See the amazing amount of information Microsoft is getting from Windows and Office
Both Windows and Office send an astonishing amount of data from your computer to Microsoft. Here’s how to see what’s being sent. The Diagnostic Data Viewer shows, as it happens, what your computer is sending to Microsoft. The tool does NOT give you the choice to not send your private information. It only tells you […]
Why Windows Variable fonts are important
Office Watch reader, John Hoffmann has some more detail on variable fonts, supported in Windows 10 and Windows 11 Variable fonts are a single package that includes many variations (Light, Heavy etc), instead of having separate font files for each variant. That takes up less disk space (important on tablet devices) and, as John explains, […]
Word vs Spelling Bee Champions – 2018 results
It’s time again to put the mighty brains and resources of Microsoft against the best and brightest of American youth. Yet again, the kids put Microsoft Word to shame. Each year, Office-Watch.com get the word lists from the finals of the US Scripps National Spelling Bee and runs them through the Microsoft Word dictionary. There’s […]
Password Protected file sharing links with OneDrive
An overdue and very welcome addition to OneDrive for Office 365 customers is password protected sharing links. Until now, you could send a link to a OneDrive stored file or folder but there was no control over who used that link. If the link ‘escaped’ to other people, they could download or even edit the […]
New ‘Pro’ fonts in Windows 10
New and improved ‘Pro’ fonts are a lesser known part of the April 2018 update to Windows 10. You can install, free, updated alternatives for Windows standard fonts like Arial, Georgia, Gill Sans and Verdana. Windows 10 now supports ‘Variable Type’ fonts where a single font file contains many variations like bold, italic, regular, condensed […]
Compulsory MS Office training for North Carolina lawyers
The North Carolina State Bar is proposing attorneys get an hour of computer training, including Microsoft Office, as part of their annual Continuing Legal Education (CLE). Only one US State, Florida, has a computer component of their current CLE. Amazing! In Florida, lawyers have to get three hours of technical training every three years. That’s […]
Royal Wedding Special
It seems every other business is using the royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle as an excuse to sell something, so Office Watch has joined the bandwagon … with tongue firmly planted in cheek. Our book Keep Calm with Microsoft Office has sample Word documents and PowerPoint slides which have the original ‘Keep […]
Using Microsoft Word to keep government accountable
It’s nice to see journalists used advanced Microsoft Word skills to keep government officials and politicians on their toes. CBC News, Canada received an early copy of a Manitoba government report on mental health. The final report was officially released a few hours later. The smart reporters at CBC compared the two reports to see […]
Security bug patches in Office for May 2018
Another month, another set of security bugs in Microsoft Office. It’s Microsoft’s version of Groundhog Day. The May 2018 dump of patches involves 102 updates covering: Office versions from Office 2010 to the latest Office 2016 Core Office features Word Excel Sharepoint and Project server. Most people don’t need to do anything. Windows and Office […]
Office 365 changes include ink editing in Word and ink to text in PowerPoint
Microsoft has announced upcoming new features in Office for Windows, Office 365. We’ll be looking at them in detail but here’s Microsoft’s summary. We’ll start with the important rollout information, these features aren’t in Office yet, they are coming to Insiders first and later to regular users. Here’s the Microsoft blurb …. Ink analysis in […]
Make your own Word virus for $40
In case you thought making a Word or Excel virus attack was hard, think again. The ‘Rubella Macro Builder’ will sell you a DIY kit with updates for just US$40 a month. The virus maker will take you through the steps to make a hacked Word or Excel document that can infect a computer and […]
Delete an empty or blank page in Microsoft Word
It’s a simple question – How can I delete a blank page in Microsoft Word? The answer isn’t so simple because there are many reasons for Word to add another page and various tricks to getting rid of them. The most common type of extra page is at the end of a document. There are […]
PowerPoint banned at Amazon – Jeff Bezos
Jeff Bezos doesn’t like PowerPoint or any other slideshow system at Amazon meetings. That’s what leapt out at us from his 2017 Letter to Amazon shareholders (published in April 2018). “We don’t do PowerPoint (or any other slide-oriented) presentations at Amazon. Instead, we write narratively structured six-page memos.” Those memos are read silently at the […]
Checking a Word mail merge for bad names or test strings
In the UK there’s been a lot of laughs and some red faces about a money raising letter ‘signed’ by the Conservative Prime Minister to a ” Mr Youmustbe F*ckingjoking ” and sent to a pensioner. It’s easy to laugh but anyone who has done large mailings knows that it’s a case of “There but […]
Warning about *.doc and other wildcards for Office documents.
Will R. an Office-Watch.com reminded us of a trap when dealing with .doc and .docx files. “I opened a command prompt and did a del *.doc. Imagine my surprise when it deleted both .doc and .docx files (I have backups). ” Firstly, a teacher’s gold star plus wise owl stamp to Will for having backups! Yes, it’s […]
European Office 365 outage stops customers cold
Last Friday, Office 365 customers in Europe and especially the UK had to stop working as the Microsoft hosting servers stopped working. When trying to use email online, users only saw an ‘AADSTS90033’ error, and the message: “Service is temporarily unavailable. Please retry later.” As usual, Microsoft’s communications were mixed. The company doesn’t want to […]
