Here’s how to replace private or confidential text with ‘filler’ nonsense or anonymous text in a Word document. Handy for getting help with Word formatting or numbering problems where you can’t share the real document to an outsider. This is often a problem for legal workers or others with privacy
Losing recent work on a document is really frustrating so here are a few tips to make Office document saving more reliable, with less risk of loss if the computer or Office programs crash. A few changes to Microsoft’s defaults can mean lower blood pressure for you. Save AutoRecover every
The ultimate in PowerPoint Handouts aren’t made in PowerPoint at all. Link a presentation to handouts in Microsoft Word, where you have all the powerful Word formatting features available to you. You’re forgiven for not knowing this option existed, because it’s not immediately obvious and you need to go several
Insert lower case letter with circles ⓐ to ⓩ in Microsoft Office, Word, Excel, Outlook etc. Officially they are called Circled Latin Small Letters. Circled small letters in different fonts Only two common Office fonts have double circled digits Segoe UI Symbol and Calibri. Here’s how the symbols look in both
The rainbow shape with multi-color effect is possible in text, shapes and images for any Microsoft Office documents including Word and PowerPoint. With a few changes you can make a rainbow for documents or slides. Rainbow Text Effect Insert | WordArt choosing whichever preset is closest to what you want.
A rainbow in Office is a custom gradient effect available for Shapes including WordArt borders and many elements in Word, PowerPoint and other Office programs for Windows or Mac. We have the exact colors, positions and options to use for a great rainbow. All the Office preset gradients are single-color
Here’s how to mask a photo with any Microsoft Office shape or icon and do it with full control over what appears from the original image. We’ve already explained two simple ways to crop a photo to a shape or fill a shape with some options to move and resize
Recent investigations have revealed some worrying truths about the risks in opening OneNote notebooks, a surprising fact about .one files, some bad news and good news. Criminals are increasingly sending out nasty OneNote .one files in emails, taking advantage of another Microsoft security ‘blind spot’. OneNote Embedded File Abuse from
XLL addins for Excel coming from the Internet will be blocked by default as a security measure. Here’s how it works and how to enable XLL files and bypass the new block. You can implement a similar block now in other Excel versions without waiting for Microsoft’s late change. Excel
The ‘speech to text’ Dictation feature is now in OneNote for Mac. Look on the far-right of the Home tab for the Dictate button. Click on it to make the little Dictation toolbar appear. Our book Dictation and Read Aloud in Office explains Dictation and other Office speech features from
There are new look menus and toolbars coming to the iPhone Microsoft Office apps, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and the all-in-one Microsoft 365 app. We’re not sure when you’ll see these changes because they are three months late! Microsoft started talking about this ‘fast and fluent’ change in November 2022. Three
What does Ctrl + Enter do in Outlook for Windows and why doesn’t it always work? What’s the equivalent in Outlook for Mac? Ctrl + Enter can be a shortcut in Outlook to send a message after you’ve finished typing. However Ctrl + Enter isn’t always available — in Outlook
Word’s Citation and Bibliography support is enough for some people, but not for everyone so here are tools available to go beyond what Microsoft provides. See Add a Bibliography to Word documents Custom Bibliography formats or styles in Word Citations for everyone in Word Source Manager for citations in Word JabRef
There’s a simple way to tell if your mailbox has the useful plus + address feature. Plus email addressing (aka disposable or sub-address) is sometimes available automatically (Gmail or Outlook.com) or has to be switched on (Microsoft 365 hosting). Some other mail hosts might have an option to allow plus
A peculiarity of indexes when you use big table cells to format your Microsoft Word document — and a suggested solution. Karen from New Mexico wrote to us describing a strange behavior in her Word document indexes. The documents are class handouts with each topic as a new row in a
A Word Drop-down list lets you quickly choose one of several options. It’s a fast way to make new documents with a standardized pattern. Don’t be scared, it’s easy to create even though the word ‘Developer’ is involved. We’ll show you how to make drop-down lists, change the bland ‘Choose
How to make a bullet list that has different bullet symbol or emoji for each Word or PowerPoint line. With the wide range of symbols and emoji in Word and PowerPoint there’s scope for creative lists that use symbols that relate to each line. It’s not possible to do that
Insert digits with double circles from ⓵ to ⓽ in Microsoft Office, Word, Excel, Outlook etc. Use them as an alternative way to number a list like this … Double Circled digits in different fonts Only two common Office fonts have double circled digits Segoe UI Symbol and Calibri. Here’s how
Type beamed ♫ or joined ♬ musical notes into Word documents, Excel worksheets, PowerPoint slides or emails. It’s possible to type musical notes and other notation in Word documents. Full musical scoring isn’t practical (there’s other software). Unicode only has two ‘beamed’ or joined musical notes, the Eighth or Quaver and the Sixteenth of Semi-quaver.
Type musical notes from breve 𝅜 (double whole note) to the semihemidemisemiquaver 𝅘𝅥𝅲 (128th note) in Microsoft Office, Word, Excel, Outlook etc. It’s possible to type musical notes and other notation in Word documents. Full musical scoring isn’t practical (there’s other software). How musical notes look in different fonts. Most fonts don’t include musical notes. The
How to make clue cards like the Jeopardy! TV show to use in PowerPoint or Word. Clue … it’s not as straightforward as you might think but we’ll take you through the steps and tricks. Use the well-known format to pose questions for your PowerPoint audience or as a section/chapter
Is the word ‘data’ singular or plural? It’s one of those changing usages of the English language that reasonable people disagree on. What does Microsoft Word’s grammar and style say … “Data is ..” or “Data are …”? The UK Financial Times has just changed its style guide to say
Outlook for Windows has the ability to select the time zone for an appointment, but what if the zone you need isn’t on the drop down list? Until Outlook 2007, Outlook only knew about one time zone and that’s the one currently set for Windows. All appointments are presumed to be
There’s a fast way to add many photos to a PowerPoint presentation using the long-standing Photo Album feature. Since at least PowerPoint 2003, there’s been a Photo Album option in PowerPoint for Windows. It’s a fast way to add many photos to a presentation. Alas, it’s not available in PowerPoint
