A lovely email from Mary S in New Hampshire proves that the Office-Watch.com money saving tips for Office 365 Home or Personal really do work. It’s exactly why we write those articles, so our customers can buy Office 365 for less than what Microsoft wants. “Just followed your “Office Watch” advice for my first renewal […]
Office 365 is the most popular target for phishing and scamming. A new record that you won’t find mentioned in all the hype about Office as a service. Vade Secure reports that Office 365 is the #1 target for criminals trying to get your password and login details. Microsoft has held the top spot for […]
Finally, and quietly, Microsoft Access has been given a new icon. We know people have worried about this omission <not>. A few months ago, Microsoft released new icons for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook to a collective yawn across the globe. Now they’ve slipped the MS Access icon into the latest Office Insiders build. No […]
Tucked away in the Windows 10 Explorer options is a choice that should be turned on and is now the default setting for Windows 10 May 2019. Normally Explorer is a single program no matter how many windows are open on the computer. That made sense when memory was limited even though it meant slightly […]
Office 365 documents can be autosaved to OneDrive or SharePoint Online but there’s a major exception which Microsoft needs to fix. AutoSave is prominent in Word, Excel and PowerPoint for Office 365, on the left of the top bar. It will regularly save your document for you but only if it’s saved to OneDrive or […]
Here’s how to change the Outlook folder labels from large text labels to smaller icons. Also tricks hiding under those folder labels. Microsoft’s default in modern Outlook is large text labels across the bottom. Click on any label to switch to that folder view. The text is large and might be suitable on a big […]
WOFF are a new-ish type of font that you might have seen mentions or downloads. Here’s how to use them in Microsoft Office; Word, Excel or PowerPoint. WOFF is Web Open Font Format designed to be compact and easy to download. WOFF is for web sites and mobile apps, not desktop programs like Office. Despite […]
“I followed your advice and bought another year of Office 365 Home cheaply to extend my subscription. Microsoft offered an extra month if I turned on auto-renewal so I took that offer. Accidentally, I discovered how to make sure the full price renewal doesn’t happen. My credit card details saved with Microsoft became invalid when […]
Windows 10 October 2018 (version 1809) wasn’t Microsoft’s finest hour with many update bugs that took too long to discover (listen to customers) and fix. The update is worth getting for one thing: a better clipboard but there’s a big problem as well. Windows 10 now saves more than one item into a clipboard memory. […]
An essential part of Word’s citations and bibliography feature is the Source Manager dialog – here’s how to, er, manage the Source Manager. Open the Source Manager from References | Citations and Bibliography | Manage Sources. There is a Current List (at right) which is saved in the current document. On the left if the […]
Since Office 2007, the workload of students and academics has been made a lot easier with the arrival of Citation features in Word. They are useful for everyone, not just in academia. Citations are individual references to source material you’ve quoted in your document. A Bibliography is a list of citations and sources used in […]
Reston, VA, May 16, 2019 – Visual Crossing Corporation is proud to announce the release of the next component of its Weather Services platform, Weather Data Services immediately available for Microsoft Excel, interactive web, and web services API. Users can choose between an interactive add-in for Microsoft Excel, a web page, and a web services API […]
A few of the May 2016 patches Microsoft Office caught our eye with embarrassing bug fixes, previously not disclosed to customers. They all apply to older Office releases: Office 2016 and before. It’s a long-standing Microsoft trick to hide embarrassing bugs from customers until they have a fix. In the meantime, customers waste time and […]
The US Dept of Homeland Security has published advice on the extra precautions that Microsoft Office 365 customers should take to protect themselves. The advice is politely titled as Microsoft Office 365 Security Observations but should perhaps be called ‘Office 365 defaults you need to change’. Many of the recommendations apply to people or organizations using […]
For the first time we can remember, Microsoft is publicly advertising the Office 365 Home Use Program. The Home Use Program changed in February 2019 to an ongoing discount on Office 365 Home plans for staff of organizations with Office volume licenses. That’s instead of a very low price on perpetual license Office software. Source: […]
The WhatsApp security bug made a lot of headlines this week. As the virtual dust settles, what should you do and what is there still to worry about. A company discovered a bug in WhatsApp which they packaged up and sold to various parties. The Pegasus bug allowed hacking of targeted individuals (mostly human rights […]
They’ve done it again … Microsoft released a bug fix for Office 2016 that caused a bug in the software! The faulty patch is KB4462238 which applies to Office 2016 installed with the older .MSI method, not the more usual ClickToRun method and not Office 365 customers. After installing the patch, clicking a hyperlink in […]
Excel 365 for Windows and Mac has a clever way to add the latest stock prices into spreadsheets in a truly quick and easy way. Stock data type has been in Excel 365 for Windows since late last year but has gradually improved as the development team react to feedback and changeover to a better […]
Separate text boxes in Microsoft Word can be linked so text in one box can automatically flow into another text box later on the same page or document. Yet again with Word, there’s some extra tricks available beyond simple linking of boxes. Linked boxes is a trick that’s a common feature in professional publishing and […]
Sometimes there’s more than one way to do something in Word like having four blocks of text on a page with images or text breakout. “How can I do a magazine-like layout with four blocks of text, one in each corner with a box of text in the middle? I’ve tried with tables and text […]
Reports that Microsoft has removed Office 365 from their flagship Windows 10 / Microsoft Store seem to be overstating things a bit. Both Office 365 Home and Personal are for sale, at full price via the Microsoft Store. Here’s the result of our search. Sometimes a big ad for Office 365 which sends you to […]
Microsoft has announced more AI or machine learning is coming to Word. It’s an extension of the Insights and Designer features already in Excel 365 and PowerPoint 365. The features haven’t been released yet even to fast track Insiders so we only have Microsoft’s word (no pun intended) on how they’ll work. Word Ideas will […]
There are some simple Microsoft Word tricks to squeeze a Table of Contents (or Table of Figures etc) into less pages. Here’s an example of a Table of Contents (ToC) that’s grown too big using Word’s default settings. It’s creeped over to a second page. We’ve seen ToC’s for big documents that take up many, […]
Follow these simple, legal, steps to get 13 months of Office 365 Home or Personal for less than what Microsoft charges for just a year. Some readers seem to doubt renewing separately from Microsoft is possible or even allowed. It’s definitely possible and permitted. Microsoft doesn’t make it obvious that customers can buy elsewhere because […]
It’s easy for forget when your Office 365 plan is up for renewal or even which plan you’ve purchased. These are vital points if you want to avoid being overcharged for Office 365 renewals, which is what Microsoft will do if you’re not careful. Go to https://office.com and login using your Office 365 linked email […]
Unclear date formatting in documents, worksheets, presentations and other media is a pet peeve of ours. These days it’s bad practice to show dates in digits only such as 01-05-2019 12/3/18 etc. Yet we often see these formats used in booking confirmations and other documents. Either of those dates can be misunderstood by a global […]
Microsoft has released in preview a new type of security policy advisor for business customers using Office 365 ProPlus. Unlike past tools, this new cloud offering promises to be more tailored to individual businesses. It will continually monitor Office software use, making changes in security settings as appropriate. The Security Policy Advisor tracks how staff […]
Office 365 for Windows has new look privacy settings, hidden deep in the menus where, presumably, Microsoft hopes customers won’t find them. These changes are in conjunction with the renamed Office cloud features now called ‘Connected Experiences’. They apply to Office 365 for Windows build 1904 and later. A series of opening screens may appear […]
If you have included tables in a document, Word can generate a list of them all for you. Like a Table of contents, this list or Table of tables can include page references or links to each table. A Table of tables can be useful for creating a proper appendix or reference within more formal […]
If you have included equations in a document, Word can generate a list of them all for you. Like a table of contents, this list or Table of Equations can include page references or links to each equation. A Table of Equations can be useful for creating a proper appendix or reference within more formal […]
If you have included images, graphs, tables or equations in a document, Word can generate a list of all of these, for you. Like a table of contents, this list can include page references or links to each figure or picture. A Table of Figures can be useful for creating a proper appendix of figures […]
How to tell which Office 365 plan (Personal, Home, University etc.) you’ve bought and the expiry date. Or maybe you’re sharing an Office 365 Home plan. The Office 365 plan, status and expiry doesn’t appear in the Office software (that would be too easy). See: Office 365 which email address am I using? Instead, go to […]
Each Office 365 account is linked to a specific email address, how can you find out which address you’re using for your Office 365 login? This might seem like a strange question but we hear it quite often. Most of us have multiple email addresses and it’s easy to get confused about which address is […]
Office 365 customers will be seeing a set of opening screens about how Microsoft gathers and uses customer data. Those screens are carefully worded to avoid some hard truths about modern cloud connections and cover Microsoft from legal liability. Cloud features can be great and very useful. Companies do their best to hide the problems, […]
Microsoft has something ‘new’ in Office 365 they call ‘Connected Experiences’. It’s really a new, fancy name for things we already have. Connected Experiences is the new catchphrase for the cloud services already in Office 365 software or apps. It’s the various features which require customer data sent to Microsoft’s servers. According to Microsoft: “Office […]
Windows Sets would have been an important innovation for Office users but has now been killed by Microsoft. Sets was a proposed and tested Windows feature which would let you group different programs together in a tabbed interface. Think of the familiar tabs in a browser except each tab had your choice of programs. That […]
Readers asked us about Window 10 naming, version and builds after Overdue changes to Windows 10 available now. Some told us we were wrong while others are confused, with both groups quoting various Microsoft sources for their ‘truth’. The sad fact is Windows naming, version and builds are a confused and inconsistent mess. Microsoft itself […]
Like any other text in Word, the appearance of all your captions can be changed by modifying the style that is applied to them or selecting the text and formatting manually. See Adding Captions in Word Caption Style All captions use the ‘Caption’ style, so modifying that style will modify the format of all past and […]
Captions let you add autonumbered labels under most Word objects including pictures (figures), tables or equations. Captions can be combined into a list of all the figures/tables/equations in the document, along with their page numbers. As usual in Word, there are many options beyond the simple adding of captions and some ‘gotchas’ as well. See Changing […]
There’s a TV show just starting its last season, maybe you’ve heard of it <g>? Here’s how to get the Game of Thrones look in Word documents and PowerPoint slides. Plenty of people have borrowed the Game of Thrones or GoT look, including a certain US President. All these uses are contrary to various trademarks […]
