Use Microsoft Designer to make compelling but effortlessly professional titles for Word documents, sheets or slides. We’ll explain how to do it, not the simplistic way that Microsoft hypes, but how Designer works in the real world. Start a banner, tweak sizing, customize fonts and colors, then seamlessly insert your
In Excel there are various ways to either protect sheets or cells from access, make a them read-only or totally encrypt the workbook with a strong password. It’s important to understand the difference in Excel between Protect and the stronger Encrypt feature. Excel’s password protection is more complicated than in
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
The new Copilot() function can be great for taking disorganized data like feedback from people and grouping it quickly. We’ll explain the best ways to do that and the pitfalls of relying on AI. One of Microsoft’s examples for Excel 365’s Copilot(() caught our eye and we were pleasantly surprised
Last Monday into Tuesday there was a serious outage that affected Outlook for Windows users. It shows how a failure on Microsoft’s server can stop new Outlook software from working at all. About 5% of global Outlook for Windows customers were unable to open the new Outlook desktop client on
It had to happen, there’s now a Copilot() function in Excel to drop AI responses directly into spreadsheets. It’s a clever trick but, as usual, there are problems that Microsoft overlooks in their hype. Excel’s new COPILOT() function brings AI directly into spreadsheet formulas. Available now in Excel for Windows
Just like Copilot or its parent ChatGPT, the Copilot function in Excel use for analysis but not so much for getting hard facts. Our testing of the new Copilot() feature shows that no-one should trust what AI says is true. We’ve taken Microsoft’s example and extended them a little to
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
Create awesome retro, classic or original WordArt in Microsoft Word 365, Word 2024 and earlier version. It’s simple, just follow these steps. At the time, WordArt was a big step for Microsoft Word. It was a quick way to add fancy text, not possible before. Alas, like many Office design
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
A simple way to update Microsoft Office 365 for Windows with one click instead of digging into the menus to do it. We’ll show you the simple command line with options that make it possible. Normally, the Windows versions of Microsoft Office 365, Office2024, Office 2021 and Office 2019 all
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.
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
Finally, PivotTables are going ‘live’ and will automatically refresh if other parts of the workbook change. It’s something that Excel users have wanted for years. Auto Refresh turns your PivotTable into a live mirror—updates to source data within your workbook now instantly refresh any connected PivotTables, without you lifting a
Microsoft has finally rolled out two highly requested updates for OneNote users on Windows, macOS, and iPad: Merging table cells and a paste text shortcut. Merge Table Cells No more resorting to convoluted workarounds or dragging your content into Excel. Now, select two or more adjacent cells in a OneNote
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;
Excel 365 is getting (at last) a clear warning that some cells have not been recalculated aka a ‘stale cell’ with the addition of a ‘Format Stale Values’ option. This feature only applies if you’re using partial or manual calculation modes. Most of us use the default Automatic mode where
There was a sudden disappearance of the Ctrl + Shift + V Paste Special shortcut in Outlook classic for Windows. We explain what caused the issue, when Microsoft will finally roll out a fix, and why the delay happened, so you can get back to efficient email editing without the
Microsoft has quietly announced that the Microsoft Store version of Microsoft 365 apps will no longer receive feature updates after October 2025, nor security updates after December 2026. Microsoft 365 for Windows via the Microsoft Store was delivered via the Store’s Appx installation—sandboxed, safe, but increasingly outdated for modern enterprise needs.
