Get more from Office 365’s Recommended Documents
Office for Windows can have an extra on the Home pane – Recommended Documents which tries to suggest documents you’re involved with. Here’s what’s possible with this feature including how to hide it away and leave more screen space for the things you want to see. Source: Microsoft Recent Documents has been in Office for […]
Excel Map Charts are way overdue for fixes
A few annoying things in Excel 365 / 2019 / 2021 / LTSC Map charts that Microsoft should fix. We’ll explain the traps and some workarounds. Making our COVID-19 Vaccination workbook reminded us of some anomalies in Excel Map Charts. Always check the Map area options Whenever using the Map Chart feature, always go to […]
Tips and help for COVID-19 Vaccination Stats download in Excel
Some of the features, tips tricks in our new COVID-19 vaccination statistics workbook for Excel 365. See Get COVID-19 vaccination stats and more from Excel for info on the workbook and what it does. We’ve made this workbook as a practical example of some important recent Excel features and how they can be used. Open […]
Get COVID-19 vaccination stats and more from Excel
We have a new COVID-19 statistics workbook with a new automatically updating Excel spreadsheet that shows the latest cases and vaccination rates by country and region. All our Office Watch readers can get the entire workbook today. We’ve made this workbook as a practical and timely example of some important recent Excel features and how […]
It only costs $2k for a Microsoft Office hack
For just US$2,000 you can buy a way to hack into a computer via Microsoft Office. All you need to make your own malware is the money and a willing seller on the dark web. A recent survey by Trend Micro and reported by Dark Reading searching posts that advertised software exploits that hackers use […]
Drawing in all sorts of places Microsoft Office apps
Microsoft has been getting serious about drawing features in Office so we thought it was time to look at what’s available and possible across all the Office applications. Word, Excel, PowerPoint and some nice drawing stuff in OneNote Once upon a time, drawing onto a Word document or Excel worksheet was only possible with a […]
Inside Excel’s newer and better Linked Data Types
Excel 365 for Windows is getting an expanded Linked Data Types feature with more categories of data and extra features. Here’s what’s possible and the traps that Microsoft doesn’t mention. Stock, Currency and Geography data types have been in Excel 365 (Windows and Mac) for some time. Now it’s expanding into other areas via Wolfram […]
Be careful with Excel 365’s Linked Data Types
Sometimes Excel 365’s Linked Data Types are great (Stock and Currencies) and other times they’ll drive you crazy or lead you to use wrong statistics. Here’s some problems we found trying out the, supposedly, simple City data type compared to the similar Geography and Location data types. Just getting the right data can be a […]
Excel 365 now has Nested Linked Data Types
Something new in Excel 365 Linked Data Types is nested data types. If a data field can itself be linked to another data type, Excel will add it automatically. See the ‘Director’ names (from the Movie data type) have little icons next to them? That’s because Excel has added the People data type when we […]
Psi upper Ψ or lower ψ symbols in Word and Office
How to insert the Psi upper case Ψ, and Psi lower case ψ symbols in Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. Psi (uppercase Ψ / lowercase ψ) is the 23rd letter of the Greek alphabet. The symbols are commonly used within physics to represent wave functions in quantum […]
Xi upper Ξ or lower case ξ symbol in Word and Office
Insert the Xi upper case Ξ, and Xi lower case ξ symbols in Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. Xi (uppercase Ξ / lowercase ξ) is the 14th letter of the Greek alphabet. The symbols are used within various contexts. The uppercase letter is often used in pure […]
Time durations are possible in Excel
” How can I enter a duration in Excel with the format days:hours:minutes:seconds ? If I enter 5:32 Excel converts that to 5:32am but I want to record 5 hours and 32 minutes.” Time durations aren’t very clear in Excel, but they are possible. The time features are mostly aimed towards date and time so […]
File open bug in Word & Office for iPad! Try this
The latest releases of Office for iPad are crashing when opening documents. Here’s what to do while Microsoft fixes the bug. The problem appears to happen when trying to open documents from OneDrive, which is the vast majority of documents because Microsoft encourages use of OneDrive. The bug is reported in the latest releases of […]
Sequence() for ordered numbers in Excel 365
Use Sequence() to get an ordered list of numbers either increasing or decreasing and with your choice of increments. Sequence is possibly the least understood of the dynamic array functions but combined with other functions it greatly extends Excel’s power. Sortby(), Filter(), Unique() and RandArray() all have obvious uses but Sequence() seems almost pointless. Here’s […]
Sabotaging Excel’s Random Numbers
A reader asks about sabotaging a random number generator. Steven H writes … The article on randomness in Excel was quite interesting, and the link to random.org was neat. Two thoughts come to mind almost immediately though: If you have an application where you absolutely need true random numbers, it is most likely the type […]
Truly random numbers are possible in Excel
With Random.org you can get truly random numbers for Excel plus options not available in the spreadsheet program like random but unique numbers with no repeats and random dates. Using ‘True’ Random numbers in Excel Our article on Random Numbers in Excel continues to surprise us by being one of the most popular pages on our […]
