In the last few hours there’s been another major breakdown in Microsoft’s cloud services affecting Microsoft 365 mail hosting, Outlook.com and Teams among others. Sadly, the problems continue after Microsoft said they were ‘recovered’. The problem started at about 7am UTC on Wednesday 25 Jan (overnight Tues into Wed in
Microsoft has a good explainer about the ‘digital ink’ features in Word 365 – Drawing Tools, Highlighter, Action Pen, Ink to Shape and Ink to Math. Most Microsoft videos are self-congratulatory, heavy on graphics and buzzwords but light on useful information. This one is freshingly different. It’s a straight-forward tour
Type the Prescription Take Rx ℞ into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. Prescription Take Rx ℞ symbol is for a medical prescription. It is commonly seen on doctor’s prescription pads and in pharmacies. How Prescription Take Rx ℞ looks Here’s
There’s a curious Microsoft update which is checking for older versions of Office that are either out of support (Office 2007, Office 2010) or will soon stop getting updates (Office 2013 expires in April 2023). Microsoft isn’t being entirely open about the update and the private data being grabbed from
Here’s the best and most flexible way to make the common ‘Stop’ circle 🚫 with diagonal line symbol in Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Microsoft Office calls it the Not Allowed symbol. It has many, many names; interdictory circle, prohibited symbol, don’t do it symbol, universal no, banned, no entry, nay, no symbol, ‘do not’
Aside from the stop/prohibited shape in Office, there are other options for entering the common sign symbol in Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Use Icons in Microsoft 365, Office 2021, Office 2019 or Emoji symbols from the Unicode list. See Make a ‘Stop’ circle / diagonal symbol in Word, Excel
Don’t bother using cut / paste to manually sorting or adjusting a list. There’s a faster shortcut for moving a line or paragraph around a Word document which isn’t in the usual lists of Word keyboard shortcuts. Word has a simple shortcut to that move the current line or paragraph
There are at least five different options inserting a Christian or Latin ✝ Cross symbol into Office documents like Word, Excel, PowerPoint or emails. There are some cross symbols available in the Windows / Office symbol fonts and there’s plenty of nice cross options available online in the flexible SVG format.
What is an interrobang ‽ and how to use it in Microsoft Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint. Also the Inverted Interrobang ⸘ that can be used with ‽ Interrobang or interabang ‽ is a non-standard punctuation mark – a combination of a question mark and exclamation mark in a single
Schedule or delay sending an email more reliably than using Outlook desktop apps. Even better, it’s incredibly simple to do in Gmail, Outlook.com or any Exchange Server mailbox including Microsoft 365 hosted mail. We’ve explained how to use “Delayed Delivery” in Outlook desktop apps and also the many problems with
“ I need to see the entire message that was sent to me, headers, MIME parts, the lot. How can I do that in Outlook?” – Gary G, Taupo NZ. The short answer is, you can’t, with a possible exception. That’s not the answer you’ll see elsewhere on the Internet
You can delay sending an email in Outlook. It’s a handy trick that can help make sure your message is read. Here’s how to schedule send an email plus the many traps, complications and a long-standing Outlook bug. A Washington Post article headed The one simple trick to make sure
2023 is the Year of the Rabbit in the Chinese calendar. There’s plenty of rabbit, bunny and other New Year related images, icons and Chinese character 兔 in Microsoft Office plus advice on the right colors to use for Chinese New Year graphics. Chinese New Year is on 22 January
Microsoft has quietly added a few extras to their Clipchamp video editor for Microsoft 365 customers. We’ll show which premium filters and effects for free, now available just for having a Microsoft 365 consumer plan. When we say Microsoft “quietly” added these extras, we mean it. There’s been no announcement,
The US State Department is changing from Times New Roman font for documents to Calibri. There are good reasons for the change though, as usual, there are objections and a little Microsoft Mystery. Calibri is the current default font in Microsoft Word and other Office apps. It’s been the default
Office 2021 is the current ‘perpetual licence’ or non-subscription version of Microsoft Office for consumers and small businesses, here’s details of what’s new, prices, shorter support time and why Microsoft doesn’t want to sell Office 2021 at all! It’s what Microsoft calls a ‘perpetual licence’ version. A single payment for
Microsoft has quietly announced that features are being withdrawn from the standard Teams plans and will only be in the higher-priced ‘Teams Premium” plan. The change is controversial because it’s a late change to the features in Teams Premium by taking away existing options from other paying customers. Microsoft knows
Excel 365 for Windows is getting more functions only for Data Models with PowerPivot. Data Analysis Expression (DAX) functions are useful for exploring large datasets. There are a few UTC time/date functions we’d like to see made available to all Excel users. A full list of the new DAX functions
Finding out the current UTC / GMT time in Excel is possible with a little VBA magic. We’ve included a full working example. Excel has two functions to give you the current date TODAY() or current date and time NOW() but it’s the local time as set on your computer.
Finding out the computers local time zone offset in Excel is possible with a little VBA magic. We’ve included a full working example of how to get the ‘nn hours from GMT’ setting from Windows into Excel. The need for the current UTC/GMT time and offset is becoming more important
Insert a Compass 🧭 symbol into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. Compass 🧭 uses Segoe UI Emoji In Windows, the Compass 🧭 symbol is in the font: Segoe UI Emoji. Depending on the app and use, it’ll appear in color
A clever and different year planner with a progress thermometer is now available for download as an Excel workbook. The days remaining in the year are visible with weekends shaded and each day of week shown. At the bottom is a clever use of Excel’s Chart features to make a
Famous London streets signs are selling for big bucks … or you can make your own in Word or PowerPoint for nothing. A sale of genuine London street signs by Westminster City Council included one for Abbey Road that sold for £37,200 (US$51,000). We thought that was a lot and
Some ‘not allowed’ or ‘prohibited’ symbols, they can be used in Word, PowerPoint, Excel or Outlook. No Smoking, No Phone, No Children, No Drinking, No Pedestrians, No Bicycles, Not Drinkable Water or Mute. The Unicode symbol list includes red circle with diagonal to stop, smoking, children under 18, Mobile Phones,
