All about Microsoft Office for Apple Mac. Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook on macOS
Microsoft 365 for Mac, Office 2021 for Mac and earlier versions.
The latest version of the macOS for Apple Mac computers, Sequoia v15, is out now. Here’s a few features and settings that might interest Microsoft Office users plus a few tips from real use of macOS Sequoia. macOS Sequioa is available now and works quite well for us. More cautious
Here’s the basics of Styles in Word for paragraph, character or both (Linked) plus Tables and Lists. I know talking about styles in Word makes eyes glaze over but they are a really useful part of Word (plus Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook). Today I watched an ‘experienced’ Word user reformatting
What to do if Excel’s columns have numbers across the top instead of letters. There’s a simple setting to switch between two different ways of labelling cells. You open an Excel workbook and the column headings look all wrong – instead of letters (A, B C …) there are numbers.
In-cell charts in Excel provide a powerful method to visualize data trends and patterns. They allow you to quickly derive insights within a worksheet, making information interpretation more straightforward without fussing about with full charts. We’ll explain how to make in-cell charts and then go further and show how to
How to lock your Excel worksheet from editing – the whole thing or some cells. Allow some people to edit a few cells, leaving the rest of the cells and formulas untouchable by others using the worksheet. Here’s a very simple example: Anyone opening the worksheet can enter a US
Microsoft has announced (indirectly) that Microsoft Office 2024 will be released in October 2024. Don’t buy Office 2021 now, better to wait until Office 2024 is released to get some more features for the same price. This nugget of news came via a Microsoft update announcement to administrators about the
The Workplace Discount Program (formerly Home Use Program) offers 30% discounts on Microsoft 365 to employees of many organizations and government agencies. Here’s how the Workplace Discount Program (WDP) works, the tricks and traps. What is the Workplace Discount Program – WDP? Organizations (companies, governments etc.) that have Microsoft 365
An often-repeated myth says that Word’s spelling or proofing language default is locked into the Windows language setting. Officially that’s not true and never has been since the first Word for Windows in 1989. In practice there’s a bug in Word which is why this persistent myth keeps being repeated.
Excel 365 has two new translation functions to identify language from text or translate text from one language to another. Let’s see how the work, some problems and unknowns. New in Excel 365 are: DetectLanguge() to identify the language of the text supplied, hopefully correctly (see below) Translate() converts text
The Microsoft 365 Insiders blog is ending, sorta. kinda. Really, it’s just moving to another part of the Microsoft.com web site. For the last five years, the Microsoft 365 Insiders blog has been the place where the company boasts about new and changed features in the Insiders or beta versions
Word can spell and grammar check in many languages, here are three ways to switch the language settings plus how to turn off the pesky automatic language switching. Microsoft Word has language settings that can apply to a whole document or just selected text. This is vital for multi-language documents
There’s a simple but not so obvious way for Excel to take a list of values and show them grouped into segments or groups. As an example, here’s the results of a class exam with their scores grouped into blocks of 20. It’s done with a tricky use of PivotTables
We went hunting for koalas in Microsoft Office. Found more than 18 of the cuddly marsupials for Word, PowerPoint or Outlook. There are emoji, Office icons, SVG, online images and more making a colony or cling of koala (either can be the collective noun for koala). None of the endangered
A PDF file made from Microsoft Office or Windows may not look right because of an ongoing PDF bug with variable fonts. It’s been around for years with no sign of a fix. The problem arises when variable fonts are in documents exported to PDFs (either Save As … or
Clipchamp, Microsoft’s video editor is now boasting background removal which is great for tricks like adding a watermark or ‘bug to a video. But there’s some limitations or ‘gotchas’ to watch out for. Add an image to a Clipchamp timeline, right-click then choose ‘Remove Background’. Wait a few moments and
Excel 365’s Linked Data Types are technically impressive. However, the reliability of the data is a problem Microsoft doesn’t talk about. We discovered mistakes with the data without actively looking for them. In general, the data sources are ‘scraped’ from sites like Wikipedia which explains some, but not all, of
The BBC has released some high-quality images from their famous TV shows to be used as online meeting backgrounds or in PowerPoint slides. Pick from Doctor Who (old or new), Fawlty Towers, Yes Minster, Match of the Day, Eastenders and more. Consider using these BBC TV backgrounds in PowerPoint for
Some imported Outlook calendar items can’t be changed, here’s why and how to make the imported appointment editable. Understanding issues with an Outlook imported appointment can help you manage calendar inconsistencies. Usually an imported appointment (via a downloaded .ics file) can be edited just like most Outlook calendar items. Often
Zoom has a browser-based word processor to their Workplace range with some interesting features including what they call the Magical Key. Zoom Docs word processor aims to enhance productivity within its collaborative environments. Zoom Docs is designed to be used within Zoom group calls and many of the templates reflect
Microsoft’s eventual replacement Outlook (new) for Windows supports Gmail, Yahoo and other accounts but there’s a privacy trap that Microsoft does its best to hide. Outlook for Windows privacy is a major concern. According to Microsoft, it’s easy to add Gmail, Yahoo and other accounts to the new Outlook, all
Can Microsoft Word handle a newly famous name “Walz” or does Word think it’s a spelling error? What about the other VP candidate, “Vance”? In the last few hours, we’ve seen social media posts like this: “ Okay, word people, now would be a great time to put a “Walz
We’ve expanded our live Paris Olympics medal table to compare countries’ performances to their population or wealth. Along the way we explain how to cope with some problems that can arise when Excel theory hits the Real World. Our newsletter readers get a working example workbook to try themselves. We
Microsoft shareholders should be happy with the company’s latest financial results for the quarter ending 30 June 2024 (Q4). Here’s a few highlights from an “Office Watch” point of view. Office 365 Commercial Revenue growth was up 13% possibly due to the new Copilot for Microsoft 365 fees. (All these
Excel for Mac is now getting the ‘From Folder’ option in PowerQuery. An important part of the PowerQuery puzzle. PowerQuery’s ‘From Folder’ lets you add more data to a query simply by adding data files into a folder. PowerQuery will then scoop up all the data and add it to
