Microsoft is a slow learner. After seven years they’ve finally fixed an annoying emoji bug in Outlook and they’ve done it in a typically sideways fashion. Current versions of Office display an incompatible smiley emoji that often appears as the letter J – instead of 😊 If you’ve ever seen a message with a J […]
Everyone is talking about ransomware now that the WannaCrypt has spread like crazy across the world. These nasty viruses target your documents and precious files including Microsoft Office files and Windows backups. This is a little embarrassing for us because Office-Watch.com has just released a new book that’s suddenly become very topical. Everyday BACKUPS – […]
Microsoft has moved quickly to block a security hole in their own anti-virus software, Windows Defender. We’re used to seeing email or instant messaging used to infect a computer when opening a document in Word or Excel, maybe an email in Outlook. But this is quite different and very worrying. The bug is in Microsoft’s […]
Coming soon is a new version of Windows, the Windows 10S. What does it mean for Microsoft Office users? The 10S is a stripped down and limited version of Windows 10. Some advanced features aren’t available while others are set to Microsoft’s preferences automatically. To buy 10S is cheaper than the Home or Pro editions, […]
Adding fonts into Microsoft Office is easy but the standard advice doesn’t always work. We’ll show you how to install a font and avoid the trap. Font installation has nothing to do with Word, Excel or PowerPoint. It’s all done in Windows. Firstly, download the new fonts. There are many fonts, free and paid around […]
Last week, Microsoft released the Dubai font to their Office 365 customers only. Now the city-state of Dubai has released it to everyone. Dubai is a new font which has both western and Arabic characters in the one package. It was created by the Dubai government with assistance from Microsoft. You have to hand it […]
At last the cries of eager Signal supporters have been heard – the latest releases allow secure transfer of Office documents, PDF and more. Signal is a well-respected, very secure and private messaging system. The makers of Signal licence their open-source encryption to other messengers like Google, Facebook and WhatsApp. Even better, Signal deliberately retains […]
A few Office-Watch.com readers asked if the Dubai font is really the first ‘city’ font. ” Hello? Geneva? Belfast? Casablanca? Gloucester? ” – Steve R. Probably Microsoft/Dubai are making a distinction between a font made specifically for a city (city-state) and a font named after a city. Back in February, Microsoft described the Dubai font […]
The Dubai font inspired us to look at the currency symbol for the United Arab Emirates – the Dirham. A quick guide for those of us who don’t know any Arabic! There’s no direct symbol for the Dirham – unlike the dollar, Euro or Yen/Yuan. The usual prefix is DH or Dhs , just plain […]
Hyped as the first city to get its own font, Dubai and Microsoft have released the Dubai font. Office-Watch.com looks beyond the press releases for the details on the new font and Dubai font alternatives. Dubai is a sans-serif OpenType font available for Windows and Mac. It’s not a full-range Unicode font but enough for […]
If you can’t get the new Dubai font, there are many alternative fonts. The closest match we could find was FF Fago by Ole Schäfer. Among the fonts supplied with Windows/Office, the most similar is Lucida Sans. It’s on the drop-down list of fonts in Windows and Mac. Here’s Lucida Sans on the Office for […]
Microsoft Publisher is the ‘desktop publishing’ part of MS Office. It has many formatting options not available in Word and is useful for making marketing documents like brochures, catalogs etc. Publisher was somewhat forgotten because it was only in the high priced Microsoft Office bundles. That changed with arrival of Office 365 ‘subscriptions’. Office 365 […]
Microsoft puts corporate pride and weasel words ahead of their customers safety and security. Hackers take advantage of Microsoft’s patch release scheduled to release a virus as widely as they can in the days before fix was available. The Dridex security bug was known to Microsoft but they stubbornly stuck to their ‘Patch Tuesday’ schedule […]
The Washington Post tells of the troubles including less common languages like Icelandic in the next wave of technology. As Office nerds we immediately looked at how the Icelandic and other languages are supported in modern Office. There’s many language specific parts of Office, more than you might expect. Menus/Ribbon, Help, Spelling, Grammar, Thesaurus, Hyphenation, […]
There are several ways to add images into an Office SmartArt graphic; the official Microsoft way plus some others that aren’t usually mentioned. In the introductory piece, Much better lists with SmartArt , we looked at the SmartArt basics which are much the same in Word, Excel and PowerPoint. We converted a list of countries […]
This latest hack into Microsoft Office is called the ‘Dridex Banking Trojan’ in most reports. It takes advantage of a newly discovered security bug in Microsoft Office. Here’s the hard details that are often overlooked in many reports. Microsoft has released patches to close the security breach but not before the hackers were able to […]
SmartArt is available in all Office desktop programs for Windows and Mac. The way it works and options available do vary between the programs, especially PowerPoint. Office for Mac menus look a little different but the primary features are there. This article is the the start of a look at the SmartArt features in Microsoft […]
OK, we admit this story is a stretch but there’s a point behind the link between this interesting story, Microsoft Word and it’s PDF support. Thomas Royen is a retired statistician who has solved a long standing mathematical question. The Gaussian correlation conjecture (GCC) had beaten experts for years before Herr Royen comes along and […]
After the recent docs.com scare we’ve had a few readers asking the basic questions: What is docs.com? What’s the difference between docs.com and OneDrive? In short, use OneDrive for all your cloud storage needs. Consider Docs.com, if you have a document that you’d like to share with the public or a wide group of people. […]
An Office security breach, which was patched last year, is still being used to infect unpatched computers. Hacked documents using the vulnerability have been appearing in the last few weeks: SIMON WERNER GMBH – RFQ.doc ‘security instructions’ Visa.doc выписка.doc, 2017april.doc While the files have .doc extensions, they are really .rtf files. They all are variations […]
One of the colors in the Crayola box is being dropped. Never fear, the color Dandelion can be part of your Office documents as can any other Crayola color. It’s not the same as the smell and feel of a Crayola crayon but it’s better than losing the color entirely. Dandelion is being removed from […]
As a publicity stunt, Microsoft published a list of common grammar mistakes made in Word. It’s strange that one of the listed mistakes is NOT detected even by the latest version of Microsoft Word. Office-Watch.com noticed this curiosity because we tested all Microsoft’s claims against their own Word software. We didn’t just copy the press […]
Even today, despite the public outcry, a document saved to docs.com will automatically be available to everyone. The privacy choices aren’t obvious and the ‘public’ default isn’t clear either. Here’s what you see when uploading to docs.com You have to click the ‘three dots’ menu button then scroll down a long list of options to […]
If you’ve ever used http://docs.com it’s a good idea to check what’s saved there and what public access is set. Login with your Microsoft account (or other login) and check the list of saved documents (click on your name at top right. Depending on your wishes you can: Leave as ‘Public on the web’ Change […]
The debate about the Oxford Comma continues with news that a Maine company has lost a court case for the lack of a vital extra comma. Oxford Comma is one of the lesser known grammar checks in Microsoft Word. Sadly, Word would not have warned of the problem and saved the millions. The court case […]
Redmond has released more Office training videos to help newbie users. Get started with Office Intro to Office Basics Sign in to Office Get help and support Change your Office for Home password Change your Office 365 for Business password What is Office 365? What is Office 365? Get the most out of Office 365 […]
If you look in folders that contain Office documents (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) you might see the occasional .tmp file. What are they, could they be useful and can they be safely deleted? The quick answers are: probably Word or Office document remnants, could be handy to recover a lost document but otherwise they can be […]
Office Picture Manager, the much loved and simple image editor was dropped by Microsoft, but it’s still available. Here’s how to get it for free. There are two ways to get Office Picture Manager (OPM). Both involve doing a custom installation of a larger package, but paring down the setup to just Office Picture Manager […]
The Google Docs apps have a useful option for making new documents, worksheets and presentations that are Microsoft Office compatible. JR Raphael at ComputerWorld pointed out the option in the Google Docs app for Android, we poked around to find the equivlalents in Google Sheets and Google Slides Under Settings there’s the choice to make Word […]
There are many ways to make pictures smaller, in both senses of the word. Here are three more options plus an important warning. Converting images into a smaller file size is sometimes essential. The large digital camera images (can be 4-6MB each) can be too big for some situations, especially when there are many of […]
CyberX Labs has identified Operation BugDrop, which uses Word document to attack targeted businesses and steal corporate information. They send emails to the business they want to raid that trick people into enabling macros. Opening the hacked document displays the Security Warning and ‘Enable Content’ button are real; created by Word. But the sincere looking […]
You’ve chosen an image, now you have to get it into your Office document. You’d hope there was a single way to do that but, as usual, there’s plenty of options. Outlook has its own special needs, different from Word, Excel and PowerPoint. There’s also privacy and image size issues to consider. The simple way […]
Here’s the complete list of non-security updates for Office 2016 for Windows and Office 2013 plus our notes on some bug fixes that caught our eye. As usual, these updates will be pushed to most Office computers automatically. No action is necessary. Unexpected Issues Microsoft is always using different words to avoid saying ‘bug’. This […]
It was only a matter of time, the first attack targeting Word for Mac has been released. It’s a simple, almost primitive hack, but it’s out there so beware. There even a ‘silver lining’ of sorts. The document is named U.S. Allies and Rivals Digest Trump’s Victory – Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.docm but the […]
One of the many small, but annoying, limitations in Office for Mac is the Insert Symbol feature. In Word for Windows it’s quite developed with a list of recently used characters: Or open up the main dialog to scroll through many more symbols or jump to exactly the one you want. But Word 2016 for […]
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is the latest gallery to put many of their images into the public domain. Now you can, legally, use them to decorate your PowerPoint presentations or Word documents. The Met has released about 375,000 images under Creative Commons Zero CC0 licence. That means there are no rights […]
Microsoft announced Touch Bar support with much fanfare back in October 2016. Over 3 months later and paying customers are still waiting. There’s been lot of talk about this feature including web sites with ‘tips’ on using Office with the Touch Bar without noting that it’s not got into ‘insider’ beta testing yet. New Macbook […]
“For me and, I am sure, many other writer, quotes are a time consuming nuisance. It would be nice to be able to select text and hit shift ‘ or shift ” to have the selection put in quotes and properly formatted. I have never seen an app with a feature like this, but I […]
To many people the Oxford Comma is an obscure grammar issue but, boy!, can it get people excited. We’ve had lots of messages, pro and con, from readers. This all started because Microsoft dropped one of the options available for the Oxford Comma check. In Office 2016 (Windows or Mac) you can’t get a warning […]
Love or loath it, the ribbon in Microsoft Office is here to stay. You’re not stuck with the ribbon Microsoft gives you, make it work better for you. In this article, we’ll show you an example of how the ribbon is designed to suit absolute Office novices first and also with Microsoft’s marketing agenda in […]
