Office Watch has a presence on Facebook, finally, https://www.facebook.com/OfficeWatch/ Our new Facebook page has the very latest Office related news posted to it as soon as we publish. Go to https://www.facebook.com/OfficeWatch/ and click Follow to see our posts in your timeline. Admittedly, we’ve been slow to adopt social media. We’ve focused on quality Office journalism, […]
Office-Watch.com has joined Instagram — the photo sharing site. The Instagram posts act as another way to get the latest Office news to you immediately. We’re @officewatch or https://www.instagram.com/officewatch/ A few readers have asked us to do this and we’re happy to oblige. We’re not entirely sure that Microsoft Office news is suitable to Instagram. Let’s face […]
The Dubai font inspired us to look at the currency symbol for the United Arab Emirates – the Dirham. A quick guide for those of us who don’t know any Arabic! There’s no direct symbol for the Dirham – unlike the dollar, Euro or Yen/Yuan. The usual prefix is DH or Dhs , just plain […]
If you send an email to an invalid email address, that address will ‘stick’ in Outlook via the AutoComplete list. Here’s how to fix that. Let’s say you send an email to fence@fred.daggcom (misplaced period/fullstop). The email will ‘bounce’ with an error message. Despite that, the wrong email address still appears in the AutoComplete list. […]
Facebook Messenger is the instant messaging part of anyone’s Facebook account but it’s not something that everyone likes … far from it. We all have many forms of communication clamoring for our attention – phone calls, SMS/texts, email to various accounts and instant messaging. Checking each of these can be a pain in the (you […]
Windows Movie Maker is a simple and free video editor from Microsoft. Officially it’s no longer available but it’s still available if you know the magic spell. Earlier this month we explained how to get the much-loved Office Picture Manager even though it’s been officially removed from Office. Movie Maker was part of Windows Essentials, […]
You’ve chosen an image, now you have to get it into your Office document. You’d hope there was a single way to do that but, as usual, there’s plenty of options. Outlook has its own special needs, different from Word, Excel and PowerPoint. There’s also privacy and image size issues to consider. The simple way […]
WhatsApp, the popular messaging system, has added a new security feature that’s being called ‘Two Factor Authentication’ but it’s NOT. Really the new option is more annoying than helpful. We’re not the only ones critical of WhatsApp and it’s lip-service attitude to security. The company adds security features but too often they don’t meet the […]
In How to share a single Excel worksheet or tab we explained how to send or share a single Excel worksheet or tab from a larger workbook. That’s OK as a one-off measure to send out a sheet but how can you do it easily as a share or ongoing collaboration? The answer is a little […]
Is it possible to share or send a single Excel tab or worksheet from an entire spreadsheet? Sharing a single worksheet or tab isn’t possible. Excel’s sharing features work on the workbook or entire document level. But it is possible to send out or share a single worksheet/tab with a little workaround. Definitions These terms […]
Styles can be saved in the document but are most effective when saved in a template. Changing the style in a template will affect any document that uses the same template. At the bottom of the Modify Style dialog are two choices for where to save the style. Microsoft has reworded the choices to make […]
Word lets us down when it comes to viewing a documents styles and how they link together. The only way to see a detailed list of styles is to Print them! In the print pane, choose the print what list and you’ll see the little known ‘Styles’ option. (Tip: Use Print to PDF to save […]
Styles in Microsoft Word would be very cumbersome if you had to set up each one individually. To make it easier, styles have inheritance. A new style is usually a copy, linked to an existing style with just some changes to selected items. Here’s an example of inheritance in a simple Word document. This is […]
Originally, Word only had paragraph styles. Styles could only be applied to an entire paragraph. Any changes to an individual word or phrase had to be done individually. Character Styles More recently, we got Character Styles. Now you can have a style that can apply to any group of letters or words in a paragraph. […]
A style is a collection of formatting choices combined under a single name. Any word or even a single letter has a collection of formatting settings as well. Font: size, color, bold/italic/underline/strikethrough/subscript/superscript, highlighting and more. Position: Left, Center, Right, Justified. List: bullet, numbering. Line Spacing, Borders, Background color and a lot more details. Instead of […]
We’ll start 2017 with a look at some commonly used characters used in Office but are missing from the standard keyboard. How to insert symbols on a ‘one-off’ basis or insert quickly for more commonly used characters. Degree mark for temperature. Has no special shortcut but you can make one (see below). Currency symbols. We […]
Sometimes Outlook ‘forgets’ that it’s the place for all email work. You click on an email address and should get an Outlook new message window. Windows 8 users get the (almost) useless Mail app filling their screen. The problem isn’t Outlook, its Windows and something that’s changed the Windows default action for making a new […]
Entering blocks of text in Excel is quite easy. What’s not obvious are all the options to make the text easier to enter and look better. Just typing in a cell will enter text. By default it will extend into any unfilled cells. If there’s something ‘in the way’ the text will just stop. Wrapping […]
In Outlook 2013 you may have noticed the ‘Link Contacts …’ item on each contact card. We’ll explain why it’s there and what it can do for you. Link Contacts is different from ‘Contact Linking’ that’s been available in many versions of Outlook. Contact Linking lets you connect a contact with a specific appointment, task […]
You can select almost anything in Windows to paste into OneNote or paste a link to the original content. Clipper You can select web page content, copy then paste it into OneNote. If you do that, OneNote will automatically add a link to the original page. Or install the OneNote Clipper. This is a browser […]
OneNote has been around since 2003 and is available to many Office users as part of their Office suite or subscription. Why not try OneNote, it’s worth a look since it can be very useful. What is OneNote We’ll skip past the Microsoft hype and tell you that OneNote is a place for notes of […]
Last week the US government made an important decision in favor of ‘net neutrality’ and got a quick complaint back in Morse Code! Verizon issued a press release complaining about the FCC’s decision. The company could make a lot of money if net neutrality was abandoned but that doesn’t play well to the public. Instead […]
Managing your Deleted Items folder You might think that when you delete something in Outlook, it’s gone. Nope, Outlook has a safety net, just like Windows does for files. In fact Outlook can have multiple safety nets to let you recover accidentally deleted files. That’s a good thing because sometimes we accidently delete an item […]
You might think that the hyphen is a simple small horizontal line … but no. There’s hidden depths even in horizontal lines within Microsoft Word. Let’s start with the standard hyphen, actually called a ‘Hyphen-Minus’ with ASCII code 45. That hyphen is the one to separate hyphenated words. We have more on hyphenation and special […]
A substantially improved and upgraded Organizing Outlook Email ebook is available right now. The 3rd edition goes deep into Outlook 2013/2010 & 2007 with new ways to get the most out of your email. The Third Edition is totally updated and revised to cover Outlook 2013/2010 & 2007 email management in detail. There are all sorts of features in Outlook to […]
A few questions from readers about their ISP (Internet Service Provider) based email service that comes with their internet access. We’ll try to explain what normally happens. Keep in mind that each ISP has it’s own rules so you should check with them. Michael B writes: “Once I switch to RoadRunner, will Earthlink disappear our Earthlink […]
Here’s how to troubleshoot your Outlook connections to POP, IMAP and SMTP accounts. Outlook has a ‘Test Account Settings’ button that makes testing a lot easier (also Auto Configuration for many accounts). It’s there when you setup or change account settings. Click on the button and Outlook will try to receive and send messages using […]
It’s hard to move from an email account you’ve used for years, but there’s a simple way to make the move easier. The main reason why Internet Service Providers give email accounts with all their connections (dial-up or broadband) is to make it harder for you to switch to another connection. If you’ve used their […]
I know talking about styles in Word makes eyes glaze over but they are a really useful part of Word (plus Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook). Today I watched an ‘experienced’ Word user reformatting a document. He laboriously worked through the document, selecting paragraphs, phrases and even individual words then clicking on the ribbon to change […]
Many reports about hacking into ‘Outlook’ had many regular Outlook software users rightly worried, especially if they are in China, Hong Kong or Macau. Don’t panic – a lot of the reporting was poorly worded and showed an ignorance of the difference between Outlook software (as sold/rented with Microsoft Office) and Outlook.com, Microsoft’s free email […]
It’s been a long-standing problem for laptop users – you have Outlook running nicely at home but when you travel it’s impossible to send messages. Here’s what’s happening and how to avoid it. The fix, that should work for most situations is to change the Outlook account settings to login for both receiving and sending […]
It’s an old problem that keeps coming up – an email arrives with a winmail.dat attachment. We’ll explain and how to fix it from receivers and senders point of view. Winmail.dat problems were once common. They don’t happen a lot these days because Microsoft Outlook and Exchange Server both have default options to stop it. […]
It’s an old problem that keeps coming up – an email arrives with a winmail.dat attachment. We’ll explain and how to fix it from receivers point of view. Winmail.dat problems were once common. They don’t happen a lot these days because Microsoft Outlook and Exchange Server both have default options to stop it. But Office-Watch.com […]
Here’s what to do if someone complains that you’re sending winmail.dat attachments with your emails. The problem is in Outlook and you need to change some settings. The setting might be global for all emails but you may need to check the settings for an individual contact or email address. Overall Setting New messages are […]
The BBC has an interesting piece on the effect of AutoCorrect and word suggestions for quicker typing. I dunno about ‘boring’ but AutoCorrect in Office does have a downside – it makes you and your typing fingers stupid. If you type stupdi into Word it will fix it to stupid as soon as you […]
Of course, you can’t fully send emails from Outlook if the computer isn’t connected to the Internet … but it’s surprising how many people don’t know they can write and click Send any time – whether the computer is connected to the Internet or not. We often use the relatively interruption free time on planes […]
The Florida Center for Investigative Reporting has released the emails of Governor Jeb Bush during his tenure as Florida’s governor. That’s of interest to us since the information is available in its original Outlook data file form. Before anyone gets angry with us … we are not making any political comment here nor any statement […]
One of the frustrations about the ‘pane’ interface in Office 2010 and Office 2013 is the failure to include all the features that customers were accustomed to from the standard File dialog boxes. Microsoft added new and useful features like pinning and removing from the list (for privacy) but didn’t bother with existing features. The […]
Last week we looked at the Find function in Word, now we’ll check out Replace which lets you substitute one thing for another in your document. You’re probably familiar with the basics. Press Ctrl + H to open the Replace dialog. Type in the text to look for ‘Find what’ and the text to replace […]
There is a way to make a shortcut or menu button to jump directly to the Find dialog box, as compared to the Navigation pane which is now the default for Ctrl + F. Thanks to all the Office Watch readers who sent in the tip including: Karen, Ron, Geoff, Calvin and Alice. Also thanks […]
