The inverted or Spanish question mark ¿ is available in Microsoft Word, regardless of language setting. There’s even an in-built shortcut. ¿ is most commonly used in Spanish for the start of an question sentence. This guide is mostly for people without a Spanish keyboard or who only occasionally need the inverted question mark. See […]
The inverted or Spanish exclamation mark ¡ is available in Microsoft Word, regardless of language setting. There’s even an in-built shortcut. ¡ is most commonly used in Spanish for the start of an exclaiming sentence. As far back as the 1660’s there have been attempts to introduce ¡ inverted exclamation to denote irony. Despite its […]
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 […]
What’s the difference between aligning to a page and align margin in Word documents? Quite often, there’s no practical difference between ‘Align Page’ and ‘Align Margin’ in Word. These options appear when positioning an object on a page and other places. Centering an object has to be done compared to some defined ‘edge’ of a […]
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 […]
Microsoft has released a series of pages describing their support for the new Japanese era in Windows, Office and .NET. Plus a new Windows feature to support a nicety of Japanese date formatting. Japan’s traditional dating system works around the Emperor’s reign. The abdication of the last Emperor and enthronement of Emperor Naruhito meant a […]
As part of Microsoft’s support for the new Japanese Imperial era, they’ve added support for traditional Gannen writing of dates as well as the newer Ichinen style. Windows 10 now supports Gannen style Japanese dates but that support doesn’t flow through to Excel formatting. Normally the default date presentation in Excel uses the Windows defaults, […]
Word sorting is more powerful than it appears, with a few extra clicks you can sort last names or anything else in a list. Sort is one of those Word features that’s been around for a long time. These days it’s tucked away on Home tab in the Paragraph group. Select a list or paragraphs […]
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 […]
WhatsApp will starting showing ads in 2020 which is another reason to give up on the messaging app and move to a more private and secure but very similar app, Signal. WhatsApp has over 1.5Billion users which makes it a too tempting target for the owners Facebook and advertisers. Facebook will be able to target […]
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 […]
There’s an important feature in Word and other Office programs that we all have, and many people use, except the US Congress … document collaboration and comparison. It’s even more amazing because most, if not all congressional offices have Microsoft Office. An article about the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress which is trying […]
Word’s Citation and Bibliography support is enough for some people, but not for everyone so there are tools available to go beyond what Microsoft provides. See Add a Bibliography to Word documents Custom Bibliography formats or styles in Word Citations for everyone in Word Source Manager for citations in Word JabRef JabRef is the commonly used, […]
Word has many supplied Bibliography formats or styles to choose from. It’s possible to add your own custom formats to suit your needs. First, a quick look at how Word figures out how to format or arrange a citation. See: Add a Bibliography to Word documents Citations for everyone in Word Note: this is another […]
Word can automatically add a bibliography or list of sources or works cited in a document. Here’s how to do it with formatting to make your teacher or professor happy. To make a Bibliography, you first have to add citations and sources to your document. Once you’ve added all the sources and citations to the […]
WOFF are a new-ish type of font that you might have seen mentions or downloads. Here’s how to use them in Microsoft Office; Word, Excel or PowerPoint. WOFF is Web Open Font Format designed to be compact and easy to download. WOFF is for web sites and mobile apps, not desktop programs like Office. Despite […]
An essential part of Word’s citations and bibliography feature is the Source Manager dialog – here’s how to, er, manage the Source Manager. Open the Source Manager from References | Citations and Bibliography | Manage Sources. There is a Current List (at right) which is saved in the current document. On the left if the […]
Since Office 2007, the workload of students and academics has been made a lot easier with the arrival of Citation features in Word. They are useful for everyone, not just in academia. Citations are individual references to source material you’ve quoted in your document. A Bibliography is a list of citations and sources used in […]
A few of the May 2016 patches Microsoft Office caught our eye with embarrassing bug fixes, previously not disclosed to customers. They all apply to older Office releases: Office 2016 and before. It’s a long-standing Microsoft trick to hide embarrassing bugs from customers until they have a fix. In the meantime, customers waste time and […]
The WhatsApp security bug made a lot of headlines this week. As the virtual dust settles, what should you do and what is there still to worry about. A company discovered a bug in WhatsApp which they packaged up and sold to various parties. The Pegasus bug allowed hacking of targeted individuals (mostly human rights […]
Separate text boxes in Microsoft Word can be linked so text in one box can automatically flow into another text box later on the same page or document. Yet again with Word, there’s some extra tricks available beyond simple linking of boxes. Linked boxes is a trick that’s a common feature in professional publishing and […]
Sometimes there’s more than one way to do something in Word like having four blocks of text on a page with images or text breakout. “How can I do a magazine-like layout with four blocks of text, one in each corner with a box of text in the middle? I’ve tried with tables and text […]
There are some simple Microsoft Word tricks to squeeze a Table of Contents (or Table of Figures etc) into less pages. Here’s an example of a Table of Contents (ToC) that’s grown too big using Word’s default settings. It’s creeped over to a second page. We’ve seen ToC’s for big documents that take up many, […]
Unclear date formatting in documents, worksheets, presentations and other media is a pet peeve of ours. These days it’s bad practice to show dates in digits only such as 01-05-2019 12/3/18 etc. Yet we often see these formats used in booking confirmations and other documents. Either of those dates can be misunderstood by a global […]
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 […]
If you have included equations in a document, Word can generate a list of them all for you. Like a table of contents, this list or Table of Equations can include page references or links to each equation. A Table of Equations can be useful for creating a proper appendix or reference within more formal […]
If you have included images, graphs, tables or equations in a document, Word can generate a list of all of these, for you. Like a table of contents, this list can include page references or links to each figure or picture. A Table of Figures can be useful for creating a proper appendix of figures […]
Like any other text in Word, the appearance of all your captions can be changed by modifying the style that is applied to them or selecting the text and formatting manually. See Adding Captions in Word Caption Style All captions use the ‘Caption’ style, so modifying that style will modify the format of all past and […]
Captions let you add autonumbered labels under most Word objects including pictures (figures), tables or equations. Captions can be combined into a list of all the figures/tables/equations in the document, along with their page numbers. As usual in Word, there are many options beyond the simple adding of captions and some ‘gotchas’ as well. See Changing […]
There’s a TV show just starting its last season, maybe you’ve heard of it <g>? Here’s how to get the Game of Thrones look in Word documents and PowerPoint slides. Plenty of people have borrowed the Game of Thrones or GoT look, including a certain US President. All these uses are contrary to various trademarks […]
Microsoft has admitted a security breach which allowed hackers to access the accounts and data of customers. The admission from Microsoft isn’t complete and the hackers say it’s worse than the company is saying. Who is affected? Some people with a free Microsoft accounts like Outlook.com, Msn.com Hotmail.com etc. Microsoft says that a ‘limited’ number […]
The May 2019 update to Windows 10 includes a long-awaited and important addition, an updated Emoji Panel. What a pity that it totally sucks and is incredibly dumb. Emoji Panel is better than what we had before (nothing) but not by a lot. We’re talking about the Emoji Panel or ‘keyboard’ which appears in Windows […]
Word has settings to automatically change the case of words that you type, fix common capitalization typing problems add items of your own to have capitalized the way you want them as you type. Word also has options to manually Change Case in Microsoft Word. The settings are in the AutoCorrect dialog at File | […]
If, while typing, you notice that Word has automatically changed capitalization of something you did not want changed, you can correct this easily as you type. Hover your mouse over the part of the word that has been automatically changed. A blue line will appear under the changed part. We typed AUtomatic and Word immediately […]
It’s income tax time in the USA and that means a new round of email scams and infected Excel documents to watch out for. IBM Security Intelligence reports on a series of scam emails courtesy of the Trickbot hackers. All the emails look like legitimate messages from big companies like Paychex, a payroll provider and […]
Microsoft continues to struggle with their support for Japanese Era date format in Excel. The new Imperial Era, ‘Reiwa’ is known but the necessary changes for Excel aren’t released yet. New Japanese Imperial Era changes in Excel and Office explains how to add the new Reiwa era without waiting for Microsoft’s patch. Meantime, yet more […]
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 […]
Change Case options in Word, like many Word features goes beyond the obvious choices on the ribbon. Alter the upper/lower case of words, phrases or more. ‘change case’ can become ‘Change Case’ or ‘CHANGE CASE’ without retyping. There are four ways to change the case of existing text in Word: Keyboard shortcut Change Case button […]
