Office has various options for graphics or images of skeletons or skulls – perfect for Halloween or other gory, scary uses in Word docs, PowerPoint slides or Outlook emails. We can’t offer a 12-foot skeleton, complete with creepy glowing eyes. For this 3.56 meter monster you have to hunt through
Create your own fun, satirical ‘Halloween costume’ pack in the style of a popular meme using just Microsoft Word or PowerPoint. Use this article as a year-round example of how to overlay one image over another plus adding text to a picture. Take a blank Halloween costume image, add an
Excel 365 is getting a simple way to add checkboxes into cells to easily set True/False, Yes/No, On/Off binary settings. You can hear the cries of “About bloody time” across the Excel world <g>. It’s long been possible to add a checkbox into an Excel worksheet but it’s a clumsy
There’s a hidden part of Excel which can be used to catch ‘data cheats’ or people who tweak workbooks to get the results they want. There’s a news story about research into honesty, the academic is being accused, ironically, of dishonesty in their findings. The Professor is suspected of tampering
Microsoft is adding Dall-E to new services for Microsoft 365 (Designer), Bing and Office (starting with Word). Let’s look at what Dall-E is, what it can do for you and the fun to be had. In short, Dall-E turns text into an image with often good and sometimes funny results.
Microsoft has announced some of the extras coming to the next version of Windows 11, rolling out from September 26 onwards. Here’s a quick look at some of these changes, in particular those which can improve your Office docs, sheets, slides and emails. Paint Paint app receives a major upgrade
Over the past ten years, OneTastic and its early version, OneCalendar, have established themselves as vital tools for dedicated OneNote users. These applications, developed as a passion project by Omer Atay from the OneNote product group, have proven especially beneficial for users who frequently record meeting notes across various sections
Microsoft and Project Gutenberg have joined to create thousands of audiobooks for free, using modern ‘text to speech’ technology that’s amazingly good. And we have some tips on how to create audiobooks with more variety in voice, accent and pace. Since 1971, Project Gutenberg has compiled a wide range of
Microsoft’s alternatives for the new Aptos fonts range are very poor. In some cases, the substitutions make no sense at all. We’ve looked at what happens if a document with Aptos fonts is opened Office 2016 and earlier versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. Aptos fonts are the new
The Python Editor for Excel is a welcome innovation of the Microsoft Garage project making editing and debugging Python code in Excel a lot easier. Python Editor add-on for Excel mirrors the functionalities of renowned integrated development environments (IDEs) using the code management system behind Visual Studio Code. Sample code
Here’s how to get the new Microsoft Designer app for iPhone and Android smartphones. Also how to share designs between the mobile app and the full Designer web app. Get the Designer app Go to https://designer.microsoft.com/install and scan the QR code provided on that page That will open the App
It seems possible that Office 2021 is really installing Microsoft 365 with the license details controlling what features are available. In some cases, it’s an important difference to keep in mind. A few bits of information suggest that there’s more commonality between Office 2021 and Microsoft 365 than you might
There are some interesting and useful changes coming to Read Aloud in Microsoft Word. More voices and languages, reading speed and (at last!) text scrolls as it’s being read. The current Read Aloud settings are limited. Review | Read Aloud then click the little ‘cog’ icon. That’s changed in some
Images can now be included in Excel PivotTables which not only makes for better looking PivotTables but more interesting Slicers too. A great contribution from Office Watch reader “AllanC” in New Zealand. With pictures in a PivotTable you can easily make cute slicers like this to show one record (person)
Microsoft is changing more than just the font in Microsoft 365, there are also default color scheme and even line changes coming too. Here’s all the proposed changes and how to reverse them. New Default Fonts We’ve already talked about the new default fonts, Aptos and Aptos Display. New default
Microsoft Excel has caught up with the needs of investors by adding automatic refresh of Stock prices and Currency data. Office Watch will explain what’s now possible and its limitations. Don’t get too excited, we’ve waited so long and when Microsoft does respond, the auto-refresh options don’t go far enough,
Like to know some more about your Microsoft 365 for Windows software license? How long the Office apps will run without an Internet connection? Here’s how to see that hidden license info, how it’s changed and a little good news too. Microsoft 365 software occasionally checks with Microsoft servers to
Here’s how to find out what type of Microsoft Office 365 licence you have with details hidden from the usual About dialog box. We recently showed it’s important for for perpetual non-subscription versions of Office like Office 2021 or Office 2019 to know if the purchase is Retail/Volume or OEM.
For all the changes Microsoft has made to Search (aka Tell Me), they continue to ignore one basic that would make Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook a lot easier to work with. Here’s some examples of how Microsoft Office search badly needs fixing. Search (formerly called “Tell Me”) usually appears
Microsoft is making Clipchamp available to their Microsoft 365 commercial customers after limiting access to consumer users for too long. As usual, Microsoft’s announcement has many ‘fine print’ details to annoy paying customers. Clipchamp is Microsoft’s online video editing service. It’s been available to Microsoft 365 Personal and Family customers
There’s a nice little Excel function that will calculate the rate of return on any asset like a stock or fund including income/dividends with purchases and sales over time. The secret sauce is XIRR() a function which calculates an internal rate of return with uneven interest or dividend payments. In
Can you scan a picture or document directly into Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook? Certainly, but these days we’re spoiled for choice and have fantastic features like using a smartphone as a simple scanner. Back in the day, you could click a button in Word 2003 to scan a document
There’s a bug in the latest release of Outlook 365 for Windows (Microsoft 365) which makes saving attachments slow to a crawl. Microsoft has a workaround to consider, if you’re desperate. The problem occurs when saving attachments to a network folder directly. There’s a long wait looking at this dialog
Excel’s new AI functions, under the Copilot branding, have started to appear in some public releases. Here’s the full list with syntax of all six AI functions. The functions have started appearing in some Excel 365 for Windows, Insiders Beta (version 2308 build 16708.20004). Not all Insiders see the same