Japanese Gannen and Ichinen date support in Excel, Office and Windows
As part of Microsoft’s support for the new Japanese Imperial era, they’ve added support for traditional Gannen writing of dates as well as the newer Ichinen style. Windows 10 now supports Gannen style Japanese dates but that support doesn’t flow through to Excel formatting. Normally the default date presentation in Excel uses the Windows defaults, […]
Excel gets Bitcoin as a Currency option
Excel has a new currency option. Bitcoin BTC is now available as a Currency symbol or text from the main list but we’ll show how to get it now on any version of Excel. There are four options available: Bitcoin symbol ₿ prefix ₿12.34 Bitcoin symbol ₿ suffix 12.34 ₿ Bitcoin code BTC prefix BTC […]
PCMark benchmarks computers with Microsoft Office
The benchmarking software PCMark 10 has added a new test that directly checks the performance of Microsoft Office programs on various hardware and software configurations. There are three separate Office Applications tests: Word covers typical word processing tasks for office workers. The test measures PC performance when opening, editing, and saving a document. Excel test […]
Office/OneDrive feature Microsoft needs to fix
Office 365 documents can be autosaved to OneDrive or SharePoint Online but there’s a major exception which Microsoft needs to fix. AutoSave is prominent in Word, Excel and PowerPoint for Office 365, on the left of the top bar. It will regularly save your document for you but only if it’s saved to OneDrive or […]
Visual Crossing Unveils Weather Services for Microsoft Excel, Web, and API users
Reston, VA, May 16, 2019 – Visual Crossing Corporation is proud to announce the release of the next component of its Weather Services platform, Weather Data Services immediately available for Microsoft Excel, interactive web, and web services API. Users can choose between an interactive add-in for Microsoft Excel, a web page, and a web services API […]
Office bug patch highlights for May 2016
A few of the May 2016 patches Microsoft Office caught our eye with embarrassing bug fixes, previously not disclosed to customers. They all apply to older Office releases: Office 2016 and before. It’s a long-standing Microsoft trick to hide embarrassing bugs from customers until they have a fix. In the meantime, customers waste time and […]
Put the latest Stock and Fund prices in Excel workbooks
Excel 365 for Windows and Mac has a clever way to add the latest stock prices into spreadsheets in a truly quick and easy way. Stock data type has been in Excel 365 for Windows since late last year but has gradually improved as the development team react to feedback and changeover to a better […]
Date Formatting considerations in Excel & Office
Unclear date formatting in documents, worksheets, presentations and other media is a pet peeve of ours. These days it’s bad practice to show dates in digits only such as 01-05-2019 12/3/18 etc. Yet we often see these formats used in booking confirmations and other documents. Either of those dates can be misunderstood by a global […]
New Office 365 software privacy settings
Office 365 for Windows has new look privacy settings, hidden deep in the menus where, presumably, Microsoft hopes customers won’t find them. These changes are in conjunction with the renamed Office cloud features now called ‘Connected Experiences’. They apply to Office 365 for Windows build 1904 and later. A series of opening screens may appear […]
Office 365 Privacy Reminder aka Microsoft covering it’s legal behind
Office 365 customers will be seeing a set of opening screens about how Microsoft gathers and uses customer data. Those screens are carefully worded to avoid some hard truths about modern cloud connections and cover Microsoft from legal liability. Cloud features can be great and very useful. Companies do their best to hide the problems, […]
Connected Experiences now in Office 365
Microsoft has something ‘new’ in Office 365 they call ‘Connected Experiences’. It’s really a new, fancy name for things we already have. Connected Experiences is the new catchphrase for the cloud services already in Office 365 software or apps. It’s the various features which require customer data sent to Microsoft’s servers. According to Microsoft: “Office […]
Google’s G Suite gets direct Word, Excel and PowerPoint doc support
Google has announced that their G Suite customers will be able to edit and collaborate with Microsoft Office documents. It will be available to all G Suite users by the end of May 2019. Source: Google. Until now, a clumsy Office compatibility app for Chrome allowed Microsoft Office documents to be edited in Google Docs, […]
Slack gets better Office 365 and OneDrive support
Slack, the popular collaboration service, has added better integration with Office 365 hosting and OneDrive. Office 365 tools were inevitable because Microsoft now has Teams, its own rival to Slack. There are two new tools, Outlook email and calendar plus nice previews of Microsoft Office documents. Office document preview Now included in Slack is better […]
Excel scams for tax time
It’s income tax time in the USA and that means a new round of email scams and infected Excel documents to watch out for. IBM Security Intelligence reports on a series of scam emails courtesy of the Trickbot hackers. All the emails look like legitimate messages from big companies like Paychex, a payroll provider and […]
Updates for Japanese Era support in Excel
Microsoft continues to struggle with their support for Japanese Era date format in Excel. The new Imperial Era, ‘Reiwa’ is known but the necessary changes for Excel aren’t released yet. New Japanese Imperial Era changes in Excel and Office explains how to add the new Reiwa era without waiting for Microsoft’s patch. Meantime, yet more […]
Microsoft gives out less information about Office bug fixes and patches
Microsoft has never been great about documenting patches and bug fixes but this month they have sunk to a new low. Maybe it’s a delayed April Fool’s prank with Microsoft ‘taking the Mickey‘ or treating Office customers with contempt? Sustained Engineering isn’t sustained Maintaining Office software is the thankless job of the Office Sustained Engineering […]
