Office 2019 for Mac – all the facts, prices and warnings
All about Office 2019 for Mac the facts, prices and warnings. There’s a matching page about Office 2019 for Windows. Before you get too excited Do NOT buy Office 2019 if you have Microsoft 365 plan like Microsoft 365 Family (formerly Home), Microsoft 365 Personal or an enterprise plan. In other words, you pay for […]
Office 2021 for Mac, your preview first look
Your first look at Office 2021 for Mac with Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, which is now out in public preview, showing off some of the new features. There’s only a Mac Office 2021 preview, no Office 2021 for Windows preview. Perhaps because there’s a few more innovations in a comparison of Office 2019 to […]
Office LTSC public preview now available
A public preview of the next perpetual licence Microsoft Office is now available. Called Office LTSC (Long Term Servicing Channel) it’s for volume customers only. Here are the options and how to get the preview. Office LTSC is the clumsily named non-subscription version of Office for organizations with volume licence agreement. See Office LTSC, first […]
Office LTSC, first look images
Here’s a first peek at Office LTSC for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Access, Publisher and OneNote which is now out in public preview showing off some of the new features. Office LTSC in it’s current preview is underwhelming, to put it mildly. But that’s what Microsoft is aiming for. Office LTSC (Long Term Servicing Channel) for […]
About Unicode, fonts and symbol codes
Confused about Unicode, code-points and other techie details about inserting symbols? Here’s how it works and can work for you in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and other apps. Like many things in modern computing, you mostly don’t have to know the details of how things work. But occasionally things don’t work the right way and then […]
Double Vertical Bar ‖ in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook
How to insert the Double Vertical Bar ‖ into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. Double Vertical Bar ‖ symbol is used to represent norms in mathematics, (for example ). It can also be used to signify parallel lines. It can be used as a visual […]
Cross of Lorraine ☨ symbol in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook
Type the Cross of Lorraine ☨ into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. Cross of Lorraine ☨ symbol was originally a heraldic cross. In more recent times it was used in the global distribution systems, Sabre, Apollo, and Wordspan, as a delimiter in a variety of input […]
Get your presentation directly into a Teams call or meeting
PowerPoint for Windows is getting a ‘Present in Teams’ button to drop your presentation into a Teams call or meeting. PowerPoint Live in Teams sounds great, but there are very specific requirements to make it work. Fire up the Teams desktop app and make sure it’s up to date. Open the presentation in PowerPoint 365 […]
Easter Bunnies and more in Microsoft Word, PowerPoint etc.
Yes, there are bunnies and other secular Easter graphics waiting for you in Microsoft 365 and Office 2019. Icons and Illustrations (both types of SVG) have some Easter or at least bunny related graphics. Stock Images also have some choices. Religious choices are missing but there are Christian or Latin Crosses available in Office. Here’s […]
Hidden picture info in your Office documents
The BBC has a ‘long read’ about hidden information inside almost all photos. Office Watch has talked about this problem many times before including how the extra image data hides in Microsoft Office documents, despite the ‘Document Inspector’. It’s too easy just to think of an image as just what you see on the screen […]
The case of the missing file extension
You’ve received a document, but when you try to open it, the file stubbornly won’t appear! We explain how to fix it. Our editor-in-chief saw that problem in an Internet cafe‚ in Ketchikan, Alaska and was surprised when neither the manager of the store nor the cruise computer ‘expert’ knew the answer. As you probably know, […]
Black Right Pointing index ☛ symbol in Office
How to insert the Black Right Pointing index ☛ into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. Black Right Pointing index ☛ symbol can be used for pointing a direction on a sign or as a different bullet symbol. There’s also a similar, lesser known symbol Black […]
Right-click menus now in Office for iPad
The Word, Excel and PowerPoint apps for iPad are getting right-click menus when there’s a external mouse or trackpad connected. It’s a good move with more iPads being used with separate keyboard & mouse as a mini-PC. Sadly the new menus aren’t all they could be. Right-click (Microsoft calls a ‘secondary click’) on an image […]
Broken Vertical Bar ¦ symbol in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook
Type the Broken Vertical Bar ¦ in Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. Broken Vertical Bar ¦ symbol was sometimes used in computing. These days there’s no specific use for the broken vertical bar but it’s good to keep in mind as a design alternative to […]
Windows fixes for Office and printing problems
The March 2021 Windows patches have caused at least two major bugs (sorry ‘issues’) that can affect Office users or anyone trying to print. Here’s the fixes and workarounds. Printing bug This is a nasty bug caused by the Windows patch KB5000802 not being properly tested before release. An update to vaguely ‘improve security’ in […]
Office docs to avoid at all costs, the old formats
There are types of Office documents that you should NOT open, even if they come from someone you trust. Here’s the full list of file extensions for the older Office document formats which are much more likely to be ‘malicious’ docs from hackers and criminals. We’ve talked about the risks of receiving hacked documents using […]
