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
All Outlook for Windows have a critical bug which makes it too easy for any hacker to gain access to a computer. It just needs a simple link clicked from an email to bypass Office Protected View protections, even from the Preview pane. So all Outlook’s should be updated asap.
Switch from the new Aptos default font in Outlook to another font that you prefer and is has better readability in Outlook desktop (Windows or Mac) and Outlook (new). Personally I’ve tried to like Aptos fonts but after a few months they still offend my eyes, especially in emails. It’s
Let’s take a moment to explain, without the hype, what Copilot is and what it can do for you and all Microsoft Office users including Office 2021,2019 and earlier. We’ll explain some ways Copilot can save time and money doing simple tasks for anyone with Microsoft Office. Beleive me that
We’ve been using Copilot and Copilot Pro for a little while and here’s our first impressions of Microsoft’s paid AI services as they exist today. In other words, what you get for your money right now. It’s hard to justify paying upfront $360 per user for a year commitment to
Word has many 2024 calendars in the File | New templates supplied by Microsoft. There are tricks to getting the most from the templates and make them personal and special. Search for ‘ calendar’ in the File | New pane. They are all programmed templates, type in type in the
Microsoft Word can make Yearly and Monthly calendars quite easily and they have better configuration options than you might expect. We’ve already looked at the Outlook printing options , customizing them including blank Weekly and Monthly calendars. Outlook doesn’t have a yearly calendar option, so we’re turning to Word. We’ll look
If you enjoy the stuff we do here at Office Watch we’d really appreciate you chucking a few dollars at our annual fundraising drive – and we have a new 2023 ebook for all contributors as a special gift. Donate via Paypal or credit card. The financial support of readers
The Microsoft Designer home page has a major update that highlights some of its hidden features. These changes aren’t just cosmetic, but are a welcome boost to the functionality and usability of the opening page. The new Designer home page is in two parts: Get Started and My Projects. Get
The Washington Post has a ten-tip etiquette guide to which we’ve added our Microsoft Office & Outlook specific suggestions. Check out Danielle Abril’s article at The Washington Post. Her recommendations are necessarily general so we’ll add more technical and specific comments for Office users. Consider not sending an email So
Often you need to switch between windows of the same program, so there should be a quick keyboard shortcut to do that. Here are your options in Windows or Mac. Whether you’re moving between Word documents, Excel workbooks or PowerPoint decks or Outlook emails, the need is the same. You
Microsoft Word is 40 years old today! Back on 25 October 1983, the first Word was released into the wild. Here’s a look at what was tech innovation back when “Every Breath You Take” was the latest pop sensation. Originally called “Multi-Tool Word”, it later renamed “Microsoft Word” or as
