We’ve looked at design and typography in 2001: A Space Odyssey and how to use the ‘2001’ look in Microsoft Office. Two readers asked about some curious kerning in our version of the title font.Maybe you’re not interested in the fine detail of the text in a fifty year old
Use Word tables to do formatting tricks, make complex formats easily and solve Word formatting problems. There’s more to Word tables than just showing grids of information like this: Tables have all sorts of little tricks in them and let you do clever things in Word. Here’s a look at
Pantone has announced their “Color of the Year” for 2022 and, as usual, we’ll explain how to use those exact colors in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. For 2022, the new color will also be appearing in Microsoft products with a nice PowerPoint template with extra color palettes. The color
The Financial Modelling World Cup or Excel esports Final was held a few days ago and you can watch the whole event. There were eight finalists from the USA, Canada, UK, India and Australia. If you can’t get enough of Excel champs at work, check out the earlier rounds. Last
In January 2022 there are important changes to the volume licence Business and Enterprise plans for Microsoft 365, Office and Windows. Monthly plans will cost 20% more, making annual plans more enticing. Microsoft says “introduces a monthly term option that will enable partners to provide customers with flexibility at a premium price,” However, the option to
Microsoft is increasing the prices on their main Business and Enterprise plans ranging from 9% to 25% effective 1 March 2022 now extended to 14 March 2022. Of course, Microsoft hasn’t stated the price rises in such stark terms. They give the increases as monthly prices (e.g $1 a month)
Microsoft is offering a discount price on Microsoft 365 to people with pirated or illegal Microsoft Office. As usual with Microsoft, there are ‘gotchas’ and unknowns with their special offer. People using illegal or pirated Microsoft Office might be seeing a message like this in their Office apps. The message
The Ink Editor button in Word 365 has gone, replaced with the ‘Action Pen’ on the Draw tab in Word 365. Some of the ink gestures have quietly changed since the original release of the Action Pen. The ‘Action Pen’ is now on right-side of the Draw tab | Drawing
Rename Word styles or give them alternative names/aliases. Sometimes you’ve got no choice but to make an alias because the original style name is fixed. Any style can have an alternative name which appears in the Style Gallery. That’s a useful trick because there’s limited space for the style name
The Word Style Gallery doesn’t have to be left the way Microsoft supplies it. Fix the Gallery to make it work better for you. Microsoft Office often has menus and options aren’t designed for the customer. Instead they are setup for Microsoft’s needs in ‘out of the box’ demonstrations or
Microsoft Word, since 2007, has developed a confusing mish-mash of lists, galleries and dialog boxes to view, select and manage styles. We’ve received a few questions about finding style options so this Office-Watch.com article will try to make sense of all fourteen places. It’s a guided tour to the various
The gradual rollout of the new look Office for Windows (Microsoft 365 and Office 2021) continues. More users, but not all, can now try the revamped Office interface. We’ve had a lot of feedback from Office Watchers about the new look. Some approve, others definitely don’t. Some users are eager
Office 365 for Windows is getting the Mica effect in a coming release for Windows 11 users. What is Mica? How will affect Microsoft Office users? We’ll explain Mica ‘material’ (Microsoft’s pretentious noun), show you what it does and how (little) it matters to Office users. Also how to get
A lesser known Excel file, the .XLL, is being used to spread password stealing malware across the Internet by email and online contact forms. As reported by Bleeping Computer, emails and online forms are getting spammed with links to fake and malicious web sites which entice people to download the
The Office 365 / 2021 for Windows “new look” is mostly about the Quick Access Toolbar with some nasty surprises and confusion, especially for novices. Let’s dig into the detail of the QAT changes, “fix” it to suit you and how the changes aren’t finished yet and not fully thought
Now there’s a new and different way to get paid Teams called Teams Essentials. Teams Essentials is a standalone Teams offering, not bundled into any other Microsoft 365 plan. That’s what makes it different from other ways to get a paid version of Teams. It costs US$48 a year per
Word lets us down when it comes to viewing a document’s styles and how they link together. The only way to see a detailed list of styles is to Print them! In the print pane, choose the drop-down list under Print All Pages and scroll down until you see the
Thunderbirds are go! They live on in Microsoft Office, ready to serve as a retro look in your Word documents or PowerPoint slides. The passing of Gerry Anderson was sad news. Mr Anderson enthralled millions of kids (and more than a few adults) with his groundbreaking shows like Captain Scarlet
Outlook’s AutoComplete seems simple and useful. It’s certainly useful but it’s hardly simple and occasionally it’s been downright dangerous or embarrassing. AutoComplete makes it too easy to send an email to the wrong address. We’ll look at AutoComplete, how it works, the pitfalls and the few settings available. First we’ll
Here’s some suggestions for making a Word, Excel or Powerpoint document smaller. Also useful for Outlook emails. We’ve had readers occasionally asking how they can ‘shrink’ a document until it’s under some arbitrary size limit. Why even worry about the file size of documents? Much of the time, the file
There are web links or .ics files that let you add an appointment direct to your Outlook calendar without retyping. Airlines and some theater and concert events offer them at the end of online booking. They are simple to use but there’s also tricks to make them even better. We’ll
There’s a limitation in Word’s Table Styles; no individual cell styles within a Word table We’ll explain the problem and several options to workaround it. Along the way it’s a chance to dig into some interesting parts of Word and Office and make them do things that might not have
It’s time to collect some feedback and questions from Office Watchers for a little Microsoft Office 365 myth busting, or not. Even after eight years of ‘subscription’ or annual payment Microsoft Office there are still misunderstandings about some parts of how modern Office works and how ‘subscription’ Microsoft 365 software
It’s possible to save even more on Microsoft Office 365, software downloads and ebooks. Here’s how. Microsoft, like many online retailers, charges US state sales tax for virtual products like Microsoft 365 subscriptions or Office 2021. That can add up to 7.5% to the cost of an Microsoft 365 subscription,
