Microsoft 365 – the subscription / annual fee plan for Microsoft Office on Windows, Mac, iPhone, iPad and Android.
Includes Word 365, Excel 365, PowerPoint 365, Outlook 365 and many other ‘365’ programs, apps and services.
Bad bug week for Microsoft email and Outlook.com
Microsoft hasn’t had a good week with their hosted email with two breakdowns of Exchange Online and Outlook.com services. One stopped emails in and out, the other prevented messages from being read. Both Exchange Online (Microsoft 365 hosted email) and Outlook.com run on the same or very similar systems. Usually a reported problem with one […]
Flipgrid now supported in PowerPoint
Flipgrid now joins YouTube, Vimeo, Stream and SlideShare as supported services for PowerPoint online videos. Microsoft’s Flipgrid is an education service for teachers to record videos to share with a class. Students can respond with their own recorded video segments. Drawing, text, emoji and other rich media are available for the videos. Go to Insert […]
Locking Objects on a slide coming to PowerPoint
A much-wanted feature is coming to PowerPoint, the ability to lock an object into position so it can’t accidently be moved out of place. Objects in a slide can too easily move out of place with an accidental tap of a mouse or finger. The problem is even worse with collaborative presentations with many people […]
Sequence() for ordered numbers in Excel 365
Use Sequence() to get an ordered list of numbers either increasing or decreasing and with your choice of increments. Sequence is possibly the least understood of the dynamic array functions but combined with other functions it greatly extends Excel’s power. Sortby(), Filter(), Unique() and RandArray() all have obvious uses but Sequence() seems almost pointless. Here’s […]
Understanding the strange FollowedHyperlink style in Word
There are a few strange, non-standard, behaviors to the FollowedHyperlink style that Word uses for visited links. FollowedHyperlink is a hidden style which Word uses for any link which has been clicked or visited by the current user. Because it’s automatically applied it has some peculiarities that don’t apply to other styles, including its partner […]
Hyperlinks and link styles explained in Word
Word has special styles for hyperlinks which you can change from the standard blue, underlined look. Word link styles have some special behaviors to keep in mind. Word links can look very different or appear no different to regular text. All these are hyperlinks, believe it or not. Hyperlink and FollowedHyperlink Links have two modes […]
Random Numbers and more in Excel
About the RAND() function to make random numbers in Excel plus related functions RandBetween() and RandArray() plus some tricks for getting whole numbers only and even rolling ‘dice’ made in Excel. By Michael Barden Typing the =rand() function into a cell in an Excel spreadsheet will return a random number that is greater than or […]
Sabotaging Excel’s Random Numbers
A reader asks about sabotaging a random number generator. Steven H writes … The article on randomness in Excel was quite interesting, and the link to random.org was neat. Two thoughts come to mind almost immediately though: If you have an application where you absolutely need true random numbers, it is most likely the type […]
Truly random numbers are possible in Excel
With Random.org you can get truly random numbers for Excel plus options not available in the spreadsheet program like random but unique numbers with no repeats and random dates. Using ‘True’ Random numbers in Excel Our article on Random Numbers in Excel continues to surprise us by being one of the most popular pages on our […]
What’s so special about the Bahnschrift font?
Bahnschrift is a Windows font which is a little special and not fully compatible within Office. We’ll explain why it’s special, the extra care needed and the workaround. While it’s listed as an Office Cloud Font, Bahnschrift was originally included with the 2017 ‘Creators’ update of Windows 10. So, it might already be installed for […]
Unique filters in Excel – the manual ‘one-off’ options
There are two a simple ways to make a list of unique or non-duplicate entries from a longer list. Unlike the many automatic ‘unique’ options in Excel, these options work only once but it’s available in many Excel releases, old and new. Advanced Filter One is hiding at Data | Sort & Filter | Advanced […]
Star Wars in the Office dictionary
Since we’re talking about Star Wars, how does Microsoft Office 2016 for Windows handle the words and names from the famous films? A mixed bag. Most of the common names are in the MS Office dictionary but some surprising omissions. The evil Emperor isn’t included. Planet Tatooine has a major part in the movies but […]
Inside the new Microsoft 365 Subscription Benefits Center
Coming to Microsoft 365 for Windows is the Subscription Benefits Center, a new way to introduce innovations in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. It appears as a diamond icon at top right. That opens a pane over your existing document with three tabs, Home, Apps & Benefits and Premium Features. Here’s how it currently looks. […]
Unique() makes a once difficult task really easy in Excel
The new Unique() dynamic array function doesn’t let you do anything new in Excel, but it makes a once-complicated task into simplicity itself. Unique or distinct, no-duplicate lists, counting and sorting the results are all possible with easy formulas that won’t confuse. For as long as there’s been Excel, people have wanted to get ‘unique’ […]
Extend UNIQUE() for distinct values that appear more than once
Excel’s Unique() function itself can’t show distinct values that appear more than once in a list. Repeated only items in a distinct list are possible with a simple extended formula. We’ve already shown the basics of Unique() either getting a list of Distinct values or values that only appear once aka Unique. But Unique() doesn’t […]
Have your say on Word’s new default font
Microsoft has decided that Calibri is getting a little tired, so it’s asking customers to vote on which font will replace it. Calibri has been the default font since Office 2007. It’s familiar to most people whether they realise it or not because it appears in many Word documents. The two fonts, Calibri (body text) […]
