The long-standing Ursnif trojan is back in a new form to infect computers and steal personal information, all via a Microsoft Word document. To begin, we’ll repeat a warning we’ve been making for years … No .doc files DO NOT open .doc files from any source (not .xls or .ppt either). Most infected and dangerous […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Sketchy Shapes, the new line option in Office 365 now has a little video to go with it. Sketchy line option in Office for Windows and Mac Sketchy or wriggly lines in Icons and SVG graphics Source: Microsoft
An upcoming feature in Word 365 for Windows (commercial editions) will be able to detect and define acronyms. When Word ‘sees’ an acronym it will try to show a definition based on it’s context in the document and how other people use the same acronym in the organization. Source: Microsoft plus some extra edits That’s […]
Back in the 16th Century, italic fonts were invented and that trick can still be used today in Microsoft Word. Italics let you fit more text into the same space. An innovative Venetian publisher, Manutius, needed to make small and affordable books. Paper was expensive so anything that put more text on the page was […]
Here’s another case of someone trying to backdate documents and being caught by hidden details in the file. The font is the giveaway but not in the usual way. It’s the ongoing saga of Craig Wright, once a big name in the cyber-currency game. He’s now involved in a court case about the alleged theft […]
Office Icons and other SVG graphics can change a lot with Sketchy lines. Sketchy lines is the new ‘hand-drawn’ line option available in Office 365 for Windows or Mac. It lets you change those somewhat stuffy and formal icons into something more casual and hand-drawn. Icons are an Office 365 feature to add scalable graphics […]
Office for Windows/Mac is getting three new outline styles for the borders of shapes and text boxes. Microsoft calls these lines ‘Sketchy’ because they have a hand-drawn line look. It’s a nice little addition to Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Outlook. Let’s see how it works plus some details and limitations that Microsoft hasn’t mentioned. Source: […]
You’re not stuck with the Microsoft automatic settings when inserting a new shape. Change the defaults to whatever you like for faster shape formatting in Office; Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. When you Insert | Shape, something like this probably appears. Blue fill, 1pt black single line outline, no effects and Text Wrapping in front […]
You’re not stuck with the Microsoft automatic settings when inserting a new text box. Change the defaults to whatever you like for faster text box formatting in Office; Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. When you Insert | Shape | Text Box , something like this probably appears. Thin black outline, no fill and text wrapping […]
If you regularly translate text from or to the same language, you can set default languages. Once you have set the languages, Word will automatically translate the text as soon as you hit Translate, without you having to set the text each time. To set the default languages, go to Review | Translate | Set […]
Word lets you translate an entire document in one go, either right click anywhere in the document, right click and select Translate, or go to Review | Translate | Translate Document. As with translating a selection, the Translator will open in a sidebar, where you can select the languages to translate from and to. Generally, […]
Word has a feature to translate text from one language to another. Whilst the translation may not be perfect, it does give you a starting point to understanding what the text says. You can either translate a selected piece of text, or the whole document. Translate works slightly differently depending on which you choose. Choosing […]
If you’re the sort of person who’s easily distracted, or just want to focus on the content of your document without worrying about formatting, there are a number of ways you can clear the distractions from Microsoft Word, so you can focus on the text you’re writing. Minimize the Ribbon Remove the entire ribbon from […]
Here’s a summary of the July non-security updates for Office 2016, Office 2013 and Office 2010. These updates should be automatically installed via Microsoft Update or you can apply them manually. Install them now if there’s a listed bug you need fixing, otherwise play it safe. Leave some time for any bugs in the patches […]
In Adding Vertical Lines in Word we looked at the many choices for lines down the page. Moving beyond that, let’s look at other vertical non-line choices to spice up a Word document. Sidebar Sidebars are the starting point for many different design element options. You’re not limited to what Microsoft supplies, just use them […]
If you know the trick, Word’s ‘Line Between’ option for multiple columns can be formatted to a different color or other types of line. The downside Word’s standard line between column setting is the lack of formatting. There’s no known way to change the look of the vertical line between columns. Like the old Model […]
There are at least five ways to add a vertical line in Word. Vertical lines can help accentuate a piece of text in Word, but knowing how to add them is not as intuitive as adding a horizontal line. Adding a border Or a Page Border Using the shape tool Adding a bar tab Adding […]
A US government department has accidentally revealed a secret by overlooking the obvious in Office document security. Office helps you scrub documents of private or secret information before sending. It’s easy to overlook the obvious data leaks that ‘Inspect Document’ doesn’t cover. ‘Inspect Document’ checks for hidden information in the document that you might not […]
Office Watch reader Steve G is having a problem in Word. The F9 key is starting Cortana instead of updating fields in a Word document. He suspects a buggy patch of Windows or Office. F9 is the most common problem but redirecting to different commands. That’s probably because F9 is a most common Office function […]
OneDrive Personal Vault is a coming additional part of OneDrive storage that adds more security for important files synchronized with cloud storage. We’ll describe Personal Vault as we know it from Microsoft’s description. There are many unanswered questions about Personal Vault that will have to wait until it’s live and available for review. Personal Vault […]
Microsoft is hyping the addition of 300 more icons to Office 365 perhaps hoping to distract customers from the many problems finding and using the Insert | Icons feature in Office 365. We like the addition of SVG graphics (Icons) into Office because it opens up a much wider range of scalable graphics. Office lacked […]
Microsoft is boasting that the Office 365 ‘Icons’ collection now has 300 more graphics but no information on what they are and no help finding them. The release of more Icons just emphasizes the problems with this cloud feature. Icons is a cloud service that delivers SVG graphics to Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook for […]
