Here’s all the different ways you can quickly insert the current date or time into a Microsoft Word document. There’s the ‘official’ shortcut and the ‘secret’ shortcut with better options than the usual tip. As usual with Word and Office, there’s the simple but incomplete answer that’s commonly given but
Back in 2015 the US government made an important decision in favor of ‘net neutrality’ and got a quick complaint back in Morse Code! Here’s how to add Morse Code dots and dashes to Microsoft Word, PowerPoint or other Office app. Verizon issued a press release complaining about the FCC’s
Type the White Right backhand pointer 👉 into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. It’s officially called “White Right Pointing Backhand Index”. White Right Pointing Backhand Index 👉 symbol is great for signs, simple hand graphics in slides or an alternative
Why call Microsoft 365 a software ‘subscription’ when it’s really renting? A few readers have asked us why Office-Watch.com calls Microsoft 365 renting when it’s called ‘subscription’ by Microsoft. Microsoft relentlessly uses the word ‘subscription’ to describe their preferred way to pay for Office but that doesn’t mean their use
Excel’s Paste Special feature can be used to modify multiple numbers at once. Paste Special is more commonly used to paste only values or formatting, it has other tricks to offer. We’ll show you firstly how to multiply numbers in Excel by using Paste Special then add, subtract and division.
The Word Text Box Gallery gives you a head start on nice document effects. Under the Insert tab in Word is the Text Box gallery, a selection of pre-set options to jazz up your document. It’s the easy way to put in fancy design elements you see in books and
OneNote Pages can contain all manner of things; text, files, documents, PDF, drawing, images, tables, web clippings, lists, audio and video files. Pictures and recordings in OneNote have some nifty tricks and you can search everything you’ve added to OneNote. Text is very simple just ‘click on the page and
Word 365 is getting another improvement to the Search feature, now you can speak your question or search. Look at the Search box on the title bar, now or soon there’ll be a microphone button at right. Click on the microphone icon and speak your search terms. Assuming your microphone
Styles in Microsoft Word would be very cumbersome if you had to set up each one individually. To make it easier, styles have inheritance. A new style is usually a copy, linked to an existing style with just some changes to selected items. Here’s an example of inheritance in a
There are good reasons to avoid the Normal style for the main text in a Word document and use the hidden ‘Body Text’ style instead. The standard Microsoft Word document structure has Headings (Heading 1, Heading 2) … with paragraphs of text in the Normal style. It sounds good but,
Outlook 365 for Windows is getting more Teams features that link received emails with Teams, start chats or schedule a meeting. Above the email, beside the Reply, Reply All and Forward buttons is now a Teams pull-down menu. Only in Microsoft 365 hosted mailboxes, including Outlook.com Share to Teams This
There’s a new “File Card” look coming to the Office ‘all in one’ app for iPhone and iPad which shows document thumbnails and other information. File Cards use the document thumbnails that are in most, but not all Office documents plus PDF files that are stored on OneDrive. Microsoft says
Adding thumbnail or preview image for Word, Excel or PowerPoint Office documents is easy, though you won’t find the choice anywhere obvious. We’ll dig into how thumbnails work for some nerdy extra detail. Thumbnails are the small images that appear in File Explorer and elsewhere instead of the standard icons
Excel has a way to rank a series of values, showing which is top, middle and bottom. As usual, what appears to be a simple thing has extra features to cope with the real world like equal placings. Here’s a simple ranking. As you can see, Excel has ranked the
Here’s a look at two things that you’d expect Excel to handle quickly and easily, but doesn’t. Showing a ranking of items with equal ranks shown (3rd equal etc) and ordinal numbers (1st, 2nd, 3rd etc) or ordinal names (first, second, third etc). All are possible in Excel but strangely
If you’d like to be really clever with Rank/Rank.EQ in Excel, here’s how to show different words for joint rankings (only two with the same rank) or equal rankings by three or more. It’s a small difference but can make your reports or merged documents look a lot more professional.
You can show ordinal numbers in Excel; 1st, 2nd, 3rd. Sadly, it’s not as simple as you’d think. The ‘Ordinal Rank’ column, 1st, 2nd etc you’d expect to be provided by Microsoft, but it’s not. There’s no in-built function nor a number format. After all, Excel has many different number
The work of Eric Gill is controversial these days, for good reason. Microsoft Windows and Office have fonts based on Gill’s work so users might need to think twice about using Gill Sans and similar fonts. Gill Sans MT and Gill Sans Nova are supplied with Windows and Office but
Office for Mac users yearn for the day when their software matches ‘feature parity’ with Office for Windows. “Two platforms, One Office” is the dream. But is it possible or even likely? We’re inspired by this tweet from José Rodríguez-Suárez. If Microsoft responds, we can predict what they’ll say, because
The right-click menu is a powerful part of modern computers. It lets you quickly access options in Windows, Mac and Microsoft Office. Right-click is such a basic part of personal computing that it works even on devices without a mouse! We love ‘stupid’ questions because they’re rarely stupid at all.
insert the Black Right Pointing Backhand Index 🖝 into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. Black Right Pointing Backhand Index 🖝 symbol can be used as a creative bullet symbol in lists or to point a direction on a sign. It’s
To play a selection of different audio tracks, one after another is surprisingly clumsy even in Microsoft 365 PowerPoint. For example, you might like to have multiple tracks from a single album or several movements from a symphony. We expected that a simple Animation would work with the second music track
A common request is for music to play throughout a PowerPoint presentation. Handy for automatic and kiosk slideshows. That’s easy in PowerPoint these days. Insert the audio then look on the Playback tab. There’s a choice ‘Play in Background’ that does the job in one click. ‘Play in Background’ is just a way of turning on
Almost Equal sign ≈ can be typed into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. The Almost Equal symbol ≈ is commonly used within Mathematics to indicate two values are roughly equal, but not exactly equal. Or use it whenever you need
