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.
Straighten handwriting in OneNote
OneNote for Windows can straighten handwritten, digital ink, text so it’s nicely even across the screen. We tested Straighten to see how it really works … and it’s not bad. Microsoft doesn’t provide a working example of straighten just a mockup with grey lines and nothing like the real OneNote interface. So we made our […]
Ink to Text tool in Microsoft 365 for Windows
Word, PowerPoint and OneNote 365 for Windows have digital ‘ink to text‘ feature to not only handwrite into documents but also edit text and add bullet or numbered lists. Ink to Text requirements Before we explain the new feature, we’ll detail the specific requirements of the new ‘Ink to Text’ Word feature. Microsoft buries these […]
Microsoft Office font spacing mystery and how to fix
A strange case of letter spacing with a Microsoft font showing differences between Word and PowerPoint. Here’s the anomaly with three possible fixes for it and similar situations. Office Watcher Paul B noticed this peculiar spacing between a fullstop/period and digit 1 with the Tenorite font. In PowerPoint, the two characters are very close together […]
Steganography used to hide Word and Excel attack
Computers are being infected with at least eight different viruses in an attack that uses steganography to hide nasty code in images linked from Word and Excel documents. But there’s good news for most Office users. Steganography is a way to hide text or code in an image or object. It’s a trick that’s been […]
Microsoft 365 instant account switching
Quickly switch accounts while using Microsoft Office 365, Office 2019 and Office 2021 for Windows and even have different logins in separate programs. Many people wear different ‘hats’ while using Office. There’s a Work ‘hat’ or ‘hats’ with more than one job. Plus your personal or home role. Sometimes even more hats/roles like a volunteer […]
Faster Office File management on the fly
The File Open and Save dialog boxes in Office have many not-obvious features which let you do a lot of file management and housekeeping on the spot. You try to save a document and realize you need a new sub-folder. Or open a document and want to move it to a different folder. Or just […]
Smaller images make smaller documents in Word and Office
Pictures in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook can make the file sizes at lot larger than you expect. Here’s how to make images smaller (in file size) for Office documents without changing the look of the document, slide etc. The images in a document are what take up a lot of space in most documents. […]
Microsoft (again) announces 365 Basic plan extras
Microsoft has announced ‘extras’ for Microsoft 365 Basic but we can’t see anything new that wasn’t promised over a year ago and delivered six months ago. It’s a just a simple PR stunt that worked. The ‘Microsoft 365 Basic’ plan has just 100GB of OneDrive storage plus a 50GB Outlook.com mailbox for US$19.99 a year […]
Paper Sizing tricks in Microsoft Word
The world can be divided in many ways — how about by paper sizes? Letter/Legal/US sizes vs A4/Metric. Microsoft Word makes it easy to cope with both even with different paper sizes in one document. There’s a very handy way to rescale between Letter <> A4 for printing. Amazing Maps on X/Twitter shows the two […]
Coin 🪙 emoji in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook
How to insert the Coin 🪙 symbol or emoji into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. How Coin 🪙 looks in different fonts Only Segoe UI Emoji font has the coin symbol in standard Windows. Coin 🪙 codes These are the important code numbers or values […]
Share a link to a specific PowerPoint slide
There’s a way to link someone to view a specific slide in a PowerPoint presentaion which is a lot faster than hunting through a big slide deck. Providing a direct link to a specific part of your slideshow not only streamlines the process of receiving feedback but also enables them to locate the content you […]
Translate automatic or manual in Outlook
Outlook for Windows has both automatic and manual options to translate incoming messages into a language you understand. We’ll explain the choices available and the Outlook settings that are in a strange order. Microsoft Translator supports over 100 languages, enabling users to translate text across a diverse array of linguistic contexts. You can easily translate […]
Why are Teams and Office divorcing?
Teams app is being forced out of the Microsoft Office bundle. It’s a compulsory divorce with a side-benefit for anyone who doesn’t use Teams or doesn’t use it often. Microsoft has now decided (under duress) to stop selling their Teams app as part of Microsoft Office / Microsoft 365 bundles throughout the world. That’s an […]
Pivotby – Excel’s new faster PivotTables
Pivotby() is a new and easy way to make PivotTables in Excel. It’s one of two new ‘aggregation functions’ but we prefer to call them fast summary powers. We’ll dig into the detail of what PivotBy() can do. Excel has been able to group or combine data for many years but now all you need […]
All about editing an incoming Outlook message
For many readers being able to edit incoming Outlook messages is just a handy feature, but for anyone in the legal or corporate world it could have ‘interesting’ consequences. In Outlook for Windows, open the email in a full window (not the Reading Pane) then go to Message | Move | Other Move Actions | […]
What “Update License” means on Microsoft 365 menus
What’s the story behind the “Update Licence” option that’s appearing in Microsoft 365 apps? What does it mean and when to use it? In Microsoft 365 for Windows you might see a new item on the bottom of the File menu called “Update Licence”. It’s strangely prominent and misleading, based on question from our readers. […]
