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 […]
Drop Caps are very old fashioned, there’s space left for them in the oldest printed books in the world, the Gutenberg Bibles. You can do the same thing, a lot more easily, in Microsoft Word. In this Office-Watch.com article we’ll go beyond the simple ‘how to’ for Drop Cap. There’s the basic settings supplied by […]
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 […]
You can use Find combined with your own actions and easily switch between the Find and editing. That’s great for situations where a simple Replace command isn’t enough. Because Find results show up in the left-hand pane or dialog box, you can move between find results, change the text in or around each result before […]
Ever since Microsoft put in the Navigation Pane, they’ve messed up access to the Advanced Find dialog box. A few readers were surprised to discover that the old Find dialog had been hiding under that little arrow on the side. Dan H. writes “You rightly mention Microsoft’s infuriating switcharoo on the familiar Ctl-F shortcut for […]
Following on from our introduction ‘Find in Word’ here’s some Word Find tricks that you might find useful. Select and Find If you select some text in a document then use the Ctrl + F shortcut, Word will find other instances of the selection in the current document. Find blank lines Finding and removing blank […]
We’ve all seen the standard Find/Replace in Word, either the ‘new’ pane or the older dialog box. Like so much else in Word, there’s a lot more available than the obvious features. Here’s a look at some of tricks. Press Ctrl + F to start a Find. In recent versions of Word, the Navigation pane […]
When you type or paste a web link into Office, it normally converts it into a web link automatically. But occasionally that feature doesn’t work right. We found one example when researching the famous artist Roy Lichtenstein and one of his best known works. Click on the image to see the Wikipedia article about Whaam! […]
A friend is expecting a parcel via Fedex and got the email shown below, so they wondered if it was really from the courier company or not. This particular email got past both the Gmail and Outlook spam filters. We thought it was a good example to use of the tell-tale signs to look for […]
Outlook has had a Categories feature for a long time … here’s how you can use it and why. Categories let you group Outlook items (emails, contacts, calendar and tasks) into broad topic areas or subjects … all without moving from their original folders. They can be subjects that a normal Outlook search could not […]
We’ve already looked at Microsoft Office document properties features. They are fully featured in Word and have limited availability in Excel so now we look at PowerPoint. PowerPoint has little document automation. Word users are often surprised to discover that even basic field codes don’t exist in PowerPoint. As a result, PowerPoint has no direct […]
We’ve already told you about document properties and how useful they are in Word. We also complained about the poor support for properties in Excel. You can add and edit document properties in worksheets much the same as in Word documents. Go to File | Info in Excel 2013 (Prepare | Properties in Excel 2007) […]
While delving into the details of Office document properties, we found some curious anomalies. They aren’t major but worth keeping in mind if you use document properties in Word documents. When you enter a document property it should just add the text and the same document property will show the same text in each place […]
Microsoft Office has Ebola … meaning it’s in the supplied dictionaries for Word 2013, Word 2010 and Word 2007. As a proper noun, the disease name has a capital letter. Without it, Word marks it as a spelling error. The surname Pooley isn’t in the dictionary and, as we’ll see, maybe deserves to be better […]
Document Properties is one of those long-standing parts of Office that is worth another look. It can be quite useful and not always in the ways that Microsoft intends. At first, document properties looks like a fixed and rigid feature with limited use. However it can be used in much wider and creative ways. Any […]
In this article we’ll go over some of the, still, little understood ribbon features before looking how to get rid of the ribbon entirely. Yesterday I met a guy who absolutely hates the Office ribbon and wanted tips on how to get rid of it. I didn’t see his Office setup but from the description […]
