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 […]
Updating Office or Windows isn’t an easy choice, you’re taking a risk no matter what you choose. Star Trek fans know about these ‘no win scenarios’ aka ‘Kobayashi Maru’ At Office-Watch.com we’re often asked what to do about updating and, frankly, it’s hard for us to give a simple answer. Like any trainee Starfleet officer, […]
Microsoft’s PR department must be laughing themselves silly this week. A press release for an existing Excel feature is getting wide coverage even though there’s nothing new and the feature is at least six months old. The blog posting on 5 June 2019 announces Microsoft is working with “Nasdaq and Refinitiv to pull current financial […]
While most Office users have nothing to worry about, there are big changes in the next macOS codenamed Catalina. macOS v10.15 Catalina will be released for Mac computers later this year and represents a major change. Catalina = 64-bit programs only For the first time, macOS Catalina will only work with 64-bit programs. That’s not […]
Excel Mobile’s Data from Picture has one big problem, it can’t figure out what’s intended to be in one cell and puts text in many cells. Cell discernment is Data from Picture’s biggest weakness and the Review process makes it hard to fix those problems. For example, text using Excel’s own Accounting format which puts […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
Follow these simple, legal, steps to get 13 months of Office 365 Home or Personal for less than what Microsoft charges for just a year. Some readers seem to doubt renewing separately from Microsoft is possible or even allowed. It’s definitely possible and permitted. Microsoft doesn’t make it obvious that customers can buy elsewhere because […]
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 […]
How to tell which Office 365 plan (Personal, Home, University etc.) you’ve bought and the expiry date. Or maybe you’re sharing an Office 365 Home plan. The Office 365 plan, status and expiry doesn’t appear in the Office software (that would be too easy). See: Office 365 which email address am I using? Instead, go to […]
Each Office 365 account is linked to a specific email address, how can you find out which address you’re using for your Office 365 login? This might seem like a strange question but we hear it quite often. Most of us have multiple email addresses and it’s easy to get confused about which address is […]
Office 365 customers will be seeing a set of opening screens about how Microsoft gathers and uses customer data. Those screens are carefully worded to avoid some hard truths about modern cloud connections and cover Microsoft from legal liability. Cloud features can be great and very useful. Companies do their best to hide the problems, […]
Microsoft has something ‘new’ in Office 365 they call ‘Connected Experiences’. It’s really a new, fancy name for things we already have. Connected Experiences is the new catchphrase for the cloud services already in Office 365 software or apps. It’s the various features which require customer data sent to Microsoft’s servers. According to Microsoft: “Office […]
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 […]
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 […]
Google has announced that their G Suite customers will be able to edit and collaborate with Microsoft Office documents. It will be available to all G Suite users by the end of May 2019. Source: Google. Until now, a clumsy Office compatibility app for Chrome allowed Microsoft Office documents to be edited in Google Docs, […]
Slack, the popular collaboration service, has added better integration with Office 365 hosting and OneDrive. Office 365 tools were inevitable because Microsoft now has Teams, its own rival to Slack. There are two new tools, Outlook email and calendar plus nice previews of Microsoft Office documents. Office document preview Now included in Slack is better […]
