Maybe it’s just us, but the news that Microsoft Word is soon getting a text prediction option does NOT qualify as good news. It’s a right PITA. Text prediction is a new cloud service from Microsoft. It’s currently in Outlook online for Microsoft 365 hosted mailboxes and some Microsoft 365
Microsoft has finally agreed to help out customers who are offline for a long time and can’t keep their Microsoft 365 activated with a regular Internet connection. People on ships or other isolated places might use their computer offline for weeks or months. Ever since Microsoft changed to counting each
Microsoft’s prices for Office 2019 bundles make one thing clear, Microsoft really doesn’t want people buying Office 2019. The retail prices are high and there’s less chance for retail discounts. There’s less competition on the perpetual license products compared to Microsoft 365 Home ‘subscription’ which is usually available for less
Microsoft has announced two ‘perpetual licence’ or non-subscription versions of Office that will be released later in 2021. Both continue Microsoft’s unstated but bleedingly obvious attempts to push customers to annual ‘subscription’ payments. Here’s what Microsoft has disclosed so far with an explanation of the continued reduction of value for
The Office ‘all in one’ app, already available for iPhone and Android, is starting its arrival on Apple iPad. The app combines Word, Excel, PowerPoint and other goodies into a single app. The ‘all in one’ app, officially called just ‘Microsoft Office’ has started a limited preview. We’ll explain how
‘Spy Pixels’ is the new name for a common tracking method used in commercial emails. We’ve written about them many times over the 20+ years of Office-Watch.com, the only new thing is the name. What are Spy Pixels? So called ‘Spy Pixels’ are tiny images (1 pixel only) linked in
Microsoft is adding new features and interface to Dictation in Word for Windows. Voice commands, auto punctuation and even a !@$#$ profanity filter. Clicking the Dictation button on the Home tab or pressing Alt + ` now opens a dialog at bottom center of the document. It will start ‘Listening’
Microsoft has announced seven extra languages added to their ‘speech to text’ Dictation feature in Outlook and Word. The new languages announced are: Hindi Russian Polish Portuguese (Portugal) Korean Thai Chinese (Taiwan) Your milage will vary As a cloud service, the available languages will vary. It depends on the version
Microsoft is hyping natural language searches in Outlook for Windows and Mac, so we dug down to see how it works and for whom. There’s a lot of ‘gotchas’ overlooked in the boasting. According to Microsoft, Outlook now has better searches: “With Natural Language in search, you simply type the
Visio now has an option to export diagrams directly into Word. Export to Word has been in preview for about a year. It’s now available to all users on Visio Online Plan 2 The feature doesn’t just export the diagram images. Metadata is also exported in a table. Process |
PowerPoint is getting a new feature ‘Auto Fix’ that Office users have wanted for many, many years. We hope it’s the start of deployment to Word and Excel across all platforms. Auto Fix is a way to automatically arrange a collection of shapes and other objects into neat rows and
Word 365 for Windows now has an even darker dark mode option which changes the page area to black with white text. Until now ‘Dark Mode’ only applied to the ribbon and other interface areas, not the document area. The newly extended Dark mode only changes the look on the
A fascinating article digs into the ‘new’ Windows 10 look to reveal that it’s not as new as Microsoft hype would have you believe. Some parts of Windows 10 are over 25 years old and it’s a similar story in Microsoft Office, despite the Ribbon. It’s the same in Microsoft
The full collection of Van Gogh masterpieces are available online, ready to be used in PowerPoint slides. Here’s how to get good quality images of the great man’s work and use them wisely in slides. Not interested in Van Gogh? These tips show how to fit any image into PowerPoint
Apple’s new Privacy tags sound like a great idea but they rely on the honesty of app makers (Ha!) The simple labels can cover an enormous amount of privacy intrusion in Microsoft Office and Outlook mobile apps. The Washington Post is behind a paywall but the ‘general tenor of his
Outlook.com / Hotmail users got a shock when told can’t send or receive email because their mailbox is way too big. What’s happening and what to do about it? Free Outlook.com accounts have a 15GB storage limit but some users have managed to go way over that quota without complaint
Here are some more ‘right pointing’ symbol options for Word, Excel, PowerPoint or any Microsoft Office app. We’ve already looked in detail at: White Right Pointing Index Hand ☞ Right arrow → symbol Now let’s see some other ‘right pointing’ options that can be used in Office documents. Right pointers
How to insert the white right pointing hand ☞ into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. Officially called “WHITE Right POINTING INDEX” ☞ symbol is a different or novelty form of the right arrow as a hand. It can be used
Shutterstock are offering two nicely designed PowerPoint templates for free. We’ll explain how to get more from the professional templates with a few clicks. Minimalistic PowerPoint templates comes in two styles: Dawn and Midnight. Dawn Template Evokes a meadow at dawn with a muted color scheme. Midnight Template Midnight template
There are two security risks in iPad and iPhone devices that are being used by hackers. It’s important to get the latest iOS update to protect your devices. Some Apple updates are bug fixes or self-serving for Apple to add links to new devices or services. 14.4 is a little
Metric to Imperial/US conversion or vice-versa can be a little messy in Excel, the new Lambda() feature lets you make an easier and simpler conversion function. It’s a simple and practical example of what’s possible with Lambda(). See Lambda – strange name for a really good extra in Excel Metric
OneDrive’s single file size limit is now 250GB up from a ‘mere’ 100GB. That’s a welcome increase for video editing and other volume users who have to deal with really big files. Word, Excel or PowerPoint users don’t need to worry about their files getting that large <g>. It is
It’s been a slow process, but now it’s possible to move a file from Outlook to Teams across both web clients and programs. Users have been asking Microsoft for years to be able to quickly copy an Outlook attachment to a Teams area. Customers had to save the attachment to
