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.
Text predictions will type for you in Outlook and Word
Word and Outlook are getting a new text prediction feature which suggests the rest of a sentence and phrase as you type. It’s like an advanced form of autocomplete that appears in browsers. As you type, the rest of a word or more will appear in light gray. Accept the text prediction, press Tab. Reject […]
‘Outlook’ has another breakdown – the second this week
Microsoft isn’t having a good week with yet another breakdown of their cloud services. This time it’s their mail hosting infrastructure for Microsoft 365 hosted mailboxes and Outlook.com . The troubles started early on Thursday 1st October 2020 (before 7am UTC ) Initially it seemed to only affect Outlook on the Web (formerly Outlook Web […]
Custom Data Types are great in Excel 365
Microsoft has done a clever thing, combining two important Excel features into a new and really useful addition – Custom Data Types. Excel 365 for Windows/Mac already has Stock and Geography data types to drop live information into workbooks. It’s now possible to make your own Custom Data Types (CDT) that work the same way. […]
When and how to switch from Office 2010 – your questions answered
Office 2010 ends support on 13 October 2020 and we’ve been receiving questions from readers asking about switching to newer Microsoft Office. We’ll answer questions about when to update, what to replace Office 2010 and important factors to consider. We’re hearing concerns about privacy in modern Office, reliability and the constant, monthly, changes in the […]
Microsoft 365 offline! What happened and what you should do
Microsoft 365 suffered a major outage of their online and cloud services. Here’s what we know, where we stand now and how to reduce your risk of trouble with future problems. The online services from Microsoft could not be accessed from about 5pm Monday (US Eastern) that included Office logins, Outlook/Hotmail, Teams and more. It […]
Do you have Application Guard for Microsoft Office?
Microsoft 365 Enterprise customers can now try Application Guard as a new way to protect against malicious documents infecting computers.What is Application Guard and what it means for Office 365 Application Guard is a combination of Windows 10 Defender and Office programs that opens a suspect document in a special way. With hardware virtualization, the […]
Nifty new adaptive mini-toolbar coming to Word 365
Microsoft Word is getting the adaptive mini-toolbar. The extension to the mini-toolbar appeared in preview versions of PowerPoint recently. Now it’s in Word previews as well. The buttons on the right change according to how you use Word. Compare that to the current Word mini-toolbar with a fixed list of buttons. The Word 365 adaptive […]
iOS 14 changes give you improvements in Outlook and OneDrive
Apple’s iOS 14 for iPhone and iPad have some useful new features. Change default mail and web apps, Widgets, Scribble and Translate. Microsoft wasted no time improving Outlook to take advantage and adding a little extra to OneDrive. iOS 14 was released with very little notice to app developers. Most were ready for the change […]
Fill in a PDF form with your signature
There are several ways to fill in a PDF form and add your signature with Microsoft Word, Acrobat Reader or online services. All these tips are free with nothing to pay. It’s possible to ‘sign’ a PDF form and return it without making a paper copy. Paper forms are so 2019 <g>. There’s no need […]
PowerPoint mini-toolbar expands with adaptive extras
PowerPoint for Windows is getting a new mini-toolbar with adaptive extra features. Some of the buttons will change depending on the tools you most commonly use. The mini-toolbar is in all Office apps, it appears whenever you select something. At the moment, the options are the same with basic formatting (font, size, color,bold, highlighting, Format […]
Easy Office document hacking with VBA Stomping or Purging
Common programming tools can be used to make malicious Office workbooks which bypass both online security checks and Microsoft’s own protections in Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Access. We’ll explain what’s happening and what Microsoft could do better. VBA Purging or VBA Stomping are clever tricks to make an Office documents (e.g. .xlsm Excel workbook) with […]
The new iPad Air and Microsoft 365 extra cost
The latest iPad Air is interesting but, like many iPad’s there’s a hidden extra cost because of Microsoft 365 licence rules. The new iPad Air has the usual changes, a faster processor and slightly better screen. The big changes are: Fingerprint login is combined with the Power button USB-C connector instead of Apple proprietary Lightning […]
Customer login now required to use Microsoft 365 apps
There’s a change in the way Microsoft 365 works with a sign-in to a Microsoft account. This applies to Word 365, Excel 365, PowerPoint 365 and other Office apps. Up to recently, Microsoft 365 / Office 365 has worked normally either when signed into a Microsoft account or not. Having a Microsoft account wasn’t required […]
How Microsoft 365 counts your sign-ins, not installs
There was a big change to Office 365 / Microsoft licenses on 1 October 2018. Microsoft 365 counts logins not installations It’s a totally new way of counting and limiting use of Microsoft Office. As long as there’s been Office, licenses have been based on installations of Office. A single Home or Personal plan user […]
Beware popular but fake Microsoft and Microsoft 365 login pages
Fake login pages for Microsoft 365, OneDrive or Outlook.com are now the second most common phishing targets. Links in emails or messages to these bogus pages which grab your email and password for hackers to steal your secrets, or those of your company. Ironside reports that Microsoft related fake login pages are only second to […]
Two Factor Authentication: Straight Talk
The latest ebook from Office-Watch.com is a little different, it’s a heartfelt ‘Thank You’ to our Office Watch donors. Peter Deegan has been quite astonished and humbled by the generosity of readers to our reader appeal. Both the money and kind remarks have been a considerable morale boost quite beyond the practical help that the […]
