There are two similar text formatting options in Excel. The well-known Merge & Center and the hidden away Center across selection. Both have their advantages, the choice is yours. Merge & Center Most Excel users know ‘Merge & Center’ because it’s atop the Merge list at Home | Alignment | Merge. It does two things: […]
A recent Windows update is causing VBA code to fail in Excel, Access and other VBA parts of Office. The culprit isn’t Office, but the version of Windows that it’s running on. After the 2019-08 Cumulative Update KB4511553 is applied, some VBA code will stop working. The patch bug is in Windows 10, 8.1 and […]
There’s a new generation growing up who see the Office ribbon differently from their parents. Check out this icon on the older Office ribbon …. To you, me and most people it means ‘Save’ because that’s obviously a floppy disk. Specifically, a 3.5” disk with either 720kb or 1.4MB up to a whopping 2.8MB (that’s […]
A lot of press reports about Office 2019 give the impression that the single-payment, non-subscription version of Microsoft Office is about to disappear off retail shelves. Everyone needs to take a deep breath and calm down … Office 2019 isn’t dead or even on life-support though Microsoft would love to stop selling it. It all […]
When the Stock and Geography data types disappear from the Data ribbon in Excel here’s how to fix and restore Linked Data Types. The Data ribbon is missing the entire ‘Data Types’ section. We’ve had several reports from Office-Watch.com readers who start Excel 365 and find that their Stock and Geography linked data worksheets won’t […]
At last! After months of delay, Microsoft has released product icons for Access, Project and Visio. Yawn, ho hum. We know Microsoft customers have been desperate to see these graphics (not). Back in March we first saw the Word, Outlook, Excel and PowerPoint graphics. As before, when it comes to changed Office icons; if we […]
The desperately needed feature is coming to Microsoft Office … the ability to search for Icons. Microsoft added Icons to Office 365 and even more a few months ago … 300 more icons in Office, but which ones and where? The problem has always been finding the right icons from the long list. There are […]
Office now has sensitivity options to label Word, Excel, PowerPoint docs plus emails. Not ‘touch-feely’ sensitivity like ‘loving’ or ‘compassionate’ but instead corporate, privacy labels. It’s a new feature for Office 365 corporate hosted E3 or E5 accounts and the admins have enabled Sensitivity options. Sensitivity appears on the Home tab in Word, Excel, PowerPoint […]
Despite all the possibilities for importing or sharing appointments, most of the time we have to manually type in new appointments or events. Here’s some tips to do it faster and get it right. We’ve all been there, a web page or email (below right) with details that need copying into a blank Outlook appointment […]
Inserting an .ics iCalendar item into Outlook is typical Microsoft Office. Seemingly easy if you believe the simplistic ‘help’ from Redmond but a little more involved in practice. iCalendar .ics files are small text files which contain an appointment or event. It’s a common standard so they can be used by Outlook or any other […]
Excel provides some handy pre-selected styles that you can apply to your cells. Here’s a selection of styles that we use, improve from Microsoft’s bland defaults and will light up your worksheets. These are excellent for distinguishing headers from data, classifying data, or showing the function of each cell (calculations, output, notes, etc.) Cell Styles […]
The Format Cells dialog can be accessed from Home | Alignment | Orientation, or by right-clicking on selected cells and selecting Format Cells. See Excel’s text and number alignment choices Text formatting in Excel with wrapping, line breaks and merging This dialog gives you more detailed options to choose from than are available in the Orientation […]
Under Excel’s Home | Alignment ribbon you can change the indents, alignment or angle of the text in selected cells. As usual, a seemingly simple set of buttons have some hidden tricks. See Text formatting in Excel with wrapping, line breaks and merging Alignment Adjust alignment of the text, both across and up/down, use the […]
Here’s this months list of bug fixes and updates for Office 2016 and Office 2013. These apply only to the older ‘MSI’ Windows installs not the modern ‘Click to Run’ Office including all Office 365. For most people, these patches will be installed automatically via Microsoft/Windows Update. PowerPoint 2016 – KB4464577 Morph now gives you […]
As Office Watch noted back in July, Office 2019 (Professional Plus or Home & Business) are no longer available in the Home Use Program. Until last month, Office 2019 Professional Plus or Office 2019 Home and Business could be had for the trivial price of $14.99 instead of well over $200. The Home Use Program […]
Microsoft and Samsung have a long announcement about Windows, Office and the new Samsung Note10 but there’s little really new. Under the bland title “Microsoft and Samsung partner to empower you to achieve more” is a carefully worded press release which mostly goes over existing Microsoft products which are available in other Samsung products and […]
If you thought that Microsoft’s move to multi-platform apps and cloud computing was hype, think again. The latest filing with the US Securities commission has a notable change in Microsoft’s policy. For a long, long time, Windows has been the core of Microsoft’s strategy. There’s been support for other operating systems but getting people onto […]
A report commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security warns government departments NOT to use Microsoft Office Online or the apps for Apple or Android. The Privacy Company report was made public with the Ministry’s permission via two blog posts short and long. Many governments and organizations have legitimate concerns about the amount […]
Office-Watch.com reader Jeffrey J. offers this look at Emailmerge.cc an add-on that fixes some limitations in the Word/Excel/Outlook mail merge system. “ Outlook email merge function does not allow multiple To line addressees, nor allows creating any cc or bcc addressees. And you cannot customize the Subject line. Manually adding/modifying each required email is labor […]
Microsoft is improving (fixing?) the activation system for Office 365 Home and Personal customers. This comes a few weeks after they announced the same changes for Office 365 Enterprise customers. The per device activation limit will be handled in a much better way. Each Office 365 user is limited to login/activations on five each of desktop programs, tablet […]
There’s no need to switch out of Word to do simple calculations because Word for Windows has its very own built-in calculator. Calculate in Word has some nice tricks but also problems and traps. Type a calculation, hit the button (see below) and the result appears in the status bar AND it’s loaded into the […]
Word allows you to insert other files with data and functionality from another document or program directly into your Word document. Microsoft calls these additions ‘Objects’ which makes it sound overly technical and difficult but it’s not. Don’t get fazed by all the nerd talk about ‘objects’, that’s programmer speak that’s leaked out into the […]
The latest release of Excel 365 for Windows is a right mess with missing Dynamic Arrays and, for a while, Stock and Geography data types disappeared too! We received some reports late Friday, US time that Excel 365 for Windows v1907 build 11901.20176 wasn’t showing Stock or Geography data types on the Data ribbon. The […]
It’s quite easy to tell if your Excel 365 has the new Dynamic Arrays. No need to setup a table and use the new feature – just three keypresses are enough. Some people are reporting that they have the right Excel 365 but with no dynamic arrays. Checking the program/app version is possible, see below. […]
After many months of testing, all Excel 365 apps now have dynamic arrays (except Excel Online) – a major and powerful expansion of Excel’s powers. The new abilities, functions and error messages might seem scary but are a great leap forward for Excel. All Excel 365 incarnations, except the browser-based Excel Online, now have dynamic […]
A new option in Office 365 for Windows is the ability to choose how hyperlinked Office files are opened. Inside Word, Excel or PowerPoint or in the default browser. The new option is at File | Options | Advanced | Link Handling Open supported hyperlinks to Office files in Office desktop apps. An Office document […]
A newly promoted UK politician has his own special style guide for staff, here’s some Word features that can help ensure your documents are approved by the boss. The Right Honourable Jacob William Rees-Mogg (to give his new full title) proudly affects an old-fashioned demeanor and has been described as “on secondment from the 18th […]
Hackers continue to trick people into giving away their Office 365 login details with a little help from Microsoft. The criminals are getting cleverer by not only stealing passwords but checking immediately and hiding the theft while they copy your mailbox. Avanan has the details on this latest type of Office 365 phishing. It starts […]
Word is getting reminders for accessibility before making a PDF. When Word makes a PDF version of a document, it includes accessibility tags. These tags help screen readers (spoken for blind and the visually impaired) and also adjusting the PDF for small and large displays. When saving a PDF (File | Export or File | […]
Yea, gods. Clippy is a persistent little beggar. Over 20 years since it infested our screens and it’s now being used as a dating meme by people not born when Office 97 annoyed us. The infamous Office paperclip, Clippy, continues to pop up just like it did in Office 97. Now it’s become a meme […]
Microsoft says we should stop calling the browser-based version of their apps ‘Office Online’. It’s now just ‘Office’. ‘Word Online’ is now just ‘Word’. ‘Excel Online’ is ‘Excel’, ‘PowerPoint Online’ is merely ‘PowerPoint’. Make sense? No, we don’t understand either. Microsoft’s explanation of the name change doesn’t help. According to Microsoft they are doing this: […]
Can Office 2007 and other older versions of Office (Office 2010, Office 2013) be installed on Windows 10. What are the licensing, activation problems? How about moving documents? Eileen G asks a common question to Office Watch: “I got a new HP desktop computer, but can I install the old MS orig office, “Home and […]
In August there’ll be some good changes to Office 365 activation for commercial customers. The per device activation limit will be handled in a much better way. Each Office 365 user is limited to login/activations on five each of desktop programs, tablet apps and smartphone apps. That’s a total of 15 devices with a single […]
Microsoft’s Home Use Program is a great way to get Office cheaply including Office 2019, Visio Professional 2019 and Project Professional 2019. The Home Use Program (HUP) has been a way to get Microsoft Office for less than retail for a long time. It’s available to many companies, organizations and government entities with Software Assurance […]
Occasionally OneNote pages or whole notebooks go missing … here’s seven places to try finding them again. Don’t Panic OneNote saves everything … it was designed that way from Day One. It’s unlikely that something has truly been erased. More likely that the page, section or notebook is hiding away somewhere in the depths of […]
A new Windows 10 (October 2018) patch fixes a bug with Office 2010 and updates Brazil time zone data used by Outlook. The patch KB4505658 fixes a long list of Windows 10 v1809 bug fixes. Sorry, they aren’t bug fixes, the euphemism is ‘quality improvements’. Two changes stuck out for us. Save and Save As […]
Microsoft Word for Android has reached a billion installs. That’s a real Billion not a Microsoft hype billion. It’s even more impressive than it seems. The billion number is counted by Google on Google Play. Microsoft loves quoting high numbers especially ‘Billion’ even when it makes little sense. But this is different. The statistic comes […]
Microsoft Word has several ways to quickly insert placeholder text into documents. Sometimes you want to add some random text to a document as filler, but don’t want to think of something to write yourself. While there are websites that will generate placeholder text for you, it is also possible to do this directly within […]
Our articles about saving past events with anniversary reminders begs the question; How far back can Outlook save an event. The answer in Outlook for Windows, Mac and online is 1 April 1601. Trying to enter a date before 1st April 1601 brings up an error: “You must specify a valid date and/or time”. That […]
Most people are familiar with Word’s Spelling & Grammar check functionality, Word’s Readability check is a great extension. Word can check the complexity of your writing, and gives you an idea of whether your writing will be understood by your target audience. We’ll show you how to see Word’s Readability Statistics, what they mean and […]
