The next Windows 8 will get a button to take you to new and mostly unloved Start Menu. More details of the Windows 8 update are coming out and it’s much as we suggested a few weeks ago. There will be a Start button on the bottom left of the
There’s SUM and then there are all the useful SUM variations to choose from. Excel’s SUM() function is probably the first one we learn but there’s a lot more to it than simply clicking on the button to add up a list of numbers. In this article we’ll look at
We found a worrying bug in Excel 2013 when inserting rows into an existing worksheet. While investigating the Excel ‘coding error’ in an economics paper we uncovered a worrying bug in Excel. It occurs in our testing of Excel 2013 in the cell ranges of formulas like SUM and AVERAGE
A simple Excel worksheet mistake caused a change in economic policy. Was it a user’s mistake or Microsoft’s? A few weeks ago, came the news that a much-quoted academic paper was based on a faulty Excel worksheet. The paper titled “Growth in a Time of Debt.” from Reinhart & Rogoff
Microsoft Word has it’s say on how to pronounce ‘GIF’ Steve Wilhite really set us geeks on fire this week. As the creator of the popular GIF image format he revealed that he preferred the soft-g pronunciation ‘jif’ (as in ‘jiffy’ or ‘gin’) not the commonly used ‘gif’ (with a
The separated Google storage quotas are now under one roof. Google has announced that the free storage available to all comers has now been combined into a single 15GB limit that you can use as you like across their services. Previously Google gave away Gmail, Google Drive with Google +
Is there any difference in the software buying Office 365 or Office 2013 Microsoft uses the terms ‘Office 365’ and ‘Office 2013’ interchangeably and confusingly so it’s no wonder Office-Watch.com gets asked about differences between the two. Strictly speaking ‘Office 2013’ is the software – the successor to Office 2010
Why did Microsoft remove a useful feature from Word 2013? In Word 2007 and Word 2010 there’s a nifty little feature called ‘New from Existing …‘ which quickly made a new document based on an existing one. Why was it removed from Word 2013? ‘New from existing …‘ wasn’t just
A useful Word 2007 and Word 2010 feature – but not Word 2013? A common way to make a new Word document is to use an old document at the starting point. Word has a few ways to do that quickly. Why do it? Often you want to make a
Other ways to make a new document based on an existing one … There’s more than one way to get a similar result as ‘New from Existing…’ that are worth keeping in mind. They apply across all recent versions of Word as well as Excel and Powerpoint too. You can
Are the upcoming changes to Windows 8 significant or just tweaks that make little difference. It’s been interesting to watch Microsoft trying to trick the media with their orchestrated campaign of ‘leaks’ and announcements about a Windows 8 update. We’re now told that an upcoming Windows 8 Service Pack will
An email sent to Gmail appears blank to the receiver with only a .p7m file – why? If you send your emails with a digital signature they might appear ‘blank’ to a Gmail receiver … something like this: The above message had HTML text in the message body but neither
The new Wikidata site should provide hours of Excel ‘fun’. The WikiMedia foundation, operators of Wikipedia among others, is developing a new site called Wikidata. It will be a home for public ‘structured data’ in other words, lists. There are plenty of lists already in Wikipedia. Wikidata will link with
Why does Outlook 2013 ‘hang’/ stop working when you try to send an email with a digital signature? You install a digital certificate to sign your emails, but when you try sending a signed message … Outlook 2013 totally ‘hangs’, it stops working. What’s going on? There’s a bug in
Really obvious spam/phishing messages not caught by Microsoft’s spam filters. You’d think that a very short message with only a web link that has an IP number not domain name would go straight to the Junk Email folder but no. On our test machines (Exchange Server and Outlook 2013 with
StartSSl offers free digital certificates for your Outlook email – here’s how to get yours Email digital signatures aren’t used a lot which is a shame because they are very useful. Signed emails are verified to come from you while it’s possible to encrypt your messages (to prevent anyone else
How to restore the line from the comment to the exact point in the document. Word 2013 has changed, yet again, the way comments are displayed in documents. It appears that the old line between the comment box and the place in the document has been removed – but it
Think you’re a low income earner? Think again …. For a little perspective on what a privileged life most of us have in the Western world … go to globalrichlist.com It will compare your income or wealth against everyone else on the planet Earth. For anyone on a seemingly low
A fast way to switch Markup views in Word 2013. Word 2013 has a new ‘Simple’ markup view that’s intended to make it easier to read a document without the screen clutter of every change being fully shown. You can change the Markup view from the Review tab | Track
Down in Australia, software companies acted out a little play with politicians In Australia’s capital, the local leaders of software giants like Microsoft, Adobe and Apple got together with politicians to act out a little play. It was all under the guise of a ‘parliamentary enquiry‘ but it was a
How might Microsoft increase the cost of Office 365? The often quoted price for an Office 2013/365 subscription is only for the first year, so how might Microsoft increase the price? There’s all sorts of opportunities for Microsoft to raise revenue from Office subscribers once they’ve put themselves on the
Even the New York Times falls for Microsoft’s spin on Office 2013/365 prices Microsoft has played a clever game with Office 2013 subscription pricing and the media has taken the bait with the proverbial hook, line and sinker. Take this generally positive review of Office 2013 titled “Subscribing to Office,
Problems installing Office 2013 made much worse by a useless error message. Installing Office 2013 as a subscription can be an exercise in frustration thanks to some very naïve decisions by Microsoft. It’s a problem with the ‘Click to Run’ streaming install used by Office 365 subscribers. You click on
Microsoft backs down and lets you move Office 2013 between computers. In an astonishing backdown, Microsoft has quietly announced that Office 2013 retail purchases will now be transferable between computers. The initial retail license terms for Office 2013 had a very different requirement than all the past version of Microsoft
