The Shrink to Fit or Shrink One Page option hiding in Microsoft Word might solve a common problem. Making a document that’s using part of an extra page (an ‘orphan’), fit into a single page or one less page. Shrink One Page or Shrink to Fit was added to Word a long time ago, at […]
We already talked about the Microsoft Word ‘Shrink One Page‘ feature and its limitations. Here’s suggestions for how to move a few orphaned lines from the top of a page in more subtle and effective ways. Obviously, every document is different so the tricks you use depend on the situation. Pick and try from this […]
Office for iOS (iPhone / iPad ) is getting the Icons or SVG support already available in Word 365 for Windows. Icons now available to Office iOS Insiders on the Insert tab. There are 500 to choose from … Source: Microsoft Available in the Word, Excel and PowerPoint apps for Android. Icons are really SVG […]
Excel for Android is getting the ability to insert numbers and text from a picture. Insert | Data from Picture is now available to Office for Android Insiders and will rollout to the public in coming months. It’s OCR (Optical Character Recognition) specialized for Excel. Source: Microsoft You can get a similar result by taking […]
Coming to Word 365 for Windows are more Ink Editor gestures plus a pop-out pane to explain the gestures available. Ink Editor is on the Draw menu. It’s a way to use a digital pen to edit existing text. For example, draw a squiggly line through some words to delete them. It’s a nifty idea […]
Array formulas are useful for getting the result from a filtered list. Continuing our series on Excel array formulas. Here’s a list of stocks with industries. How many stocks are in the ‘Shop’ industry? The array formula in G5 has the answer from the formula: 1=COUNTIF(Table3[Industry],G4) The expanded version of the array might help explain […]
Array formulas are an important part of Excel and they are about to become a lot more important. You won’t be able to ignore arrays much longer because they will be an unavoidable part of Excel for everyone. This is the start of a series to help you understand arrays in Excel. At the very […]
Microsoft Office for Windows is gradually changing the software name to Office 365 . It’s being done slowly, almost by stealth but it’s happening. Keen eyed readers have noticed a gradual change on the Microsoft web site and software. We first mentioned it back in August 2018 but the software name change to Office 365 […]
We’ve added more to Real Time Excel, our comprehensive guide to adding the latest information into Excel easily and automatically. Real Time Excel already has in-depth coverage of Linked Data Types, a new and truly interesting addition to Excel for Windows. On 15 October 2018 we added a bit more to the already expansive coverage: […]
A New York Times article about parents writing their kids college entrance essay reminded us of a forgotten feature in Microsoft Word. A feature of modern ‘helicopter parenting‘ is helping, if not entirely writing, essays for their children. The article How I Know You Wrote Your Kid’s College Essay by JM Farkas, a college essay […]
The people who brought us Wunderlist have now turned their sights on PowerPoint and hope to disrupt how we think of presentation software with Pitch. They’ve already identified two important failings in PowerPoint. You’d think that between PowerPoint, Keynote (Apple) and Slides (Google) would have the whole presentation software market sewn up tight. But upstarts […]
Microsoft has re-released the October 2018 update to Windows 10 after (hopefully) fixing the bug which deleted some customers vital files. The October 2018 update problem was caused by changes to Known Folder Redirection or KFR which we’ll explain below. Windows 10 October 2018 update – take two The Windows 10 October 2018 update is […]
Microsoft includes a OneNote logo in a lot of Office 2019 promotion but that’s a stretch because there’s no ‘OneNote 2019’ included. Down in the fine print: “OneNote for Windows 10”. That’s the OneNote app which is available to all. OneNote desktop has already been dropped from the Office lineup. Replaced by the Windows 10 […]
Microsoft has now announced the prices for all Office 2019 bundles it makes one thing clear, Microsoft really doesn’t want people buying Office 2019. The retail prices are high and there’s less chance for retail discounts. There’s less competition on the perpetual license products compared to Office 365 Home ‘subscription’ which is usually available for […]
An Australian university has developed a font that will help you remember what you read. It sounds like an April Fool’s joke, but the font is real and works in Office for Mac or Windows. Sans Forgetica was made at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. Unlike most fonts, Sans Forgetica is designed to be a […]
What causes blank spaces in the Word navigation pane and how to fix them. The Navigation Pane in Word shows the Headings in a document but sometimes has the unexpected. Blank lines or text not in a heading. But sometimes blank spaces appear, like between London and Paris above. Why is that happening? The Navigation […]
Adding email, calendar and contacts Live Tiles to the Windows Start Menu would seem like an obvious thing to do. Here’s how you can workaround to do it. On the Windows 8 and 10 large Start Menu are ‘Live Tiles’ which are updated to show the latest information. Some of them are setup to show […]
As Douglas Adams said, Don’t Panic. There are problems with the Windows 10 October 2018 major update but they won’t strike you if you’re careful. The October 2018 update has been suspended by Microsoft after reports that documents/files were being deleted during the update process. Not good at all. The affected files seem to be […]
Microsoft has announced their own virtual machine version of Windows and Office desktop that you can run from anywhere called Windows Virtual Desktop. WVD is a virtual Windows machine which runs on Microsoft’s Azure cloud servers. Users access that machine from their own computer using Remote Desktop software. Many organizations already do this, either hosting […]
New Zealand is getting some unfair bad publicity after a change in their laws which allows Customs officials to ask for the passwords to access computers or devices brought into the country. Customs officials all over the world can usually search anything you bring in and that includes password protected Office documents, hard drives, USB […]
Press Release: ORLANDO, FLA. (PRWEB) OCTOBER 01, 2018 LawToolBox, a market leader in delivering modern solutions for legal professionals in Microsoft Office 365, announces that at the Microsoft Ignite 2018 conference it has won the award for second place in the Best Office Integration category for its Deadline App for Microsoft Teams. This recognition is especially notable because […]
Word, Excel, PowerPoint and other Office apps for Windows 10 have been sidelined by Microsoft with no new features planned. Bad news for anyone still using a Windows Phone. The Windows 10/Mobile apps will continue to work but no more features are planned. This ‘no more features’ decision appears to apply to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, […]
From today, 1 October 2018, Office 365 licencing rules change in a way Microsoft has never done before. Redmond announced the change a few weeks ago but now we can see the new Office 365 licence rules working, with a few unanswered questions. The change won’t affect your current Office software. There’s no noticeable difference […]
Here’s how to save a Word document with the private and hidden details automatically removed. Normally, you’re expected to manually go to File | Info | Inspect document to check/remove things like comments, hidden text, header, footers or watermarks. What if you want it to happen automatically, whenever you save a file or just make […]
Murphy Brown is back on TV, just another sign of the strange world in 2018. An excuse for us to recreate the TV show’s look as a design inspiration for Word and PowerPoint. You may not want to use the exact look of the Murphy Brown title card, but it’s a starting point for design […]
Office Insiders have a new toy to play with …. making images transparent in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. This is available now for fast track insiders with version 1810, build 10910.20007 or later. Pictures can be made transparent to reveal what’s behind in lower layers of the document, slide or worksheet. The new option […]
Office 2019, the new non-cloud version of Office for Windows and Mac, is now available to volume licence and commercial customers. This is the ‘cloud free’ or, as Microsoft call it the ‘on-premises’ version of Office desktop. It has no cloud related features and is ‘feature fixed’ with no future enhancements. There’ll be security and […]
Officially, Office 2019 will be sold to consumers ‘in a few weeks’ but a leak gives us the probable release date, bundles and prices. Two Office 2019 Bundles Office 2019 will be sold to consumers in two packages: Home and Student or Home and Business. That’s much the same as Office 2016 perpetual licence which […]
Insiders (Fast or Slow) will start seeing a major change to the date information they get from the Excel Stock Data type. All Excel for Windows ‘Insiders’ can try out the Stock and Geo data types. They are a new way to get external information into Excel without the hassle of data connections. Date Format […]
A fun new font using famous logos for letters also demonstrates where Windows 10 color font features are ahead of Word 2016. Brand New Roman is a fun mashup font made up of famous logos. It looks best in color so it’s handy that Windows 10 supports color fonts. Try out Brand New Roman at […]
Ever wanted to stretch out your essay or report so it fit on more pages? Times Newer Roman is a font that will help you do just that. Any student knows the standard tricks for making an essay seem longer. Adjust the margins, stretch the Font | Advanced | Spacing, slightly larger line spacing, bigger […]
Adding thumbnail or preview image for Word, Excel or PowerPoint Office documents is easy, though you won’t find the choice anywhere obvious. We’ll dig into how thumbnails work for some nerdy extra detail. Thumbnails are the small images that appear in File Explorer instead of the standard icons for Word, Excel, PowerPoint etc. Microsoft used […]
Microsoft has finally added their Antimalware Scan Interface (AMSI) into the Office 365 programs, including Word, Excel and PowerPoint. This technology is designed to check VBA and other programming code when it’s opened and before running. It’s a runtime check separate from any document scanning done by Windows Defender. Source: Microsoft AMSI was first released […]
Office 365 ProPlus customers can keep running older versions of Windows longer after a change of heart by Microsoft. Windows 8.1 will be supported for Office 365 ProPlus through January 2023. That means both Windows 8.1 and Office 365 ProPlus now have the same end of support date for Windows 8.1. Office 365 ProPlus will […]
Microsoft is extending availability of cloud services like OneDrive, Skype for Business and MS hosted Exchange for Office 2016 perpetual licence customers including Office 365 ProPlus At the moment, Office 2016 single-payment and Office 365 ProPlus would be blocked from OneDrive, Skype for Business and Microsoft supplied Exchange Server after 13 October 2020. This does […]
The Windows clipboard is quite limited but there’s a better one hiding inside Microsoft Office for Windows. It can collect more items, paste in any order and be cleared when you like. We’ll also show how to keep the sometimes annoying pane out of the way. You’re about to hear more about the clipboard because […]
Finding out the computers local time zone offset in Excel is possible with a little VBA magic. We’ve included a full working example of how to get the ‘nn hours from GMT’ setting from Windows into Excel. The need for the current UTC/GMT time and offset is becoming more important as Excel improves its external […]
Finding out the current UTC / GMT time in Excel is possible with a little VBA magic. We’ve included a full working example. Excel has two functions to give you the current date TODAY() or current date and time NOW() but it’s the local time as set on your computer. Often the worksheet needs either […]
A new report from Sophos shows how hacking via Office documents has changed of lot in 2018 with new attacks coming much faster than in the past. Microsoft’s assurances that a security bug (sorry ‘exploit’) hasn’t been used ‘in the wild’ doesn’t mean a lot. Office document hacks made in bulk The people who find […]
After a lot of talk and promises, Office Insiders are getting a look at the proposed Outlook for Windows single-line or Simplified Ribbon for Office 365 customers. As usual, there’s good news and bad news in the interface change. Though it’s early days and there’s still time for changes. Don’t Panic There’s no reason to […]
