Microsoft is cunningly pushing Teams as part of its COVID-19 preparedness recommendations. But Teams isn’t the best option for everyone, far from it. Promoting Teams is good for Microsoft and their sales partners but not necessarily their customers. At Microsoft.com there are now special banner ads promoting Teams as the
Microsoft has been talking about document collaboration for a long time but now it’s available to everyone with a recent version of Office and OneDrive. So here’s a simple guide to opening the same document at the same time on multiple computers. You don’t need two people to try out
Here’s how to share a Microsoft Office document that’s saved on a compatible cloud service like OneDrive or Dropbox. All you need is Office 365/2019 or 2016 for Windows or Mac. Document collaboration works in Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Sharing a single file via cloud storage is a lot faster
Fit a little more onto your Outlook 365 for Windows display. Sadly the option doesn’t apply to the entire Outlook window. On the View tab, Layout there’s a choice Use Tighter Spacing with the choice of ‘Relaxed’ or ‘Tight’. What does that mean? The main list vertical spacing changes. With
Here’s another example of why older .DOC Word documents should be avoided. This time it’s a fake Norton LifeLock email and hacked document. The Word .doc document has a fake login dialog . Source: Unit 42 The document executes a known remote access tool NetSupport Manager. That tool has legitimate
A BBC Panorama special ‘Spying on the Scammers’ is a view inside a ‘Microsoft’ call center which is really a scam to scare people, steal their money and infect their computers. The special is available in the UK on iPlayer. There’s also this six minute version available worldwide. “Panorama has
We highlighted Word 365’s Side to Side view but there’s another side-by-side viewing trick that works for any two windows on either Windows or Mac. Side by Side or Split View is great for many situations. No fussing about switching between windows or getting lost with all the open application.
Office users often want a second screen, especially when using a laptop. We’ve discovered Duet, an efficient and elegant way to use an iPad as an extension screen for a Windows or Mac machine. Mac users get the bonus of the new ‘TouchBar’ for older Macs. Duet impressed with the
Excel’s NetworkDays() and NetworkDays.Intl() need more help to cope with realistic situations with public holidays and more than one vacation. Annabelle Almer started looking at NetworkDays() & NetworkDays.Intl() and we ended up deep down a geeky rabbit hole trying to get the functions working in realistic situations. The functions work,
Making a list of all the days between two Excel dates is possible in various ways, manually, an Excel 365 formula or some VBA code. We need a way to make a list of all the dates between a start and end date. Use this to make a list of
The Konami Code symbols can be used together or separately in PowerPoint slides, Word documents or elsewhere. They serve to demonstrate some tricks and failings in Office and it’s SVG support. The Konami Code graphics caught our eye because they are a useful set of icons or graphics either complete
If you’ve ever tried to enter a number starting with zero into an Excel spreadsheet, you will have had the frustrating experience of finding that as soon as you exit the cell, the zero disappears from the front of the number. Here’s how to stop Excel from ‘helping’ you when
The Start Menu on a new Windows 10 has Microsoft Office icons which are badly labelled, misleading and setup to promote Microsoft’s corporate agenda. We’ll explain what Microsoft has done and how regular Office users can make the Start Menu better. Make a Start Menu that suits you, not Microsoft.
Last week we said it would not be long before Microsoft released their Office app for Apple devices and, sure enough, within a few days Office ‘all in one’ for iPhone and iPad is out. The app is a combination of Word, Excel and PowerPoint plus other tools into a
A new type of infected Word document is doing the rounds with the name ObliqueRAT with a few new tricks. ObliqueRAT is similar to an earlier nasty CrimsonRAT but has a range of infection capabilities and is encrypted. Password Protected The infected Word documents usually arrive via email and are
Microsoft has released a video to promote the Office Mobile ‘all in one’ app for Apple and Android. It’s big on fancy graphics but almost no useful information. There are lots of fancy colors, bouncing bubbles and even Office logos turning into balloons then exploding … all for no good
Farewell to Lawrence Tesler and Gary Starkweather. One gave us the clipboard with cut, copy and paste as well as the ridding computers of modes. Mr Starkweather invented the laser printer, a major innovation for the time. Back in the 70’s, word-processing programs had two modes – editing and viewing.
Apparently nothing can escape the touch of US politics*. Even Microsoft Word and PowerPoint got dragged into the latest Democratic Primary debate. It all started with Elizabeth Warren describing Pete Buttigieg’s health plan as ‘just a PowerPoint’. Buttigieg responded with the ad-lib that “I’m more of a Microsoft Word guy.”
Here’s a limited solution to the problem of excluding multiple holidays or vacation lists to use in NetworkDays() or NetworkDays_Intl() and a request to Microsoft for an improvement in the function. NetworkDays() or NetworkDays_Intl() is OK if you only have to deal with one list of public holidays or one
We looked at the handy NetworkDays.Intl() function in Excel and mentioned that the Holidays parameter is a lot more complicated that it appears. Let’s look at how Holidays works and how it gets messy when faced with real world applications. Quick Recap of NetworkDays.Intl() Just to recap, NetworkDays.Intl() lets Excel
Here’s a step-by-step example of Networkdays.Intl() in an Excel worksheet. We suggest using that improved function over the older NetworkDays() with less options. As usual, you can select the formulas tab and Excel will guide you through the process. From Formulas | Date & Time choose NETWORKDAYS.INTL . It will
The NETWORKDAYS function in Microsoft Excel will calculate the number of working days between two dates. It will automatically exclude weekends (e.g. Saturday and Sunday) plus you can exclude public holidays and personal vacations. Most people read the function as ‘Network Days’ but it’s really ‘Net Work Days’. Figure out
Arrays have more powerful options than simple Excel ranges but, happily, it’s very easy to convert a range of cells into an array. Or sometimes you have a mix of arrays and ranges that need to be managed as a collection of arrays. That’s what we’ve needed to make the
PowerPoint 365 is now able to create animated GIF’s from presentations. It’s a little limited but the basics are there, and we’ll explain how to get even more from ‘Export to Animated GIF’. Animated GIF’s have long been wanted in PowerPoint. They make simple animations or mini-videos which are widely
