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
How to move rows or columns up, down or across an Excel worksheet. There’s a quick way but it’s not obvious. Excel has a variety of different ways in doing this, but it’s important to know the fastest and easiest way, to save you a lot of time and hassle.
Word has many calendars in the File | New templates supplied by Microsoft. Search for “calendar” in the File | New pane then make simple changes to suit you. In Microsoft Word’s File | New pane, search for ‘calendar’. There are two basic calendar designs: Start of Week Some have
Here’s how to choose good looking font pairs for your Word headings and body text or PowerPoint titles and text. We’ve shown you how to use Google Fonts in your Office documents. The Google Fonts site itself is little help but others have curated suggested pairings. Most of the suggested
WOFF are a new-ish type of font that you might have seen mentions or downloads. Here’s how to use them in Microsoft Office; Word, Excel or PowerPoint. WOFF is Web Open Font Format designed to be compact and easy to download. WOFF is for web sites and mobile apps, not
There’s a strange, almost prudish, feature in the Microsoft Word spell checker aka Microsoft Editor that’s used in many of the company’s products. We’ll explain Microsoft seeming avoidance of ‘Naughty Bits’ and why it’s happening. Warning! This article is unusually explicit (NSFW) for Office Watch. If sexually explicit but standard
Type Up Down Arrow with Base or underline ↨ into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. How Up Down Arrow with Base ↨ looks in different fonts. Here’s some examples of how Up Down Arrow with Base / Underline ↨ looks
Is it possible to share or send a single Excel tab or worksheet from an entire spreadsheet? Sharing a single worksheet or tab isn’t possible. Excel’s sharing features work on the workbook or entire document level. But it is possible to send out or share a single worksheet/tab with a
There are three symbols that Microsoft won’t put in their fonts for Windows and Office. They are obscure and you’re unlikely to need them. It’s an interesting bit of trivia and example of the differing corporate cultures and judgements. (This article includes an image that might offend some people. NSFW,
Only for a few hours, Amazon is running their Microsoft 365 Family plus gift card deal potentially saving $50 but there’s also traps to be aware of. The offer is “Microsoft 365 Family 12-month subscription with Auto-Renewal + $50 Amazon Gift Card” our bold text. Check out the deal at
An important Microsoft Office related security bug fix has been bypassed by hackers in an embarrassingly simple way. Back in September 2021, Microsoft released a fix for a security bug which involved accessing a web page within a Word document (docx or rtf). That web page then downloaded and ran
Outlook replies can be a problem of invisible or hard to read text when the incoming email has a color background. We’ll explain the problem and how to fix your reply email. Messages with colored backgrounds might look OK to the sender but are a pain when you try to
