It’s been a busy few weeks for Richard Appiah Akoto the Ghanaian teacher who taught Microsoft Word with only a blackboard. Mr Akoto was flown to Singapore for a Microsoft Education conference where he received a standing ovation. Quite something for his first trip outside Ghana. “I wanted to teach them how to launch Microsoft […]
With all the news about data leaks from Facebook and others, we thought it was time to restate our privacy policy. Office-Watch.com deliberately keeps as little information as possible about our readers and customers. That costs us dearly as a business but we feel it’s the right thing to do. Newsletters For our newsletters, all we […]
Outlook has a really annoying and inconsistent physical address glitch that Microsoft has ignored for years while it’s rival at Google got it right from the start. The problem comes when you paste an address into the Location field of an appointment. Very often, addresses are formatted across two or more lines like this: As […]
A follow up on our story about the Corel patent case and the more confusing case of a developers licence to use the MS Office ribbon interface. As we noted, the Microsoft page that explained the rules for using the Office interface were ‘retired’ even though they are still relevant. Even more relevant since Corel […]
A rare factual error in Last Week Tonight with John Oliver that, amazingly, is related to Microsoft Word. In an item about The White House Calligrapher, Oliver said the job was easy because there’s already a font with the job title in Microsoft Word. And he shows a Word for Mac font list with a […]
A follow up on the story of the Ghanian teacher who has to draw Microsoft Word on his blackboard to teach the program. He’s Richard Appiah Akoto a 33 year old teacher at Betenase M/A Junior High School in the town of Sekyedomase in central Ghana. A place so obscure, by modern standards, that it […]
Here’s how to stop Office Watch, or other newsletters, from being moved from the Gmail Inbox to the ‘Spam’ folder or their ‘Promotions’ tab. At the moment neither Office Watch nor our friends at Popbitch are considered ‘spam’ by Gmail, but that can change. Any changes you make to Gmail’s settings have to be made […]
Here’s how to stop Outlook.com/Hotmail from wrongly marking email as spam. These are messages that end up in the Junk Email folder. We’ve already explained how to move messages from the Junk Email folder to your Inbox. But that doesn’t stop future messages from the same sender going to the Junk Email folder. The option […]
Microsoft’s mail service Outlook.com moves Office Watch to Junk Email. Here’s how to stop it doing that. The same advice applies to other newsletters and emails that are wrongly marked as Spam / Junk Email. The famous UK newsletter, Popbitch, is treated the same way. Spam filters aren’t perfect No spam filter is perfect, they […]
The Corel patent dispute raises the interesting question, can other developers use the Ribbon interface in their own products? The answer isn’t clear. There was a clear path to follow but Microsoft has managed to confuse the issue. The Ribbon with it’s tabs, buttons, galleries, collapsing view as the window narrows etc was developed by […]
A jury has found Corel guilty of six patent violations in it’s WordPerfect and QuattroPro products which have breached Microsoft Office related patents. Yes, WordPerfect and QuattroPro are still out there! We were surprised too. The patents relate to the Office interface like the ribbon. In WordPerfect, Corel even goes so far as to say […]
SoftMaker Office is moving into the Macintosh world with the public beta/preview of Office 2018 for Mac. Softmaker is a German based company that already makes Office suite software for Windows, Linux and Android. Source: Softmaker The Office for Mac suite contains a word processor, TextMaker 2018. The spreadsheet PlanMaker 2018 and presentation application Presentations […]
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, […]
The makers of Wannacrypt made some quick money for a small investment. That means other’s will copy their success or take advantage of the fear and confusion. WannaCrypt has received a lot of attention but it’s important to remember that ransomware isn’t new. The global publicity about WannaCrypt changed how it was handled. It’s different from […]
There’s now a way to recover files locked up by Wannacrypt ransomware without paying the attackers a thing but there are some catches. Adrien Guinet at Quarkslab has developed Wcry, decryption code for WannaCrypt. At the time of writing it only works for Windows XP computers, even then, it needs a bit of luck. Windows […]
Microsoft overuses the term ‘exciting’ to describe their latest work but the new ‘Transform by Example’ for Excel looks genuinely exciting. However you get data for Excel, the common problem is ‘massaging’ it to fit your needs. Dates need changing to match Excel, addresses need splitting into address/state/zip and names separated into first/middle/last. Excel’s Get […]
A New York Times article raises our blood pressure and not because the paper is a mouthpiece for left wing bleeding hearts and fellow travelers.* In Ransomware Attack, Where Does Microsoft’s Responsibility Lie? accepts the standard line that Microsoft is doing its best to solve security problems as they arise. No mention that Microsoft made […]
Microsoft played a great PR game over the last few days. They managed to deflect responsibility for the WannaCrypt ransomware global outbreak and even make the company look like the victim. Make no mistake, the main responsibility for the WannaCrypt trouble lies with Microsoft. Some blame can be directed to the US Intelligence agencies and […]
Microsoft has moved quickly to block a security hole in their own anti-virus software, Windows Defender. We’re used to seeing email or instant messaging used to infect a computer when opening a document in Word or Excel, maybe an email in Outlook. But this is quite different and very worrying. The bug is in Microsoft’s […]
There’s no doubt that the Microsoft Surface is a nice piece of kit but you pay extra for it and even more than that! Microsoft’s usual trick in promoting their Surface machines is to EXclude the price of the keyboard. That lets them promote a lower headline price which most media copy into their puff […]
Sensepost has revealed an interesting way to hack your computer via Outlook. Microsoft’s public response has been to deny there’s a problem and put the responsibility on customers. The method hasn’t been used ‘in the wild’ and it’s not easy to infect Outlook. But we’ve heard that before (especially from Microsoft) and history tells us […]
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 […]
Hyped as the first city to get its own font, Dubai and Microsoft have released the Dubai font. Office-Watch.com looks beyond the press releases for the details on the new font and Dubai font alternatives. Dubai is a sans-serif OpenType font available for Windows and Mac. It’s not a full-range Unicode font but enough for […]
Microsoft Publisher is the ‘desktop publishing’ part of MS Office. It has many formatting options not available in Word and is useful for making marketing documents like brochures, catalogs etc. Publisher was somewhat forgotten because it was only in the high priced Microsoft Office bundles. That changed with arrival of Office 365 ‘subscriptions’. Office 365 […]
Microsoft puts corporate pride and weasel words ahead of their customers safety and security. Hackers take advantage of Microsoft’s patch release scheduled to release a virus as widely as they can in the days before fix was available. The Dridex security bug was known to Microsoft but they stubbornly stuck to their ‘Patch Tuesday’ schedule […]
Microsoft has announced reductions in service for customers who bought the ‘perpetual licence’ or one-off version of Office 2016 for Windows. Veiled? Some commentators are calling it a ‘veiled’ attempt by Microsoft to switch customers from the single-payment purchase to the annual ‘subscription’ system. The move is certainly aimed to do that but it’s hardly […]
We’ve all played Solitaire, it’s been part of Windows since v3.1 but how did it begin? Surely there was a team of Redmond developers dedicated to the task, beavering away day and night, powered by diet cola and chocolate bars? Nope. Solitaire was made by a bored intern at Microsoft who needed something to do! […]
Proton Mail is a secure email service run from Switzerland. How does it compare with standard email using Microsoft Outlook for Windows? Proton Mail is an option to consider if you’re looking for secure email messaging but it’s not as easy to use as some instant messaging services available. Proton Mail is OK but nothing […]
This latest hack into Microsoft Office is called the ‘Dridex Banking Trojan’ in most reports. It takes advantage of a newly discovered security bug in Microsoft Office. Here’s the hard details that are often overlooked in many reports. Microsoft has released patches to close the security breach but not before the hackers were able to […]
The Creators update to Windows 10 is coming this week. Windows 10 for Microsoft Office users, Creators edition is ready now before Microsoft publicly releases the new Windows 10. Past purchasers of Windows 10 for Microsoft Office users get a free update to the new edition. Be ready for the major changes to Windows before […]
OK, we admit this story is a stretch but there’s a point behind the link between this interesting story, Microsoft Word and it’s PDF support. Thomas Royen is a retired statistician who has solved a long standing mathematical question. The Gaussian correlation conjecture (GCC) had beaten experts for years before Herr Royen comes along and […]
It seems that every day there are more suggestions on how to reduce ’email overload’, here’s some that caught our eye. Bain & Company analyzed their staffs use of Microsoft Outlook and similar applications: Senior executives receive more than 200 emails each day A typical frontline supervisor spends about eight hours a week managing emails Of those […]
As a publicity stunt, Microsoft published a list of common grammar mistakes made in Word. It’s strange that one of the listed mistakes is NOT detected even by the latest version of Microsoft Word. Office-Watch.com noticed this curiosity because we tested all Microsoft’s claims against their own Word software. We didn’t just copy the press […]
If you’ve ever used http://docs.com it’s a good idea to check what’s saved there and what public access is set. Login with your Microsoft account (or other login) and check the list of saved documents (click on your name at top right. Depending on your wishes you can: Leave as ‘Public on the web’ Change […]
Avecto’s analysis of Microsoft’s security lapses and patches shows a worrying increase in the number of security vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office when you’d hope to see fewer. Most of the coverage has been on the issue of Administrator access but we’re more worried about the security holes in Office. It’s very concerning to see the […]
It should be no surprise that Amazon is rumored to be working on an Office suite to rival Microsoft Office and Google Docs. The Information is reporting that Amazon wants Office programs to complement their very popular and flexible cloud service – Amazon Web Services AWS. At the moment, this is little more than a […]
Office Picture Manager, the much loved and simple image editor was dropped by Microsoft, but it’s still available. Here’s how to get it for free. There are two ways to get Office Picture Manager (OPM). Both involve doing a custom installation of a larger package, but paring down the setup to just Office Picture Manager […]
Occasionally we’re asked. Should we trust Office patches from Microsoft or not? Why do buggy patches keep happening? There’s no simple answer. It depends on your level of trust in Microsoft and the amount of time you’re prepared to spend manually checking and installing patches. Office-watch.com has been writing about problems with updating and patching […]
Office 2016 for Windows is being updated by Microsoft so our Office 2016: the real startup guide has a 2nd edition to include the latest new features. The work was done by Peter Deegan in Nepal. Some people go to Nepal for trekking in the Himalayas, others to enjoy the lovely valleys and villages. Peter […]
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 […]
