All about Microsoft Office Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, Microsoft 365, Office 2021 and earlier versions.
FIRST LOOK: Excel’s six new AI Copilot functions
Excel’s new AI functions, under the Copilot branding, have started to appear in some public releases. Here’s the full list with syntax of all six AI functions. The functions have started appearing in some Excel 365 for Windows, Insiders Beta (version 2308 build 16708.20004). Not all Insiders see the same functions because Microsoft sometimes does […]
Make better Excel Charts by adding graphics or pictures
Add some extra flair to your plain Excel charts by inserting pictures or graphics within the chart. It’s remarkably easy and enhances charts a lot. You can simply enhance your graph by inserting a business logo in the chart area. Or you might want to add images to replace the text labels. You may want to insert an image of money to represent dollars spent, or a car to represent […]
Check out the winner and other new fonts in Microsoft 365/Office 2021
Here are samples of the five new fonts available for Microsoft 365 and Office 2021 customers one of which has become the new default font, but under a different name – Aptos. Did we say five? … there are really 10 new sans-serif fonts. Each of the five newbies come in two versions, normal for […]
Word’s Find can’t find all Unicode symbols and emoji
Word has a way of finding Unicode symbols by their reference number, except it doesn’t work for many symbols and not at all for emoji! And the Find ^u option is inconsistent with the rest of Word and common practice. These bugs have been in Word for a few years now with no sign of […]
Make your own Worlde in Office and Word
Make your own Wordle grids in Microsoft Office, Word, PowerPoint or Excel. Choose the right font, colors (the exact green, yellow or grey) plus grid details including blank or unfilled boxes. Wordle was originally a standalone app, created by Josh Wardle . It’s now owned and run by The New York Times, though the look […]
Three Microsoft 365 features have disappeared
Some features have been dropped from Microsoft 365 Family, Personal and other plans. Wolfram data types in Excel and so-called ‘Partner Benefits‘. As usual the announcement was full of marketing euphemisms and didn’t tell the whole story because a third feature (Excel’s Money template) discontinued on the same date. Three Microsoft 365 features were dropped on […]
Beware unpatched Windows and Office security bug
Microsoft is warning about a security bug in Windows and Office that has no patch (yet) but is being publicly exploited. We’ll explain what to look out for and how to protect yourself. It appears to be (yet another) security hole in Windows which allows unauthorized code to run on a computer. It’s from a […]
OneNote for iPad gets superscript and subscript
OneNote for iPad is finally getting superscript and subscript text formatting options, ten years after the app was released. We’ll show where to find it on the Home tab and the keyboard shortcuts. It’s true, Subscript and Superscript are only now coming to OneNote for iPad (released in 2013). Microsoft is proud of this innovation, […]
Get the right Barbie color for Word, PowerPoint and Office
Barbie (the doll, not the Aussie BBQ) is everywhere at the moment so we’ll explain how to select Barbie Pink in your Word documents, Excel sheets and PowerPoint slides. There’s no one Barbie Pink but a selection to choose from. We looked around various official sources for the toys and movie trying to find the […]
How to find emoji in Microsoft Word and the bugs to avoid
Finding emoji or any high value Unicode symbol is difficult in Microsoft Word because of bugs in the software. We’ll explain the only reliable way to find emoji and the problems with the features that should work, but don’t. We’ll start with the best answer we can find. It’s not a perfect solution but it’s […]
More Word Find / Search tricks
Some more Microsoft Word Find tricks. Select and Find, finding blank lines, search for special characters/emoji, find a certain font or formatting plus wildcard options. This article follows on from our introduction Find pane search secrets in Word Select and Find If you select some text in a document then use the Ctrl + F […]
Use the Office phone activation option a better way
Microsoft has a better, smarter option for the telephone activation of Office 2021, Office 2019 or earlier versions of Office with a method nowhere near as painful or clumsy. All you need is a smartphone, iPhone or Android. What is Microsoft software activation? Software Activation happens after installing perpetual license Office such as Office 2021, […]
Moai 🗿 or stone statue emoji, 3D model and more in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook
Add the Easter Island stone statue (Moai/Moyai) 🗿 symbol, 3D model or photo into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. Moai 🗿 symbol represents the famous stone statues of Easter Island. It can be used to show a deadpan, ‘straight face’ or ‘stone face’ (literally) expression. […]
Eight SUM functions in Excel … and more
Everyone knows the SUM function in Excel but that’s just the start, there are eight SUM() functions (and more) for adding up numbers in different ways. SUM() SUM is one of the first functions taught to newcomers. It’s as old as Excel itself (older because SUM was in the first spreadsheet program, Visicalc) In its […]
Why there’s three font locations in Windows 11 and 10
With the sale of fonts via the Microsoft Store and cloud fonts there’s now a complication in the familiar way fonts are managed in Windows 11/Windows 10 and how Office for Windows handles new fonts. There are now three different locations that fonts can be saved. For as long as anyone can remember, all Windows […]
Outlook and Office might be blocked by anti-virus software
A Windows 11 update might stop Outlook or other Office apps from working because of a conflict with anti-virus software. The trouble started with KB5027231 a Windows 11 update released 13 June 2023 which, among other things, fixed a file copying bug. 15 days later Microsoft admitted there was a bug in the bug patch. Not […]
