All about Microsoft Office Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, Microsoft 365, Office 2021 and earlier versions.
Longer passwords yes, but more complex password are better
Will Dormann in exposing the half-measure Outlook patch also shows that more complex passwords with mixed-case letters plus digits and symbols is better than a simple long password. The highest length of time to crack an 8 character password from NTLMv2 hash with a mere single mid-range GPU. Longer passwords are better but you don’t need […]
Warning about *.doc and other wildcards for Office documents.
Will R. an Office-Watch.com reminded us of a trap when dealing with .doc and .docx files. “I opened a command prompt and did a del *.doc. Imagine my surprise when it deleted both .doc and .docx files (I have backups). ” Firstly, a teacher’s gold star plus wise owl stamp to Will for having backups! Yes, it’s […]
European Office 365 outage stops customers cold
Last Friday, Office 365 customers in Europe and especially the UK had to stop working as the Microsoft hosting servers stopped working. When trying to use email online, users only saw an ‘AADSTS90033’ error, and the message: “Service is temporarily unavailable. Please retry later.” As usual, Microsoft’s communications were mixed. The company doesn’t want to […]
New US Law opens up Microsoft’s data anywhere to the US government
Remember that court case where Microsoft sued the US government over a warrant to collect someone’s cloud data? Well, it’s over and the result isn’t good for anyone who likes to keep their documents, databases, photos or emails private. The case was about data saved on Microsoft’s cloud service in Ireland. The US government wanted […]
Why bother with bulk conversion of old Office documents to new formats
Should you even bother bulk converting old documents (.doc .xls .ppt) into the newer Office formats (.docx .xlsx .pptx etc.)? It’s tempting to look at your older documents (doc etc) and think about converting them into the newer Office formats. There’s some advantages to conversion but it’s more difficult than you might expect and probably […]
Why you should delete .doc .xls or .ppt files
If we’ve said it once, we’ve said it a thousand times … ignore or delete any .DOC .XLS .PPT files you get via email or shared. The main carrier of virus infection is Microsoft Office documents, a fact that Microsoft doesn’t like to talk about. What Microsoft doesn’t say is that the major source of […]
Should you submit to Microsoft?
What should you do when Microsoft asks to see one of your documents? Submit the files or not? There’s no easy answer when Microsoft asks to see a file from your computer for their anti-virus system, Windows Defender. Do you send the files or not? This can happen with Defender hits a file that seems […]
Office 365 changes to Microsoft’s Terms and Conditions
Microsoft is updating the rules which govern use of their services including Office 365, OneDrive, SharePoint, Cortana and Xbox. Despite what you might have heard, there’s nothing really new or changed, just some clickbait headlines. There are reasons to be concerned about the Microsoft Terms and Conditions, but they are long-standing worries, nothing about the […]
How to Format Documents While Barely Lifting a Finger – not really
A recent New York Times article about Microsoft Word has good information but the headline is quite wrong. The article is called “How to Format Documents While Barely Lifting a Finger” so we expected a piece about how to reformat a document using themes or styles. Instead it’s about dictation in Google Docs, Windows, Office […]
Busy few weeks for ‘Blackboard Teacher’ from Ghana
It’s been a busy few weeks for Richard Appiah Akoto the Ghanaian teacher who taught Microsoft Word with only a blackboard. Mr Akoto was flown to Singapore for a Microsoft Education conference where he received a standing ovation. Quite something for his first trip outside Ghana. “I wanted to teach them how to launch Microsoft […]
What is the cloud and what does it have to do with Microsoft Office
You’ve all heard about “The Cloud” as if everyone knows what it is. It’s clear from recent reader messages that not everyone knows about The Cloud. Or they think they know. Or they don’t realize how much the cloud can and will do. Office-Watch.com explains the cloud and how it applies to Microsoft Office. What […]
Sync your Office Recent Documents between devices
Timeline was a new feature in Windows 10. It was a way to see which documents and files you’ve opened across all your devices. What you won’t hear is that Office already has a similar feature. The Office team has already synchronized the Open / Recent Documents lists across Word, Excel and PowerPoint for PC, […]
Why Libraries are great for Office users and why Microsoft hides them
Libraries is a great Windows feature that Microsoft introduced and promoted in Windows 7 but now regrets and hides in Windows 10. We’ll explain why they’ve changed their mind and why you should still use Libraries to manage your Office documents. A Library bring together the contents of many folders into a single view. The […]
Ribbon developers licence update
A follow up on our story about the Corel patent case and the more confusing case of a developers licence to use the MS Office ribbon interface. As we noted, the Microsoft page that explained the rules for using the Office interface were ‘retired’ even though they are still relevant. Even more relevant since Corel […]
What’s with these Outlook.com promo emails?
An Office-Watch.com reader asks about the emails promoting Outlook.com that are heading his way. All of a sudden, I’m getting emails asking me to sign up for “Outlook.com”. Do you know what that is all about? I already subscribe to “Office 365” following the purchase and update information that you folks provide to keep my […]
Office 365 plus US tax software ‘saving’
Amazon US has a deal bundling current US Tax software with Office 365 Home or Personal. It’s just an example of how Office 365 bundle offers should be checked closely. Office Watch has always been wary of any deals combining Office software with other products. Too often the combined price isn’t great, the additional product […]
