Sometimes Excel 365’s Linked Data Types are great (Stock and Currencies) and other times they’ll drive you crazy or lead you to use wrong statistics. Here’s some problems we found trying out the, supposedly, simple City data type compared to the similar Geography and Location data types. Just getting the
Here’s a first peek at Office LTSC for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Access, Publisher and OneNote which is now out in public preview showing off some of the new features. Office LTSC in it’s current preview is underwhelming, to put it mildly. But that’s what Microsoft is aiming for. Office LTSC
Suggested Replies are coming to Outlook 365 for Windows. As usual, there are details that Microsoft has ‘forgotten’ to mention but we at Office Watch aren’t so forgetful! In the Outlook reading / preview pane, possible replies can be displayed. Or Microsoft’s cloud systems have scanned the message and offered
In late 2018, Excel 365 got an important new feature, Dynamic Arrays . Here’s a simple way to use the feature to make your workbooks sort better and automatically. It also fixes a long-standing problem in Excel. We’re going to focus on a very simple and useful part of dynamic
Yes, there are bunnies and other secular Easter graphics waiting for you in Microsoft 365 and Office 2019. Icons and Illustrations (both types of SVG) have some Easter or at least bunny related graphics. Stock Images also have some choices. Religious choices are missing but there are Christian or Latin
A more efficient way to mark index entries in Microsoft Word is with a concordance or AutoMark file. It’s a separate document with a table of words to be found in the document coupled with their index entries. See Simple Indexing in Microsoft Word for an intro to Word’s indexing
Another bad week for Microsoft’s customers who rely on the Microsoft 365 hosting and other cloud technologies. There were global outages for more than half a day in Teams, Azure, Xbox Live and many other Microsoft Cloud services. All should be restored by the time you read this but there
Excel in a web browser has some new improvements, many of them are familiar Excel desktop features moved online but one is unique to the browser-based version. Version history for collaboration, more zoom options for keyboard and screen, multiple range selections and changing regional settings are all now available online.
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
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
Type the four Playing Card symbols Spade ♠ Hearts ♥Diamonds♦ or Clubs♣ into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. The card symbols have uses beyond playing cards. Diamond ♦ can be a bullet symbol. ♥ heart has many uses, not all
Windows 10X is coming and you’ll hear a lot about it in the coming months. Let’s see what Windows 10X is, how it will run Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Outlook) and why most people won’t need to worry about Windows 10X. What is Windows 10X? Windows 10X is
The Microsoft 365 Productivity Score has been raising concerns about staff privacy and intrusion into their ‘Work from Home’ life. We’ll look at what Productivity Score actually does, how it’s changed after public pressure and why administrators might prefer to be intrusive. Productivity Score applies to Microsoft 365 hosted organizations.
Claude Almer 1950-2020 We’re devastated to report the passing of Claude Almer who died in Sydney, Australia, on November 19, 2020 after a long illness Claude was technical and personal support for Office Watch since well before the newsletter started in 1996. Whenever in-depth analysis of some virus code was
Apple’s new Macbook’s use a totally new type of chip, the M1 or Apple Silicon. What does that mean for Microsoft Office and other programs? We’ll explain what Apple Silicon Macs are and why they are better. Microsoft Office compatibility with the new machines (it’s messy at the moment) and
Illustrations are a new graphics option coming to Microsoft 365 that supplements the existing Icons with a wider range of visual aids for documents, emails, worksheets and slides. They’ve appeared, without any mention, in preview versions of Microsoft 365 for Windows (version 13415.20002) and Microsoft 365 for Mac (v16.43 20102102)
The UK has been embarrassed (again) with the news that around 16,000 COVID-19 test results were missing from the official database and so contact tracing wasn’t done. The culprit? Excel. Or, to be fair, bad use of Excel is to blame. Not understanding it’s limits and how to workaround them.
Microsoft has done a clever thing, combining two important Excel features into a new and really useful addition – Custom Data Types. Excel 365 for Windows/Mac already has Stock and Geography data types to drop live information into workbooks. It’s now possible to make your own Custom Data Types (CDT)
Office 2010 ends support on 13 October 2020 and we’ve been receiving questions from readers asking about switching to newer Microsoft Office. We’ll answer questions about when to update, what to replace Office 2010 and important factors to consider. We’re hearing concerns about privacy in modern Office, reliability and the
Common programming tools can be used to make malicious Office workbooks which bypass both online security checks and Microsoft’s own protections in Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Access. We’ll explain what’s happening and what Microsoft could do better. VBA Purging or VBA Stomping are clever tricks to make an Office documents
Everyone with Microsoft 365 can get a ‘quick poll’ now with any email account or software. No need to wait for the Outlook Quick Poll option, now in preview for Microsoft 365 customers with Outlook for Windows. As we’ve already explained, Quick Poll is a simple and very limited way
Microsoft has made a major blunder with the July patches for Office. An update can crash Outlook for Windows entirely and the reason for the problem makes the bug especially humiliating for Microsoft. We’ll explain Microsoft’s blunder, what you can do if affected and how to avoid the buggy patch.
Word can be used to fill in and make an ICE or In Case of Emergency card. Our newsletter subscribers can download the Word document, ready to fill in and use. ICE cards are known to paramedics and emergency rooms the world over. An unconscious or uncommunicative patient is searched
Animated GIF support is coming (finally!) to Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint. We discovered the new feature in a new Insiders build, Microsoft hasn’t announced anything. Here’s an animated GIF playing in Word 365. Paste or Insert an animated GIF now has play/pause buttons included (bottom left corner). The animation
