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 […]
A previously theoretical way to misuse Office documents to infect your computer is now ‘in the wild’ and Microsoft isn’t interested in stopping it. Last week we told you about a new way for Office documents to get malware onto your computer. Cymulate discovered that the Online Video feature could be manipulated to download malware […]
Microsoft has raised the prices of Office 2019, but there are still ways to beat the price rise. As widely expected, Microsoft upped the retail price of Office 2019. The official price increases are up to 10%. Office 2019 Home & Student remains at the same price, $149.99, keeping the entry price for Office the […]
The latest ‘Insiders Fast Track’ Outlook for Windows has an interesting but somewhat incomplete new feature for managing appointments called ‘End appointments early’. It’s an overall setting at File | Options | Calendar | End appointments and meetings early. There are ‘end early’ choices for meetings: Less than one hour One hour or longer We […]
Another way to convert text to dates is by adding zero to the text. This is a trick which forces Excel to convert the text into an Excel value so it can then add the zero. Since adding zero doesn’t change the value, you end up with text converted to an Excel value. It’s a […]
A little side-trick for converting text dates to Excel dates is replacing the text separator. Excel lets you replace text within the selected cells only. If the text dates are in the correct order (e.g. m/d/y ) but use the wrong separator for your Windows regional setting (e.g. m-d-y ). Excel’s Replace function will replace […]
The late and much missed musician Prince wished to be known by single character symbol called ‘Love Symbol Number 2’. Here’s how to enter that unique symbol in Word, PowerPoint or Microsoft Office generally. There are various methods suggested on the Internet, we’ve narrowed then down to one excellent option (SVG graphic) two others that […]
Microsoft Word can print the selected parts of a document, not just the whole document, Select the part of the document you want to print. Word won’t let you print separated selections (made using the Ctrl key). Go to File | Print (or Ctrl + P) and from the Settings list choose Print Selection. The […]
A badly managed switch to Office 365 made it hard for staff and passengers at London’s Victoria Station. An uninstall message for Office 2010 appeared over the important platform display. The Register reports that the platform status displays, not the main board were hard to read because an Office 365 update notice kept appearing. Source: […]
After more than a decade of apathy, Word users will get a document To Do list feature. Finally, Microsoft has listened to customers! For as long as we can remember, Office users have been asking for a To Do list and other notes elements to be added into Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents. Redmond is […]
Yet another breakdown of Office 365 servers makes like difficult for customers. Users were unable to login with their Office apps or to Microsoft hosted Exchange Servers. It’s not clear how widespread the problems were. It happened on 31 October 2018 but took twelve hours to repair. That’s a disappointingly long time. It seems Microsoft […]
