All about Microsoft Office Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, Microsoft 365, Office 2021 and earlier versions.
Word does Brexit, Prorogue but not Remoaner
Microsoft Word’s dictionary is updated more regularly, especially for Office 365 customers. A good example of that is the addition of Brexit related words. We typed into Word various words that the people of the UK are too familiar with, just to see what’s in the Microsoft dictionary. The same results in Word 365 for […]
Now Word wants to Rewrite your sentences
The upcoming Rewrite feature in Word will offer alternative phrases or wording for your sentences. Rewrite is another cloud based feature so anything selected for Rewrite is sent to Microsoft. The feature is supposed to be in Office 365 for Windows Insiders build 1908 (11901.20018), English only but hasn’t appeared even in build 1909. No […]
Master PowerPoint Handouts, make printouts look better
Handout Master lets you customize your presentation handouts more than the basics; changing the position and formatting of headers/footers, adding a background color or gradient. Maybe you can help uncover some unexplained mysteries of Handout Master, see below? Our Quick PowerPoint Handouts article showed you how to go to File | Print to print out […]
Quick PowerPoint Handouts
There are many ways to make a paper/PDF version of a PowerPoint slide deck, this is the quick ‘only a few clicks’ option. There are other choices that we’ll cover in upcoming articles. PowerPoint has some ‘Handouts’ features but they aren’t all in the same place and some aren’t even called ‘Handouts’! Why handouts? It’s […]
Microsoft and others listen to Skype calls … and what else?
Microsoft and some contractors listen to Skype calls but that shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. And Microsoft’s response was quite typical – they refuse to stop. Microsoft can and does let it’s ‘associates’ listen and read from Office documents and voice data. Word, PowerPoint and Outlook users are also likely spied upon. The choice […]
New PowerPoint handout feature isn’t new at all
A supposedly ‘new’ feature in PowerPoint 365 for Windows is already in regular PowerPoint? The latest Insiders version of Office 365 for Windows has no truly new features. The only ‘new’ feature is something that’s already in Office 365. As we looked down the list of changes in version 1909 build 16.0.12013.20000 it was all […]
Ursnif is back in Word documents to steal your identity
The long-standing Ursnif trojan is back in a new form to infect computers and steal personal information, all via a Microsoft Word document. To begin, we’ll repeat a warning we’ve been making for years … No .doc files DO NOT open .doc files from any source (not .xls or .ppt either). Most infected and dangerous […]
Center Across Selection vs Merge & Center in Excel
There are two similar text formatting options in Excel. The well-known Merge & Center and the hidden away Center across selection. Both have their advantages, the choice is yours. Merge & Center Most Excel users know ‘Merge & Center’ because it’s atop the Merge list at Home | Alignment | Merge. It does two things: […]
Windows update causes Office VBA to fail
A recent Windows update is causing VBA code to fail in Excel, Access and other VBA parts of Office. The culprit isn’t Office, but the version of Windows that it’s running on. After the 2019-08 Cumulative Update KB4511553 is applied, some VBA code will stop working. The patch bug is in Windows 10, 8.1 and […]
Office 2019 isn’t dead though Microsoft wishes it were so
A lot of press reports about Office 2019 give the impression that the single-payment, non-subscription version of Microsoft Office is about to disappear off retail shelves. Everyone needs to take a deep breath and calm down … Office 2019 isn’t dead or even on life-support though Microsoft would love to stop selling it. It all […]
New icons for Access, Project and Visio … ho hum
At last! After months of delay, Microsoft has released product icons for Access, Project and Visio. Yawn, ho hum. We know Microsoft customers have been desperate to see these graphics (not). Back in March we first saw the Word, Outlook, Excel and PowerPoint graphics. As before, when it comes to changed Office icons; if we […]
Search for Microsoft Office Icons
The desperately needed feature is coming to Microsoft Office … the ability to search for Icons. Microsoft added Icons to Office 365 and even more a few months ago … 300 more icons in Office, but which ones and where? The problem has always been finding the right icons from the long list. There are […]
Sensitivity settings add security for Office documents
Office now has sensitivity options to label Word, Excel, PowerPoint docs plus emails. Not ‘touch-feely’ sensitivity like ‘loving’ or ‘compassionate’ but instead corporate, privacy labels. It’s a new feature for Office 365 corporate hosted E3 or E5 accounts and the admins have enabled Sensitivity options. Sensitivity appears on the Home tab in Word, Excel, PowerPoint […]
Fast adding an appointment to Outlook and getting it right
Despite all the possibilities for importing or sharing appointments, most of the time we have to manually type in new appointments or events. Here’s some tips to do it faster and get it right. We’ve all been there, a web page or email (below right) with details that need copying into a blank Outlook appointment […]
Justify, Fill, Orientation, Shrink to Fit and other Excel formatting tricks.
The Format Cells dialog can be accessed from Home | Alignment | Orientation, or by right-clicking on selected cells and selecting Format Cells. See Excel’s text and number alignment choices Text formatting in Excel with wrapping, line breaks and merging This dialog gives you more detailed options to choose from than are available in the Orientation […]
Excel’s text and number alignment choices
Under Excel’s Home | Alignment ribbon you can change the indents, alignment or angle of the text in selected cells. As usual, a seemingly simple set of buttons have some hidden tricks. See Text formatting in Excel with wrapping, line breaks and merging Alignment Adjust alignment of the text, both across and up/down, use the […]
