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. […]
There are shortcuts that automatically format bold and italic text in Word. The same shortcuts and more work in WhatsApp texting as well. AutoFormatting Bold and Italics as you type In Microsoft Word and Outlook it’s possible to make words bold or italic as you’re typing. For touch-typists that’s faster than stopping to highlight text […]
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 […]
In Japan there are two amazing uses of Excel. Excel used for displaying train timetables and to make beautiful works of art. The Michelangelo of Excel Tatsuo Horiuchi has become the Michelangelo of Excel. On retirement he wanted to turn to art but didn’t want the expense of paint, brushes etc. He turned to his […]
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 […]
What can you do when Outlook won’t connect to a new mailbox no matter what you try? Long time Office Watch reader, Phil, found himself with an especially stubborn Outlook which would not connect to his new mailbox. He’s changed Office 365 mail servers so had to reconnect Outlook to the new mailboxes for him […]
Does Excel have enough significant digits for Pi in the inbuilt Pi() function? Modern computing can calculate Pi to 3.14 trillion digits which is a good trick but even extreme situations only needs Pi to 15 significant digits. What’s extreme? How about interplanetary travel? JPL/NASA calculate the paths of probes to Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and […]
Word can check if you use a single or double space after a sentence (fullstop/period) but how can it be changed single space to double throughout a document? The Sentence Spacing settings (single, double or don’t care) is in Word’s Grammar settings see Sentence Spacing in Word. These days, sentences more commonly separate with a […]
Word can check if you use a single or double space after a sentence (fullstop/period) but how can it be changed throughout a document? Make all sentences end with a single space instead of double spaces, triple or more. The Sentence Spacing settings (single, double or don’t care) is in Word’s Grammar settings see Sentence […]
An automatically updated list of all worksheets or tabs in Excel but there are ‘gotchas’ which aren’t often mentioned. We’ve already talked about fitting more tabs on the screen or making a manual list of tabs/worksheets. Now we’ll take the next step and make an automatic list of worksheets that will update as the workbook […]
Let’s look at the basic options for making a Table of Contents (TOC) in a Word document. The basic TOC options haven’t changed for a long time. The look of the dialog boxes and galleries changed with Word 2007 however under those superficial features, the fundamentals are the same. Table of Contents is very easy […]
Word for Windows has three options for saving a document to a web page, Web Page, Single Web Page or Web Page, Filtered. Here’s a look at all three and how to choose the best option for you. What you choose depends on how much similarity you need between the Word document and the web […]
Type the Yen ¥ currency symbol into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. Yen is used for Japanese currency and sometimes other currencies like the Chinese Renminbi / Yuan. ¥ symbol is easy on some keyboards but for most there’s no specific key for Yen. Word […]
Here’s a quick and easy way to totally erase file, folders or free disk space so there’s no trace of the original data. Also erasing an entire drive before handing over or selling. As you may know, deleting a file doesn’t really remove it from your computer. Even after deleting from the Recycle Bin, the […]
How can you tell if you’re reading email in a web browser or using email software like Outlook for Windows or Mac? This might seem obvious to some but many people use ’email’ without understanding the important difference between webmail and email programs. There are two ways to read and send emails: use software/apps like […]
Type or enter the ° Degree symbol into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Windows programs generally. Degree ° is a common symbol and should be available in most fonts. If not, try another font or one of the fonts with a very wide range of characters like Arial Unicode MS or Ludica Sans Unicode. Typing […]
If the Translation options in Microsoft Office don’t do it for you, try the Google Translate full document translation option instead. For a long time, Google has a word and text translation between languages. The app is a godsend to travelers around the world, and the locals dealing with them! Entire Office documents can also […]
There’s a simple Microsoft Word trick that lets you shrink the vertical space between lines. Reducing below single line spacing. To set less than 1 line space go to Paragraph | Line Spacing and choose ‘Multiple’ – yes ‘Multiple’. Sounds screwy but it works. Set the Multiple line spacing value to less than one eg 0.7 […]
Pantone has announced its Color of the Year for 2019 but before you run off to grab color swatches, here’s how to get it in Microsoft Office – Word, Excel, PowerPoint etc. The color of 2019 is <drum roll> ….. Living Coral … As usual what’s more amazing than the color is the description from […]
The late and much missed musician Prince wished to be known by single character symbol called ‘Love Symbol Number 2’. Here’s how to enter that unique symbol in Word, PowerPoint or Microsoft Office generally. There are various methods suggested on the Internet, we’ve narrowed then down to one excellent option (SVG graphic) two others that […]
Microsoft Word can print the selected parts of a document, not just the whole document, Select the part of the document you want to print. Word won’t let you print separated selections (made using the Ctrl key). Go to File | Print (or Ctrl + P) and from the Settings list choose Print Selection. The […]
There’s a special purple color named by Pantone as ‘Love Symbol Number 2’ in honor of the musician Prince. That same purple is possible in Microsoft Word and other Office applications. Only last year, Pantone teamed with Prince’s estate to announce that PQ 7448C was to be known as Love Symbol Number 2. Now the […]
A judgement from the US Court of Appeals turned on the Word Count feature in Microsoft Word and how it differs from the rules for court submissions. Most courts have rules about the length of submission which, in this case, were accidently exceeded. The plaintiff is representing himself (‘pro se’) so the judge was more […]
The Shrink to Fit or Shrink One Page option hiding in Microsoft Word might solve a common problem. Making a document that’s using part of an extra page (an ‘orphan’), fit into a single page or one less page. Shrink One Page or Shrink to Fit was added to Word a long time ago, at […]
We already talked about the Microsoft Word ‘Shrink One Page‘ feature and its limitations. Here’s suggestions for how to move a few orphaned lines from the top of a page in more subtle and effective ways. Obviously, every document is different so the tricks you use depend on the situation. Pick and try from this […]
An Australian university has developed a font that will help you remember what you read. It sounds like an April Fool’s joke, but the font is real and works in Office for Mac or Windows. Sans Forgetica was made at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. Unlike most fonts, Sans Forgetica is designed to be a […]
What causes blank spaces in the Word navigation pane and how to fix them. The Navigation Pane in Word shows the Headings in a document but sometimes has the unexpected. Blank lines or text not in a heading. But sometimes blank spaces appear, like between London and Paris above. Why is that happening? The Navigation […]
Adding thumbnail or preview image for Word, Excel or PowerPoint Office documents is easy, though you won’t find the choice anywhere obvious. We’ll dig into how thumbnails work for some nerdy extra detail. Thumbnails are the small images that appear in File Explorer instead of the standard icons for Word, Excel, PowerPoint etc. Microsoft used […]
A new report from Sophos shows how hacking via Office documents has changed of lot in 2018 with new attacks coming much faster than in the past. Microsoft’s assurances that a security bug (sorry ‘exploit’) hasn’t been used ‘in the wild’ doesn’t mean a lot. Office document hacks made in bulk The people who find […]
Here’s how to add a keyboard shortcut for any Microsoft Word style including Headings and Normal style. A shortcut is faster than clicking on the ribbon anytime you want to apply a style. For commonly used styles it’s easier and faster to use a keyboard shortcut. Microsoft even supplies a few with Word, but not […]
There’s a little trap in Excel when figuring out the number of days between two dates. Excel has one way, but the real world has two others. It’s easy to forget the differences, in fact we forgot it ourselves in the Schenghen Visa Calculation. This article is part explanation, part warning and part mea-culpa. How […]
How to type the degree symbol (Fahrenheit, Celsius, Kelvin, latitude, longitude) into Microsoft Word, Excel or PowerPoint. Degree Symbol codes Decimal: 176 Hex: 00B0 Web: ° ° ° Word The degree symbol ° has an inbuilt shortcut in Word. Ctrl + @ or Ctrl + Shift + 2 followed by a space will enter a […]
Back in 2002 I wrote an Access Archon article dealing with reference issues, among them the problem of certain references being upgraded when a database is opened in a higher version of Access, but not downgraded when it is again opened in a lower version. You might think that over the last 16 years Microsoft […]
While North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, was busy in Singapore, his government hackers were busy with new malware called TypeFrame and delivered by, you guessed it, a Microsoft Word document. Typeframe has eleven different elements bundled with a Word document. As usual, the hackers send the document and try to trick people into running […]
Your deadline is in four hours, you’ve got pages to write and BAM! the ‘M’ key breaks on your keyboard …. What do you do? That happened to Colin Chambers, a University of Buffalo student when a drink spilled on his keyboard and as he put it: “The letter between “L” and “N” in the […]
Empty or unwanted pages just after a Word table are especially annoying. Trying to select anything after the table can be difficult unless you know the tricks. Here’s the common problem in Word. A table goes to the end of a document or section but another empty page is added. Clicking Home | Paragraph | […]
Here’s how to convert an older .doc .xls or .ppt into a safer and smaller .docx .xlsx .pptx even if you don’t have Microsoft Office. Any smart computer user is wary of documents received in the old .doc .xls .ppt formats because they are regularly used to transmit viruses. The new document formats are much […]
Here’s a manual method of replacing text with filler or anonymous words in Microsoft Word Use this when you need help with a Word document formatting problem but can’t share the troublesome .docx because it contains confidential information. Our head honcho, Peter Deegan, had this problem himself. A friend asked for help with a Word […]
