Microsoft highlights how they shortchanged Office customers
The latest Microsoft Office promotion is a rare example of an ad which shows how a product was deliberately crippled with less features. The ‘Twins Challenge’ is a series of very selective videos that are supposed to highlight differences between Office 2019 (single purchase, less profitable for Microsoft) and Office 365 (annual payment, highly profitable). […]
New Office 365 Save option ain’t so bad
Office 365 is getting yet another way to save a document and it’s not as bad as the advance publicity suggested. We’ve now had a chance to use the new Save dialog ourselves and it’s not another attempt to force customers to OneDrive. The change is now available for Office Fast Insiders and eventually all […]
Wiping drives or shredding files in Windows
Here’s a quick and easy way to totally erase file, folders or free disk space so there’s no trace of the original data. Also erasing an entire drive before handing over or selling. As you may know, deleting a file doesn’t really remove it from your computer. Even after deleting from the Recycle Bin, the […]
Have a happy Year of the Pig emoji in Word and Office
It’s the Chinese Year of the Pig and there are some symbols in Word, Excel and PowerPoint to mark the occasion in Office for Windows or Mac. The Unicode standard has three Pig related emoji, Pig, Pig Face and Pig Nose. Once you know the names or hex value, they can be found with the […]
Google Translate with Office documents
If the Translation options in Microsoft Office don’t do it for you, try the Google Translate full document translation option instead. For a long time, Google has a word and text translation between languages. The app is a godsend to travelers around the world, and the locals dealing with them! Entire Office documents can also […]
Stock data type search tips in Excel
Finding the right stock or index among the tens of thousands available in Excel’s Stock data type isn’t always easy. Here’s some stock search tips that might help with some advice about a changing situation. Stock data type is available in Excel 365 for Windows and coming to Excel 365 for Mac (currently only Insiders). […]
Stock and Geography Data Types coming to Office for Mac
Great news for Mac Office 365 users, the Stock and Geography data types in Excel 365 for Windows have started rolling out to Excel 365 for Mac. At the moment it’s only Excel 365 for Mac, Fast Insiders v16.22 build 190112 or later. It means it’s coming to Slow Insiders and Office 365 customers generally […]
Office memory leak finally patched by Microsoft
An astonishingly simple security breach in Microsoft Office has finally been patched two months after Microsoft confirmed the problem. The unanswered question, why did it take so long to discover it? Mimecast.com discovered the ActiveX memory leak back in November 2018 and told Microsoft. Two months later Microsoft fixed the problem in their January 2019 […]
Show Japanese Imperial Era dates in Excel and why it’s wrong
Excel can display dates in many different formats including Japanese Imperial Era. You don’t need the Japanese version of Excel. Office-Watch.com shows how to display an Era date and how Excel knows which Era to use. You don’t ‘convert’ a date from western format to Japanese Era. Like any date in Excel, just change the […]
Microsoft pulls Office 2010 update, won’t say why, but we will
Feature updates for Microsoft Office 2010 have been withdrawn but Redmond won’t tell customers why, beyond the usual vague platitudes. The KB4032217, KB4461627, KB4032225, and KB4461616 updates for Office 2010 released 2 January 2019 were withdrawn after a few days after complaints. Microsoft won’t admit what the problem is beyond saying customers “may experience difficulties in Microsoft Excel or […]
New Office app coming to Windows 10
Microsoft is replacing the current ‘My Office’ gateway app with a new ‘Office’ app for Windows 10. The Office app is a gateway to your Word, Excel, PowerPoint documents plus Outlook, OneDrive and SharePoint. Source: Microsoft The official Microsoft blurb: ” Quickly switch between apps. See all your Office apps in one place and switch […]
2019 Calendars from Excel
If you’re looking for 2019 calendar options, open up Microsoft Excel. Excel has a wide range of calendar templates to choose from. Go to File | New and type ‘calendar’ into the search box. There’s a proverbial embarrassment of riches. Pick a year All the Excel templates apply to any year. Enter the year you […]
Play music via Excel
Musicians with Excel skills might like to try Excel MIDI an Excel file with a simple sequencer that plays MIDI music. Made by ruiseixas from Portugal, Excel MIDI is an Excel worksheet downloadable from SourceForge. It’s an .XLSM file so you’ll have to enable VBA content to let it work. We tried it on Excel […]
Why can’t you buy individual Office programs?
Office Watch reader, Meredith M. asks a question we’ve heard many times before. Why can’t you buy individual Office programs instead of paying for an Office bundle with programs you don’t need? “My issue: I need ONLY Word, Excel and Access–but I NEED them. I know that I cannot buy them separately but does anyone […]
Bonus for ‘Real Time Excel’ readers
Our article Track the largest companies Market Caps in real time got a lot more interest than we expected. Maybe because Apple and Microsoft are so close in value at the moment. So we’ve made the worksheet available for Real Time Excel readers. Market Capitalizations.xlsx also includes an example of the upcoming function Sortby() which automatically re-sorts a […]
New Icons for Microsoft Office 365
It’s been five years since the Word, Excel, PowerPoint and other Office icons were given a new look. Now they’ve been announced and, frankly, we could not care less. New look icons don’t make any difference to anyone’s daily use of Office. It’s like supermarket groceries that boast ‘New Packaging’ as if any customers care? […]
