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.
Nudge, nudge PowerPoint for better positioning
Moving objects around your PowerPoint slides in tiny, tiny little jumps instead of larger moves, simply by holding down the Ctrl key. The simple way to position an image or object in a PowerPoint slide is either dragging with the mouse or using the arrow keys – obviously. Either option is usually enough but the […]
Easily Calculate Body Mass Index in Excel
BMI or Body Mass Index is a ‘rule of thumb’ calculating body fat based on height and weight. It’s easy to calculate in Excel whether you use metric or feet/pounds. BMI can be a polite way of saying how overweight a person is! A BMI over 30 is considered obese and need of work to bring down […]
How to convert Normal style to Body Text style in Word
Switching paragraphs from Normal style to Body Text styles in Microsoft Word is a clever use of the Replace feature that can switch text with any style to another. We’ve talked about how savvy Word users have their main text paragraphs in the Body Text style instead of the standard Normal style. See also Modifying Body Text […]
Microsoft Office is getting pronoun choices
In a move sure to anger some folks, Microsoft is adding pronoun choices to contacts details on profile cards. People will be able to let others know how they like to be addressed: she/her, her/him, they/them or other choices. Before some blood pressure levels rise to dangerous levels, Office Watch will explain what’s happening. What […]
Automatic worksheet/tabs list in Excel
Make an automatic list of tabs in an Excel workbook a better and more flexible way with options to create clickable links and sort the sheet list. Unlike older methods, it works in Excel for Windows and Mac. We’ve already talked about fitting more tabs on the screen or making a manual list of tabs/worksheets. […]
Explore five (yes FIVE) different Exclamation Mark ! in Word and Office
There’s more possible with the humble ! exclamation mark / point in Microsoft Word or Office. At least five different ! available and that’s before changing color, size and other text effect options. We’ll show you ways to insert FIVE different exclamation marks into Office, as characters, icons, symbols and several emoji with infinite variations possible […]
Stop contract trickery with a Word document
There are risks when sending a Microsoft Word document to someone when you don’t need to, one landlord found that out the hard way. A Word doc can be changed if you’re not careful. We have some suggestions for avoiding unexpected editing traps. A tenant in the USA received a draft lease via email in the […]
Publisher ‘zero-day’ security bug that should not have happened
Microsoft has disclosed and fixed a ‘zero-day’ security bug in Publisher. It’s a “Security Feature Bypass” that’s already being used to infiltrate computers, is so incredibly simple and should never have happened at all. Called CVE-2023-21715 “Microsoft Publisher Security Features Bypass Vulnerability” it easily allowed macros to be run in Publisher when they should not. […]
Closed captions for PowerPoint audio – adding and saving
PowerPoint 365 (Windows, Mac and iOS) can now use separate caption files for audio inside a presentation and also export the captions with media. What’s new are captions for audio files like a transcript of a lecture or even song lyrics for a PowerPoint ‘sing-a-long’. There’s a catch but one that can be bypassed. Modern […]
Warning! AI ‘help’ coming to Microsoft Office
Microsoft’s hints that AI ‘help’ is coming soon to Word, Outlook and other Office apps are for investors not paying customers. Don’t get too excited (or worried) about the immediate future of AI tools into either Search or Office apps. There are problems with current AI offerings and traps for people if they aren’t careful. […]
Make captions for PowerPoint video and audio
Here’s the basics of how subtitling or captions works for PowerPoint. Using a simple text editor, you can create closed-caption files for videos and audio that you wish to make more accessible. It’s great for subtitling any video including one you’ve made of your PowerPoint presentation. Closed captions or Subtitles are made and stored in […]
Purple, Prince, Pantone and Microsoft Office
There’s a special purple color named by Pantone as ‘Love Symbol Number 2’ in honor of the musician Prince. That same purple is possible in Microsoft Word and other Office applications. Only last year, Pantone teamed with Prince’s estate to announce that PQ 7448C was to be known as Love Symbol Number 2. Now the […]
Add Prince’s Symbol ‘Love Symbol Number 2’ in Word and Office
The late and much missed musician Prince wished to be known by single character symbol called ‘Love Symbol Number 2‘. Here’s how to enter that unique symbol in Word, PowerPoint or Microsoft Office generally. There are various methods suggested on the Internet, we’ve narrowed them down to one excellent option (SVG graphic) two others that […]
Beware a Microsoft Office 365 – OneDrive outage, what you must to do protect yourself
No cloud service is perfect, no matter what the company says. Here’s what you must do to protect yourself from breakdown of your OneDrive, SharePoint, Teams or Microsoft 365 cloud storage. Microsoft pushes use of OneDrive to store all your documents and images. That suits Microsoft’s strategy but isn’t necessarily a good thing for customers. […]
Exploding Head 🤯 emoji in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook
Insert the Exploding Head 🤯 emoji into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. How Exploding Head 🤯 emoji looks Windows only has Exploding Head 🤯 in the Segoe UI Emoji font, either color or black. To me the black version looks more like a bowl than […]
Three ways to understand part of an Excel formula
Excel has three different ways to see a partial formula result to help you locate and fix a problem or understand how a formula works. Two methods have been in Excel for some time and there’s a new tooltip feature. Evaluate Formula The full Evaluate Formula has been around since at least Excel 2007. It […]
