All about Microsoft Office Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, Microsoft 365, Office 2021 and earlier versions.
Remake your own photos for Halloween
Microsoft Designer has a simple way to take a photo and turn it into something scary or spooky for Halloween. We’ve already explained about Designer’s Restyle Image option that converts a photo into a graphic in a style and additions you choose. Use it at Halloween to transform a photo of children or grandkids. As […]
Excel blooper history – mistakes by users and Microsoft
Excel is now 40 years old and it’s capable of some amazing things. Let’s not forget some of the mistakes made by users and serious bugs by Microsoft along the way. First a reminder of some Excel bugs and how Microsoft never seems to learn from their mistakes. Excel bug adding rows and columns Back […]
Halloween icons and symbols for Word, Powerpoint and more
Quickly add a Halloween ghost, pumpkin, witches’ hat and more to your Outlook email, Word document or PowerPoint slides which have many in-built icons, graphics and pictures to enhance your “All Hallows’ evening” Icons, Stock Images, Stickers and Illustrations are all available in Microsoft 365 for Windows or Mac. Some Icons are also available in […]
Spice up Halloween with Microsoft Designer
Microsoft Designer makes it easy to create a unique and personal little graphic for Halloween, full size with animation, sticker or clipart Office Watch shows you how to use Designer for Halloween and some of the little tricks needed to make Designer work better. It took only a few minutes to make this small, personalized, […]
Get Microsoft 365 for less money
There are simple and legal ways to save money on consumer Microsoft 365 plans, either Personal or Family. Don’t give Microsoft more money than you have to. Microsoft 365 is NOT a normal subscription Microsoft 365 Personal or Family plans are different in three, potentially, money saving ways: A Microsoft 365 consumer/retail subscription isn’t like […]
RandArray – Excel’s best way to get random numbers
My ‘go to’ way to get random numbers in Excel is the new-ish RandArray because can do everything that Rand() or RandBetween() can and more. RandArray() fills cells with random numbers for as many rows and columns as you want. It’s in Excel 365, Excel 2024 and Excel 2021. The most basic version of the […]
Great PowerPoint heading with picture fill
Adding a picture to PowerPoint text background look great and is easier than you might think. Even better, are many hidden options to adjust the image and position it exactly as you want. Curious about how to create text effects like in the image below? Look no further—if you have PowerPoint, you can easily do […]
Clock is ticking for Office 2019 and Office 2016 users
Here’s what you need to know now there’s only a year left for Office 2016 and Office 2019 before their official support ends. End of Support On 14 October 2025, Microsoft will stop making security and bug fixes for Office 2019 and Office 2016 for both Windows and Mac. Office 2019 only has five years […]
Feed in Microsoft 365 is ending soon
The Feed feature on Microsoft 365 for business is ending in just a few weeks. It’s being replaced by a less helpful AI feature that doesn’t always help. The Microsoft Feed feature will retire starting November 1, 2024. the Feed feature will be retired from the Microsoft 365 app, affecting https://www.microsoft365.com and https://www.office.com , as […]
Excel tricks to highlight selected row, column, heading and more
Make it easier to see your current cell in an Excel workbook by dynamically highlighting the selected row, column, cell or headings. Here’s obvious and more subtle highlighting options plus the downside of highlighting, real world tips and debugging tricks if you’re having trouble. There are many different variations on this method; two colors, headings […]
How to get back WordPad
The latest Windows 11 update will delete Wordpad from the computer. Here’s how to get it back and keep it on Windows. As promised back in February 2024, the Windows 11 24H2 update deletes the Wordpad app. That’s a shame because Wordpad could open Microsoft Word documents (.docx) files offline and without buying Office or […]
Force Microsoft Office 365 to half-yearly feature updates
There is a way to force the Microsoft 365 Office apps to half-yearly feature updates instead of the usual monthly changes. Microsoft Office 365 for consumers and small businesses (Personal, Family and other plans) automatically updates each month with new and changed features. Some are minor but others are big and important. That’s OK for […]
Make simple bar charts with Conditional Formatting
Excel can make bar charts in-cell without bothering with the full Chart system. Despite what you might have seen, there’s plenty of options in Excel Data Bars. The usual example of Excel Data Bars has the colored bar in the same cell as the value. In this article we’ll show how it’s possible to have […]
Check your Microsoft account recovery options … now before it’s too late
It’s not enough to setup two-factor security for your Microsoft account. Make sure your recovery settings are checked and up to date. Do it now before it’s too late. Today we’re helping someone trying to login to their Microsoft account after losing their password. Many, many hours of frustration and worry that could have been […]
Office 2024 is now on sale
The new version of Microsoft Office 2024 is now on sale to the general public all around the world. This is the ‘perpetual licence’ or single purchase release with no subscription fee. Office 2024 is now available direct from Microsoft.com and some retailers at the same prices as Office 2021. See All about Office 2024 […]
Investigating the Word language bug
Here’s how Office Watch reader, Erik and we drilled down into Windows and Word to narrow down the source of the Word language bug. Erik’s tests are with Office 365 on Windows 11 Pro 23H2 but the same behavior has been reported by others in many versions of Word and Windows. Office Watch had a […]
