A Word document and a floppy disk caught a serial killer back in 2010. There are current lessons for anyone wanting to keep their personal or business data confidential. Known as the ‘BTK killer’, he murdered 10 people in Kansas between 1974 and 1991. The murderer was finally caught in 2004. He liked sending notes […]
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 […]
Here’s a practical example of how to share an appointment or event with reminders using the iCalendar .ics standard. Some Apollo 11 events ready to download and add to your calendar (in Outlook or other software). Outlook supports .ics files and so does most other calendar programs. They are small text files which have all […]
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 […]
How can you buy an older version of Microsoft Office to fit in with your other computers? Fran, a loyal Office-Watch.com reader has that problem getting Office 2013. “ I have Office 2013 on two computers now. Is there a way to get another copy for the new Microsoft Surface I just bought for less than the price […]
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 […]
You might think the simple ! exclamation mark is obvious in Microsoft Word or Office but there’s more possible even with this humble symbol. We’ll show you ways to insert FIVE different exclamation marks into Office, as characters, symbols and emoji with infinite variations possible on those five base symbols. We’re not including the inverted […]
Don’t bother using cut / paste to manually sorting or adjusting a list. There’s a faster shortcut for moving a line or paragraph around a Word document which isn’t in the usual lists of Word keyboard shortcuts. Word has a simple shortcut to that move the current line or paragraph up or down without selecting […]
Here’s some other problems with the Word Sort feature and tricks to work around them. Generally speaking, long or complex sorting is better done in Excel. Excel has much better data management features to split and sort. The final result can be copied into Word. Sort a list of names by surname or more in […]
Word’s Sort feature is OK, up to a point but has its limitations.We humans insist on variations of the simple ‘first and last’ name that confuse a computer. For short lists, it’s probably enough to do a Word surname sort then manually adjust the list for any anomalies. Longer lists need the power of Excel […]
Yet again, Microsoft Word is beaten by mere humans when we pit the software against words used in the 2019 Spelling Bee finals. We made a list of some words from the 2019 Spelling Bee finals including the last eight words which confirmed the winners. See for yourself how Microsoft Word did against the human […]
Excel has a new currency option. Bitcoin BTC is now available as a Currency symbol or text from the main list but we’ll show how to get it now on any version of Excel. There are four options available: Bitcoin symbol ₿ prefix ₿12.34 Bitcoin symbol ₿ suffix 12.34 ₿ Bitcoin code BTC prefix BTC […]
How to easily make and receive appointments with other people using Outlook. This is a feature that’s been in Outlook for many, many years and so is often overlooked amid the hype for the latest ‘exciting’ thing from Microsoft. We’ll look at how to send an create an appointment to send out and what to […]
If you have included tables in a document, Word can generate a list of them all for you. Like a Table of contents, this list or Table of tables can include page references or links to each table. A Table of tables can be useful for creating a proper appendix or reference within more formal […]
How to insert the different Ellipsis … marks into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. Ellipsis … symbol is used for a gap or break in some text, usually to drop out some irrelevant text or speech. The same applies in maths e.g. 1,1,2,3 …. 377 […]
Changing the case upper/lower for text through all of a Word document is easy because the default settings don’t need changing. We’ve already talked about the manual Change Case options in Word, now we’ll move onto bulk changes. Sometimes the spelling of a product or brand has peculiar case choices like iPad, eBay or reCAPTCHA. […]
Converting SVG icons into JPG is essential for older Word and Office versions that don’t have native icon/SVG support. SVG’s are great with many advantages for Office 365 and Office 2019 users. Not everyone has the latest Microsoft Office or shares documents with others who have earlier versions of Office. Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) are […]
One of the first major Word viruses, the Melissa virus, is 20 years old. It’s amazing to see how much and how little has changed over two decades. Office viruses today follow much the same pattern as they did back in the 20th Century. Melissa was a Word macro virus which infected computers then spread […]
Which font to use if emulating a true laundry care or clothing text label in Word, PowerPoint or other Office program? We’ve already talked about how to put standard laundry care symbols in Word, Excel or PowerPoint but what about the text that usually goes with the icons? In our research we couldn’t find any […]
