Microsoft Outlook and Teams had a horror Monday (and now into Tuesday) with cloud service outages affecting many paying and unhappy customers. The peak trouble was around 11am (US Eastern time) Monday 5th June. UPDATE: As we type this, there’s a new Exchange Online (Microsoft 365 hosting) outage. According to
Insert the official Power on, off, sleep or standby symbols in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and other Microsoft Office apps. Either via a font or graphics. These power symbols are not directly supported in either Windows or Mac. That’s surprising because the symbols are commonly used on appliances and in software.
Use Excel to figure out the percentage discount or increase, for example the difference between the original and sale prices. We’ll show you the Excel formula and some practical tricks beyond the official answer. Percentage discount formula The basic formula is: (Original – Sale) – to figure out the difference
Amazon’s European sites are offering good deals on Microsoft 365 Personal (in Deutsch “Microsoft 365 Single”) The best deal is around €4.35 a month. We’ll look at each offer, figure out which is best and how to avoid the traps. We’ve found similar good deals for the six-user Microsoft 365
Amazon’s European sites are offering good deals on Microsoft 365 Family (for 6 users) including an unusual offer we’ve not seen before. The best deal amounts to just €5 a month which you can use to extend an existing Microsoft 365 Family plan. We’ve looked at each offer, figured out
The latest Microsoft 365 feature is an insult to customers who won’t obey. For years Microsoft has been pushing customers to save everything to their OneDrive cloud storage using many tricks, but this latest ‘smart reminder’ is blatant and insulting to paying customers. Smart Save Reminders The feature is called
Hide that ‘Try the new Outlook’ option appearing in Outlook for Windows and why you should not click that button … not yet anyway. Microsoft has released the ‘new Outlook’ to some customers as an option because they want lots of unpaid ‘guinea pigs’. Each ‘new’ feature added to the
It’s one thing for a printer maker to add expensive and limited ink ‘subscriptions’ but HP have gone way too far by permanently disabling a printer if the customer stops the monthly plan. And there’s excessive monitoring of how you use your printer. HP+ Smart Printing System (aka HP Plus
Insert the Right arrow → into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. The official Unicode name is ‘Rightward Arrow” → but it can be called ‘Right pointing’ ‘Right facing’ or just ‘Right Arrow’. Want more arrows or pointers? Check out all
Word and Office have several right “pointing hand” symbols available in some fonts. Here’s the Unicode options, index, backhand, sideways in white or black, all explained and shown. Want more arrows or pointers? Check out all 200+ Arrow or Hand pointing symbols and more in a searchable list. Index, Backhand
How does Microsoft Word’s spell check work against ten difficult or unusual words from a New York Times spelling bee quiz? What’s in a Word is an interesting quiz of words used in past Scripp’s Spelling Bee’s and, as usual, we’re interested in how many of the words are recognized
There are three main ways to run a macro in Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook). From the Macros list, from a button on a ribbon or from the Quick Access toolbar. We previously spoke about how to install an Office VBA macro, here’s how a macro can appear
Insert any of the chess piece symbols available in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and other Office apps. King, Queen, Bishop, Knight. Rook and the lowly Pawn all with different looks, depending on the font plus three pieces available in Microsoft Office icons and the single chess piece emoji. Chess Pieces –
A new Excel add-in converts an Excel 365 worksheet into a Visio diagram. You don’t need to buy Visio to use the Microsoft Visio Data Visualizer in its simple form, just Excel 365 for Windows/Mac or Online. It’s an interesting tool and worth checking out if you make diagrams or
Did you know that you have Visio Online with your Microsoft 365 subscription? Most business or school users already have this amazing tool. Visio Online lets you create and share diagrams on the web ready for your Office documents. What is Visio Online ‘Visio Online’ is a lightweight version of
You may have noticed that opening a link in Outlook behaves differently and not in your chosen browser. That’s because Microsoft wants to push their Edge browser, though they have some excuses for the change. When you click on a link in Outlook for Windows, it might open in the
We’ve always been suspicious of printer toner/ink subscriptions and there are at least three traps in these heavily marketed offers. What is a printer ink subscription? Ink subscription plans, like HP’s Instant Ink, work with the customer paying a monthly fee for ink/toner to be supplied as required. The internet
Printer makers are happy to sell a cheap printer because they make big profits on ink, toner and other consumables. Here’s how to save money. Buy in advance Stores and printer makers rely on people waiting until they’ve run out of ink/toner before rushing to get more. You pay a
HP is getting publicity for their printers in all the wrong ways with two faulty firmware updates. One update stops HP Printers from using non-HP ink cartridges while another update stops some printers working at all! “Dynamic Security” for HP Printers HP’s update to printers add what they call “Dynamic
Here’s how to easily install VBA code or macro in Microsoft Office. Adding some code you’ve seen on a web site or been given is simple once you know the little tricks. Often people are given some Office VBA code to use with Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook but without
Changing the measurement units in PowerPoint is possible but unnecessarily complicated, we’ll show you how in both Windows and Mac. The Measurement Units show up in the ruler and also in places like the size and exact positioning of images. Measurement option – US or Metric Ideally you want to
New shortcuts are coming to Microsoft Office 365 for Windows which will help navigate larger pull-down menus with keystrokes. Plus the screen-reader labels are being improved. In short: the Tab key moves between sections/blocks of a pull-down menu.That’s it … so simple and perhaps surprising that it’s not there already.
Add your personal signature to a PDF with the Microsoft 365 app for Apple or Android devices. You can sign a PDF and save your signature for quicker reuse with other documents. This is a useful trick if someone sends you a document to be signed. Instead of printing, signing
The European Space Agency has released the first full Earth image from its new weather satellite and it’s a fantastic, high-resolution view of Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Great for a desktop, screen saver or Powerpoint slide. Taken by the Meteosat Third Generation Imager-1 (MTG-I1), the image is available