Format Painter with Shapes and gradients
Format Painter in Office will work to copy formatting between shapes which is very useful for complex Gradients. But they don’t always format copy in the way you’d expect. We’re obliged to Office-Watch.com reader, Lorelei, for pointing out that Format Painter can copy gradient fills in most but not all situations. To copy the formatting […]
COVID-19 Excel workbook improvements
We’ve made a few changes to our COVID-19 tracking workbook for Excel 365. The kind comments from readers are much appreciated. For those of you who asked, it was made by our Editor-in-Chief, Peter Deegan, who is safely locked-down in London. Peter refreshed the COVID-19 statistics (which any Excel 365 will do from Data | […]
April 2020 updates for Office come with a warning
The April 2020 security fixes for Microsoft Office come with a warning that some VBA code will stop working. There are workarounds to let some references through. The KB4557055 security fix blocks VBA references that link to Internet or intranet sources or have been downloaded from the Internet. That will effect some Office/VBA code which […]
COVID-19 stats in Excel 365 for Mac
We’ve made a new version of our COVID-19 statistics workbook that’s compatible with Excel 365 for Mac. Keep track of COVID-19 statistics using this Excel spreadsheet that shows the latest cases and deaths for countries you choose and populations also added for you. Excel 365 for Windows has a separate download available here. Excel for […]
COVID-19 Excel workbook – under the hood
Some of the features and tricks in our COVID-19 worksheet for Excel 365. We’ve made this workbook as a practical and timely example of some important recent Excel features and how they can be used. Open up the workbook in Excel 365 for Windows and add some countries to see the whole table and chart […]
Track COVID-19 stats in your own Excel spreadsheet
Keep track of COVID-19 statistics using this automatically updating Excel spreadsheet that shows the latest cases and deaths for selected countries with populations also added for you. We’ve been a little annoyed at media coverage that deals with raw numbers without adjusting for population. We opened up Excel 365 and made use of its Geography […]
Sending and Receiving faxes without a fax machine
It is possible to send and receive faxes without a fax machine. At least you can send a fax from your computer without a fax machine because there are online services to do that for you. We’ve noticed some press reports were overwhelmed offices have reverted to faxes because their web systems have broken down. […]
Add the Indian Flag into Word, Excel or PowerPoint
Find and add the Indian flag into Office documents, Word, Excel or PowerPoint, then use some Office picture tools to enhance the image. The same help applies for any other national flag, just look for a different source. Get the Indian Flag Image There are many, many copies of the Indian flag available. We’ve opted for the Wikipedia site because it […]
Excel’s WORKDAY() counts by working days
Excel’s Workday() function counts working days before or after the starting date. The counted workdays automatically excludes weekends (Saturday and Sunday) and can account for holidays. We previously explored the NetworkDays.Intl() function in Microsoft Excel to calculate the number of working days between two dates. Workday() is similar but returns the date (past or future) after the number of workdays. It is useful for many purposes. You can […]
Converting Google Sheets to Excel
Google Sheets can be handy for sharing and working on spreadsheet files with other people, but sometimes you just really need that file in Excel. No problem – it’s actually really easy to convert them. All you have to do is download the file and save it as an Excel file. If the Google Sheets File is […]
Microsoft 365 summary that’s readable!
Here’s a readable and searchable version of the Microsoft 365 summary table that came with Microsoft’s announcement of the rebranding from Office 365 to Microsoft 365. It shows the differences between ‘free’ Office (with a Microsoft account), Microsoft 365 Personal (formerly Office 365 Personal) and Microsoft 365 Family (formerly Office 365 Home). Important limitations on […]
Unpacking a big day for Office 365 / Microsoft 365
Microsoft has dumped a lot of news in a single day. As a result there’s a lot of misunderstanding and, sorry to say, misreporting. Journos not accustomed to Microsoft’s PR tricks have fallen for them. We’ll try to ‘unpack’ what’s been announced into what’s happening now, in the known future or just sometime in the […]
Excel’s EOMONTH() to find the last day of the month
The Excel function EOMONTH() returns the date of last day in a month. With a little extra, it’ll tell you the number of days in any month. EOMONTH() is the Excel equivalent of the little rhyme ‘30 Days has September, April, June and November …’ plus it handles leap years with 29th February. Applies To Excel for […]
Download a Warning Triangle in Word and PowerPoint
Here’s a download of the standard but blank Warning Triangle graphic and image ready for Word and PowerPoint. We’ll look at the official warning sign specification as a starting point, then we’ll look at variations based on that. In other words, symbols that look a bit like a warning sign, but different. The official ISO […]
Get ready to Zoom ….
Zoom online meeting software has become very popular with many people joining it for the first time. Here’s how to fully get ready for a Zoom meeting, there’s more to it than the official advice. Two Office Watch readers found themselves asked to join a Zoom meeting at short notice. Neither had heard of Zoom […]
Microsoft cloud servers slow down
Microsoft has quietly announced some minor but important slow down in some of their cloud services including the way real-time edits of Office documents are handled. It’s a wise move given the increased demand for cloud services. Microsoft had an outage on their much-hyped Teams services earlier this week. Like other cloud companies, Microsoft has […]
