Ever wondered about scam phone calls? Either cold calls or calls prompted by an email? Maybe a fake virus warning or false Microsoft Office activation scam? For a look at the other side of those phone calls, check out India’s Call-Center Talents Put to a Criminal Use from The New York Times.
There’s a new type of infected Office document that can bypass some protections and trick people into installing a keylogger on their computer. A keylogger is software that records each keypress and send it to a hacker. They can use that info to get your login details for many sites
David Ringstrom writing at Accountingweb.com makes some good points about how the shifting versions of Office 2016 can cause trouble. The problem is most acute in Excel 2016 but can happen in Word and PowerPoint too. When you share a workbook or document, the receivers Office has to be compatible
“Why doesn’t Word for Mac have a reading view like Word for Windows?” Clare C. Nottingham, UK? Word 2016 for Mac does have a variation on reading view. It’s similar to Word for Windows, but it’s renamed. Look for Focus on the View tab. Word for Windows has Read mode.
Microsoft has released a new version of Office 2016 for Windows to the ‘Slow’ insiders. This means Office 365 customers have more goodies to look forward to in coming months. You’ll need Office 2016 Version 1612 (Build 7628.2048) or above. The new features, as described by Microsoft are: View and
The latest ‘Slow’ insiders release for Office 2016 has a new feature for shared documents – the Activity view. This pane shows who has saved a shared document on OneDrive, OneDrive for Business or SharePoint. There are ‘Open version’ links offered but these only give errors in our tests. Perhaps
There’s very few security patches this month but the major fix is for Word 2016 for Windows. Alas, as usual, Microsoft tries to overwhelm with a lot of standard phrases leaving key questions unanswered. This months security flaw is similar to many others over the years. A hacked document can
Microsoft is extending their ‘beta testing’ of Office to Office for iPhone and iPad. The Office Insider Programs gives people access to test releases of Office software with new and changed features. The downside is reliability. The software doesn’t always behave the way it should and might even ‘crash’. Any
Office-Watch.com ebooks give great value to our readers. The low price is just the start. There’s also free updates to the book available to past and new customers. Real-Time Excel has just been updated to include more chapters and example documents. The update is available now to past purchasers who
If you’re looking for a new PowerPoint background, desktop or screen-saver image, NASA always has something to impress. The latest from NASA and JPL is an image of Earth and the Moon, from Mars. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) needed calibration and pointing it ‘home’ allows that. The brown blob,
A style is a collection of formatting choices combined under a single name. Any word or even a single letter has a collection of formatting settings as well. Font: size, color, bold/italic/underline/strikethrough/subscript/superscript, highlighting and more. Position: Left, Center, Right, Justified. List: bullet, numbering. Line Spacing, Borders, Background color and a
Shared calendars are now supported in the Outlook apps for Apple and Android devices. At this stage, you have to setup the calendar sharing from an Outlook web interface. Both the sharing and acceptance of the share have to be done on the web site. Only view and edit permissions
Excel will support Bitcoin in an upcoming release. According to Microsoft’s roadmap for Excel, Bitcoin support will: “… track, calculate and analyze Bitcoin data using native Bitcoin number formatting options. Feature is first being rolled out to Excel 2016 for Windows, Excel Online, Excel Mobile for Windows and Excel Mobile
It was inevitable, I suppose. WhatsApp, the messaging service, allows documents to be sent through their service, so scammers are using the new feature to send virus infected documents to people. The Independent is reporting that “Fake WhatsApp documents being used to trick people into downloading and installing viruses onto
We’ll start 2017 with a look at some commonly used characters used in Office but are missing from the standard keyboard. How to insert symbols on a ‘one-off’ basis or insert quickly for more commonly used characters. Degree mark for temperature. Has no special shortcut but you can make one
MailSortr is an interesting Outlook addin for anyone who arranges their emails into folders and sub-folders. This utility creates a custom Inbox view which combines the contents of any folders you wish into a single view. Source: MailSortr It’s a clever use and extension of Outlook’s Search Folders feature. Other
There’s a piece of malware about that tries to trick Microsoft Office users into ‘activating’ their Office software when there’s really no problem. Here’s how to deal with it if you get caught. Once it’s running, the malware appears ‘on top’ of your screen with a phone number to call.
The OneDrive app for iOS devices now has a preview option for Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents. From version 8.6.1 onwards, the OneDrive app can display Office documents without opening a separate app (like one of the Office apps for iOS). Handy for quickly checking a document for a detail
The popular messaging system, WhatsApp supports sending documents between users. It’s a fast, simple and reasonably secure way to get a file from ‘A to B’. It’s an lesser known feature of some secure messaging apps, in addition to their main use for texting, sending pictures and make free voice
A dozen different Office security breaches are patched this month, in addition to many for Windows and other MS products. All supported Office versions are affected. Office 2016, 2013, 2010 and 2007 for Windows plus the Office compatibility pack and the standalone viewers for Word and Excel. Also patches for
Another festive season (marketing) tradition is the Pantone ‘Color of the Year’ which gets a lot of media coverage. It gives us an excuse to explain how to convert (as best you can) a Pantone color into something to use in Microsoft Office. Pantone colors don’t have a direct match
We’d love to use the Signal messaging app. It’s very secure without going to extremes and it’s free. So why doesn’t it get used at Office-Watch.com? Simple – there’s no file transfer feature. You can exchange texts and make phone calls but that’s it. Even WhatsApp now lets you transfer
The Office for Android apps can now access a wider range of cloud storage options including Dropbox, Box, Egnyte and Tencent with more to come. We’ve mentioned before Microsoft’s Cloud Storage Partner Program which allows non-Microsoft providers to get a link inside the Office apps. It’s something that would have
The ‘Get Office’ app for Windows 10 has received a considerable upgrade to make it more than a billboard to sell Office 365. It’s now (or will be) an ‘Office hub’ for access to all things Office. Recent documents, the programs themselves, Office 365 account settings plus help and training.
