Microsoft PowerPoint’s Cameo lets you put a live camera feed into your slides. The camera feed can be moved, resized, cropped, and styled just like any other image. Designer in PowerPoint can also be used to add flair to slides that use cameo. Cameo is already in Windows and Mac
Microsoft is boasting about the coming ‘offline support’ for the new Outlook but a look at the detail shows its very limited offline access. The current Outlook desktop apps for Windows and Mac have excellent offline support, meaning you can work on your mail, calendar, contacts even when there’s slow
One of the most commonly used and confusing Excel functions is much better in Excel 365 and Excel 2021. Vlookup() has a new, better and easier replacement Xlookup(). It’s a truly good and useful addition to Excel, some might call it a godsend. Xlookup is available in Excel 365 for
A British medical office has made a right mess of selecting trainee anesthetists by the misuse of Excel. Let’s look at what happened and some ways you can avoid similar mistakes. As told in The Register, the UK Anesthetic National Recruitment Office (ANRO) had the job of selecting candidates from
Safe Mode is a special way for Office apps to run when things aren’t working properly. Here’s how to use Safe Mode, if Office doesn’t offer it automatically, and what Safe Mode does differently. Safe Mode is useful in situations where you cannot open files in normal mode because the
OneNote desktop will start getting AI tools, CoPilot, from November 2023. According to a Microsoft Roadmap entry, ‘general availability*’ of CoPilot in OneNote will start next month. Not ‘1st November’ as some are reporting but starting during November. Copilot in OneNote will be able to make lists, create a plan
Excel 365 is getting a simple way to add checkboxes into cells to easily set True/False, Yes/No, On/Off binary settings. You can hear the cries of “About bloody time” across the Excel world <g>. It’s long been possible to add a checkbox into an Excel worksheet but it’s a clumsy
Microsoft has fixed a bug in Outlook for Windows which wrongly popped up the notice “Outlook closed while you had items open. Reopen those items from your last session?” When Outlook closes with items open (email, appointment etc.), it should offer to reopen those items when Outlook next starts. The
There’s a hidden part of Excel which can be used to catch ‘data cheats’ or people who tweak workbooks to get the results they want. There’s a news story about research into honesty, the academic is being accused, ironically, of dishonesty in their findings. The Professor is suspected of tampering
OneDrive Personal Vault is available to Microsoft 365 users across the globe. It’s an extra security level for your most important and private files. Here’s how to setup, use it and work with Office documents in the Vault folder. OneDrive Personal Vault is a more secure extension to standard OneDrive. It’s
The low-cost Microsoft 365 Basic plan is now getting all the security features that were promised back in January when the plan was released. Microsoft 365 Basic’s main features are 100GB of OneDrive storage and a 50GB Outlook.com mailbox for US$20 a year. In January 2023 the plan was announced
Microsoft Office Add-ins are about to get a bit more ‘pushy’ with the addition of a fixed ‘Get Add-ins’ item to the File menu. Part of Microsoft’s continuing and somewhat desperate effort to get commissions from third-party software makers. Microsoft has been pushing Office add-ins for years, hoping to get
Use a hidden registry hack to protect your privacy by reducing the amount of private info Microsoft Office apps send to Microsoft. Dr Aleksandar Milenkoski, working for the German Federal Office for Information Security, has produced a report on what information Microsoft Office software sends back to the company. That’s information
You can disable the “Hyper” “Office” key or Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Win shortcuts to open Microsoft 365 and Office apps. We’ve told you about the Office Keyboard Shortcuts in Windows 11 and 10 which start by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Win together. That clumsy four-finger shortcut is an alternative to the Office key which Microsoft tried to introduce
How to insert the Stethoscope 🩺 symbol/emoji into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. Trivia: the stethoscope was invented by a Frenchman who was embarrassed putting his ear upon a lady’s chest to hear her heartbeats. His original was a simple tube,
The alternative name for India is Bhārat and that term is now being used, somewhat controversially, by the government. How does Microsoft Word handle “Bharat” and what are your choices for either using the word or not. Even if you’re not interested in the name change, it’s a practical lesson
Microsoft is adding Dall-E to new services for Microsoft 365 (Designer), Bing and Office (starting with Word). Let’s look at what Dall-E is, what it can do for you and the fun to be had. In short, Dall-E turns text into an image with often good and sometimes funny results.
Microsoft has announced some of the extras coming to the next version of Windows 11, rolling out from September 26 onwards. Here’s a quick look at some of these changes, in particular those which can improve your Office docs, sheets, slides and emails. Paint Paint app receives a major upgrade
Over the past ten years, OneTastic and its early version, OneCalendar, have established themselves as vital tools for dedicated OneNote users. These applications, developed as a passion project by Omer Atay from the OneNote product group, have proven especially beneficial for users who frequently record meeting notes across various sections
Microsoft and Project Gutenberg have joined to create thousands of audiobooks for free, using modern ‘text to speech’ technology that’s amazingly good. And we have some tips on how to create audiobooks with more variety in voice, accent and pace. Since 1971, Project Gutenberg has compiled a wide range of
Microsoft’s alternatives for the new Aptos fonts range are very poor. In some cases, the substitutions make no sense at all. We’ve looked at what happens if a document with Aptos fonts is opened Office 2016 and earlier versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. Aptos fonts are the new
The trial release of Python in Excel is very interesting but it’s not the usual “Insiders” feature release with two important differences that will cost you later. “Insiders” is Microsoft’s name for their beta testing option to try upcoming features to the public Office apps. Excel gets Python – who,
Microsoft has many little ‘ads’ or suggestions that Microsoft Office 365 users (Windows or Mac) join the Microsoft 365 Insiders program (formerly Office Insiders). Is it safe to become an ‘Office Insider’ and why is Microsoft pushing it so much? Office Insiders is the testing program for new Office features.
There are some keyboard shortcuts to open or switch to Office apps in Windows 11 and Windows 10, if you have enough fingers! They are all based around the Ctrl + Alt + Shift + Win combo plus a letter. That might seem like a keyboard shortcut for an octopus
