Excel is now 40 years old and it’s capable of some amazing things. Let’s not forget some of the mistakes made by users and serious bugs by Microsoft along the way. First a reminder of some Excel bugs and how Microsoft never seems to learn from their mistakes. Excel bug
Microsoft 365 for Mac can now use the Apple Handoff option to pass a document between a Mac computer, iPhone or iPad. We’ll also explain how to get a similar feature on any combination of devices Apple or Android. Apple Handoff lets you pass control of an open document between
Quickly add a Halloween ghost, pumpkin, witches’ hat and more to your Outlook email, Word document or PowerPoint slides which have many in-built icons, graphics and pictures to enhance your “All Hallows’ evening” Icons, Stock Images, Stickers and Illustrations are all available in Microsoft 365 for Windows or Mac. Some
Microsoft Designer makes it easy to create a unique and personal little graphic for Halloween, full size with animation, sticker or clipart Office Watch shows you how to use Designer for Halloween and some of the little tricks needed to make Designer work better. It took only a few minutes
There are simple and legal ways to save money on consumer Microsoft 365 plans, either Personal or Family. Don’t give Microsoft more money than you have to. Microsoft 365 is NOT a normal subscription Microsoft 365 Personal or Family plans are different in three, potentially, money saving ways: A Microsoft
My ‘go to’ way to get random numbers in Excel is the new-ish RandArray because can do everything that Rand() or RandBetween() can and more. RandArray() fills cells with random numbers for as many rows and columns as you want. It’s in Excel 365, Excel 2024 and Excel 2021. The
Adding a picture to PowerPoint text background look great and is easier than you might think. Even better, are many hidden options to adjust the image and position it exactly as you want. Curious about how to create text effects like in the image below? Look no further—if you have
Office Insiders will get a nasty Copilot shock when they start a new document in Word 365. Microsoft has gone ‘over the top’ in their latest effort to push Copilot. The latest Insiders release of Word 365 with a paid Copilot plan has this when a new blank document is
Word is getting an online coach to improve or adapt your writing with the Copilot Coaching. It’s an extension of the current rewrite option in Copilot. Coaching analyses the selected text or entire document then makes suggestions that you can accept or reject. There are quite a few conditions on
If you’ve used OneNote recently, you’re probably aware of the feature allowing you to draw shapes and make lines straight. Then Word for Windows got “Draw and Hold”. Now Excel and PowerPoint can draw straight lines and draw neat shapes (circle, square and more). We’ll explain how it works and how
The Feed feature on Microsoft 365 for business is ending in just a few weeks. It’s being replaced by a less helpful AI feature that doesn’t always help. The Microsoft Feed feature will retire starting November 1, 2024. the Feed feature will be retired from the Microsoft 365 app, affecting
A nice extra coming to Excel 365 highlights the selected cell, row and column with a single click or use an Excel trick to get the same and even better look now. Until now, that’s only been possible with some conditional formatting and a touch of VBA. Excel 365 will
Make it easier to see your current cell in an Excel workbook by dynamically highlighting the selected row, column, cell or headings. Here’s obvious and more subtle highlighting options plus the downside of highlighting, real world tips and debugging tricks if you’re having trouble. There are many different variations on
Word for Windows has a new and dangerous bug which deletes a document as you try to save it. The bug has been fixed but here’s how to make sure you’re not running the bad Word. Any bug which deletes data is bad and while it takes a specific set
Researcher, a search and citation tool in Word 365 will disappear in a few months. You’ll find Researcher, for now, on the References tab in Word 365 for Windows or Mac. That button will be removed from the Word ribbon sometime in late December 2024 and should be totally gone
A rap about OneDrive? If your ears can stand it, Microsoft has a OneDrive song for you. This tune was played as a prelude to a live Q&A session, possibly to discourage people from attending? “OneDrive, it’s the king of the cloud… never loses a file” Click on the image
There is a way to force the Microsoft 365 Office apps to half-yearly feature updates instead of the usual monthly changes. Microsoft Office 365 for consumers and small businesses (Personal, Family and other plans) automatically updates each month with new and changed features. Some are minor but others are big
Excel can make bar charts in-cell without bothering with the full Chart system. Despite what you might have seen, there’s plenty of options in Excel Data Bars. The usual example of Excel Data Bars has the colored bar in the same cell as the value. In this article we’ll show
It’s not enough to setup two-factor security for your Microsoft account. Make sure your recovery settings are checked and up to date. Do it now before it’s too late. Today we’re helping someone trying to login to their Microsoft account after losing their password. Many, many hours of frustration and
Here’s how Office Watch reader, Erik and we drilled down into Windows and Word to narrow down the source of the Word language bug. Erik’s tests are with Office 365 on Windows 11 Pro 23H2 but the same behavior has been reported by others in many versions of Word and
Sometimes Word will switch to another language despite all the settings saying otherwise. With the help of an Office Watch reader, we’ve dug into the details to find what might cause the bug in Word and suggest some possible solutions. Word and Office should obey the default language setup in
An 85-year-old blunder has just been fixed at Westminster Abbey to change the spelling to Brontë with the important diaresis. Here’s how to type an ë in Word and other matters arising. Here’s how the memorial to the Brontë sisters looked in Poets Corner until a few days ago. For
There are plenty of audio and music options available in PowerPoint if you want to give your audience a break from your voice. We’ll go beyond the simple ‘adding music’ help to give some practical advice for audio in presentations: You will find the audio basics at Insert | Media |
The BBC has a great collection of over 16,000 sound effects that you can add to your PowerPoint presentations. Use them as a trigger sound for a click on a presentation, as a novel background noise or even an alert sound on your computer or smartphone. Sound Effects Galore Exploring
