All about Microsoft Office Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, Microsoft 365, Office 2021 and earlier versions.
Nice new features in Excel on the web
Excel on the web has a new look and some nifty extra features like better ways to arrange rows/columns – move, resize, insert. A clever Freeze Pane option too. Some of these we’d love to see in desktop Excel. Overall, the web version of the Office apps now look more like the modern desktop apps […]
Microsoft Designer has discovered landscape images
Microsoft Designer’s Image Creator can now make landscape (wide) images as well as square and portrait orientations. Unlike Copilot which gives no orientation choice. Go to Image Creator and click on Size to see three options. Square (1024 x 1024) Portrait (1024 x 1792) Wide (1792 x 1024) Designers ‘Wide’ is almost the common 16:9 […]
WebP support available in Microsoft Office
Microsoft added support for WebP images in Microsoft 365, allowing users to insert WebP pictures into Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other Office applications. WebP images offer high quality with smaller file sizes compared to traditional formats like JPEG and PNG. WebP is an image format unknown to many people but is increasingly used by web sites. […]
Two better ways to Remove Background from images
Microsoft Office has a Remove Background tool for images but there are two better, faster and free ways to do the same job. Background removal lets you get an image with a transparent surround which can be merged/overlaid into any other slide or document more seamlessly (left) than a separate box with non-matching background (right). […]
Two faster ways to insert an image from the web into Microsoft Office
There are two quicker ways to insert an image or graphic from the Internet or web page into a Word document, Excel sheet, PowerPoint slide or Outlook email. The method most people are taught is to save an image to their computer then Insert | Picture | from this device to select that file. That […]
How the Background Removal Tool in Office really works.
The Background Removal Tool in Microsoft Office lets you neatly delete the background of images with just one click. It makes the photo subject stand alone with a transparent background. We’ll explain how remove background really works, it’s not quite as simple as Microsoft’s demonstrations make out. Windows 11 Paint is getting a ‘Remove Background’ […]
Insert the Spanish flag into Word, Excel or PowerPoint
Add Spain’s national flag into Office documents, Word, Excel or PowerPoint, then use some Office picture tools to enhance the image. Get the Spain Flag Image There are many, many copies of the Spanish flag available. We’ve opted for the Wikipedia site because it has an SVG scalable version (preferred) and PNG versions for older […]
More free Copilot tricks for Microsoft Office users
You don’t need to pay for Microsoft’s AI service, Copilot, to get some of its benefits in Microsoft Office, especially Word, Outlook and Excel. Try converting text to a table or vice versa. The trick to grabbing text from an image. Along the way you’ll also discover some of the limits and problems with the […]
Change a picture to a custom color in Office
Don’t miss this often overlooked Office trick, changing the color of an image or graphic in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or Outlook. We did this in our article about inserting Prince’s ‘Love Symbol Number 2’ in Office documents. The image is available in various formats but always black, not purple. As usual, there’s more to color […]
Excel’s data from picture!
The nifty Excel ‘Data from Picture’ feature is in all Excel 365. It’ll convert a picture of text & numbers into a worksheet … almost. And there’s alternatives if you don’t have Microsoft 365. Data from Picture is already all versions of Excel 365 for Windows and Mac and Excel Mobile apps for iPhone, iPad […]
Insert the English flag into Word, Excel or PowerPoint
Add England’s national flag “St George’s Cross” into Office documents, Word, Excel or PowerPoint, then use some Office picture tools to enhance the image. Not to be confused with the British “Union Jack” flag, the English flag is a simple red cross on a white field. Many online searches for an ‘England’ or ‘English’ flag […]
What to do about 30088-27 errors on Office install
Some Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Office users have been getting “30088-27” errors when trying to update the app in the past month. Users of Click-To-Run (C2R) versions of Office 2016, 2019, and 2021 are affected as well as Microsoft 365 when updating to Office version 17726.20126. The update error says there was a problem looking […]
All about “Please check your network connection and try again” errors
Many of us have seen the error message “Please check your network connection and try again” when the Internet is definitely available. What does this Office or OneDrive error message really mean and what can you do to fix it? This error message appears in Microsoft Office help and other places like OneDrive. “Sorry, something […]
Using OpenDocument in Microsoft Office
OpenDocument is another set of file formats for word-processing, spreadsheets and presentations. It’s an international standard that’s supported by Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Office. OpenDocument vs Microsoft Office docs While most people use the modern Microsoft Office document formats (.docx .xlsx .pptx etc) there’s a competitive set of Office file formats to consider. The OpenDocument […]
Get a truly private word processor from Proton
Proton, the makers of fully encrypted cloud and email storage now have an online word processor that’s properly private from everyone except you. Data stored on Proton is fully encrypted from ‘end to end’ including when it’s saved on Proton’s servers. Unlike Microsoft’s OneDrive, no-one can access Proton stored data except the user. Apple has […]
Microsoft 365 gets better Open Document compatibility
Microsoft 365 is updating their OpenDocument format support to v1.4 which will improve compatibility with other software like LibreOffice. OpenDocument Format (ODF) is the International Standard for saving documents (ISO 26300 if you’re keeping score). It’s similar to the Microsoft Office formats in their basics of being XML based with ZIP compression. After initially joining […]
