All about Microsoft Office for Apple Mac. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook on macOS, Microsoft 365 for Mac, Office 2021 for Mac and earlier versions.
Microsoft leads again! The most impersonated brand on the Internet
Hackers now imitate Microsoft account logins more than any other, so criminals can steal personal and corporate information. So Microsoft leads again, but you won’t see this in their promotions. A brand phishing attack is a fake site that appears to be the real company, often using a similar URL and a page design the […]
Office 365 continues to be a hackers treasure chest
Office 365 hosting is still a big target for hackers and criminals to infiltrate organizations around the world. There are two new terms to know: Lateral Movement and Breakout Time. As Microsoft pushes their cloud services, it’s become a bigger and more valuable target for anyone wanting private data to sell or blackmail. Office 365 […]
Microsoft bug fixes have October Outlook surprise
There are 87 different security breaches fixed in this months rollout of Microsoft bug fixes, including an important one for Windows. Also a Critical fix for Outlook and patches for Word, Excel. We’ll start with a very critical Windows bug that’s important to patch right away. Vital Windows 10 bug fix It’s possible to run […]
Is Excel ready for negative interest rates?
Are your Excel worksheets ready for negative interest rates? The world is seeing historically low interest rates. So low that they can drop to zero or even lower rates. Not only can Excel worksheets break with unexpected negative percentages but modelling can accidently move into negative territory. Interest rates might get more precise going to […]
8 tips for great Excel Sparklines
Excel’s Sparklines have a good range of options for highlighting high and low values, text or calculated overlays, changing axis and handling blank or zero values. Sparklines are in Excel for Windows and Mac. Excel Mobile (iPhone, iPad, Android) shows existing Sparklines made elsewhere but they can’t be changed, only resized or deleted. Even the […]
WTF! Microsoft 365 goes offline … again. This has got to stop.
There’s been another breakdown in Microsoft’s crucial online services – the third in only ten days. The trouble started on Thursday 7th October about 2:45pm US East Coast time (18:45 UTC). Users could not login to Microsoft cloud services. According to Microsoft, the outage affected “Microsoft Teams, Outlook, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, and Outlook.com.” […]
Office 365 for Mac has major change coming
Microsoft is changing their operating system requirement for Office 365 on Mac from 10 November 2020. From 10 November 2020, Office 365 will need one of these macOS release: 10.14 (Mojave) 10.15 (Catalina) the upcoming 11.0 (Big Sur) to get Office 365 updates or install on new computers. Keep up with the latest Microsoft Office […]
What happened with UK COVID tracking and Excel?
The UK has been embarrassed (again) with the news that around 16,000 COVID-19 test results were missing from the official database and so contact tracing wasn’t done. The culprit? Excel. Or, to be fair, bad use of Excel is to blame. Not understanding it’s limits and how to workaround them. We’ve tried to figure out […]
Sparklines make simple graphs for Excel
A strange name but Sparklines is a useful new part of Excel which makes simple single-cell graphs in Excel for Windows or Mac. Mea Culpa – we thought that ‘Sparklines’ was a fancy name made up by Microsoft after a long liquid lunch … Office Watch readers, John F, Nick M and Peter B all […]
When and how to switch from Office 2010 – your questions answered
Office 2010 ends support on 13 October 2020 and we’ve been receiving questions from readers asking about switching to newer Microsoft Office. We’ll answer questions about when to update, what to replace Office 2010 and important factors to consider. We’re hearing concerns about privacy in modern Office, reliability and the constant, monthly, changes in the […]
Microsoft 365 offline! What happened and what you should do
Microsoft 365 suffered a major outage of their online and cloud services. Here’s what we know, where we stand now and how to reduce your risk of trouble with future problems. The online services from Microsoft could not be accessed from about 5pm Monday (US Eastern) that included Office logins, Outlook/Hotmail, Teams and more. It […]
Fill in a PDF form with your signature
There are several ways to fill in a PDF form and add your signature with Microsoft Word, Acrobat Reader or online services. All these tips are free with nothing to pay. It’s possible to ‘sign’ a PDF form and return it without making a paper copy. Paper forms are so 2019 <g>. There’s no need […]
Easy Office document hacking with VBA Stomping or Purging
Common programming tools can be used to make malicious Office workbooks which bypass both online security checks and Microsoft’s own protections in Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Access. We’ll explain what’s happening and what Microsoft could do better. VBA Purging or VBA Stomping are clever tricks to make an Office documents (e.g. .xlsm Excel workbook) with […]
How Microsoft 365 counts your sign-ins, not installs
There was a big change to Office 365 / Microsoft licenses on 1 October 2018. Microsoft 365 counts logins not installations It’s a totally new way of counting and limiting use of Microsoft Office. As long as there’s been Office, licenses have been based on installations of Office. A single Home or Personal plan user […]
Beware popular but fake Microsoft and Microsoft 365 login pages
Fake login pages for Microsoft 365, OneDrive or Outlook.com are now the second most common phishing targets. Links in emails or messages to these bogus pages which grab your email and password for hackers to steal your secrets, or those of your company. Ironside reports that Microsoft related fake login pages are only second to […]
Two Factor Authentication: Straight Talk
The latest ebook from Office-Watch.com is a little different, it’s a heartfelt ‘Thank You’ to our Office Watch donors. Peter Deegan has been quite astonished and humbled by the generosity of readers to our reader appeal. Both the money and kind remarks have been a considerable morale boost quite beyond the practical help that the […]
