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.
Excel on the web has easier ways to insert functions
Excel’s web version now has some better ways to insert functions direct from the function search window. Also easily see the open/close bracket pairs. Insert Function ‘wizard’ Insert Function has expanded into a little ‘wizard’ (remember those?) after finding the function, a second pane lets you insert parameters with some guidance. Go to Insert | […]
Stop Designer in PowerPoint
Designer in PowerPoint 365 is great, but it can be too pushy and intrusive with the Design Ideas pane popping up too much. Designer risks becoming the new ‘Clippy’! Here’s how to stop Designer appearing until you want it. PowerPoint Designer suggests slide designs based on the content. It’s a cloud service which means there […]
Tricks to get more from PowerPoint Designer
PowerPoint Designer and Design Ideas is the start, not the end, of making a great looking presentation. Some simple changes will make something unique and not obviously copied from Microsoft’s template supply. We’ll show how to dig into the Design Ideas to change individual slide elements a little, or a lot. Not familar with PowerPoint Designer … get the […]
Getting More from PowerPoint Designer
PowerPoint Designer should just be the start of making a great looking presentation. A few manual adjustments will transform Microsoft’s automated suggestions into something awesome and unique. All the design helpers in PowerPoint and Office have the same problem. Everyone uses them and so a lot of slides or docs end up looking the same. Instead of […]
Make PowerPoint Designer better, add some words
PowerPoint’s Designer suggestions work better if you add some words to the slide first. If you add some broad keywords or title, it gives Designer clues for the most appropriate look. Designer uses the text to choose from the many templates available. The words don’t have to appear in the final presentation, just while selecting […]
Using Designer for more eye-catching PowerPoint slides
PowerPoint Designer is perhaps the most interesting and useful feature in PowerPoint 365. It turns a basic slide into something eye-catching. Here’s how to use Design Ideas effectively and wisely. It’s a very quick and easy way to take a couple of Design Elements and create a full-blooded Custom Style for your Slide Show with a […]
Get over 3,000 more great Office icons from Google
Google has more than 3,000 Icons available to add into Microsoft Office documents from either SVG files or a font. Material Symbols are a collection of small icons, much like the Icons available in modern Office. As SVG files they can be recolored and changed from their standard black line look. Use them in Word […]
How Word Designer makes plain documents look great
Word Designer is a really fast way to reformat a document into something very interesting and professional. Here’s how to use it properly and add extra tweaks to make your Word doc look really great. All these documents were transformed from a plain document with a few clicks. Word Designer does a lot more than […]
Croissant 🥐 emoji in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook
Add the Croissant 🥐 emoji into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. I have to declare a personal interest in this article because the Croissant 🥐 is an essential part of my breakfast. No morning is complete without the “Three C’s” – Coffee, Computer and Croissant […]
Sketchy line option in Office for Windows and Mac
Office for Windows and Mac has three special outline styles for the borders of shapes and text boxes. Called ‘Sketched’ or ‘Sketchy‘ because they have a hand-drawn line look. It’s a nice little addition to Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Outlook. Let’s see how it works plus some details and limitations that Microsoft hasn’t mentioned. All […]
Sketchy or wriggly lines in Icons and SVG graphics
Microsoft Office Icons and other SVG graphics can be improved a lot simply with Sketchy or Sketched lines. They turn an icon or graphic from something formal into a hand-drawn and casual look. Sketchy lines is the ‘hand-drawn’ line option available in Microsoft 365 for Windows or Mac plus Office 2021. It lets you change […]
Better Icon, illustration or SVG editing trick in Office
Get more from Microsoft Office Icons, Illustrations, Cartoon People and other SVG graphics by turning them into Office Shapes which opens up many more options for editing and recoloring the graphic. That includes ‘splitting’ a single graphic into parts that can be changed separately. Microsoft 365, Office 2021, 2019 and 2016 for Windows/Mac have an […]
Quickly make your Word document look better
Word has some quick ways to turn a plain document into something fantastic. All it takes is a few clicks on the Design tab to change the overall look, fonts and colors. And we’ve added tips to fix formatting that doesn’t change. Let’s start with a very plain version of a famous and definitely not […]
How hackers trick you to open infected documents
Here’s how to avoid the tricks hackers use to infect your computer via Office documents. Microsoft has added features to Office that should make it harder to infect your computer via a Word, Excel or PowerPoint document. Hackers have found ways to trick people into bypassing those warnings and enable the viruses in the document. […]
Office Application Guard is on the way out
Microsoft Application Guard for Office is being ‘deprecated’ (phased out) in Windows 11 and Windows 10 after only a few years. No official reason has been given and the excuses don’t make sense. Back in 2019 Microsoft announced Application Guard as a new way to isolate macro enabled documents from unknown sources. Suspect documents are […]
Outlook desktop crashes on Outlook.com
Outlook 365 for Windows can crash when sending email from a Outlook.com is more than usually embarrassing for Microsoft. The bug is only in the Current Channel (Preview) version 17029.20028 which is the version to everyone on that pre-release option. Other releases like Beta channel and the public release are NOT affected. According to Microsoft, […]
