All about Microsoft Office Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, Microsoft 365, Office 2021 and earlier versions.
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 […]
Skype meeting links revealed – good and bad
Microsoft has rushed out a new Skype feature that lets you setup an online meeting or group call with a single shareable link. Of course there a good things about this option and some very bad things. As usual, the setup is more complicated than Microsoft makes out. This new system lets you setup a […]
Zoom problems you can easily fix
Zoom has problems but there are easy settings that will fix your online calls and meetings. It’s time to balance some of the excessively worrying Zoom coverage of recent days. Some people and extreme groups are taking advantage of the open defaults on Zoom. There’s an organized effort to share Meeting ID’s to harass targeted […]
Get ready for hospital – have a ‘go bag’ ready
If you get so sick they send you to hospital, you’ll be too ill to get ready. ‘Prepare for the worst’ by making up a hospital ‘go bag’ with what you’ll need. Visitors to hospitals are being severely restricted so make sure you have communication options. Prepare your computer for isolation or quarantine Because we’re […]
Making AutoText or AutoCorrect entries in Word
If you have words or longer sections of text that you type frequently and don’t want to have to type in full each time, Word allows you to set your own shortcuts to automatically enter this text in a few keystrokes either AutoCorrect or AutoText. There are two ways to do this. For shorter pieces […]
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 is NOT a big change
A lot of misleading talk about the Microsoft 365 change makes it seem a lot bigger and more of an upheaval than it really is. Time for a reality break … breath regular everyone. Headlines like these are all ‘bollocks’ as the British say, nonsense: Office 365 major shakeup Replacing Office 365 Converting Office 365 […]
Clever tricks with Zoom
Zoom has some clever tricks available to make a meeting more efficient and fun. Virtual Backgrounds, sharing screens, files, chatting on the sidelines, raising your (virtual) hand and changing the boss of the meeting (aka Host). Also an important tip for PowerPoint in a Zoom meeting. Here’s some Zoom tricks we’ve found and used. As […]
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 […]
Goodbye Office 365, Welcome Microsoft 365
Microsoft is dropping the Office 365 branding and switching to Microsoft 365 plans for annual ‘subscriptions’ to the Office programs and related services. These changes happen on 21 April 2020 but don’t mean any major change for customers. As we’ll see the new plans are almost the same as the current Office 365 plans, with […]
Office 365 / Microsoft 365 business plan changes
The Office 365 Business plans are changing name to the new Microsoft 365 branding with a somewhat confusing switch of names. It’s part of the switch from ‘Office 365’ to ‘Microsoft 365’ which happens on 21 April 2020. Goodbye Office 365, Welcome Microsoft 365 Same, same but different As they say in Thailand “Same, Same … […]
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 […]
One readers experience with WhatsApp, Skype and Viber
For a different perspective on calling apps, we were delighted to receive this long and detailed message from Michael Joyce who has both the technical experience but regular use of calling apps like WhatsApp, Skype and Viber. Michael is just one reader who has a better experience with WhatsApp than we’ve ever had. It underlines […]
Online call services ranked
Choose the best online call and conference service to keep in touch with the people in your life. We’ve looked at all the major online voice and video calling/conferencing options and ranked according to ease of use, access to all-comers and reliability across slow Internet connections. Leaving aside privacy considerations, our preference for online calls […]
Try Grandma’s Trivia Quiz by email and online
A simple and cheap way to keep kids amused and give them something to talk to grandparents and others during online calls. Grandma/pa starts with some trivia questions for the kids to research, sent by email. Later in the day there’s an online call when grandma/grandpa can catch up on the day and discuss the […]
