Choosing the sort type is really important and Word doesn’t always guess correctly. Office-Watch.com reader Peter M. reminds us that choose the sort type is really important: Text, Number or Date. “I just thought it worth pointing out that, for example 8, 70, 600 would sort in one order as
How to add and remove data from a PivotTable. Thanks for the great feedback from our article on PivotTables. One concern some of you have is about adding or removing source data after the PivotTable has been created. That’s understandable because the original PivotTable releases where unclear and curiously sensitive
Why Excel PivotTables get messed up and how to stop it. Time and again we’ve heard from people who try PivotTables and only get nonsense tables. That’s understandable since Microsoft’s hype about PivotTable ignores the basics that we’ll cover in this article. You’ve probably seen a Microsoft demonstration of PivotTables
A simple, practical and non-scary example of how Excel PivotTables can work for you. Excel’s PivotTables are a great feature but one that seems way too hard for most of us … so here’s a simple and practical example of how PivotTables can help. A little fear of PivotTables is
A funny example of how you can’t trust the spelling and grammar checks in Word. We laughed at this sign, seen in a Tesco’s supermarket in the UK. Guess what – according to Word 2013 that entire document has no grammar mistakes at all! Even ‘incontinence’ doesn’t get a contextual
Word: how to find the character code used for a particular letter or symbols. Last week we talked about the Unicode v7.0 symbols and how to use symbols in Word. With over 100,000 characters in the Unicode specification, it’s important to know the character code number for the symbol you
A quicker way to do some regular tasks in Outlook. Quick Steps is that big block in the middle of the Outlook 2010 and 2013 Home tab Quick Steps let you customize and combine Outlook functions into a single click without resorting to VBA. The defaults are meant to be
Why RE and FW are the best options for email subjects When you reply or forward a message your email program will add a prefix to the subject line. The question is – do you choose the standard ‘English’ prefixes RE: and FW: or your local equivalents? There’s plenty of
What makes a conversation in Outlook? In the Outlook world a conversation is a series of emails with the same subject line or conversation ID. It’s as simple as that. In the past these were called email ‘threads’. Outlook 2010 and Outlook 2013 can group messages by conversation or thread.
How to change the date format in Excel Online The default date format in Excel has always been a mystery to newcomers and its stranger in Excel Online (the new name for Excel Web Apps). To change the default date format for display and date entry for Excel Online, go
Outlook tricks you may not have considered for New, Reply, Reply All, Forward and Resend. New / Compose The simple and easy one first. Click on the New Email button to start a new message. At the very least fill in the TO, Subject and some message text then click
Sharing a document with Office 2013 and OneDrive Sharing a document online for people to view and edit is pretty easy. Here’s how … Create your document in Office 2013 and save it to your OneDrive account. Tip: turn on Track Changes before uploading so you can see who edited
How to get a message when certain RSS feeds are updated As you probably know, it’s possible to get an alert or an action when certain email messages arrive into Outlook using the Rules feature. Office-Watch.com shows how to do the same thing for an RSS feed. It will let
How to recover deleted files in OneDrive. Skydrive/OneDrive retains deleted files for 30 days or until the Recycle Bin exceeds 10% of your allowed storage space. This feature works much the same way as the Recycle Bin in Windows and it’s called ‘Recycle Bin’ down on the bottom left of
Upload photos automatically from smartphones. One of the features of Skydrive/OneDrive is the ‘Camera Roll’ or ‘Camera Backup’, it’s a simple and automatic way to copy photos between some devices. Is it ‘Camera Roll’ or ‘Camera Backup’? Microsoft uses both terms, depending on where you look. Most commonly from your
A simple guide to sending files via Skydrive / OneDrive There are many ways to send files that are too big for email (usually over 20MB). In this article we’ll look at how to do that with Skydrive. Skydrive, soon to be called, OneDrive is Microsoft’s public cloud storage service.
A simple guide to sending files via Dropbox. There are many ways to send files that are too big for email (usually over 20MB). In this article we’ll look at how to do that with Dropbox either sending a ‘one-off’ file or regularly exchanging files with someone else. Dropbox is very
Getting the free Dropbox software. The free Dropbox program is available for Windows, Mac and Linux. It will synchronize your cloud storage with local folders, saving you the hassle of manually uploading/downloading each file. All the file transfers happen in the background. Dropbox software is the best and easiest way
Use Dropbox for sharing Office documents and collaboration on editing, but it’s not ideal. Another use for Dropbox is sharing Office documents and collaboration on editing, but it’s not ideal. With Office 2013 you can do this better with Skydrive because Microsoft’s own cloud storage allows simultaneous collaboration – in
If you put a file up on Dropbox, how does anyone know it’s there? If you put a file up on Dropbox, how does anyone know it’s there? Obviously you can tell them, by email, phone or even face-to-face! Or they can check the shared folder for anything new. Happily
How to recover files deleted from Dropbox storage Dropbox retains deleted files for 30 days. You can see those files from the web site. Click on the ‘Show deleted files’ button top-right. Click on the ‘open’ trash can to hide deleted files. Click on a deleted file to see the
One of the best Dropbox features – Camera Upload One of the nice features of Dropbox is the ‘Camera Roll’, it’s a simple and automatic way to copy photos between devices. Most commonly from your smartphone (Apple, Android) to your computer. It works automatically and often takes only seconds from
2014 looks like the year of long movie titles with colons – here’s how to save yourself some typing. More and more movies are sequels and that means longer and longer movie titles. Most have colons because the studios don’t trust us to figure out that a movie is a
Keep your calendar clear by hiding private appointments like reminders to take medicine. Sometimes we have appointments or events that we want to keep private or at least hide from the regular calendar views. You can have appointments in Outlook which will pop-up reminders when necessary but not show up
