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.
Get a Paris 2024 Olympics event times into Outlook calendar
Here’s how to quickly add events from the Paris 2024 Olympics into your Outlook calendars, showing times in your location. The Paris Olympic organizers have provided an online calendar with .ics calendar files for individual events from their website. Those calendar files can be imported into Outlook for Windows or Mac. They’ve been well made […]
Why Crowdstrike might still strike you
There are two ways the fallout from the Crowdstrike troubles might affect people even if their computers didn’t ‘die’. First, some organizations are still recovering or are dependent on businesses that are recovering. Keep that in mind if there are problems with a company. (On the other hand, some organizations might use Crowdstrike as an […]
One thing you must do to your email account today
Securing your email account is vital. It’s the one thing that everyone must do unless they want hackers to invade your privacy and possible steal your money. A news story from Australia is yet another lesson in why everyone should properly secure their email account with two-factor authentication. A lady lost $26,000 Aussie dollars (US$17,500) […]
Microsoft Designer has discovered landscape images
Microsoft Designer’s Image Creator can now make landscape (wide) images as well as square and portrait orientations. Unlike Copilot which gives no orientation choice. Go to Image Creator and click on Size to see three options. Square (1024 x 1024) Portrait (1024 x 1792) Wide (1792 x 1024) Designers ‘Wide’ is almost the common 16:9 […]
WebP support available in Microsoft Office
Microsoft added support for WebP images in Microsoft 365, allowing users to insert WebP pictures into Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other Office applications. WebP images offer high quality with smaller file sizes compared to traditional formats like JPEG and PNG. WebP is an image format unknown to many people but is increasingly used by web sites. […]
Two better ways to Remove Background from images
Microsoft Office has a Remove Background tool for images but there are two better, faster and free ways to do the same job. Background removal lets you get an image with a transparent surround which can be merged/overlaid into any other slide or document more seamlessly (left) than a separate box with non-matching background (right). […]
Two faster ways to insert an image from the web into Microsoft Office
There are two quicker ways to insert an image or graphic from the Internet or web page into a Word document, Excel sheet, PowerPoint slide or Outlook email. The method most people are taught is to save an image to their computer then Insert | Picture | from this device to select that file. That […]
How the Background Removal Tool in Office really works.
The Background Removal Tool in Microsoft Office lets you neatly delete the background of images with just one click. It makes the photo subject stand alone with a transparent background. We’ll explain how remove background really works, it’s not quite as simple as Microsoft’s demonstrations make out. Windows 11 Paint is getting a ‘Remove Background’ […]
Insert the Spanish flag into Word, Excel or PowerPoint
Add Spain’s national flag into Office documents, Word, Excel or PowerPoint, then use some Office picture tools to enhance the image. Get the Spain Flag Image There are many, many copies of the Spanish flag available. We’ve opted for the Wikipedia site because it has an SVG scalable version (preferred) and PNG versions for older […]
More free Copilot tricks for Microsoft Office users
You don’t need to pay for Microsoft’s AI service, Copilot, to get some of its benefits in Microsoft Office, especially Word, Outlook and Excel. Try converting text to a table or vice versa. The trick to grabbing text from an image. Along the way you’ll also discover some of the limits and problems with the […]
Change a picture to a custom color in Office
Don’t miss this often overlooked Office trick, changing the color of an image or graphic in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or Outlook. We did this in our article about inserting Prince’s ‘Love Symbol Number 2’ in Office documents. The image is available in various formats but always black, not purple. As usual, there’s more to color […]
Excel’s data from picture!
The nifty Excel ‘Data from Picture’ feature is in all Excel 365. It’ll convert a picture of text & numbers into a worksheet … almost. And there’s alternatives if you don’t have Microsoft 365. Data from Picture is already all versions of Excel 365 for Windows and Mac and Excel Mobile apps for iPhone, iPad […]
Insert the English flag into Word, Excel or PowerPoint
Add England’s national flag “St George’s Cross” into Office documents, Word, Excel or PowerPoint, then use some Office picture tools to enhance the image. Not to be confused with the British “Union Jack” flag, the English flag is a simple red cross on a white field. Many online searches for an ‘England’ or ‘English’ flag […]
What to do about 30088-27 errors on Office install
Some Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Office users have been getting “30088-27” errors when trying to update the app in the past month. Users of Click-To-Run (C2R) versions of Office 2016, 2019, and 2021 are affected as well as Microsoft 365 when updating to Office version 17726.20126. The update error says there was a problem looking […]
Clipchamp now for work accounts
Clipchamp, Microsoft’s simple video editor, now allows business users to use their Windows app as well as the browser based interface. Originally, Clipchamp was only available to personal Microsoft accounts. Later business and school accounts could use https://app.clipchamp.com/ in Chrome or Edge browsers. Now the Clipchamp app for Windows is available to work, school, personal […]
All about “Please check your network connection and try again” errors
Many of us have seen the error message “Please check your network connection and try again” when the Internet is definitely available. What does this Office or OneDrive error message really mean and what can you do to fix it? This error message appears in Microsoft Office help and other places like OneDrive. “Sorry, something […]