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.
How to stop Outlook grouping Inbox messages, most commonly by date. “Today”, “Yesterday” etc. which might suit some people but is a right nuisance to others. This is an option in Outlook (classic) for Windows which can appear, seemingly for no good reason. It’s not in Outlook (new). Some people
Excel is getting a new function TrimRange() which should solve a long-standing calculation performance problem. As well as speeding up workbooks, TrimRange() comes with some new range options that add to the well-known colon. Ever since Microsoft added dynamic arrays to Excel there’s been a problem … how to reference
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
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
Paid Copilot plans have some innovations in the Word 365 interface with a better way to Make Changes to text plus more paste options too. These changes are in Word 365 public releases linked to a paid Copilot plan. We found them in v2407 build 17830.20138 with Copilot Pro. Auto
Microsoft 365 for Windows might crash while someone is just typing (you read that right). All the Office apps, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook or OneNote can be affected according to Microsoft, which knows about the problem and offers some workarounds. The problem is caused by an out-of-date language pack which
The latest Outlook security hole is quite easy to exploit so it’s a good idea to quickly update Microsoft 365/Office for Windows. The security bug is easy to exploit. Infection occurs simply by downloading a small file from any web site or source and running it. Hackers know plenty of
As promised, Excel 365’s Regular Expression support has been extended to include both Xlookup() and XMatch() functions. Regex adds a huge amount of power to matching results from a table. Back in July, Excel 365 added three Regular Expression (regex) functions, RegexTEST(), RegexEXTRACT() and RegexREPLACE(). At the time Microsoft promised
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
This is how to change Word’s Zoom to your preferred Zoom settings instead of the defaults. Ray R writes … “I have been having some vision problems lately and have found that using Word’s zoom dialog to increase the displayed font size without changing it in the document or email
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
Excel 365’s Geography data type isn’t totally reliable or accurate. Looking at its results for the UK (United Kingdom) vs Great Britain is just one example of the problems you need to watch out for. If you’re not clear on the difference between United Kingdom and Great Britain, see below.
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
Microsoft says that the new Outlook for Windows is now generally available, but everyone should ignore that. Outlook (new) isn’t truly ready. It lacks vital features and has serious security shortcomings which are likely to frustrate anyone who relies on it. On 1 August 2024, Microsoft declared that Outlook (new)
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
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
The Dictation feature in Outlook for iPhone, iPad and Android will leave the apps in September for no reason Microsoft will share. The announcement was made discreetly so that only Microsoft 365 non-consumer accounts with Admin access are notified. Message MC841218 “We will be retiring the Dictation feature from Microsoft
Paying Copilot Pro customers have lost a major part of what they pay for. Say goodbye to Copilot GPT Builder in early July 2024. It’s only been a few months since Microsoft launched their paid AI plans including Copilot Pro and they are already removing a major component. Copilot GPT
Here’s how to save a Word document with the private and hidden details automatically removed. Normally, you’re expected to manually go to File | Info | Inspect document to check/remove things like comments, hidden text, header, footers or watermarks. What if you want it to happen automatically, whenever you save
