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.
Keep a close eye on the increase/decrease decimals buttons on the Excel ribbon because Microsoft has changed them for one version of Excel. Increase / decrease decimals is a very common Excel feature to change the visible accuracy of a number. For example, choosing Currency or Accounting style (which defaults
Protecting an important Excel worksheet from careless editing, or allowing only specific cells to be modified is all part of a powerful and highly flexible feature in Microsoft Excel known collectively as “Protect”. It’s been there for a long time but is little understood, so we’ll do our humble best
How did we make a Word table with a picture background for a recent article – asks an Office Watch friend? She meant this table of Zoom shortcuts for toggling audio and video . There’s a similar table for Teams shortcuts. The quick answer is … we cheated! Word can’t
Miss the classic WordArt from Word’s glory days — the arched text, the rainbow slopes, the wavy headlines that screamed “1990s”? Those old gallery styles are still alive inside every modern version of Word, including Word 365 and Word 2024. They’re just well hidden. Here’s the simple compatibility mode trick
Microsoft has announced a price rise for many volume license customers using one of their time-honored stealth tactics. For as long as anyone can remember, Microsoft changes their pricing plans by a repeating cycle of “customizing” plans then later “simplifying”, “consistent” or “standardizing” the same plans. All of those changes
Microsoft has begun rolling out Python in Excel—the powerful integration that allows users to write Python formulas directly inside Excel—to Microsoft 365 Family and Personal subscribers. That’s great news because Python adds a lot to Excel, making available a lot of features that previously Excel users could only dream about. What’s
Excel 365 has access to the Python language and packages. We’ll explain what that means, who gets it and why Python in Excel is a big deal. Python is a high-end and widely used programming language with many features in its many packages or add-ons. It’s this last bit that
Excel, long known for its love affair with numbers, has now developed a taste for images—thanks to Python. Microsoft has rolled out a feature that lets users insert images into individual Excel cells and analyze them using Python code. Yes, the spreadsheet just got a little more artsy and a
Discover Excel’s Text-Splitting Power – Unlock Faster, Smarter Data ManagementMicrosoft has elevated text handling in Excel by rolling out powerful formula functions—TEXTBEFORE, TEXTAFTER, and TEXTSPLIT—that revolutionize how you extract and split strings. No more convoluted nested LEFT, RIGHT, or SEARCH formulas . Normally when working with text it’s common to need
Discover a smarter way to insert images directly into Excel cells with the IMAGE() function — no more awkward floating pictures. With just one formula, you can pull in external images using a secure URL, control how they fit or fill the cell, and even fine-tune dimensions with pixel-level precision.
To prevent somebody ripping off your prized presentation or deck, you should password-protect your presentation, making it accessible only to people you trust. PowerPoint includes a built‑in password‑protection feature that ensures only authorized users can open and modify your presentation. Why password lock a PowerPoint presentation? To keep the deck
The BBC has published a good history of the famous “Keep Calm and Carry On” poster from World War 2 but missed what, to us, is the most important 21st Century innovation. When “Keep Calm and Carry On” first became popular, we saw the opportunity to showcase what Word and
Microsoft has officially warned all Microsoft 365 customers to update Office—or risk losing handy features like Read Aloud, Transcribe, and Dictate. Most people will already be OK but it’s worth checking to make sure. Microsoft is totally revamping the backend services that powers the voice related parts of Microsoft Office;
If you’re wondering why a contacts address change in Outlook doesn’t stick, you’re not alone—many Outlook users face this frustrating issue. There are three possible reasons starting with a little known quirk in how Outlook saves email addresses. An Office Watch reader asks why Outlook keeps remembering an old email
Transform how you format Word documents with keyboard shortcuts—going beyond the built‑in ones for Headings 1–3 by adding your own for Heading 4, 5, 6 (and beyond) that Microsoft has forgotten. With these simple tweaks, your document structuring becomes faster and more consistent. Word’s in-built Heading styles come with some shortcut keys, but
Microsoft is retiring the Reuse Slides feature, however you can still copy slides manually—and it’s simple. Whether you’re preparing for a meeting, a lecture, or a project presentation, knowing how to quickly and efficiently move or copy slides between presentations can save you both time and hassle. To get started,
Worried about losing files in OneDrive or getting locked out of your Microsoft account? You should be worried. Reading about one horrifying OneDrive experience. Here’s what you need to know about keeping your data safe, why regular backups matter. Discover practical tips to protect your files and avoid the common
When will your version of Microsoft Office stop getting security bug and software bug fixes, what Microsoft calls the “end of support“. This is important because software updates are necessary for Office apps. Mainly because outdated versions are more vulnerable to hackers, particularly in the case of opening malicious emails,
Microsoft is sacking another 9,000 workers or about 4% of its global workforce. That’s in addition to the 6,000 people dismissed earlier this year. What does that mean for us paying customers? If you’ve wondered why Microsoft pushes Copilot AI so hard – it’s to recoup their incredibly large investment
Down in Australia there’s another example of a mistake when redacting a Word document before public release. Make sure you delete any links to redacted text, such as a Table of Contents or summary. What caught our eye was the latest example of an oversight when redacting a document. Aussie
Many common Excel functions have a great new power added to them with little fanfare. They can become dynamic array functions which improves the consistency of worksheets. It’s simple and easy to do. When Microsoft added dynamic arrays to Excel, all the focus was on the new functions like SORT,
Some Excel functions won’t spill their results in the way you might expect. Edate(), EOmonth(), IsEven(), IsOdd() and RandBetween(), among many, need an extra little trick to become a dynamic array function. We’ve already explained how many common Excel functions (Round(), Trim(), Upper() and many more) can “spill” their results
The July 2025 security bug fixes list plugs another 137 problems found in Microsoft software. Some are really serious and need patching right away for all Microsoft 365 and Office users. BitLocker also gets some security fixes. This months load of Microsoft Office security updates includes a fix for a
There’s a mystery English grammar rule that any native speaker knows but probably can’t explain. It’s the order of adjectives before a noun (e.g why “Brown Big Cat” is wrong). The Microsoft Word grammar checks for this rule but doesn’t always ‘see’ or fix it. Adjective order is a mystery
