All about Microsoft Office Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, Microsoft 365, Office 2021 and earlier versions.
Text predictions will type for you in Outlook and Word
Word and Outlook are getting a new text prediction feature which suggests the rest of a sentence and phrase as you type. It’s like an advanced form of autocomplete that appears in browsers. As you type, the rest of a word or more will appear in light gray. Accept the text prediction, press Tab. Reject […]
Ignore the scare tactics, Office 2010 isn’t ending
Ignore the scary headlines and threats about Office 2010 ‘ending’ early next month. Things are nowhere near dire, desperate or urgent for Office 2010 users. Office 2010 support (security patches, bug fixes and tech support) end on 13 October 2020. That does NOT mean that the software will suddenly stop working or become an overnight […]
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 […]
Do you have Application Guard for Microsoft Office?
Microsoft 365 Enterprise customers can now try Application Guard as a new way to protect against malicious documents infecting computers.What is Application Guard and what it means for Office 365 Application Guard is a combination of Windows 10 Defender and Office programs that opens a suspect document in a special way. With hardware virtualization, the […]
iOS 14 changes give you improvements in Outlook and OneDrive
Apple’s iOS 14 for iPhone and iPad have some useful new features. Change default mail and web apps, Widgets, Scribble and Translate. Microsoft wasted no time improving Outlook to take advantage and adding a little extra to OneDrive. iOS 14 was released with very little notice to app developers. Most were ready for the change […]
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 […]
Customer login now required to use Microsoft 365 apps
There’s a change in the way Microsoft 365 works with a sign-in to a Microsoft account. This applies to Word 365, Excel 365, PowerPoint 365 and other Office apps. Up to recently, Microsoft 365 / Office 365 has worked normally either when signed into a Microsoft account or not. Having a Microsoft account wasn’t required […]
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 […]
Stop accidental duplicates in your Excel lists or Tables
Stop duplicate names, email addresses or product SKU’s from being added to an Excel list or Table. Adding more rows to an Excel Tables can be done while preventing accidental duplicates creeping into the list. Excel Tables or lists can grow to hundreds or thousands of rows, there’s a risk of someone entering a duplicate […]
Easy Voting by email in Outlook
Microsoft is releasing a ‘Quick Poll’ option in Outlook ignoring the very similar, voting buttons, option that’s already in Outlook for Windows and Outlook for Mac. Use Voting Buttons to ask a question and Outlook will automatically collect responses. Office Watch also explains how recipient see the voting options and respond. Voting buttons have been […]
Format text with Dictate voice commands in Word
Dictate now has formatting commands with two ways to apply bold, italic, underline and other text formatting as you speak. Dictate with formatting is now available in Word Online (in a web browser) for Microsoft 365 customers. It’ll spread to other Word releases (for Windows, Mac etc) later. To use voice formatting, choose Home | […]
Microphone setup and settings for Dictate and Windows 10
Setting up and testing a microphone to work with Windows 10 is necessary before using Dictate in Office. Go to Windows settings to control which microphone is used by Word 365’s Dictate. Dictate has no microphone settings of its own (in Word for Windows or Word Online). Both use the Windows default recording device. That’s […]
