Two new Microsoft keyboards have a dedicated Office key. Office-Watch.com has tested one of these keyboards to see how the new Office key really works. We have a full list of Office key shortcuts plus how it works inside Word, Excel and PowerPoint and geeky hardware info. Hard information about
Microsoft Word can now suggest alternative wordings for phrases and sentences in a feature called Rewrite. It’s ‘synonyms for phrases’ not just single words. Rewrite is promoted as ‘Say it another way’. If you want a different wording for an overworked phrase, Rewrite could help. Speaking of overworked phrases, here’s
Outlook for Windows is getting a new Search bar which combines many existing search and other options right on top of the title bar. It’s now available to Office 365 Insiders and will gradually roll out to other Office 365 . Outlook Search is hard to miss, it’s right on
The Microsoft Whiteboard app can now import pages from Word documents or selected slides from a PowerPoint deck. The new feature is better than it’s promoted because you can select pages/slides not just entire documents or decks. Start from the Insert menu where there are now options for Word document
Microsoft’s new Surface Buds are earbuds with links to Microsoft Office for voice control and transcription. The new product is a rival to the Apple Airpods and many other similar cordless earphones. What’s different is the touch surface with allow more integration with Windows and especially Office. Source: Microsoft It’s
3D Formulas in Excel allow you to make calculations using data from many different worksheets, including ones that don’t exist yet. This can be incredibly useful, when you have similar figures for different periods across worksheets and want to use data from all of those periods. For our example, we have a file with expenses for a number of
A new Windows 10 bug patch has some fixes for Microsoft Outlook. Microsoft’s documentation is typically brief, so we’ll fill in some details. The time zone changes are too late to help some customers … why? KB4520062 has many Windows 10 fixes but a few affect some Outlook users and
Why does Microsoft demand a credit/debit card for Office 365 plans when you’ve bought your annual plans elsewhere, and probably cheaper? As Office Watch readers know, you don’t have to buy Office 365 Home or Personal direct from Microsoft. Microsoft is the worst place to buy or renew Microsoft Office
A few days ago we told you about a very good deal at Argos in the UK, half-price Office 365 Home. One couple has taken advantage of our tip, and other suggestions from Office-Watch, to get two years of Office 365 for the price of one. One of our readers
Soon, Office 365 will warn you when the document, worksheet or presentation uses a document format that doesn’t support modern accessibility features. Accessibility features like alt text in images, color contrast, heading consistency, table structures are only available with the modern Office document formats ( .docx .xlsx .pptx etc). Office
Microsoft has started its usual sales campaign to go with the end of support for Office 2010 in a year from now. There are alternatives beyond what Microsoft is selling. In a self-serving blog headed “Support for Office 2010 is ending—get current with Office 365 ProPlus” we see the tiresomely familiar marketing
Over time there’s been a change in the way email programs login to your mail host. It’s mostly hidden from us mere humans but important to understand. Here’s how to use oAuth and how to bypass it, if your email program doesn’t support it. Older versions of Outlook don’t know
Microsoft is releasing two new keyboards with new keys; an Office key and a dedicated Emoji key. Back in June we talked about the plans for an Office key to go alongside the existing Windows key. Here it is … Source: Microsoft The Office and Emoji keys are on the
Excel has a huge range of charts available and endless ways to customize them, but after working to get it just right, you don’t want to have to go through the whole process again next time you want to make a similar chart. Fortunately, you don’t have to because Excel
iTunes has been replaced with separate programs on the new MacOS ‘Catalina’ release. What does that mean for the future of iTunes for Windows? Most people use iTunes for Windows to sync music and videos with their iPad or iPhone. It has many other uses but Windows has it’s own
Here in the UK there’s a very good deal on Office 365 Home, saving more than ₤10 on the street price or 50% off the full retail price. Use this offer to extend your Office 365 plan for a lot less than Microsoft will charge. Office 365 Home is the
The new iPad has a great price tag and good features but a hidden price trap for Microsoft Office users. It has a 10.2” screen with support for important accessories like an external keyboard and Apple Pencil. Source: Apple. The trap is in the screen size, at 10.2” it’s 0.1
It’s time again for the monthly drop of security updates for Windows and Office. Here’s what caught our eye; two Excel security bugs and a Windows update which kills VMWare Workstation. Commentators are calling this a ‘light’ month for security patches because there are a mere 59 patches instead of
Mac users can now update their computers to MacOS Catalina release but there’s important things to do before updating and some good reasons to wait a little while. Microsoft Office compatibility As we warned back in June, older Office for Mac will not work with MacOS Catalina. If you have
The Washington Post has a useful tip for anyone with Apple AirPods that aren’t maintaining a decent battery life. Use the right wording to Apple support and you should be able to get replacement AirPod’s a little cheaper than retail. Now that AirPods are a few years old, customers are
Microsoft is pushing out a new Office app for iPhone and Android devices however most Office users won’t need to bother with it. Paid Office 365 subscribers already have better choices as part of their annual plan. The new app is called ‘Microsoft Office Mobile’ and it’s a single app
There are many situations where you need to split up text into separate columns. Names, phone numbers, dates, addresses and lot’s more can be managed with Excel’s Text to Columns, Text to Columns allows you take data from one column, and split it out into multiple columns. This can be
Outlook on the web is now blocking another 38 email attachments because they can be carriers of viruses. But Microsoft doesn’t block the most commonly used files for infecting computers. Far and away the most common infected email attachment is old-style Word documents, with .doc extensions. Excel .xls worksheets and
Here’s a complete, searchable and sortable list of all the email attachments that are or soon will be blocked by various types of Microsoft Outlook. There’s confusion and inconsistencies in the Microsoft documentation and application of these new blocks. They have a list of blocked attachments for Outlook in “Office
