A smaller Surface machine isn’t coming soon but Office for Android surely is. The rumor mill is running hot about the Surface Mini (comatose, possibly deceased) and Microsoft Office for Android (in gestation). Microsoft did have a plan for a smaller version of their Surface computers but it was apparently killed. Buy why? Surely Microsoft […]
Join the list of testers for future versions of Microsoft Office. Microsoft has opened their waiting list for people to test future versions of Microsoft Office. Businesses and individuals can apply here http://prereleaseprograms-public.sharepoint.com/ There’s no guarantee you’ll be selected nor which version of Office you’ll be offered (Office for Windows, Mac, iPad. Maybe the upcoming […]
Do the latest Microsoft data encryption promises mean much? Microsoft has announced more encryption services for customers but it’s more ‘papering over the cracks’ than a real effort to protect customer’s data. Microsoft has made some vague changes to protect the transmission of your emails and documents, but nothing to protect that information on their […]
Microsoft doesn’t see the main problem as they apologizes & explain the Lync and Exchange outages. In a blog post, Microsoft has explained what happened in the cloud service breakdowns earlier this week but exposes their lack of understanding for customers’ needs with cloud services. The break in Exchange Server is down to “an intermittent […]
QuickOffice is no more but Google improves MS Office document support Google has announced improvements to their direct support for Microsoft Office document formats as part of a reshuffle of their apps. The Google apps for viewing and editing documents will be updated to include editing of Microsoft Office document formats, without conversion. On Android […]
Email services for Office 365 and Exchange Online should now be resumed but Microsoft handled it really badly. In Microsoft’s world, damage to sales is far worse than any failure to meet customers service needs. So on that score, Microsoft has done well for itself in the last day or so. They had a major […]
Microsoft raises the bar for cloud storage quantity but not quality. Microsoft has laid down a serious challenge to Google, Dropbox and other online storage provider with big increases in OneDrive storage limits for free and paying customers. Sadly, no mention of improvements to OneDrive itself, especially security and privacy, but we digress. Over the […]
An interesting font idea from Spain – handwriting of homeless people turned into fonts. HomelessFonts.org is a series of fonts based on the handwriting of homeless people. For example, here’s the Francisco font. There are five fonts at present with more promised. Priced per font at €19 Euros for individuals and €290 for companies The […]
How can you tell which type of Office 2013 installation you have? Office 2013 comes with two quite different installation methods. Ideally there should be no difference between the two but the latest patch bug only affects some users with one type of installation called ‘Click to Run’. Since there’s some differences between the two […]
What does the new Amazon phone have for Office users? The new Amazon Fire Phone is interesting though it remains to be seen whether features like ‘Dynamic Perspective’ are useful or gimmicky. For us, the main question is Microsoft Office compatibility both for users of the Fire Phone and anyone else sending documents to a […]
What’s in the latest Office 2011 for Max update? In late May, Microsoft quietly released an update for Office 2011 for Mac taking it to version 14.4.2. If this was Office for Windows, it would be called a ‘Service Pack’ but somehow, not Office for Mac. Update Secrecy One thing that is the same of […]
Another easy way to get images into Word and other Office documents. Last week we mentioned a faster way to get a scanned image into Word via the ‘scan to clipboard’ option available in some scanning software. There are similar options available for copying existing image files into Word, Excel or PowerPoint documents as well […]
A simple solution to uninstall problems with Office 2013/Office 365. If you’re trying to uninstall Office 2013 you might get some unhelpful error messages like: Couldn’t uninstall OfficeWe’re sorry, Office couldn’t be uninstalled. Please try uninstalling Office again. ‘Try later’ isn’t a very useful suggestion. How much later? A minute, an hour, a day? Office […]
The competition among cloud storage providers continues with Box improving their Android app. The competition among cloud storage providers continues with Box improving their Android app. The new Android app for Box includes ‘lightning fast’ document viewing including for Word, Excel and PowerPoint as well as PDF and images. Specifically the content preview supports .doc […]
Can you scan a picture or document directly into Word? Back in the day, you could click a button in Word to scan a document or image and drop it into a document. Can you still do that? Alas no. Microsoft dropped its imaging services within Windows and so Word lost the scan button. The […]
Does this Microsoft document give a peek at the touch screen version of Office aka Office Gemini? A document from Microsoft Research has got some people excited because it might reveal how Office software as a touch/Metro/Modern app (aka Office Gemini) will look. As part of a discussion about ‘Great Inking’ – the future possibilities […]
Behind the latest attempt to make Surface popular. Microsoft has announced Surface Pro 3, the latest incarnation of their tablet device. This time the focus is on replacing traditional laptops with something that has the power of a laptop but also portability of a tablet. There’s a larger 12-inch screen with various Intel Core options. […]
A new way to publish PowerPoint presentations with videos, web pages and quizzes. Office Mix is a way to turn a Powerpoint slide deck into what Microsoft calls an ‘interactive online lesson’. It’s squarely aimed at the educational market. The idea is to expand a PowerPoint presentation into a full online lesson containing: The presentation […]
Or survey gives results that suit those paying for the survey. It’s an old PR trick, put together some report or survey that will get lots of free publicity for the company that’s footing the bill. It’s easy copy for overworked journos so you can’t blame them for using them. Microsoft has done it themselves. […]
Microsoft likes us noticing changes – so why not tell us first? Jenny N. writes: ” I totally agree with you about Microsoft’s habit of making changes and fixing bug without telling customers. But it’s more ironic than you realize. Look at a comment from an Office for iPad product manager on the MS blog. He’s […]
