The latest version of the macOS for Apple Mac computers, Sequoia v15, is out now. Here’s a few features and settings that might interest Microsoft Office users plus a few tips from real use of macOS Sequoia. macOS Sequioa is available now and works quite well for us. More cautious
All you need is a ‘strawberry’ to see both ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Copilot gets simple things wrong. Or ask which is larger of two numbers. Modern AI systems aren’t as great as the hype and why you definitely need to check anything Copilot, ChatGPT, Google Gemini or Meta etc tells
No spam/junk email filter is perfect but it’s hard to understand how some recent messages have been missed by Microsoft’s inhouse security systems. Here’s two peculiar examples to watch out for. A prank email or a failed scam? An email is sent out to many people that seems to have
A new collection of Copilot features have been released under the banner “Wave 2” with inclusions for Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Word and Teams. Don’t get too excited because there’s ‘fine print’ that limits who can catch this wave. Before we explain a little of what’s in the new set of
Here’s the basics of Styles in Word for paragraph, character or both (Linked) plus Tables and Lists. I know talking about styles in Word makes eyes glaze over but they are a really useful part of Word (plus Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook). Today I watched an ‘experienced’ Word user reformatting
What to do if Excel’s columns have numbers across the top instead of letters. There’s a simple setting to switch between two different ways of labelling cells. You open an Excel workbook and the column headings look all wrong – instead of letters (A, B C …) there are numbers.
How to lock your Excel worksheet from editing – the whole thing or some cells. Allow some people to edit a few cells, leaving the rest of the cells and formulas untouchable by others using the worksheet. Here’s a very simple example: Anyone opening the worksheet can enter a US
Just when you thought there was nothing left to explore on the frontiers of knowledge, three Danish academics have uncovered the science of paper cuts! Paper cuts are surprisingly common but not well understood. Researchers found that paper around 65 micrometers thick is the worst culprit. “Here we visualize and
An old and unsafe Microsoft technology, ActiveX is finally being dropped from Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Office. As usual, there are details and niceties behind the major announcement. For starters, ActiveX isn’t really being discontinued. Microsoft is disabling ActiveX as a default. If you need ActiveX, a menu, registry or
Microsoft’s promise of offline support in Outlook (new) is a lot LESS than it appears as the company continues to over-promise and under-deliver their Outlook replacement. We’ve said it before … Maybe someday new Outlook will really be ready for the public but it’s not there yet. See Outlook (new)
Discover how to adjust bullet point spacing in Microsoft Word with the two key settings to achieve precise bullet point alignment and formatting. Learning the techniques to perfect your bullet points can make a significant difference in readability and presentation. There are TWO places to change the position of the
Microsoft has announced (indirectly) that Microsoft Office 2024 will be released in October 2024. Don’t buy Office 2021 now, better to wait until Office 2024 is released to get some more features for the same price. This nugget of news came via a Microsoft update announcement to administrators about the
The Windows Snipping Tool has a nifty little redaction shortcut that’s an undocumented secret. The Snipping Tool is available in Windows 11 and 10, the redaction feature (Microsoft calls it “Text Actions” is in Snipping Tool v11.2308.33.0 and later. Use Microsoft Store | Library | Updates to get the latest
An often-repeated myth says that Word’s spelling or proofing language default is locked into the Windows language setting. Officially that’s not true and never has been since the first Word for Windows in 1989. In practice there’s a bug in Word which is why this persistent myth keeps being repeated.
How to stop Outlook grouping Inbox messages, most commonly by date. “Today”, “Yesterday” etc. which might suit some people but is a right nuisance to others. This is an option in Outlook (classic) for Windows which can appear, seemingly for no good reason. It’s not in Outlook (new). Some people
Excel is getting a new function TrimRange() which should solve a long-standing calculation performance problem. As well as speeding up workbooks, TrimRange() comes with some new range options that add to the well-known colon. Ever since Microsoft added dynamic arrays to Excel there’s been a problem … how to reference
Excel 365 has two new translation functions to identify language from text or translate text from one language to another. Let’s see how the work, some problems and unknowns. New in Excel 365 are: DetectLanguge() to identify the language of the text supplied, hopefully correctly (see below) Translate() converts text
The Microsoft 365 Insiders blog is ending, sorta. kinda. Really, it’s just moving to another part of the Microsoft.com web site. For the last five years, the Microsoft 365 Insiders blog has been the place where the company boasts about new and changed features in the Insiders or beta versions
Many people are moving away from Evernote due to the high prices. Here’s the simple way to migrate all Evernote notebooks to Microsoft OneNote. Why move from Evernote? Evernote’s pricing has risen to unrealistic levels. The cheapest paid plan “Personal” is now US$129.99 which is more expensive than Microsoft 365
Having trouble changing Microsoft Word defaults? The ultimate way to change defaults is sure to work. It’s has been around since the very early days of Word and works for Outlook too! We often hear from people having trouble changing Word’s opening (default) settings for a new document. Various places
Word can spell and grammar check in many languages, here are three ways to switch the language settings plus how to turn off the pesky automatic language switching. Microsoft Word has language settings that can apply to a whole document or just selected text. This is vital for multi-language documents
There’s a simple but not so obvious way for Excel to take a list of values and show them grouped into segments or groups. As an example, here’s the results of a class exam with their scores grouped into blocks of 20. It’s done with a tricky use of PivotTables
We went hunting for koalas in Microsoft Office. Found more than 18 of the cuddly marsupials for Word, PowerPoint or Outlook. There are emoji, Office icons, SVG, online images and more making a colony or cling of koala (either can be the collective noun for koala). None of the endangered
“Temping” is a staple and sell-out each year at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. It makes clever use of Microsoft Office, and we were lucky enough to get a ‘behind the scenes’ look. The show is a unique blend of interactive technology and narrative storytelling, where the solo audience member takes
