The famous game, Civilization, has been impressively recreated in Excel as Solly’s Cellivization. Civilization was an early computer game that started in 1991 for MS-DOS and has undergone many reincarnations for Windows, Mac and gaming devices now almost forgotten. Here it is in Microsoft Excel … Even with the power
Here’s a list of the known Office install/update error codes with possible fixes. All thanks to a diligent and long-suffering Office Watch reader. Ron S has compiled these lists from web sites and forums based on experiences of other people. Doesn’t Microsoft have all this? Yes, they probably do but
There’s no direct ‘watermark’ option for PowerPoint Handouts which is a shame because it would be very useful to add ‘Confidential’, ‘Draft’, ‘Private’ or other very obvious notices. You can fake it with a little PowerPoint trickery. Add a Watermark Picture In short, make an image with the watermark text.
The newer File | Open panes include a Search option to quickly find Recent Documents by name. That means it’s practical to expand the Recent Docs list to a higher or maximum value in Word, Excel or PowerPoint. In any of the three programs go to File | Options |
Here’s this months non-security bug fix updates.for Office 2016 and Office 2013. They are only for .msi installs, not ‘Click to Run’ modern installations. For most systems, they’ll be applied automatically. This is the full list with extra notes on a few fixes which caught our eye. Office 2016 updates
The error messages on Office 365/2019 setup and update are notoriously unhelpful, so here’s a guide to fixing Office install or update problems that work out here in the real world. Error messages like the infamous ‘Something went wrong” should be taken with a large pinch of salt. The error
If you get an error message when installing or updating Office 365 or Office 2019 there’s little help available beyond Microsoft telling you ‘Something went wrong’. What looks like specific error message are general statements that don’t identify the problem. These troubles aren’t any surprise to experienced Microsoft Office users.
Microsoft Word’s dictionary is updated more regularly, especially for Office 365 customers. A good example of that is the addition of Brexit related words. We typed into Word various words that the people of the UK are too familiar with, just to see what’s in the Microsoft dictionary. The same
The upcoming Rewrite feature in Word will offer alternative phrases or wording for your sentences. Rewrite is another cloud based feature so anything selected for Rewrite is sent to Microsoft. The feature is supposed to be in Office 365 for Windows Insiders build 1908 (11901.20018), English only but hasn’t appeared
The venerable SUM() function in Excel is simple, really too simple. It just adds up a range of cells with no way to filter or limit what’s included. SumIF selects what to add-up from a longer list. SumIf sometimes confuses people because they, understandably, expect the range to be SUMmed
Microsoft and some contractors listen to Skype calls but that shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. And Microsoft’s response was quite typical – they refuse to stop. Microsoft can and does let it’s ‘associates’ listen and read from Office documents and voice data. Word, PowerPoint and Outlook users are also
A supposedly ‘new’ feature in PowerPoint 365 for Windows is already in regular PowerPoint? The latest Insiders version of Office 365 for Windows has no truly new features. The only ‘new’ feature is something that’s already in Office 365. As we looked down the list of changes in version 1909
The long-standing Ursnif trojan is back in a new form to infect computers and steal personal information, all via a Microsoft Word document. To begin, we’ll repeat a warning we’ve been making for years … No .doc files DO NOT open .doc files from any source (not .xls or .ppt
There are two similar text formatting options in Excel. The well-known Merge & Center and the hidden away Center across selection. Both have their advantages, the choice is yours. Merge & Center Most Excel users know ‘Merge & Center’ because it’s atop the Merge list at Home | Alignment |
An interesting forum thread suggests a problem between the ISP, Bell Fibre, and Microsoft’s OneDrive for Business. Several users report a severe slowdown in connections between their computers and OneDrive for Business. Speeds are capped around 600 kbps instead of the 500-800 MB/s. NOT standard OneDrive for Office 365 Home/Personal,
A recent Windows update is causing VBA code to fail in Excel, Access and other VBA parts of Office. The culprit isn’t Office, but the version of Windows that it’s running on. After the 2019-08 Cumulative Update KB4511553 is applied, some VBA code will stop working. The patch bug is
A lot of press reports about Office 2019 give the impression that the single-payment, non-subscription version of Microsoft Office is about to disappear off retail shelves. Everyone needs to take a deep breath and calm down … Office 2019 isn’t dead or even on life-support though Microsoft would love to
At last! After months of delay, Microsoft has released product icons for Access, Project and Visio. Yawn, ho hum. We know Microsoft customers have been desperate to see these graphics (not). Back in March we first saw the Word, Outlook, Excel and PowerPoint graphics. As before, when it comes to
The desperately needed feature is coming to Microsoft Office … the ability to search for Icons. Microsoft added Icons to Office 365 and even more a few months ago … 300 more icons in Office, but which ones and where? The problem has always been finding the right icons from
Office now has sensitivity options to label Word, Excel, PowerPoint docs plus emails. Not ‘touch-feely’ sensitivity like ‘loving’ or ‘compassionate’ but instead corporate, privacy labels. It’s a new feature for Office 365 corporate hosted E3 or E5 accounts and the admins have enabled Sensitivity options. Sensitivity appears on the Home
Despite all the possibilities for importing or sharing appointments, most of the time we have to manually type in new appointments or events. Here’s some tips to do it faster and get it right. We’ve all been there, a web page or email (below right) with details that need copying
The Format Cells dialog can be accessed from Home | Alignment | Orientation, or by right-clicking on selected cells and selecting Format Cells. See Excel’s text and number alignment choices Text formatting in Excel with wrapping, line breaks and merging This dialog gives you more detailed options to choose from than
Under Excel’s Home | Alignment ribbon you can change the indents, alignment or angle of the text in selected cells. As usual, a seemingly simple set of buttons have some hidden tricks. See Text formatting in Excel with wrapping, line breaks and merging Alignment Adjust alignment of the text, both
Here’s this months list of bug fixes and updates for Office 2016 and Office 2013. These apply only to the older ‘MSI’ Windows installs not the modern ‘Click to Run’ Office including all Office 365. For most people, these patches will be installed automatically via Microsoft/Windows Update. PowerPoint 2016 –