
Microsoft has released four security patches that all Outlook for Windows need to protect from newly discovered bugs. The patches apply to Outlook 365, 2019, 2016, 2013 and 2010 for Windows and are available today. The four Outlook security bugs are related. They involved a hacked .RWZ file that could be sent to you via […]
