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.
Protect or Encrypt Your Excel Workbooks
In Excel there are various ways to either protect sheets or cells from access, make a them read-only or totally encrypt the workbook with a strong password. It’s important to understand the difference in Excel between Protect and the stronger Encrypt feature. Excel’s password protection is more complicated than in Word or PowerPoint because there […]
Excel increase/decrease decimal buttons change
Keep a close eye on the increase/decrease decimals buttons on the Excel ribbon because Microsoft has changed them for one version of Excel. Increase / decrease decimals is a very common Excel feature to change the visible accuracy of a number. For example, choosing Currency or Accounting style (which defaults to two decimal places / […]
How to protect Excel sheets from unwanted changes – Part 1
Protecting an important Excel worksheet from careless editing, or allowing only specific cells to be modified is all part of a powerful and highly flexible feature in Microsoft Excel known collectively as “Protect”. It’s been there for a long time but is little understood, so we’ll do our humble best to fix that. The idea […]
How to use Copilot() in Excel for analyzing text
The new Copilot() function can be great for taking disorganized data like feedback from people and grouping it quickly. We’ll explain the best ways to do that and the pitfalls of relying on AI. One of Microsoft’s examples for Excel 365’s Copilot(() caught our eye and we were pleasantly surprised when we extended their example. […]
New Outlook for Windows stops for 19 hours
Last Monday into Tuesday there was a serious outage that affected Outlook for Windows users. It shows how a failure on Microsoft’s server can stop new Outlook software from working at all. About 5% of global Outlook for Windows customers were unable to open the new Outlook desktop client on Windows devices for up to […]
Discover the COPILOT Function in Excel
It had to happen, there’s now a Copilot() function in Excel to drop AI responses directly into spreadsheets. It’s a clever trick but, as usual, there are problems that Microsoft overlooks in their hype. Excel’s new COPILOT() function brings AI directly into spreadsheet formulas. Available now in Excel for Windows and Mac (Insider Beta channel), […]
Make a Word table with picture background
How did we make a Word table with a picture background for a recent article – asks an Office Watch friend? She meant this table of Zoom shortcuts for toggling audio and video . There’s a similar table for Teams shortcuts. The quick answer is … we cheated! Word can’t have a table with a […]
How to Get Old-School WordArt Back in Modern Microsoft Word
Miss the classic WordArt from Word’s glory days — the arched text, the rainbow slopes, the wavy headlines that screamed “1990s”? Those old gallery styles are still alive inside every modern version of Word, including Word 365 and Word 2024. They’re just well hidden. Here’s the simple compatibility mode trick that unlocks all the retro […]
Another Microsoft price rise by stealth
Microsoft has announced a price rise for many volume license customers using one of their time-honored stealth tactics. For as long as anyone can remember, Microsoft changes their pricing plans by a repeating cycle of “customizing” plans then later “simplifying”, “consistent” or “standardizing” the same plans. All of those changes inevitably mean more money for […]
Simple ‘one click’ force an update to Microsoft Office
A simple way to update Microsoft Office 365 for Windows with one click instead of digging into the menus to do it. We’ll show you the simple command line with options that make it possible. Normally, the Windows versions of Microsoft Office 365, Office2024, Office 2021 and Office 2019 all update automatically and you don’t […]
Python in Excel for Microsoft 365 Consumers: Available Now
Microsoft has begun rolling out Python in Excel—the powerful integration that allows users to write Python formulas directly inside Excel—to Microsoft 365 Family and Personal subscribers. That’s great news because Python adds a lot to Excel, making available a lot of features that previously Excel users could only dream about. What’s Available Now (Preview) For consumer […]
Excel gets Python – who, when and why
Excel 365 has access to the Python language and packages. We’ll explain what that means, who gets it and why Python in Excel is a big deal. Python is a high-end and widely used programming language with many features in its many packages or add-ons. It’s this last bit that makes Python an important extension […]
Python Meets Pixels: Excel Now Analyzes Images Like a Pro
Excel, long known for its love affair with numbers, has now developed a taste for images—thanks to Python. Microsoft has rolled out a feature that lets users insert images into individual Excel cells and analyze them using Python code. Yes, the spreadsheet just got a little more artsy and a lot more tech-savvy. Forget floating […]
Excel’s better text splitting powers
Discover Excel’s Text-Splitting Power – Unlock Faster, Smarter Data ManagementMicrosoft has elevated text handling in Excel by rolling out powerful formula functions—TEXTBEFORE, TEXTAFTER, and TEXTSPLIT—that revolutionize how you extract and split strings. No more convoluted nested LEFT, RIGHT, or SEARCH formulas . Normally when working with text it’s common to need to break the text apart […]
A smarter way to add pictures into Excel
Discover a smarter way to insert images directly into Excel cells with the IMAGE() function — no more awkward floating pictures. With just one formula, you can pull in external images using a secure URL, control how they fit or fill the cell, and even fine-tune dimensions with pixel-level precision. This modern approach, available across […]
Make your own “Keep Calm and Carry on”
The BBC has published a good history of the famous “Keep Calm and Carry On” poster from World War 2 but missed what, to us, is the most important 21st Century innovation. When “Keep Calm and Carry On” first became popular, we saw the opportunity to showcase what Word and PowerPoint can do beyond standard […]
