Since we’re talking about Star Wars, how does Microsoft Office 2016 for Windows handle the words and names from the famous films? A mixed bag. Most of the common names are in the MS Office dictionary but some surprising omissions. The evil Emperor isn’t included. Planet Tatooine has a major
Coming to Microsoft 365 for Windows is the Subscription Benefits Center, a new way to introduce innovations in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. It appears as a diamond icon at top right. That opens a pane over your existing document with three tabs, Home, Apps & Benefits and Premium Features.
The new Unique() dynamic array function doesn’t let you do anything new in Excel, but it makes a once-complicated task into simplicity itself. Unique or distinct, no-duplicate lists, counting and sorting the results are all possible with easy formulas that won’t confuse. For as long as there’s been Excel, people
Excel’s Unique() function itself can’t show distinct values that appear more than once in a list. Repeated only items in a distinct list are possible with a simple extended formula. We’ve already shown the basics of Unique() either getting a list of Distinct values or values that only appear once
Microsoft has decided that Calibri is getting a little tired, so it’s asking customers to vote on which font will replace it. Calibri has been the default font since Office 2007. It’s familiar to most people whether they realise it or not because it appears in many Word documents. The
The new iOS 14.5 has hundreds of new emoji but beware using them in emails and documents because they can look very different on other computers. We have examples of how a simple emoji can look very different in Word or Outlook. The new version of iOS for iPhone and
Thanks to Office-Watch.com reader, Pierre B. we can tell about a good deal on Microsoft 365 Personal or Family, now available from Amazon in Canada. Microsoft 365 Personal cheaper The usual price for Microsoft 365 Personal (12 month, one user) is CDN$79.99, but Amazon.ca has it for CDN$48.99. Here’s the
Microsoft is updating their Services Agreement, the rules we call agree to live with when using Microsoft’s many services. We found a few interesting things in the changes. The Summary of Changes to the Microsoft Services Agreement is mercifully short. Compared to full agreement of over 15,000 words which is
Here’s all about Office 2019 for Windows – the facts, prices and shortcomings. There’s a matching page about Office 2019 for Mac. Before you get too excited Do NOT buy Office 2019 if you have Microsoft 365 like Microsoft 365 Family (formerly Home), Microsoft 365 Personal or an enterprise plan. In
All about Office 2019 for Mac the facts, prices and warnings. There’s a matching page about Office 2019 for Windows. Before you get too excited Do NOT buy Office 2019 if you have Microsoft 365 plan like Microsoft 365 Family (formerly Home), Microsoft 365 Personal or an enterprise plan. In
Excel 365 for Windows is getting another option for importing data into PowerQuery, from a dynamic array. In many cases the original data source could be imported, sorted and filtered in many different ways. Importing a existing dynamic array is a useful extra trick for us Excel nerds. We can
Learn how to create live, dynamic sorted lists in Excel using the powerful combination of Sort()/SortBy() and Filter() functions. In Excel 365 and Office 2021+ dynamic array formulas like FILTER() let you extract a subset of data — and by wrapping that result inside SORT(), you can instantly sort the
Your first look at Office 2021 for Mac with Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, which is now out in public preview, showing off some of the new features. There’s only a Mac Office 2021 preview, no Office 2021 for Windows preview. Perhaps because there’s a few more innovations in a
A public preview of the next perpetual licence Microsoft Office is now available. Called Office LTSC (Long Term Servicing Channel) it’s for volume customers only. Here are the options and how to get the preview. Office LTSC is the clumsily named non-subscription version of Office for organizations with volume licence
Here’s a first peek at Office LTSC for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Access, Publisher and OneNote which is now out in public preview showing off some of the new features. Office LTSC in it’s current preview is underwhelming, to put it mildly. But that’s what Microsoft is aiming for. Office LTSC
Suggested Replies are coming to Outlook 365 for Windows. As usual, there are details that Microsoft has ‘forgotten’ to mention but we at Office Watch aren’t so forgetful! In the Outlook reading / preview pane, possible replies can be displayed. Or Microsoft’s cloud systems have scanned the message and offered
The new spelling, grammar and other suggestion Editor can now be used with selected text, not just the whole Word 365 document. It’s a little change but an important and useful one. Select a block of text, right-click and choose ‘Review selection in Editor’. Selecting text for the Editor is
Sometimes Microsoft announces new features for the Insiders early testers that aren’t even available yet. It seems Redmond’s promotional hype gets ahead of the software reality. The new Accessibility ribbon is just the latest example. According to a blog post from 29 March, there is a new Accessibility ribbon in
Filter is another Excel 365 dynamic array formula that’s really useful and far better than similar options in earlier versions of Excel. Just like SORT() and SORTBY(), FILTER() refreshes automatically whenever the source values change. The older pull-down filter and sort choices don’t update properly. Dynamic Arrays also give you
Confused about Unicode, code-points and other techie details about inserting symbols? Here’s how it works and can work for you in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and other apps. Like many things in modern computing, you mostly don’t have to know the details of how things work. But occasionally things don’t work
Details and warnings about the April 2021 security and non-security updates for Office 365, Office 2019 and Office 2016 for Windows. There are some side-effects to watch out for. All these update will, or have been, pushed to your computer already. We’ve included a tip on how to force an
Here’s all the security and general bug fixes for April, aimed at Office 2016, Office 2013 and Office 2010 for Windows. Most customers will have their Office updated automatically unless you’re one of the cautious who wait a little while to see if there’s any bugs in the bug fixes.
Microsoft has been changing the way comments work in Office 365 and now it’s the turn of Excel 365 to get the new-style conversational comments. If you’ve opened up Excel 365 recently you might have seen a notice like this: “ Comments can now be used for discussions. When you
In late 2018, Excel 365 got an important new feature, Dynamic Arrays . Here’s a simple way to use the feature to make your workbooks sort better and automatically. It also fixes a long-standing problem in Excel. We’re going to focus on a very simple and useful part of dynamic
