There is a way to make a shortcut or menu button to jump directly to the Find dialog box, as compared to the Navigation pane which is now the default for Ctrl + F. Thanks to all the Office Watch readers who sent in the tip including: Karen, Ron, Geoff, Calvin and Alice. Also thanks […]
When you type or paste a web link into Office, it normally converts it into a web link automatically. But occasionally that feature doesn’t work right. We found one example when researching the famous artist Roy Lichtenstein and one of his best known works. Click on the image to see the Wikipedia article about Whaam! […]
As part of the Outlook for Mac release, Microsoft has indicated their Office for Mac plans. A new Office for Mac (Office 2015 for Mac?) will be released in the second half of 2015. Office 365 subscribers/renters will be able to switch to the new Office for Mac at no extra charge. There will also […]
Outlook has had a Categories feature for a long time … here’s how you can use it and why. Categories let you group Outlook items (emails, contacts, calendar and tasks) into broad topic areas or subjects … all without moving from their original folders. They can be subjects that a normal Outlook search could not […]
WinBeta is reporting that emails are going out to people who qualify for the next step in Office software testing. This marks a major step in the progress to yet another version of Office. A few months ago Microsoft asked people to ‘indicate interest’. Now they appear to have culled those requests and sent emails […]
While Microsoft Word lumbers along, there’s some interesting and genuinely creative word processors out there. We’re not talking about direct rivals to Microsoft Office 2013 like OpenOffice, LibreOffice, Kingsoft Office Free, Google Docs, iWork or earlier versions of Office. Instead we’ll look at software that takes a very different approach to putting words on the screen […]
Microsoft has made it easier for students to get a free copy of the Microsoft Office suite with a major streamlining of their existing Student Advantage program. How to get the free Office The student (13 years and older) has to be enrolled at a school which has MS Office licenced for all faculty and […]
Choosing the sort type is really important and Word doesn’t always guess correctly. Office-Watch.com reader Peter M. reminds us that choose the sort type is really important: Text, Number or Date. “I just thought it worth pointing out that, for example 8, 70, 600 would sort in one order as Text and the reverse order […]
How to sort a list using a hidden or unseen list in Word. Sometimes you want to sort a list in a way that isn’t apparent to the reader. To continue our Apollo theme, here’s a list of the twelve men who walked on the moon with the order they stepped onto the surface. To […]
You can hide a column in Word, all it takes is a little trickery. Sometimes you want to hide a table column in a Word document but according to Microsoft you can’t do it. Here’s how to do it anyway. It’s true that there’s no explicit ‘hide column’ option like in Excel but you can […]
In-depth and clever tricks with sorting in Word. Following our look at different alphabetical orders, here’s a look at the sorting options in Word. You can sort paragraphs, lists and tables in a Word document. Select the list or paragraphs then choose Home | Paragraph | Sort. For tables there’s similar sort options are at […]
Why Excel PivotTables get messed up and how to stop it. Time and again we’ve heard from people who try PivotTables and only get nonsense tables. That’s understandable since Microsoft’s hype about PivotTable ignores the basics that we’ll cover in this article. You’ve probably seen a Microsoft demonstration of PivotTables where it looks sooooo easy. […]
How to add and remove data from a PivotTable. Thanks for the great feedback from our article on PivotTables. One concern some of you have is about adding or removing source data after the PivotTable has been created. That’s understandable because the original PivotTable releases where unclear and curiously sensitive about the data ranges used. […]
How to quickly insert symbols in Word without taking your fingers off the keyboard. Inserting Symbols into Word documents is a pain, go up to the ribbon Insert | Symbols | Symbol at the very least … or you can use a trick from the 20th century to keep your fingers on the keyboard. Type […]
A simple, practical and non-scary example of how Excel PivotTables can work for you. Excel’s PivotTables are a great feature but one that seems way too hard for most of us … so here’s a simple and practical example of how PivotTables can help. A little fear of PivotTables is understandable. It’s one of those […]
Word: how to find the character code used for a particular letter or symbols. Last week we talked about the Unicode v7.0 symbols and how to use symbols in Word. With over 100,000 characters in the Unicode specification, it’s important to know the character code number for the symbol you want. That raises the question, […]
How can you get the new Unicode symbols in Office documents? There’s plenty of new symbols included in the Unicode 7.0 standard, here’s how to get them into your Office documents. Most fonts do NOT have all the Unicode characters, after all, there are over 133,000 of them. There are far too many characters so […]
A guide to getting more life and value from your printer. The Guardian has a nice little guide to maintaining an inkjet printer and saving money. We’ve never had good experiences with recycled ink or toner cartridges and have always found their quality to be poor. But others swear by recycled/refilled cartridges so if you […]
Plenty of free ebooks about Office 2013, Office 2010, Office 365 and more. Microsoft has released another 130 free ebooks for anyone to download. It includes titles about Windows 8, Office 2013, Office 2010 and Office 365. A list of the Office related titles with links is below. Free ebooks should be enough to boast […]
How to get the World Cup schedule into Outlook automatically. The football/soccer World Cup is about to start with 64 matches being played over the next month. Here’s how to get a reliable schedule into your Outlook calendar quickly and easily. Outlook lets you import an Internet feed of calendar items. This is better than […]
How to quickly change web links in Office documents. It’s possible to bulk change web links in Word documents using the Replace, here’s the trick. For example, you might need to change the domain name due a corporate restructure or update links so they are secure (https) instead of regular (http) links. The trick is […]
Does pasting an image into Office take up more space than inserting it? Gary Z read our tip about pasting images into Office and asks: “I remember reading years ago that graphics are copied to the clipboard in BMP. Huge files. Then if paste HUGE increase in Word file size. So INSERT jpg, tiff, png. […]
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 […]
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 […]
Great table formatting options not available from Microsoft Word’s Table Style gallery. Word’s Table Style gallery is a tempting selection of table formats but it doesn’t show you all the options to make your table look good. Some of these variations are right there on the ribbon, others are buried a bit deeper. The Table […]
Combine adjacent cells into a single cell or split a cell in two. Welcome to ‘Merge Cells’ where you can combine adjacent cells into a single cell. It’s very handy for table formatting tricks and other unusual situations like a longer than common text label. Or a three row heading like this with various merged […]
Use Word tables to do formatting tricks or make complex formats easily. There’s more to Word tables than just showing grids of information like this: Tables have all sorts of little tricks in them and let you do clever things in Word. Here’s a look at some of those tricks … Using hidden tables Tables […]
Why RE and FW are the best options for email subjects When you reply or forward a message your email program will add a prefix to the subject line. The question is – do you choose the standard ‘English’ prefixes RE: and FW: or your local equivalents? There’s plenty of alternatives to RE and FW […]
Outlook adds holidays from various countries but it’s not very clear or clever about it. Recently we’ve been looking at Outlooks Holiday support. We thought it would a simple matter of clicking ‘Add Holidays’ but instead we found an old-fashioned, unclear and poorly designed system that’s causes lots of hassles and frustration. From File | […]
A better way to view your email in Outlook 2010 and Outlook 2013 Outlook Conversation view is a different way to arrange your email. It groups messages with (usually) the same subject together making it easier to follow an email thread. Conversations also makes better use of valuable screen real estate. When Microsoft first showed […]
What makes a conversation in Outlook? In the Outlook world a conversation is a series of emails with the same subject line or conversation ID. It’s as simple as that. In the past these were called email ‘threads’. Outlook 2010 and Outlook 2013 can group messages by conversation or thread. For most people the conversation […]
How to change the date format in Excel Online The default date format in Excel has always been a mystery to newcomers and its stranger in Excel Online (the new name for Excel Web Apps). To change the default date format for display and date entry for Excel Online, go to your Microsoft account: Go […]
How to delete ‘duplicate’ holidays in Outlook. When you add holidays to Outlook, sometimes you can end up with duplicate entries because Outlook isn’t smart enough to detect simple duplications in the calendar. Here’s an example of triplication of holiday items in the Outlook Calendar. It’s easy to do given Outlook’s poor holidays support. Removing […]
Put Easter and other public holidays back into Outlook If you check your Outlook calendar for the coming weekend, you might not see Easter Monday marked for Monday 21 April, Good Friday marked for Friday 18 April 2014. Or maybe US Thanksgiving on 27 Nov 2014 isn’t listed? Why? Doesn’t Outlook come with public holidays automatically […]
How to get rid of an email conversation or thread. Sometimes you get emails on a topic that doesn’t matter to you and is cluttering up your Inbox. Outlook 2010 and Outlook 2013 have a fairly simple solution – the Ignore button. Ignore tells Outlook to move all existing and future emails with a certain subject […]
Outlook tricks you may not have considered for New, Reply, Reply All, Forward and Resend. New / Compose The simple and easy one first. Click on the New Email button to start a new message. At the very least fill in the TO, Subject and some message text then click Send. There can be more […]
Sharing a document with Office 2013 and OneDrive Sharing a document online for people to view and edit is pretty easy. Here’s how … Create your document in Office 2013 and save it to your OneDrive account. Tip: turn on Track Changes before uploading so you can see who edited the document and what changed. […]
Word 2013’s ‘Pickup where you left off’ is different from the Shift+F5 shortcut. All the recent talk about the ‘Pickup where you left off’ feature in Word 2013 had a few Office-Watch.com readers asking how it’s different from the long-standing GoBack shortcut in Word – Shift + F5. GoBack or Shift + F5 has been […]
How to convert a PDF into a Word document, even when Word 2013 can’t do it. Since Word 2013 can’t properly convert ‘image only’ PDF’s or you don’t have Word 2013 at all, how can you convert PDF’s? There are many options available including free and paid online services, OCR software or even paying someone […]
Why won’t Word 2013 convert some PDF’s? Word 2013 lets you convert some PDF files into Word documents, but what about those it won’t convert to editable text? What’s going on? First a quick primer on two types of PDF. Image only Some PDFs are just pictures of pages. The PDF treats each page as […]