The Oxford English Dictionary has a list of new English words for 2025. We’ve checked to see if the Microsoft Word dictionary understands all these new terms. Some of the ‘new’ words are very familiar (‘load’, ‘class’ or ‘terror’) but with new meanings. Others are quite new (‘gigil’, ‘ludraman’ or
Two new Microsoft 365 “mini-apps” are being rolled out to some customers. People and File Search are coming for business and enterprise customers. Microsoft buries the important limitations of the two new apps, so we’ll put them first to save you wondering. Microsoft 365 Companions Both File Search and People
Outlook (new) has some more ads appearing in it as well as a handy way to add calendar events from an email. An incoming email to Outlook (new) can have a “Show on Calendar” option at the top when the software detects an event like a flight booking. Look for
The Washington Post has done an interesting comparison of AI services and their email drafts for some difficult situation. Microsoft’s Copilot came last. Check out “We asked 5 AI helpers to write tough emails. One was a clear winner.” (login may be required) The headline is a little misleading. Copilot
Microsoft is adding yet another push for customers to save all their documents to OneDrive. This time inside Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents. OneDrive is Microsoft’s preferred place to save files and they cite various benefits to cloud storage. The company ignores the downsides to OneDrive and the right of
Microsoft has no shame about dropping ads into paid Microsoft Office apps when there’s a way for the company to make even a little more money. We’ve received reports of the Word 365 or PowerPoint 365 side-pane opening to show this ad because the customer has turned off automatic renewal
Three Pie emoji 🥧 🍕🍰 in Microsoft Office (Windows or Mac) plus some Stock Images, one for ‘Pi’ and a lot more for ‘Pie’. Just part of our tongue-in-cheek Pi 𝜋 Day and Pie series of articles. Pi 𝜋 emoji There is no emoji for 𝜋 because it’s a text symbol
We mourn the passing of Woody Leonhard, Office Watch co-founder, on 8 March 2025 at age 73. Back in 1996, Woody Leonhard and Peter Deegan teamed up to create “Woody’s Office Watch” (the precursor of Office Watch) as a way to spread accurate and detailed news about Microsoft Office. Woody
Trying to convert a Microsoft Publisher (.pub) file to Word (.docx)? We test Microsoft’s official recommendation, exporting the Publisher file to PDF and then importing that PDF into Word. It technically works but produces poor results in real-world tests. The conversion often ends up nearly unusable for typical editing tasks.
Sometimes it hard to know if Microsoft is suffering from ‘cognitive dissonance’ or deliberately treat their customers like fools that will accept anything the company says, no matter how nonsensical it is. Captain Worf has some words of wisdom … More that a few Office Watch readers asked about this
The reason Microsoft Word prefers ‘corporate speak’, phrases and language but there is more than one way to change Word’s grammar and style suggestions to suit you. Quite often on social media there are complaints about Microsoft Word’s grammar and style suggestions like this one. “MS Word suddenly dislikes the
Check out this headline ‘ramen’ font that looks great and has a clever name – Times New Ramen. Seine Kongruangkit made a font from photos of noodles, nifty use of Photoshop and an undying love of Ramen noodles <g>. Times New Ramen – you have to love it, just for
For the last three days (since 3rd March) the Apple Mail app for iPhone and iPad hasn’t always been able to connect to Microsoft hosted mailboxes. While Microsoft delays, here’s the fix they won’t mention. Since Monday, many Apple Mail users have been pestered with login requests for their Microsoft
With Skype ending what are the choices for making cheap phone calls, especially saving money on international calls? The ability to link computers and devices to regular phone numbers is something that Skype excelled at. You could call phone numbers from a device or setup a phone number that people
Get two extra months of Microsoft 365 Personal or Family for no charge. Microsoft can offer a ‘free’ extension to your plan if you try to do something the company doesn’t like. There are some parts of Microsoft 365 Personal or Family that make the plans very profitable for Microsoft.
The new Outlook for Windows has what Microsoft calls “Mail Merge” which could be useful but bear NO relation to the standard Word/Outlook “Mail Merge” to send many emails. In the new message Options for Outlook (new) is an enticing button “Start Mail Merge” but don’t get too excited. This
Don’t be scared of Master Documents – just very, very careful. Master Documents is useful and sometimes essential but it’s not the most stable or reliable part of Microsoft Word. What is a Master Document? In Microsoft Word, a Master Document is a Word document which has links to other
Microsoft is dumping most of their Skype service in May 2025, ending a very useful option for people around the world, especially who use a regular phone for communication. Here’s the ending timeline, an important extension for Microsoft 365 customers and alternatives (official and others). Skype has been around since
Back in 2015 we were amazed and dismayed to discover a privacy gap in Microsoft Office. Seven years later Microsoft has done nothing to fix or warn customers about. The problem is with images inserted into Office documents (Word, Excel, PowerPoint). The image ‘meta-data’ including GPS coordinates are retained with
Apple gives their iCloud storage full encryption, meaning only the user can access their backups, photos and other data. Microsoft 365 customers should be asking Microsoft to do the same (don’t hold your breath). Advanced Data Protection is an option that encrypts all the customers information and files on Apple’s
Advanced Data Protection, the best security option for Apple iCloud is now blocked for UK customers. A real blow to individual privacy and citizens’ rights but there are options for our British friends to keep their files safe. Advanced Data Protection is Apple’s option to fully encrypt data saved on
Outlook (classic) for Windows, the one we’ve all used for many years has been dropped from some Microsoft 365 installations even though the replacement Outlook (new) is still a “work in progress”. Here’s how to still get the ‘real’ fully-functioning, classic Outlook. Outlook (new) is the eventual replacement for what’s
Microsoft is testing a free version of Office for Windows with limited features, an important requirement and ads to ‘pay’ for the software. It’s three Microsoft 365 for Windows apps but with restrictions on what it can do and where documents are saved. If you download from this page at
Is there a way to use Microsoft Word’s “Master Document” feature with OneDrive? No, but only because Microsoft won’t fix it. Master Documents in Word won’t work on OneDrive. You might think that after all of Microsoft’s efforts to get customers using their cloud storage, the company would make sure
