Make your own blue checkmark Twitter ‘verified’ in Office
You can add a Twitter blue or gray checkmark to your Microsoft Office documents including Word docs, PowerPoint slides. We’ll show you how to add the ‘verified’ graphic at any size you need with the exact blue, gray or some other color. Oh, and save yourself $8 a month <kidding>. We’ve all seen the Twitter […]
Inside Microsoft Create, the new Office templates site and more
Microsoft Create is a new part of Microsoft 365 that will replace the existing Office templates site and more. Office Watch explains how to use the Create site now, the many categories available and what’s to come. Cut through all the usual Microsoft Hype™ like “ultimate creator launchpad” and the dreadful phrase “uplevel your creative […]
Kerning text simply explained for Word and Powerpoint
Kerning is a font setting that’s important in Word and PowerPoint. We’ll explain kerning and why you mostly don’t have to worry about it except for large size text like titles and headings. Kerning adjusts the horizontal space between letters so they look right to the human eye. It’s necessary because letters take up different […]
TEL – Telephone ℡ symbol in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook
Insert the TEL – Telephone symbol ℡ into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. TEL – Telephone ℡ symbol is a single character with the letters TEL, normally used to prefix a telephone number in a letter heading or footer. How TEL – Telephone ℡ looks […]
Tilde ~ symbol in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook
Type the Tilde ~ into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. Plus an emoji alternative to Tilde. Tilde is used to mean ‘approximate’ as in “ ~30 minutes late”. In maths it means ‘similar order of magnitude’ e.g. “ a ~ b “. Tilde ~ symbol […]
Good advice for buying an iPad
The Verge has some good advice on buying an iPad and choosing between the many models available. Now’s the time to buy last year’s iPad by Dan Seifert cuts through the messy collection of Apple iPad models with this core advice … … thing that remains the same is it is an iPad. There might be […]
Are the 2022 Words of the Year recognized in Microsoft Word?
The 2022 Word of the Year is “Permacrisis” according to one dictionary, is that and other new words recognized in the Microsoft Word dictionary? Surprisingly, one of the 2022 words is and there’s another strangeness in the Word Grammar and Style checks. According to the Collins Dictionary, the 2022 Word of the Year is “Permacrisis” […]
Microsoft Word isn’t censoring your politically incorrect language
Yet again, Microsoft finds itself accused of “censoring” some “politically incorrect language” in another outbreak of the culture war. It puts Office Watch in the unusual situation of defending Microsoft, using some facts about how Microsoft Word really works. There are all sorts of accusations being spread, most of which could be debunked simply by […]
Change the order of styles in Word’s Gallery
Changing the order of styles in Microsoft Word’s Style Gallery is possible but buried way down inside the message boxes. A standard Word Style Gallery looks like this. Right-clicking on a style gives some options, including Remove from Style Gallery. Moving the styles into another order is more complicated. You’d think modern Word would let […]
Manage Styles and display order in Word for Mac
Managing Styles and priority / order settings in Word for Mac is harder but possible if you’re willing to dig in document or template settings. Word for Mac has two style lists available, just like Word for Windows. The Quick Style Gallery across the ribbon Home tab (called Style Gallery in WinWord) and the Styles […]
Change single space after sentence to double space in Word
Word can check if you use a single or double space after a sentence (fullstop/period) but how can it be changed single space to double throughout a document? The Sentence Spacing settings (single, double or don’t care) is in Word’s Grammar settings see Sentence Spacing in Word. These days, sentences more commonly separate with a […]
Pray / Thank You 🙏 emoji in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook
There’s a Pray / Thank You 🙏 emoji you can drop into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. Pray / Thank You 🙏 symbol in Western cultures can be used to show prayer or devotion more generally as well as thanks or appreciation. The official Unicode […]
Limit editing and collaboration within a Word document
There are options in Microsoft Word to limit access a document in different ways. It’s more fine-grained control of what people can do in the document rather than the entire Word document permissions options we’ve mentioned before. Restrict Editing options let you collaborate on a document more broadly without the risk that important parts will […]
Three ways to stop people changing your Word document
Word, Excel and PowerPoint have options to stop people from changing a document, making them ‘read only’ in tech speak. These options protect your documents from unauthorized editing or even reading them at all. There are different levels of protection, they are all under File | Info | Protect Document. While they are mostly talked […]
Stop copying of your signature as a picture
There’s no way to stop someone copying a picture of your signature (or any image) but there are some tricks to stop the image being misused. Thanks to Office Watch reader, Tim P. for the excellent question: “I liked your article on inserting signatures. In relation to inserting a picture of my signature, I was […]
Insert a signature picture into a Word document
There are some nifty tricks to inserting a picture of your signature into a Word or other document. Tips that make the result look realistic and professional. We’ve already explained the many ways to get a picture of your ink signature into Office. Now you have a picture of your signature, it’s ready to be […]
