Word and PowerPoint online, the browser versions, now have the same Synonyms feature that’s in the Windows and Mac releases. Synonyms helps you vary your vocabulary by suggesting alternative (different, substitute, other ) words. If you’ve used Synonyms in Office for Windows or Mac, there’ll be no surprises in the
Microsoft has released some ‘sweater’ backgrounds for Christmas, Hannukah or anytime of year. The PNG images are intended as backgrounds for Teams calls but can be used anywhere. A PowerPoint slide, Word background, Zoom call background or whatever. Adding Virtual Background or blurred video to TeamsAdd your own background image
The only specific 2020/2021 calendar template in Microsoft Word is an academic calendar from August 2020 to July 2021, here’s how to use it and make it better. In File | New search for ‘academic calendar’ there are a few options. We’re looking at ‘Academic year calendar’. A few notes
Microsoft 365 for Mac is getting a revamped look for the Home or Start menu in early 2021. Here’s all the new and old features in the Home pane or as Microsoft calls it “Office Start experience” (no kidding) The Home panel changes to be more consistent with what’s visible
Microsoft Office 365 and 2019 for Mac (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook) now work directly on the new M1 chip. There are a few ‘gotchas’ but support for Apple Silicon is almost complete. Apple is moving away from Intel chips to their own ‘Apple Silicon’ hardware, starting with the M1
Microsoft Forms is now available for everyone, not just businesses. It’s available to collect information or opinions for any reason. One example is party planning, virtual party at the moment. Ask people for their preferred date, number of people, diet requests etc. All the info is collected and comes to
Google’s Gmail can now directly edit Microsoft Office documents arriving in email attachments. It’s available to all Gmail users, free and paid accounts. It removes a lot of the hassles of exchanging Office documents with Gmail and Google Docs/Sheets/Slides users. No more document conversion hassles … at long last! Email
The usual security fixes for Microsoft Office this month include some unexpected patches for Office 2010 which is a pleasant surprise. Office 2010 is now officially out of support (since 13 October 2020) but still works fine. That’s supposed to mean there’s no more patches. Microsoft hasn’t explained their reason
Microsoft Teams users are getting similar ‘Insider’ or ‘Beta’ options to trial new and changed features. It’s setup similar to the existing ‘Insider’ options for Windows and Office. The naming of Insider levels is similar, but not the same as for Office. Public Preview Channel – the last step before
PowerPoint Mobile for Android is getting an ‘Outline View’ but it’s not like Outline View in Windows or Mac versions of PowerPoint. This Outline View is really an ‘Outline to Presentation’ wizard that lets you make an outline or bullet point list then choose a slide theme to quickly make
You don’t have to write directly onto each PowerPoint slide. Instead write an outline of headings and text, then convert into slides. There are two ways to do it, with Word or directly into PowerPoint. Outline View View | Outline View shows each slide title with bullet points within a
Mac computers aren’t immune to hacking and viruses. There’s a new backdoor infiltration out there posing as a Word document and directly targeting Macintosh computers. OceanLotus is interesting because it targets MacOS, trying to open a backdoor through which hackers can get data from Mac computers. Another noteworthy part of
The Microsoft 365 Productivity Score has been raising concerns about staff privacy and intrusion into their ‘Work from Home’ life. We’ll look at what Productivity Score actually does, how it’s changed after public pressure and why administrators might prefer to be intrusive. Productivity Score applies to Microsoft 365 hosted organizations.
The Microsoft 365 logins on top executives are being sold on the dark web, allowing hackers direct access to the emails and files of chief executives, directors and managers. ZDnet is reporting that a forum for hackers has an offer to sell login details for Microsoft 365 / Office accounts
Discounts on Microsoft 365 Family (formerly Home) are rare these days but Amazon in Europe (Deutschland, France etc) have a Cyber Monday offer worth grabbing. Save more than €30 on the regular price of a one year renewal. Amazon Deutschland are selling the £99 package for just £62.07 on Monday
Discounts on Microsoft 365 Family (formerly Home) are rare these days but Amazon UK has a Cyber Monday offer worth grabbing. Save more than £30 on the regular price of a one year renewal. Amazon UK are selling the £79.99 package for just £47.99 on Monday 30 Nov only. The
If you’re thinking about getting Microsoft 365 email hosting with full Teams and SharePoint, Microsoft has a limited time offer this week only. However, before you jump into their deal, there’s another very similar option that’s even cheaper. Until 30 November 2020, Microsoft is offering 25% discount on their Business
Microsoft can’t help themselves when it comes to naming their ‘Insiders’, ‘Preview’ or beta test versions. The names change for no good reason and timing is different for each platform rather than all Office apps changing at the same time. The latest changes are for MacOS, iOS (iPhone/iPad) and Android
Short Stock videos are coming to PowerPoint 365 slides and backgrounds. Instead of searching the web or making your own little videos, they are now available from PowerPoint itself. All the videos are short (around 10 seconds) and automatically loop by default. Here’s four of them as a sampler ..
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
Claude Almer 1950-2020 We’re devastated to report the passing of Claude Almer who died in Sydney, Australia, on November 19, 2020 after a long illness Claude was technical and personal support for Office Watch since well before the newsletter started in 1996. Whenever in-depth analysis of some virus code was
Some people have way too much time on their hands …. and this was pre-lockdown! Hunter Hobbs decided to find out how long it takes to scroll down to the very bottom row of Excel. That’s row 1,048,576. It only takes a moment and two keystrokes to get there, but
The famous Bodleian Library in Oxford is a lovely place to work and now you can pipe that ambience into your ‘Work from Home’ area. More than a few Office Watch articles are written in libraries including the old British Library Reading Room (alas been closed for some years), the
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
