The OneDrive app for iOS devices now has a preview option for Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents. From version 8.6.1 onwards, the OneDrive app can display Office documents without opening a separate app (like one of the Office apps for iOS). Handy for quickly checking a document for a detail
The popular messaging system, WhatsApp supports sending documents between users. It’s a fast, simple and reasonably secure way to get a file from ‘A to B’. It’s an lesser known feature of some secure messaging apps, in addition to their main use for texting, sending pictures and make free voice
A dozen different Office security breaches are patched this month, in addition to many for Windows and other MS products. All supported Office versions are affected. Office 2016, 2013, 2010 and 2007 for Windows plus the Office compatibility pack and the standalone viewers for Word and Excel. Also patches for
Another festive season (marketing) tradition is the Pantone ‘Color of the Year’ which gets a lot of media coverage. It gives us an excuse to explain how to convert (as best you can) a Pantone color into something to use in Microsoft Office. Pantone colors don’t have a direct match
We’d love to use the Signal messaging app. It’s very secure without going to extremes and it’s free. So why doesn’t it get used at Office-Watch.com? Simple – there’s no file transfer feature. You can exchange texts and make phone calls but that’s it. Even WhatsApp now lets you transfer
The Office for Android apps can now access a wider range of cloud storage options including Dropbox, Box, Egnyte and Tencent with more to come. We’ve mentioned before Microsoft’s Cloud Storage Partner Program which allows non-Microsoft providers to get a link inside the Office apps. It’s something that would have
The ‘Get Office’ app for Windows 10 has received a considerable upgrade to make it more than a billboard to sell Office 365. It’s now (or will be) an ‘Office hub’ for access to all things Office. Recent documents, the programs themselves, Office 365 account settings plus help and training.
Microsoft is boasting that Office 365 is now available in eleven more countries, though that’s a bit of hype. The ‘new’ countries where you can buy Office 365 plans are: ” Bhutan, Cambodia, Greenland, Guadeloupe, Laos, Maldives, Martinique, Mozambique, Myanmar and Vatican City “ Some of these might catch your
Maybe Microsoft thinks that all ‘foreigners’ are stupid or don’t understand technology? Their Outlook ‘concessions’ to the EU regarding the LinkedIn buyout are laughable. LinkedIn, the large social media site, is being bought by Microsoft for $26 billion but faces opposition from rivals. Salesforce, in particular, is fighting the merge
Our extended coverage of Word’s AutoText feature uncovered some peculiarities and annoyances but mostly the yawning gap between the ribbon/menu options and the field code features. What you see on the menu, drop down lists and options for AutoText aren’t reflected in the AUTOTEXTLIST field code. AUTOTEXTLIST makes a little
There are long-standing but hidden parts to AutoText that’s worth checking out – the field codes. Two Word field codes apply to AutoText: {AutoText } – inserts or updates the named AutoText field automatically. {AutoTextList } makes a menu of some or all AutoText entries to select from. These field
We’re not sure what has got to Microsoft in Britain but they’re offering some excellent prices on Office 365 annual ‘subscription’ at the moment. Around 40% off the regular price for renewals and new customers. The usual prices for Office 365 in the ‘Mother Country’ are: Home (5 users/licences) £79.99
If you want to pay more for Office 365, just renew automatically when your subscription ends. There’s a cheaper way and you’ll get 13 months for less than Microsoft will charge you for 12. Here’s how: You can renew or extend your Office 365 Home or Personal account at any
Officially there’s one way to insert common or reused text into a Word document – but really there’s two options, depending you on your need. We’ll show you both! We recently told you about Quick Parts and AutoText to be used in Outlook emails, now let’s look at those same
Several readers have asked for a fix to an annoyance in Outlook’s handling of AutoText for emails and replies. They’d like to have different AutoText menus for each Outlook account. Many people have multiple email accounts for different roles in our life. An individual has a personal email account plus,
Many media reports about an early end to Office 2007 support which are true, but not for the vast majority. Some press either didn’t understand what’s happening or decided to ‘spin’ it for clickbait. Microsoft needs to accept some blame for this confusion because they didn’t publicly announce the change
Microsoft’s explanations for Office bug fixes range from deliberately delayed, to duplicated through ambiguous wording to no explanation at all! We can only hope that the bug fixes themselves were done with more care and professionalism than the documentation. Delayed Disclosure Microsoft has long had a policy of deliberately keeping
If you’re interested in the hard numbers about the 2016 US election, David Wasserman @redistrict has done the work for you. Channel your inner ‘Nate Silver’ <g>. Go to https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/133Eb4qQmOxNvtesw2hdVns073R68EZx4SfCnP4IGQf8/htmlview?sle=true#gid=19 to see a ‘read only’ Google Docs worksheet showing the state-by-state results. Not visible above are columns with the total
Coming soon to Office 2016 for Windows for Office 365 subscribers is a new type of graphic – the icon. Office 365 Insiders have this now and it’ll be sent to all Office 2016 for Windows/Office 365 subscribers in 2017. It’s an addition to the Insert tab and needs an
Office 2016 for Windows will soon support scalable vector graphics (SVGs). Preview/Insiders can try them now and it’ll be available to all Office 365 subscribers in 2017. That means you’ll be able to make your documents look even better with vector-based SVG files that won’t pixelate when increased in size.
Microsoft has announced that the Access database program will get added database connectors in early 2017. The announcement was a bit vague on date, detail and which Access users will be getting these additional features. Date “Early 2017” before 1 April 2017 or sometime in the next 4½ months. Detail
Microsoft Access, the database part of Office has been added to more Office 365 plans. Access will be automatically included with Office 2016 downloads and updates from 1 December 2016 onwards for Office 365 users on Business and Business Premium plans. Office 365 ProPlus, E3 and E5 plans already include
A collaboration option for the more security conscious is Semaphor, from the same company as the SpiderOak secure cloud storage. An important consideration with any cloud service is the risk of intrusion into the information you’ve saved on the cloud servers. Cloud providers talk a lot about data security to
CodeWeavers, the people behind CrossOver, have announced that the next version will support much of Office 2013. That means it will be possible to run the Windows versions of Word 2013, Excel 2013,PowerPoint 2013 and Project 2013 on Linux or MacOS systems, using CrossOver v16. Office 365 subscribers will be
