All about Microsoft Office Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, Microsoft 365, Office 2021 and earlier versions.
Office/OneDrive feature Microsoft needs to fix
Office 365 documents can be autosaved to OneDrive or SharePoint Online but there’s a major exception which Microsoft needs to fix. AutoSave is prominent in Word, Excel and PowerPoint for Office 365, on the left of the top bar. It will regularly save your document for you but only if it’s saved to OneDrive or […]
Outlook folders; changing names to icons
Here’s how to change the Outlook folder labels from large text labels to smaller icons. Also tricks hiding under those folder labels. Microsoft’s default in modern Outlook is large text labels across the bottom. Click on any label to switch to that folder view. The text is large and might be suitable on a big […]
Office 365 hack: get auto renew bonus month without paying more
“I followed your advice and bought another year of Office 365 Home cheaply to extend my subscription. Microsoft offered an extra month if I turned on auto-renewal so I took that offer. Accidentally, I discovered how to make sure the full price renewal doesn’t happen. My credit card details saved with Microsoft became invalid when […]
Visual Crossing Unveils Weather Services for Microsoft Excel, Web, and API users
Reston, VA, May 16, 2019 – Visual Crossing Corporation is proud to announce the release of the next component of its Weather Services platform, Weather Data Services immediately available for Microsoft Excel, interactive web, and web services API. Users can choose between an interactive add-in for Microsoft Excel, a web page, and a web services API […]
Office bug patch highlights for May 2016
A few of the May 2016 patches Microsoft Office caught our eye with embarrassing bug fixes, previously not disclosed to customers. They all apply to older Office releases: Office 2016 and before. It’s a long-standing Microsoft trick to hide embarrassing bugs from customers until they have a fix. In the meantime, customers waste time and […]
Microsoft is now advertising the Home Use Program for Office
For the first time we can remember, Microsoft is publicly advertising the Office 365 Home Use Program. The Home Use Program changed in February 2019 to an ongoing discount on Office 365 Home plans for staff of organizations with Office volume licenses. That’s instead of a very low price on perpetual license Office software. Source: […]
WhatsApp security bug – what to do and what to worry about
The WhatsApp security bug made a lot of headlines this week. As the virtual dust settles, what should you do and what is there still to worry about. A company discovered a bug in WhatsApp which they packaged up and sold to various parties. The Pegasus bug allowed hacking of targeted individuals (mostly human rights […]
Office 2016 bug fix pulled because it was buggy!
They’ve done it again … Microsoft released a bug fix for Office 2016 that caused a bug in the software! The faulty patch is KB4462238 which applies to Office 2016 installed with the older .MSI method, not the more usual ClickToRun method and not Office 365 customers. After installing the patch, clicking a hyperlink in […]
Microsoft pulls Office from the Windows 10 Store – not
Reports that Microsoft has removed Office 365 from their flagship Windows 10 / Microsoft Store seem to be overstating things a bit. Both Office 365 Home and Personal are for sale, at full price via the Microsoft Store. Here’s the result of our search. Sometimes a big ad for Office 365 which sends you to […]
Date Formatting considerations in Excel & Office
Unclear date formatting in documents, worksheets, presentations and other media is a pet peeve of ours. These days it’s bad practice to show dates in digits only such as 01-05-2019 12/3/18 etc. Yet we often see these formats used in booking confirmations and other documents. Either of those dates can be misunderstood by a global […]
Office 365 Security Policy Advisor in preview now
Microsoft has released in preview a new type of security policy advisor for business customers using Office 365 ProPlus. Unlike past tools, this new cloud offering promises to be more tailored to individual businesses. It will continually monitor Office software use, making changes in security settings as appropriate. The Security Policy Advisor tracks how staff […]
New Office 365 software privacy settings
Office 365 for Windows has new look privacy settings, hidden deep in the menus where, presumably, Microsoft hopes customers won’t find them. These changes are in conjunction with the renamed Office cloud features now called ‘Connected Experiences’. They apply to Office 365 for Windows build 1904 and later. A series of opening screens may appear […]
Office 365 Privacy Reminder aka Microsoft covering it’s legal behind
Office 365 customers will be seeing a set of opening screens about how Microsoft gathers and uses customer data. Those screens are carefully worded to avoid some hard truths about modern cloud connections and cover Microsoft from legal liability. Cloud features can be great and very useful. Companies do their best to hide the problems, […]
Connected Experiences now in Office 365
Microsoft has something ‘new’ in Office 365 they call ‘Connected Experiences’. It’s really a new, fancy name for things we already have. Connected Experiences is the new catchphrase for the cloud services already in Office 365 software or apps. It’s the various features which require customer data sent to Microsoft’s servers. According to Microsoft: “Office […]
What a shame. Windows Sets is dead
Windows Sets would have been an important innovation for Office users but has now been killed by Microsoft. Sets was a proposed and tested Windows feature which would let you group different programs together in a tabbed interface. Think of the familiar tabs in a browser except each tab had your choice of programs. That […]
Windows name, version and builds make no sense
Readers asked us about Window 10 naming, version and builds after Overdue changes to Windows 10 available now. Some told us we were wrong while others are confused, with both groups quoting various Microsoft sources for their ‘truth’. The sad fact is Windows naming, version and builds are a confused and inconsistent mess. Microsoft itself […]
