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 […]
Microsoft and Samsung have a long announcement about Windows, Office and the new Samsung Note10 but there’s little really new. Under the bland title “Microsoft and Samsung partner to empower you to achieve more” is a carefully worded press release which mostly goes over existing Microsoft products which are available in other Samsung products and […]
A report commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security warns government departments NOT to use Microsoft Office Online or the apps for Apple or Android. The Privacy Company report was made public with the Ministry’s permission via two blog posts short and long. Many governments and organizations have legitimate concerns about the amount […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 for Android has reached a billion installs. That’s a real Billion not a Microsoft hype billion. It’s even more impressive than it seems. The billion number is counted by Google on Google Play. Microsoft loves quoting high numbers especially ‘Billion’ even when it makes little sense. But this is different. The statistic comes […]
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 […]
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 […]
OneDrive Personal Vault is a coming additional part of OneDrive storage that adds more security for important files synchronized with cloud storage. We’ll describe Personal Vault as we know it from Microsoft’s description. There are many unanswered questions about Personal Vault that will have to wait until it’s live and available for review. Personal Vault […]
Microsoft is expanding OneDrive storage for paying customers, either as part of an Office 365 plan or paying separately. Office 365 Home, Personal and other plans already include a Terabyte of OneDrive cloud storage per user. Now it’s possible to expand beyond 1TB online storage, for a monthly fee, up to 2TB. Additional storage is […]
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 […]
Excel 365’s new ‘Data from Picture’ feature is now available for iPhone and iPad. It converts a photo into a spreadsheet grid you can work from. We told you about ‘Data from Picture’ back in March when it became available in Excel for Android. Data from Picture is on the Insert tab between Table and […]
How does Excel 365’s Data from Picture work outside the carefully selected demos shown by Microsoft? Data from Picture converts a photo of a document or table into an Excel worksheet. It does that by sending the image to Microsoft’s cloud servers for interpretation. The converted table comes back to your device for review and […]
Microsoft has announced that the Office apps for Android won’t update for older versions of Android. These are the Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook apps for Android. Quietly, the system requirements were changed to cover only the last four major versions of Android. Misleading news alert Despite what you may have read, the Office apps […]
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 […]
Does Excel have enough significant digits for Pi in the inbuilt Pi() function? Modern computing can calculate Pi to 3.14 trillion digits which is a good trick but even extreme situations only needs Pi to 15 significant digits. What’s extreme? How about interplanetary travel? JPL/NASA calculate the paths of probes to Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and […]
Usually, WhatsApp sends a small version of an image not the full size original. Here’s how to send the proper picture on Apple iPhones for editing and viewing on larger screens. In short: send the image using the Document option instead of Camera! A similar trick is possible in WhatsApp for Android. ‘Document’ will send […]
Make WhatsApp send and receive the original picture on Android devices for editing and viewing on larger screens. Usually, WhatsApp sends a small version of an image not the full size original. Find out more at Make WhatsApp send full size, original photos iPhone too! Send a full, original image by WhatsApp for iPhone In short: send […]
There’s a simple trick to make WhatsApp send full size, original pictures instead of smaller versions that WhatsApp usually sends. Sending the original, unchanged picture is better for display on larger screens and especially for editing the image. It’s best to have good resolution pictures in Word and especially PowerPoint presentations. Choose the send option […]
Excel for Android has a new trick, converting photos of tables or other documents into worksheets. As usual, some conditions and limitations apply to Insert Data from Picture that are overlooked in the usual hype. The idea is simple, take a photo of a table or grid in a document then Excel will convert it […]
Many new emoji are now in the official Unicode list but we’ll have to wait for them to appear in Word or Outlook emails. After the Unicode Consortium ratifies additions to the vast character list, it takes some time for Microsoft, Apple and others to add the emoji to their fonts. The 2019 Emoji list […]
We’re delighted to announce something new at the Office Watch bookstore. Beating Bots, Spies & Cock-ups is all about safely and securely sending files and documents. Keeping your personal and business information private on the Internet. suits Windows and Mac, Office 365, Office 2019, Office 2016 and earlier We all send personal information over the Internet. […]
Apple and Microsoft have come to terms and now you can buy an Office 365 ‘subscription’ plan from the Apple App Store. Why do such a silly thing? We’ve seen a lot of hype about Office 365’s arrival in the App Store. Commentators almost hyperventilating with excitement including the phrase ‘rejoicing throughout the land’ apparently […]
Windows 10 Mobile will end support in December 2019, the latest in a long line of failed attempts by Microsoft to produce a smartphone version of Windows. Smartphones with Windows 10 will continue to work, of course. So will the Office apps for Win 10 Mobile. But there’ll be no more security patches, features or […]
Pantone has announced its Color of the Year for 2019 but before you run off to grab color swatches, here’s how to get it in Microsoft Office – Word, Excel, PowerPoint etc. The color of 2019 is <drum roll> ….. Living Coral … As usual what’s more amazing than the color is the description from […]
The late and much missed musician Prince wished to be known by single character symbol called ‘Love Symbol Number 2’. Here’s how to enter that unique symbol in Word, PowerPoint or Microsoft Office generally. There are various methods suggested on the Internet, we’ve narrowed then down to one excellent option (SVG graphic) two others that […]
The new iPad Pro’s announced today by Apple come with an extra cost to use Microsoft Office. Office Mobile apps for iPad are usually free for everyone. There are some extras for Office 365 customers but most of the app features are available for all comers. But the new iPad Pro’s, like their predecessor Pro […]
Microsoft has added the Dictation feature to the browser based versions of Word and OneNote. You can speak and words will appear in Word/OneNote using the cloud ‘speech to text’ feature. Source: Microsoft Dictation is already available in Word 365 for Windows. Office for Mac users have a ‘voice to text’ feature available in the […]
Office for iOS (iPhone / iPad ) is getting the Icons or SVG support already available in Word 365 for Windows. Icons now available to Office iOS Insiders on the Insert tab. There are 500 to choose from … Source: Microsoft Available in the Word, Excel and PowerPoint apps for Android. Icons are really SVG […]
Excel for Android is getting the ability to insert numbers and text from a picture. Insert | Data from Picture is now available to Office for Android Insiders and will rollout to the public in coming months. It’s OCR (Optical Character Recognition) specialized for Excel. Source: Microsoft You can get a similar result by taking […]
Word, Excel, PowerPoint and other Office apps for Windows 10 have been sidelined by Microsoft with no new features planned. Bad news for anyone still using a Windows Phone. The Windows 10/Mobile apps will continue to work but no more features are planned. This ‘no more features’ decision appears to apply to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, […]
After our recent Excel worksheet for visitors to Europe we were asked for a similar one to help people stay onside with the UK Statutory Residence Test (SRT). This is a test to decide if someone is a UK resident for tax purposes. Depending on the situation, a person can be in the UK for […]
The August Insiders update for Word and PowerPoint for Android have improved Zoom features plus another option is entirely missing! We’ve tested these features to see how they really work, assuming the promoted features are there at all. Office Watch hasn’t taken Microsoft at their word. We’ve tried out the software to see how the […]
Here’s a quick look at some of the modest Excel tricks we used to make the Schengen Visa Calculation worksheet. Table Making the itinerary list an Excel Table lets us make use of some features. Formatting It’s a lot easier to format as a table with banded rows. We’ve turned off the Table | Filter […]
Android users can get some extra features like Word count and landscape editing of PowerPoint slides in the July 2018 updates to Office for Android apps. Version 16.0.10325.20043 of the apps are now available. Most likely, Google Play will update your device automatically. Word Count in Word for Android The document word count appears as […]
