Microsoft has added more protections against nasty Excel 4.0 macros aka XLM macros. XLM or Excel 4.0 macros are an older pre-VBA system that’s still available in modern Excel 365 for Windows and Mac. XML macros have been around since 1992 but gradually replaced by VBA which debuted only a
There are types of Office documents that you should NOT open, even if they come from someone you trust. Here’s the full list of file extensions for the older Office document formats which are much more likely to be ‘malicious’ docs from hackers and criminals. We’ve talked about the risks
Microsoft Exchange Server software has been comprehensively hacked over the last few months, focusing on US systems but spreading across the world. What happened, who needs to act now and what everyone should watch out for. Exchange Server is the mailbox technology used by many, many companies around the world.
In Gmail online, messages can be tagged as ‘Important’ or ‘Star’, clicking the little arrow or star next to a message. Important and Star are treated very differently in Outlook for Windows. Flags in Outlook – Starred in Gmail Gmail has a ‘Star’ option for messages, just click the star
Without notice, the main forum for Office customers to tell Microsoft what they want has disappeared. No explanation of what’s happened and what, if anything, will replace it. For many years, Microsoft has boasted about their UserVoice pages such as https://office365.uservoice.com/ but it’s gone dark. All the years of suggestions
WhatsApp desktop extensions (Windows and Mac) can now make and receive voice or video calls. Until now the desktop apps where limited to texting and sending attachments. If you use WhatsApp (or Signal), the desktop extensions are really great. Instead of pecking away on a tiny screen, you can type
Gmail has a very different way of organizing mail to the Outlook/Microsoft system of folders. Gmail’s Labels, Important and Categories have different or no meaning in Outlook for Windows. Labels Gmail has Labels which are tags that can be applied to messages. Outlook shows those labelled messages as if they
You can choose which mail folders are synchronized with Outlook but you won’t find this option with the rest of the Gmail account settings in Outlook. Instead go to the heading of the Gmail account in the folder pane, right-click and choose IMAP folders. Subscribed folders Let’s stop for a
PowerPoint 2016, 2013 and 2010 users need these bug fixes from Microsoft to prevent the program crashing. The bug might happen opening a presentation with a diagram – ouch. There are two updates needed to fix the bug, one for Office generally and for PowerPoint itself. PowerPoint 2016 KB4493164Office 2016
No need to right-click to see spelling and grammar suggestions in Word and Outlook 365. It’s changing so only a single left click will show the suggestions, corrections and more. On the downside, fewer options are initially displayed. Useful features are now multiple clicks away and hidden from view. It’s part
Word online (in a web browser) can now embed live web content like videos from YouTube or a quiz from Forms Embedded content is fully interactive within the Word document. Play the video, fill in the form/quiz. No special command or ribbon button necessary. Just paste in the web link,
Word online (web browser) is getting a way to convert a Word document into a PowerPoint presentation. For the moment it’s available as a preview feature in Word online. See if you have it at File | Transform. Transform document to presentation Start from File | Transform | Transform to
Type the Not Equal ≠ sign into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. Not Equal ≠ symbol is used in equations, obviously but it’s also handy shorthand in a heading or slide. The official Unicode name is ‘Not Equal To’. How Not Equal ≠ looks in different fonts. Here’s some
The default Gmail settings in Outlook need some attention because, frankly, they aren’t very good. Once you’re add Gmail to Outlook for Windows, there are settings to fix or check. This article explains the important Outlook settings for Gmail accounts, where they are, what they mean and which ones to
Outlook for Windows can connect to Google’s Gmail here’s the simple setup available in Outlook 365 and 2019. It’s just the start of a longer process that Microsoft doesn’t openly explain to customers, starting with an important limitation. Free Gmail – no calendar or contacts Outlook for Windows only synchronizes
Maybe it’s just us, but the news that Microsoft Word is soon getting a text prediction option does NOT qualify as good news. It’s a right PITA. Text prediction is a new cloud service from Microsoft. It’s currently in Outlook online for Microsoft 365 hosted mailboxes and some Microsoft 365
Microsoft has finally agreed to help out customers who are offline for a long time and can’t keep their Microsoft 365 activated with a regular Internet connection. People on ships or other isolated places might use their computer offline for weeks or months. Ever since Microsoft changed to counting each
Microsoft’s prices for Office 2019 bundles make one thing clear, Microsoft really doesn’t want people buying Office 2019. The retail prices are high and there’s less chance for retail discounts. There’s less competition on the perpetual license products compared to Microsoft 365 Home ‘subscription’ which is usually available for less
Microsoft has announced two ‘perpetual licence’ or non-subscription versions of Office that will be released later in 2021. Both continue Microsoft’s unstated but bleedingly obvious attempts to push customers to annual ‘subscription’ payments. Here’s what Microsoft has disclosed so far with an explanation of the continued reduction of value for
The Office ‘all in one’ app, already available for iPhone and Android, is starting its arrival on Apple iPad. The app combines Word, Excel, PowerPoint and other goodies into a single app. The ‘all in one’ app, officially called just ‘Microsoft Office’ has started a limited preview. We’ll explain how
‘Spy Pixels’ is the new name for a common tracking method used in commercial emails. We’ve written about them many times over the 20+ years of Office-Watch.com, the only new thing is the name. What are Spy Pixels? So called ‘Spy Pixels’ are tiny images (1 pixel only) linked in
Microsoft is adding new features and interface to Dictation in Word for Windows. Voice commands, auto punctuation and even a !@$#$ profanity filter. Clicking the Dictation button on the Home tab or pressing Alt + ` now opens a dialog at bottom center of the document. It will start ‘Listening’
Microsoft has announced seven extra languages added to their ‘speech to text’ Dictation feature in Outlook and Word. The new languages announced are: Hindi Russian Polish Portuguese (Portugal) Korean Thai Chinese (Taiwan) Your milage will vary As a cloud service, the available languages will vary. It depends on the version
Microsoft is hyping natural language searches in Outlook for Windows and Mac, so we dug down to see how it works and for whom. There’s a lot of ‘gotchas’ overlooked in the boasting. According to Microsoft, Outlook now has better searches: “With Natural Language in search, you simply type the
