Easy video backgrounds in PowerPoint
Adding a video as the background of a PowerPoint slide is surprisingly easy. You might expect that it requires special features but it doesn’t. There are some tricks to know if the slide gets muddled up. A true PowerPoint slide background has to be still a solid color, gradient, pattern or picture. But the layer […]
Office 2010 updates are still available, here’s how
0Patch is stepping in where Microsoft has left by offering continued security updates for Office 2010 after official support was dropped a few months ago. Newly discovered high risk security bugs in Office 2010 will get micropatches from 0Patch. These unofficial updates change the existing program files to prevent the new security lapses troubling your […]
Putting a Command on the Quick Access Toolbar
The Quick Access Toolbar (QAT) is located on the left side of the Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook title bar. You can add commands, options and even symbols for easy and quick obvious access By default, the QAT only has Save, Undo, Redo and Touch/Mouse commands but you can cut down on unnecessary keystrokes by placing […]
Quickly add any special characters in Office
One of the eternal questions to Office Watch is about adding characters to an Office document. Symbols and characters not on the keyboard. The most common requests are for adding currency symbols like Pound £ Euro € or Yen/Renminbi ¥ but can also include the @ symbol which can, even these days, be missing from […]
Make your own ‘Awards’ with Word and PowerPoint
Those ‘award’ logos with the laurel or fern on each side can be made in Word or PowerPoint. The ‘awards’ can be serious or joking. Here’s the thing we mean, you’ll often see them on theatre or movie posters. Format The standard wording for these logos is: Award organization (Academy Award, Pulitzer, Tony, BAFA) The […]
Copyright © tricks for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook
Tricks for typing the Copyright © into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. Copyright © symbol isn’t on any keyboard but is so commonly used that there are special shortcuts available to type © Copyright © in Word and Outlook The Copyright © has an inbuilt […]
Illustrations, new graphics in Microsoft 365 Windows and Mac
Illustrations are a new graphics option coming to Microsoft 365 that supplements the existing Icons with a wider range of visual aids for documents, emails, worksheets and slides. They’ve appeared, without any mention, in preview versions of Microsoft 365 for Windows (version 13415.20002) and Microsoft 365 for Mac (v16.43 20102102) On the same dialog box […]
Sound Recording Copyright ℗ symbol in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook
Put the Sound Recording Copyright ℗ or Circled P character into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. Sound Recording Copyright ℗ symbol (aka Circled P ) is used to mark musical copyright. The ‘P’ stands for ‘Phonogram’ or the modern ‘Phonorecord’ (a broad term for any […]
Quickly add continent maps to your Office documents
Adding a continent map is easy in Word, Excel or Powerpoint, in fact there’s a few ways to get them for the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia and Antarctica. It depends on the quality you need and version of Office. Continental Icons Among the many icons are silhouettes of all the continents – at least […]
Paste Icons or SVG from Office documents to other apps
Microsoft is expanding their support for SVG graphics by allowing these ‘Icons’ to be copied from Office documents into other third-party apps. Users can take an Office Icon or SVG and easily copy it to another app to use or change beyond Office’s in-built features. There’s no special menu item or feature, it’s part of […]
Office dropped onto Windows computers, in a new way
Microsoft is trying a new way to push Office or Microsoft 365 to new customers by dropping links into the Windows Start Menu. We’ve seen this on the Start Menu of Windows 10 preview releases. It’s a group of icons for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote and Skype. Most of the links are to the […]
When and how to switch from Office 2010 – your questions answered
Office 2010 ends support on 13 October 2020 and we’ve been receiving questions from readers asking about switching to newer Microsoft Office. We’ll answer questions about when to update, what to replace Office 2010 and important factors to consider. We’re hearing concerns about privacy in modern Office, reliability and the constant, monthly, changes in the […]
Microsoft 365 offline! What happened and what you should do
Microsoft 365 suffered a major outage of their online and cloud services. Here’s what we know, where we stand now and how to reduce your risk of trouble with future problems. The online services from Microsoft could not be accessed from about 5pm Monday (US Eastern) that included Office logins, Outlook/Hotmail, Teams and more. It […]
Do you have Application Guard for Microsoft Office?
Microsoft 365 Enterprise customers can now try Application Guard as a new way to protect against malicious documents infecting computers.What is Application Guard and what it means for Office 365 Application Guard is a combination of Windows 10 Defender and Office programs that opens a suspect document in a special way. With hardware virtualization, the […]
Nifty new adaptive mini-toolbar coming to Word 365
Microsoft Word is getting the adaptive mini-toolbar. The extension to the mini-toolbar appeared in preview versions of PowerPoint recently. Now it’s in Word previews as well. The buttons on the right change according to how you use Word. Compare that to the current Word mini-toolbar with a fixed list of buttons. The Word 365 adaptive […]
PowerPoint mini-toolbar expands with adaptive extras
PowerPoint for Windows is getting a new mini-toolbar with adaptive extra features. Some of the buttons will change depending on the tools you most commonly use. The mini-toolbar is in all Office apps, it appears whenever you select something. At the moment, the options are the same with basic formatting (font, size, color,bold, highlighting, Format […]
