All about Microsoft Office Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, Microsoft 365, Office 2021 and earlier versions.
Office Online: The main ribbon and other tricks
Office Online is a slimmed down version of Word for Windows or Mac. What’s possible in a browser interface is impressive from a technical point of view but it will never compete with Word for Windows or even Word for Mac. Anyone familiar with Office for Mac or Windows should be able to use the […]
Your free and standby Microsoft Office alternative: Office Online
Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote are always available for you, even if the main Office for Window/Mac are broken or missing. Office Online is the alternative that you have as a standby when regular Office fails or isn’t available. As long as you have a browser and decent Internet connection, you can use Word Online, […]
Microsoft will continue forcing customers to Office 365: report
A private April 2018 Gartner report confirms what Office-Watch.com has been saying for years. Microsoft is forcing customers away from perpetual licence/one-off software purchases and into software rental like Office 365. As reported by Gregg Keizer at Computerworld, Microsoft will continue ‘encouraging’ customer to annual fees by limiting access to key cloud features for perpetual […]
North Korea attacks via Microsoft Office … again
While North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, was busy in Singapore, his government hackers were busy with new malware called TypeFrame and delivered by, you guessed it, a Microsoft Word document. Typeframe has eleven different elements bundled with a Word document. As usual, the hackers send the document and try to trick people into running […]
Zenbook Pro laptops have an Office extension screen
The ASUS Zenbook Pro series comes with a snazzy touchpad which doubles as an extension toolbar for Microsoft Office. Source: ASUS Instead of a blank touchpad, it’s a small high-res touchscreen that can display icons or even full videos (play Lawrence of Arabia on a tiny, tiny screen!). For Microsoft Office it means that mini-toolbars […]
Office 2013 and Office 2010 ‘community’ support ending next month
Microsoft has announced that the community support forums for Office 2013 and Office 2010 are ending next month, July 2018. The Community Support Forum are online forums where Microsoft staff and volunteers answer questions from Microsoft customers. From July 2018 Microsoft won’t be responding to queries in these forums: Office 2010, 2013 Windows 7, 8.1, […]
Office 2011 for Mac won’t work on Mac Mojave
Office 2011 for Mac is just one of many programs that won’t work at all on the upcoming MacOS release ‘Mojave’. That’s not a surprise for anyone who follows Apple’s policy announcements. Many years ago, Apple warned that they’d eventually stop supporting 32-bit programs with 64-bit applications becoming the required standard. Among the programs that […]
Office 2019 for Mac feature list revealed
Microsoft has announced that a perpetual licence version of Office for Mac will be released later this year. Office 2019 for Mac will come out alongside Office 2019 for Windows. Both are for non-subscriber / perpetual licence customers only. Anyone with Office 365 ‘subscription’ doesn’t need to bother with these ‘2019’ releases. Source: Microsoft The […]
Check out the new look ribbon coming to Office for Windows
For the first time in a decade, Microsoft is making substantial changes to the Office ribbon interface. But not to worry, the changes don’t appear to be enough to put anyone off Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. The existing ribbon is retained, that’s an important point that’s not emphasized enough in the leaked Microsoft video. […]
Get historical stock price data into Excel
Modern Excel can grab information from multiple files in a single folder. Just open the worksheet, refresh the query and it’s up to date! This article is a condensed version of just one chapter in Real Time Excel – the new 2nd edition has a lot more detail and example files ready to use. […]
The latest way Microsoft Office is used to infect your computer
Criminal have found another way to (mis)use Microsoft Office and infect computers using the latest ‘zero-day’ hack. You may know that Adobe’s Flash was a popular add-in for web pages to display multi-media content. But Flash was very insecure and unstable so it’s been mostly replaced with other secure systems. Most modern browsers block Flash […]
June 2018 updates for Microsoft Office 2016 and Office 2013
As usual, Microsoft has released non-security updates and bug fixes for Office 2016 and Office 2013 on the first Tuesday of the month. A few caught our eye: Late last year, Microsoft was caught out leaving a horribly vulnerable Equation Editor in Office for 17 years. A new patch restores the MT Extra font so […]
Indian Banks drop Microsoft Office, revert to calculators
Two Indian banks clamped down use of unlicensed Microsoft Office, leaving staff to use calculators or open-source alternative spreadsheets. Mid-Day.com reported that Bank of India and Saraswat Bank had some licenses for Microsoft Office but not enough for all the computers the bank had allocated to staff. Branches were instructed to uninstall Office from many […]
See the amazing amount of information Microsoft is getting from Windows and Office
Both Windows and Office send an astonishing amount of data from your computer to Microsoft. Here’s how to see what’s being sent. The Diagnostic Data Viewer shows, as it happens, what your computer is sending to Microsoft. The tool does NOT give you the choice to not send your private information. It only tells you […]
Why Office 365 coming to the Mac App Store is a bad move
Later this year, you’ll be able to buy an Office 365 annual ‘subscription direct from the App Store on a Mac. Buying through the App Store will be a bad move for any Mac users. That was one of the lesser noticed announcements at Apple’s WWDC 2018 conference. The whole App Store is being redesigned and […]
Why Windows Variable fonts are important
Office Watch reader, John Hoffmann has some more detail on variable fonts, supported in Windows 10 and Windows 11 Variable fonts are a single package that includes many variations (Light, Heavy etc), instead of having separate font files for each variant. That takes up less disk space (important on tablet devices) and, as John explains, […]
