All about Microsoft Office Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, Microsoft 365, Office 2021 and earlier versions.
Two ways to make a running total in Excel
Here’s two ways to make a running total column in Excel. The way you were probably taught and a much better and more flexible choice. Running or Accumulative Totals are a very common thing in spreadsheets. Here’s a really simple example in columns C and E. Here’s two ways to make those totals, using Sum() […]
Delete or hide comments in a Word document
All your choices for deleting or hiding comments in Word documents. An essential step before sending a document out. Comments in a Word document are really great for making side-notes or even discussions between people working on a shared document. It’s also great for adding your own notes to a document. But there’s some problems […]
How to stop migration to new Outlook
How to prevent Microsoft from pushing a change from classic Outlook for Windows to their new and incomplete Outlook (new). Microsoft is pushing customers to use Outlook (new) even though the software doesn’t have basic features like proper offline support or interactions between mailboxes. New Outlook also has a serious privacy breach for anyone using […]
New Outlook coming to Windows 10, like it or not
Microsoft will soon be pushing the new Outlook for Windows to all Windows 10 users whether they like it or not. They are doing it in a peculiar and self-serving way. Outlook (new) for Windows is the totally revamped replacement for Outlook (classic) sold with MS Office and the Windows Mail/Calendar apps. The install of […]
Copilot comes to Microsoft 365 with many limits and a high price
Microsoft 365 Family and Personal plans are getting Copilot AI integration into their Office apps but it comes with a big price increase and many limits to what people get for the extra cost. Customers in Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand have seen massive prices rises in Microsoft 365 Family and Personal […]
Too Many Microsoft Outlooks? Clear Up the Confusion in Simple Terms
If you’ve ever been baffled by all the different things Microsoft calls Outlook, you’re not alone. Microsoft uses the “Outlook” name for multiple apps, web services, mobile clients and desktop programs. From Outlook (classic) for Windows to Outlook.com and the Outlook mobile app, making it hard to know which version you’re actually using or talking […]
Office Watch ebooks now easier and faster
We’ve totally renovated our ebook store to make the whole process a lot easier and faster for our customers around the world. Go to https://store.office-watch.com/ to see the new look and technology. Any purchases in 2025 will use the new system. Better and faster downloads Go direct to ebook download after payment. There’s a download […]
Why Word doesn’t always show US and UK spelling correctly?
Microsoft Word’s English dictionaries can be confusing because they don’t always mark incorrect spelling differences between US and UK English (like color/colour). We did some tests with surprising results. English spellings can get screwy as you move between countries and there’s a lot more overlap than many people realize or realise 😁. There are many […]
Excel has ‘real’ Regular Expression functions
Microsoft Excel 365 has built-in support for regular expressions (regex). The functions REGEXTEST, REGEXEXTRACT and REGEXREPLACE have powerful pattern matching, text extraction and replacement directly into spreadsheet formulas, eliminating the need for VBA, add-ins or convoluted workarounds. Even better, the functions use a widely understood form of Regex for text-manipulation capabilities, data cleaning, validation and […]
How to remove words from the Word dictionary
How and why to remove words from the main Microsoft Word dictionary. The Office Exclusion List ensures a red squiggly underline appears to warn you about an unwanted word. Sometimes the supplied Office dictionary has words you don’t want or you’d like a warning about. Here’s how to put the red squiggly line under words […]
New Outlook’s blocked images problem
The new Outlook for Windows has a safety setting that might stop you seeing images in emails and is another privacy breach by Microsoft to snoop at customers data. It’s buried deep in the software and turned on automatically. Deep in the Settings for Outlook (new) is a way to block images in messages when […]
All the Outlook solutions to ‘Spy Pixels’ in emails
The many different Microsoft Outlook versions have a way to block images linked to emails, that includes the so-called ‘spy pixels’ used by many companies. See ‘Spy Pixels’ email epidemic, the good and the bad You can choose to view pictures in an Outlook email by clicking a button at the top of each message. […]
2025 calculations in Excel
2025 is a special number, as various social media posts have pointed out. It can be calculated in some interesting ways like (20 + 25)2 = 2025. Naturally we had to convert these into Excel formulas. 2025 is 45 squared, in other words, a ”perfect square”. This last happened in the year1936 (442) and the […]
Microsoft 365 and Office in 2024
A lot happened for Microsoft Office customers in 2024, maybe you missed some of the highlights of the year? Many improvements to Excel with more to come, Word got a Paste upheaval, Publisher given the chop plus relentless pushing of new Outlook and Copilot. Outlook (new) The new, totally different, Outlook for Windows was prematurely […]
Important Microsoft 365 and Office events to watch in 2025
2025 promises to be ‘interesting’ for Microsoft 365 and Office users, not always in a good way. Here’s some of the predictable events. What I can guarantee in 2025 is more Copilot and Outlook (new) hype – some justified and some stretching credibility. Happy New Year! Office 2016 and Office 2019 end All Office 2016 […]
What Office License do you have? Retail, Volume or OEM
Here’s how to find out what type of Microsoft Office licence you have; Subscription, Retail, Volume or OEM and other hidden details of your Office license. For perpetual non-subscription versions of Office like Office 2024, Office 2021 or Office 2019, it’s important to know if your purchase is Retail/Volume or OEM. OEM licences are sold […]
