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 […]
A lot of press reports about Office 2019 give the impression that the single-payment, non-subscription version of Microsoft Office is about to disappear off retail shelves. Everyone needs to take a deep breath and calm down … Office 2019 isn’t dead or even on life-support though Microsoft would love to stop selling it. It all […]
When the Stock and Geography data types disappear from the Data ribbon in Excel here’s how to fix and restore Linked Data Types. The Data ribbon is missing the entire ‘Data Types’ section. We’ve had several reports from Office-Watch.com readers who start Excel 365 and find that their Stock and Geography linked data worksheets won’t […]
At last! After months of delay, Microsoft has released product icons for Access, Project and Visio. Yawn, ho hum. We know Microsoft customers have been desperate to see these graphics (not). Back in March we first saw the Word, Outlook, Excel and PowerPoint graphics. As before, when it comes to changed Office icons; if we […]
The desperately needed feature is coming to Microsoft Office … the ability to search for Icons. Microsoft added Icons to Office 365 and even more a few months ago … 300 more icons in Office, but which ones and where? The problem has always been finding the right icons from the long list. There are […]
Office now has sensitivity options to label Word, Excel, PowerPoint docs plus emails. Not ‘touch-feely’ sensitivity like ‘loving’ or ‘compassionate’ but instead corporate, privacy labels. It’s a new feature for Office 365 corporate hosted E3 or E5 accounts and the admins have enabled Sensitivity options. Sensitivity appears on the Home tab in Word, Excel, PowerPoint […]
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 […]
As Office Watch noted back in July, Office 2019 (Professional Plus or Home & Business) are no longer available in the Home Use Program. Until last month, Office 2019 Professional Plus or Office 2019 Home and Business could be had for the trivial price of $14.99 instead of well over $200. The Home Use Program […]
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 […]
Microsoft is improving (fixing?) the activation system for Office 365 Home and Personal customers. This comes a few weeks after they announced the same changes for Office 365 Enterprise customers. The per device activation limit will be handled in a much better way. Each Office 365 user is limited to login/activations on five each of desktop programs, tablet […]
It’s quite easy to tell if your Excel 365 has the new Dynamic Arrays. No need to setup a table and use the new feature – just three keypresses are enough. Some people are reporting that they have the right Excel 365 but with no dynamic arrays. Checking the program/app version is possible, see below. […]
After many months of testing, all Excel 365 apps now have dynamic arrays (except Excel Online) – a major and powerful expansion of Excel’s powers. The new abilities, functions and error messages might seem scary but are a great leap forward for Excel. All Excel 365 incarnations, except the browser-based Excel Online, now have dynamic […]
A newly promoted UK politician has his own special style guide for staff, here’s some Word features that can help ensure your documents are approved by the boss. The Right Honourable Jacob William Rees-Mogg (to give his new full title) proudly affects an old-fashioned demeanor and has been described as “on secondment from the 18th […]
There are plenty of options to fit text in Excel but not all of them are obvious. Here’s your choices for wrapping text, adding line breaks and merging cells. At first, when you type text in a cell it just keeps going across the next cell, if it’s empty. Sure, you can drag the edge […]
In August there’ll be some good changes to Office 365 activation for commercial customers. The per device activation limit will be handled in a much better way. Each Office 365 user is limited to login/activations on five each of desktop programs, tablet apps and smartphone apps. That’s a total of 15 devices with a single […]
Microsoft’s Home Use Program is a great way to get Office cheaply including Office 2019, Visio Professional 2019 and Project Professional 2019. The Home Use Program (HUP) has been a way to get Microsoft Office for less than retail for a long time. It’s available to many companies, organizations and government entities with Software Assurance […]
Occasionally OneNote pages or whole notebooks go missing … here’s seven places to try finding them again. Don’t Panic OneNote saves everything … it was designed that way from Day One. It’s unlikely that something has truly been erased. More likely that the page, section or notebook is hiding away somewhere in the depths of […]
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 […]
Most people are familiar with Word’s Spelling & Grammar check functionality, Word’s Readability check is a great extension. Word can check the complexity of your writing, and gives you an idea of whether your writing will be understood by your target audience. We’ll show you how to see Word’s Readability Statistics, what they mean and […]
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 […]
Here’s the enhanced Apollo 11 mission timeline as an Excel worksheet. Office Watch newsletter readers asked for it after last weeks articles using the NASA web page as a data source. Complete Apollo 11 timeline in Excel Things to do with the Apollo 11 timeline in Excel Apollo 11 suggested viewing and reading The full […]
There are many ways to share an entire calendar or individual events in Outlook software. Sharing can be ‘live’ and connected. Any changes or updates to the event or calendar are automatically sent to everyone sharing. Or it can be a ‘one-off’ item. A special attachment which is emailed or a little .ics file. Receivers […]
An Excel worksheet with Apollo 11 timeline can be used to analyze and breakdown the astronaut’s movements plus answer the big question: what time was it when Armstrong walked on the moon? See how we put the Apollo 11 timeline into Excel using Get & Transform or the older Copy/Paste method. Also Add Apollo 11 events […]
NASA has a detailed web page with the timeline of the Apollo 11 mission from before liftoff to well after splashdown It’s an example of the two ways to put a web table into an Excel worksheet. Newer Excel (365, 2019 and 2016) has PowerQuery with ‘Get and Transform’ which is much better. The older […]
Amazon Prime members might have a chance to get Office 365 cheaply while the Prime Day deals are on. The Amazon ‘Prime Day’ runs for two days (go figure), Monday 15th and Tuesday 16th apparently according to local time zones. Office 365 Home is often discounted but rarely to the extent that the Prime Day […]
Sketchy Shapes, the new line option in Office 365 now has a little video to go with it. Sketchy line option in Office for Windows and Mac Sketchy or wriggly lines in Icons and SVG graphics Source: Microsoft
The 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 is our excuse to show-off some features in Outlook for Windows/Mac. How to add past events, post events in other time zones, get reminders of upcoming anniversaries and set reminders for longer times than Outlook allows. Adding Past Events Outlook can save details of past events. That it’s in […]
PowerPoint for Windows and Mac getting much better ink replay and animation support as shown in a new build for Office Insiders. Up to now, digital ink drawings could be replayed as a simple animation. That’s been available for about three years starting with OneNote Mobile. That was OK but, as we noted back in […]
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 […]
It’s time for the July roundup of patches for yet more security bugs in Microsoft Office including Office 365 and Office 2016 for Windows plus Office 2013 and 2010. Plus the latest example of confusing documentation errors. Office 365 and Office 2019 A bug which lets Office Javascript doesn’t check the web page requesting details […]
Here’s another case of someone trying to backdate documents and being caught by hidden details in the file. The font is the giveaway but not in the usual way. It’s the ongoing saga of Craig Wright, once a big name in the cyber-currency game. He’s now involved in a court case about the alleged theft […]
Office for Windows/Mac is getting three new outline styles for the borders of shapes and text boxes. Microsoft calls these lines ‘Sketchy’ because they have a hand-drawn line look. It’s a nice little addition to Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Outlook. Let’s see how it works plus some details and limitations that Microsoft hasn’t mentioned. Source: […]
In Adding Vertical Lines in Word we looked at the many choices for lines down the page. Moving beyond that, let’s look at other vertical non-line choices to spice up a Word document. Sidebar Sidebars are the starting point for many different design element options. You’re not limited to what Microsoft supplies, just use them […]
If you know the trick, Word’s ‘Line Between’ option for multiple columns can be formatted to a different color or other types of line. The downside Word’s standard line between column setting is the lack of formatting. There’s no known way to change the look of the vertical line between columns. Like the old Model […]
