Free sign to keep in touch with customers while in lockdown
Many café, restaurants and other businesses are closed due to the pandemic but still missing an opportunity to keep in touch with customers. Here’s a sign and tips to help recover when restrictions are lifted. There’s a lovely café near us which has closed for the duration. It would be nice to know when it […]
Hospital Go Bag – a checklist
Continuing our look at what to put in a bag ready for an emergency trip to hospital. A checklist to ‘Prepare for the worst’. In part 1 Get ready for hospital – have a ‘go bag’ ready we looked at the devices to take, what to put on them and setup. Now we’ll list some […]
Making AutoText or AutoCorrect entries in Word
If you have words or longer sections of text that you type frequently and don’t want to have to type in full each time, Word allows you to set your own shortcuts to automatically enter this text in a few keystrokes either AutoCorrect or AutoText. There are two ways to do this. For shorter pieces […]
Microsoft 365 is NOT a big change
A lot of misleading talk about the Microsoft 365 change makes it seem a lot bigger and more of an upheaval than it really is. Time for a reality break … breath regular everyone. Headlines like these are all ‘bollocks’ as the British say, nonsense: Office 365 major shakeup Replacing Office 365 Converting Office 365 […]
Microsoft 365 summary that’s readable!
Here’s a readable and searchable version of the Microsoft 365 summary table that came with Microsoft’s announcement of the rebranding from Office 365 to Microsoft 365. It shows the differences between ‘free’ Office (with a Microsoft account), Microsoft 365 Personal (formerly Office 365 Personal) and Microsoft 365 Family (formerly Office 365 Home). Important limitations on […]
Unpacking a big day for Office 365 / Microsoft 365
Microsoft has dumped a lot of news in a single day. As a result there’s a lot of misunderstanding and, sorry to say, misreporting. Journos not accustomed to Microsoft’s PR tricks have fallen for them. We’ll try to ‘unpack’ what’s been announced into what’s happening now, in the known future or just sometime in the […]
Keep Calm and Wash Hands extras
We’ve added more documents and slides to our template collection, Keep Calm with Microsoft Office with extras like ‘Keep Calm and Wash Hands’. The new designs include useful graphics for coronavirus, biohazard symbol and a hand washing graphic. These and many more Word docs & PowerPoint slides in Keep Calm with Microsoft Office All these are included […]
Download a Warning Triangle in Word and PowerPoint
Here’s a download of the standard but blank Warning Triangle graphic and image ready for Word and PowerPoint. We’ll look at the official warning sign specification as a starting point, then we’ll look at variations based on that. In other words, symbols that look a bit like a warning sign, but different. The official ISO […]
Get ready to Zoom ….
Zoom online meeting software has become very popular with many people joining it for the first time. Here’s how to fully get ready for a Zoom meeting, there’s more to it than the official advice. Two Office Watch readers found themselves asked to join a Zoom meeting at short notice. Neither had heard of Zoom […]
Microsoft cloud servers slow down
Microsoft has quietly announced some minor but important slow down in some of their cloud services including the way real-time edits of Office documents are handled. It’s a wise move given the increased demand for cloud services. Microsoft had an outage on their much-hyped Teams services earlier this week. Like other cloud companies, Microsoft has […]
Using Skype with Microsoft Office
Skype can be integrated into collaborating on Word, Excel or PowerPoint documents. It’s not officially part of Microsoft Office collaboration but is easily done. It lets you work on a document while talking to other collaborators at the same time. Like this … This works with any modern version of Office or really any program […]
Keyboard Shortcuts for Styles in Word
You can set up your own shortcuts to quickly apply any style in Word. You’re not limited to the in-built shortcuts for Normal and a few Headings. You may be familiar with using keyboard shortcuts to such has Ctrl+B or Ctrl+I to quickly change text to bold or italic but those don’t apply styles, just individual character formatting. We’ve explained […]
Coronavirus scams and nasty Word documents
No surprise that criminals are using Coronavirus/COVID-19 as a way to trick people into opening nasty Word document that could infect your computer. All the usual suspects are trying to take advantage of Coronavirus to sell stuff. Plenty of fake ‘cures’ being touted, usually existing ‘miracles’ rebadged to take advantage of the unwary. Just one […]
New Word security bugs are more ‘interesting’ than usual
Microsoft has just fixed the latest security bugs discovered in Word. They caught our eye because it’s more widespread than usual which is ‘interesting’ in the way of the old proverb*. The bugs are called CVE-2020-0850, CVE-2020-0851 and CVE-2020-0852 Microsoft gives all the deliberately bland title “Remote Code Execution Vulnerability”. There have been many, many […]
Remote Access options to control a distant computer
There are several free options to access one computer from another. You can see the screen, type and mouse from a remote location, just as if you were in front of the real computer. Access work computer from home computer Use desktop computer from a laptop or tablet Interact with laptop machine from a desktop […]
Collaborate remotely on documents, spreadsheets and presentations
Working on an Office document can easily be done between many people no matter how far away they are. Most organizations will have some way to share documents remotely If not, there are clever options available. Instead of exchanging documents (we’ll get to that in a moment), save the document in a cloud location that […]
