Microsoft Office has a Remove Background tool for images but there are two better, faster and free ways to do the same job. Background removal lets you get an image with a transparent surround which can be merged/overlaid into any other slide or document more seamlessly (left) than a separate
Add England’s national flag “St George’s Cross” into Office documents, Word, Excel or PowerPoint, then use some Office picture tools to enhance the image. Not to be confused with the British “Union Jack” flag, the English flag is a simple red cross on a white field. Many online searches for
Some Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Office users have been getting “30088-27” errors when trying to update the app in the past month. Users of Click-To-Run (C2R) versions of Office 2016, 2019, and 2021 are affected as well as Microsoft 365 when updating to Office version 17726.20126. The update error says
Outlook for Windows is about to become Outlook (classic). We’ll explain why the change is necessary and should have happened last year. The current Outlook for Windows is being renamed “Outlook (classic)” or more properly “Outlook (classic) for Windows”. That will properly distinguish it from the new, still in development,
How long will Microsoft let you use Microsoft 365 if you don’t pay by the due date? Will the subscription service just stop on the due date or is there a ‘grace period’. We wondered how patient Microsoft would be if a Microsoft 365 Business plan wasn’t paid by the
Here’s the latest example of a fake Microsoft email that slips past their anti-virus and security checks to end up in a Microsoft 365 mailbox. It might look like a real email at first glance but it’s not. The big clue to us was “Office 365” which is a name
Ever wanted to make a drawing from a photo? Now you can with a new Microsoft Designer feature “Restyle Image”. It turns any photo into an image in a variety of styles. “Restyle Image” lets you upload a photo, choose a drawing style and then the Designer AI system will
There’s a fairly new Microsoft product called Microsoft 365 Basic featuring 100GB of OneDrive and a 50GB mailbox for under US$20 a year. There’s a hidden opportunity for anyone with non-subscription Office 2021/2019 too. What’s in Microsoft 365 Basic Stripping away all the hype and marketing blurb, the Basic plan
Make your own jigsaw puzzle in PowerPoint to gradually reveal a photo or logo hiding underneath. We’ll show how to make the pieces plus a download sample PowerPoint file for our loyal subscribers. You can use a jigsaw puzzle PowerPoint slide as a powerful storytelling tool, ideal for illustrating how
How can spam email appear in a brand new Outlook.com account right away, before anyone has been given the address? Office Watch reader Sophie J setup an Outlook.com account and was shocked to see spam email appear in the mailbox within minutes. She hadn’t given out the email address to
Gantt chart for project management or event scheduling are possible in Excel. Here’s the step-by-step help plus a complete sample worksheet for our subscribers. Gantt chart can be widely used in project management for visualizing project schedules. They break down a project or event into tasks or activities as horizontal
Google Drive accidently deleted a $125 Billion dollar pension fund. It’s an extreme example of why it’s important to have your own backups of cloud stored files. Don’t rely entirely on one company, including Microsoft’s OneDrive. Cloud storage is great but nothing is 100% perfect so it’s essential to have
Pasting text in Word might seem like a simple thing but there’s a lot of important and smart options available to suit what you need to see and where the content is coming from. Don’t get too worried about all the different paste choices. The main thing is to be
Microsoft Word 365 is changing the default paste action, which is a noticeable difference. You should know some important details and how to make the change now for any version of Microsoft Word. Plus some unclear points in Microsoft’s explanation of the change. Word 365 is only changing the default
Passkey logins are now available to all Microsoft accounts as an easier, faster and more secure way to login to Microsoft 365 and other accounts. It’s a great login option we’ve been waiting for. Passkeys are a secure and password-less way to login to a web site using the login/verification
With a simple trick, you can use Copilot to summarize and query Word documents without paying for an expensive Copilot plan. In theory you need an expensive Copilot plan to sum up or ask questions about Word document with Microsoft’s AI system. The Copilot side-pane is only available in Copilot
Office-Watch.com has Star Wars Day covered with a series of articles which add the spirit of the Rebel Alliance or the Empire to your Microsoft Office documents, workbooks and slides. Star Wars Day is 4th May each year … “May the fourth be with you” geddit? Star Wars fonts Star
PowerPoint offers compression embedded video and audio files, reducing the overall file size. But these options aren’t where you might expect to find them, aren’t selective and need to be used with care. There is compression option for media files (video or audio) to a suitable quality level and make
Smart or Generative Erase in Microsoft Designer has returned after an unexplained absence. Use it for graphics or just to fix a photo. Designers’ Generative Erase can remove people or objects from an image, replacing it with the surroundings. It does a good job doing something that, a few years
Computers are being infected with at least eight different viruses in an attack that uses steganography to hide nasty code in images linked from Word and Excel documents. But there’s good news for most Office users. Steganography is a way to hide text or code in an image or object.
The File Open and Save dialog boxes in Office have many not-obvious features which let you do a lot of file management and housekeeping on the spot. You try to save a document and realize you need a new sub-folder. Or open a document and want to move it to
What’s the story behind the “Update Licence” option that’s appearing in Microsoft 365 apps? What does it mean and when to use it? In Microsoft 365 for Windows you might see a new item on the bottom of the File menu called “Update Licence”. It’s strangely prominent and misleading, based
Drop in some Easter flavor to your documents, slides or emails from right inside Word, PowerPoint, Outlook and Excel. Either religious (Ascension, Crucifix etc) or secular (eggs, chocolate, bunnies) images and graphics are available. Modern Office, especially Microsoft 365 have stock images and icons from a large collection compiled by
Get rid of the over large ‘AutoSave’ slider on the Word, Excel or PowerPoint status bar. The Autosave button (strictly a label plus slider) takes up a lot of room on the top row of modern Office apps. That space is quite crowded and you need it to fit as
