Microsoft has started its usual sales campaign to go with the end of support for Office 2010 in a year from now. There are alternatives beyond what Microsoft is selling. In a self-serving blog headed “Support for Office 2010 is ending—get current with Office 365 ProPlus” we see the tiresomely familiar marketing strategy playing out. Encouraging customers […]
Over time there’s been a change in the way email programs login to your mail host. It’s mostly hidden from us mere humans but important to understand. Here’s how to use oAuth and how to bypass it, if your email program doesn’t support it. Older versions of Outlook don’t know about Open Authentication but there’s […]
Like it or loath it but the comma ellipsis has arrived ,,, as an alternative to the more common ellipsis with dots. Here’s how to use it in Word and Office. The comma ellipsis is a modern, more casual version. It’s used as a more dramatic, even annoyed trailing off of a thought, compared to […]
Excel has a huge range of charts available and endless ways to customize them, but after working to get it just right, you don’t want to have to go through the whole process again next time you want to make a similar chart. Fortunately, you don’t have to because Excel allows you to save your […]
It’s time again for the monthly drop of security updates for Windows and Office. Here’s what caught our eye; two Excel security bugs and a Windows update which kills VMWare Workstation. Commentators are calling this a ‘light’ month for security patches because there are a mere 59 patches instead of the usual 80 or more. […]
You can add text that appears smaller and slightly below (subscript) or above (superscript) your main text quite easily in Word. This kind of text is commonly used in mathematics (e.g. X2) and other technical fields (e.g. H2O), but can also be used for something as simple as a date or other ordinal number (e.g. […]
There are options in Word to limit access a document in different ways. It’s more fine-grained control of what people can do in the document rather than the entire document permissions options we’ve mentioned before. Restrict Editing options let you collaborate on a document more broadly without the risk that important parts will be changed […]
There are many situations where you need to split up text into separate columns. Names, phone numbers, dates, addresses and lot’s more can be managed with Excel’s Text to Columns, Text to Columns allows you take data from one column, and split it out into multiple columns. This can be used to split full names […]
Here’s how to add a taste of the logo or text from ‘Friends’ to a Word document, PowerPoint slide or other document. All you need is available online plus a little Office trickery. Note for old-timers (like Peter, our Editor-in-Chief). ‘Friends’ was a televisual entertainment shown on broadcast networks in full color. The plots revolved […]
Outlook on the web is now blocking another 38 email attachments because they can be carriers of viruses. But Microsoft doesn’t block the most commonly used files for infecting computers. Far and away the most common infected email attachment is old-style Word documents, with .doc extensions. Excel .xls worksheets and PowerPoint .ppt presentations are similarly […]
Here’s a complete, searchable and sortable list of all the email attachments that are or soon will be blocked by various types of Microsoft Outlook. There’s confusion and inconsistencies in the Microsoft documentation and application of these new blocks. They have a list of blocked attachments for Outlook in “Office 365,, Outlook 2019 Outlook 2016, […]
This is where the Excel Name Box gets really interesting. You can select a cell or range of cells, and give them a name. That name can then be used to find that data again, or in formulas instead of typing in the cell range. It’s the same as going to Formulas | Define Name […]
The Name Box is an unassuming little box at the top of your Excel worksheet that you may not have thought about much, but it has an amazing range of uses. The box is next to the formula bar, and usually displays the address of the cell that you are in. The Name Box can […]
One of the ‘emergency’ options to remember is WordPad, which can open Word documents, available in modern Windows 10, 8.1 and 7. Often overlooked, WordPad can be very useful. It’s always available when Windows is running even in the Safe mode. No extra install or setup needed. It’s on the Start Menu as one of […]
As we suspected, there are more holes in the Office Document Inspector. Our clever readers came up with some possibilities for revealing secrets in documents, worksheets and presentations. Document Inspector is good but could be better. As you’ll see, there really should be a warning about objects with multiple layers. The biggest problem with Document […]
If you want to add a bit of zing to your document, Word has a fun little feature that allows you to add color gradients to your text or background of a text box. You can even use it to add a rainbow effect, which is a bit gaudy but demonstrates the possibilities of more […]
Typing or formatting cells of repetitive data can be very boring, but Excel has an Auto Fill feature to make it easier by automatically filling in data for you. We thought we knew Auto Fill but it has some surprising and useful tricks. Auto Fill goes beyond simple incrementing numbers or dates which is what […]
Word, Excel and PowerPoint have options to stop people from changing a document, making them ‘read only’ in tech speak. These options protect your documents from unauthorized editing or even reading them at all. There are different levels of protection, they are all under File | Info | Protect Document. While they are mostly talked […]
Tucked away in Microsoft Office is a little used tag ‘Content Status’ or just ‘Status’ that could help manage and find Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents in organizations. Unfortunately, Content Status is only used once in Office features. It’s supported in Windows Explorer if you know where to look. On the Mac it’s all but […]
PowerPoint has many choices for printed/PDF handouts to go with a presentation. Here’s a guide to the options spread in different places on the PowerPoint ribbon and menus. Quick PowerPoint Handouts Under File | Print is the basic handouts option to print slides and lines for people to handwrite notes. However those options do NOT […]
While printing PowerPoint handouts for your audience with just the slides can be useful, sometimes you may want to give them your notes as well as the slides, which is where Notes Print comes in. Contrary to its name, Notes Print includes slides as well as your notes underneath them. To print the slides with […]
Consider switching to SumIFS, it’s much the same as the older Excel function, SumIf() but easier to expand as your needs change. It can add up values according to more than criteria like a name and date range. We’ve talked about SUMIF and how its parameter order is a little strange. SumIF has filter/criteria […]
There are two a simple ways to make a list of unique or non-duplicate entries from a longer list. Unlike the many automatic ‘unique’ options in Excel, these options work only once but it’s available in many Excel release, old and new. Advanced Filter One is hiding at Data | Sort & Filter | Advanced […]
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 […]
Making a list of unique or not duplicated names from a longer Excel list with duplicates is possible in three ways that update automatically. One is headspinningly hard and one has some minor quibbles. The best option is a lot easier but not yet available to everyone. We’re talking here about making a list of […]
Handout Master lets you customize your presentation handouts more than the basics; changing the position and formatting of headers/footers, adding a background color or gradient. Maybe you can help uncover some unexplained mysteries of Handout Master, see below? Our Quick PowerPoint Handouts article showed you how to go to File | Print to print out […]
There are many ways to make a paper/PDF version of a PowerPoint slide deck, this is the quick ‘only a few clicks’ option. There are other choices that we’ll cover in upcoming articles. PowerPoint has some ‘Handouts’ features but they aren’t all in the same place and some aren’t even called ‘Handouts’! Why handouts? It’s […]
The venerable SUM() function in Excel is simple, really too simple. It just adds up a range of cells with no way to filter or limit what’s included. SumIF selects what to add-up from a longer list. SumIf sometimes confuses people because they, understandably, expect the range to be SUMmed to come first followed by […]
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 […]
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: […]
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 […]
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 […]
It’s amazing to see how people use Excel in ways probably not dreamt of by the programs makers. We usually think of Excel as a financial tool either for businesses or personal budgeting or managing lists. Anything to do with numbers or lists has a place in Excel, like a guy in Singapore with a […]
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 […]
