A few quick notes if you’re buying a Chromebook to use with Microsoft Office. 4.5 ways to use Microsoft Office on a Chromebook ChromeOS is essentially the Chrome browser running in a separate device. Any web site or web based application that can run in the browser will work on
How to make a computer setup suitable for the elderly or infirm. Something that’s simple ‘turn on and it’ll work’ and needs little or no action by the recipient or their carers. Bill Chubb wrote to us with his solution for keeping in touch with his wife in a nursing
Microsoft has made a major blunder with the July patches for Office. An update can crash Outlook for Windows entirely and the reason for the problem makes the bug especially humiliating for Microsoft. We’ll explain Microsoft’s blunder, what you can do if affected and how to avoid the buggy patch.
Read Aloud is the newer and better form of the old Speak feature from Word 2016-2010. It’s available in Word 365 and Word 2019. Read Aloud has more controls than the older Speak feature and it appears in more places within Word. The voice selection and settings in Windows are
The Excel team has joined the current ‘Cake’ meme with a new Cake() function in Excel. Hilarity ensues … Source: Twitter Ho ho, very funny, it is to laugh. Most people took the message in good spirit with one person implementing it in VBA That code really works. ChrW() returns
Microsoft continues to tinker update the Comments part of Word with yet more changes coming in Word 365. We’ll explain the new Comments view plus look over some of the Comments features from recent years. At last, users get some control over how comments appear. Not a lot of control
2020 will be remembered for many things (big sigh) but from a design viewpoint, it could be the Year of the Icon. Many of those graphics are available either in Office directly or imported from elsewhere – we’ll show you both. Everywhere you go there are signs reminding us of
Microsoft has added two genuinely new and interesting video meeting options to Teams. Together mode and Dynamic View plus some useful video filters. Both are innovative ways to display a large number of people in a virtual meeting. Having been caught napping by a combination of Coronavirus and Zoom, Microsoft
Word 2016, Word 2013 and Word 2010 for Windows all have a ‘text to speech’ or ‘Speak’ feature to read back a document. It’s hiding away behind the ribbon but works fine once you’ve found it. Speak button can be put on the Quick Access Toolbar or Ribbon. Select some
The Office.com home page is being updated or rather rearranged. The changed page has been described as ‘beautiful’ and ‘great’. The changes are gradually rolling out to enterprise Office 365 customers, presumably consumer Office 365 Home/Personal users will see the change a little later. The current Office.com page looks like
Despite fair warnings, Microsoft has allowed an old Excel format .SLK to get past their email security and infect Excel for Windows computers. As reported by Avanan, criminals have found a way to bypass the email security for Office 365 hosted mailboxes (possibly Outlook.com as well), allowing an infected email
How to quickly fix display problems in Microsoft Office. When Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook don’t show up on the screen correctly. It doesn’t happen often but occasionally Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook open but as all grey. Clicking around the screen displays just a ribbon or menu but not
Additions and changes to Microsoft 365 (Word, Excel etc) are often not explained properly beyond a short paragraph. Then there are cases where even that explanation is a mystery. We’re obliged to Hannah J. from Munich for asking about this item on the Microsoft site from April 2019 which we
Excel for iPhone and Android smartphones have a useful extension of Excel Tables called Cards. It’s a better way to view tables on a smaller screen with larger text and easier editing. Instead of scrolling right/left on the small screen, all the info for a single table row can be
Microsoft’s Surface Earbuds are out now and have some extras for Word, Outlook and PowerPoint users. When we look past the hype there’s more than a few special conditions to keep in mind. Surface Earbuds have been some time coming, we first mentioned them about nine months ago. Now they
Word for iPhone now has a reading mode … at long last there’s a way to look through a document without the keyboard and other editing tools getting in the way. When a document is opened, it’s in read mode. No pesky keyboard or menus. The top line has Edit,
Word can be used to fill in and make an ICE or In Case of Emergency card. Our newsletter subscribers can download the Word document, ready to fill in and use. ICE cards are known to paramedics and emergency rooms the world over. An unconscious or uncommunicative patient is searched
Microsoft now lets you add your own virtual background image for Teams video calls. Before this change, there was a simple hack to add your own image as a virtual background. Microsoft rushed to add virtual backgrounds to Teams video in response to the popularity of Zoom. A major problem
Microsoft’s Money in Excel is worth looking at even if you don’t want to use it. There are some useful features and formula tricks you can use in your own workbooks. Group Columns Grouping columns or rows is normally for bringing together lists rows or columns. Grouping days into a
Apple is switching their Mac computers from Intel to their own in-house chipsets known as ‘Apple Silicon’. A change in CPU is a big deal and raises questions about compatibility with Microsoft Office. The change from Intel to Apple CPU’s has been expected for some time and will take years
Animated GIF support is coming (finally!) to Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint. We discovered the new feature in a new Insiders build, Microsoft hasn’t announced anything. Here’s an animated GIF playing in Word 365. Paste or Insert an animated GIF now has play/pause buttons included (bottom left corner). The animation
Microsoft has expanded Teams to allow personal groups like families, clubs and groups to use the service. Within Teams it’s possible to text chat, save and edit documents, share calendars and lists. A family could have a grocery list to which anyone can add items before the next supermarket run.
There’s a bug in the activation process for Microsoft Office from Office 2016 way back to Office 2007 which makes it appear that there’s no telephone option available. The message “Telephone activation is no longer supported for your product” isn’t true. Phone activation is still available. Microsoft doesn’t seem interested
Money in Excel shows up on the Home tab once you’ve opened the Microsoft template. Here’s how to remove its button from the ribbon or completely remove the add-in from Excel. As soon as you open and use Money in Excel, it adds itself to the Home tab on the
