The latest ‘Fast Ring’ Insiders update to Office for Windows restores the correct versioning between the Fast and Slow Ring ‘Insiders’ releases. Normally, the latest changes and new features appear in the Fast Ring release. After the bugs have been discovered by the fearless Fast Ring testers, an update goes
Windows will automatically index and let you search Office documents on your computer or network – how can you stop that happening? Maybe the document is personal or so private you don’t want anyone to find it with a Windows Search. Or discover that the document even exists! Password Protection
It’s now possible to change the default layout for a new Excel PivotTable. PivotTable default configuration has been on the ‘wish list’ for many years. It’s now in Excel 2016 for Windows, Office 365 customers only as part of the May 2017 update. The changed defaults apply to all new
Microsoft overuses the term ‘exciting’ to describe their latest work but the new ‘Transform by Example’ for Excel looks genuinely exciting. However you get data for Excel, the common problem is ‘massaging’ it to fit your needs. Dates need changing to match Excel, addresses need splitting into address/state/zip and names
Everyone is talking about ransomware now that the WannaCrypt has spread like crazy across the world. These nasty viruses target your documents and precious files including Microsoft Office files and Windows backups. This is a little embarrassing for us because Office-Watch.com has just released a new book that’s suddenly become
Microsoft has moved quickly to block a security hole in their own anti-virus software, Windows Defender. We’re used to seeing email or instant messaging used to infect a computer when opening a document in Word or Excel, maybe an email in Outlook. But this is quite different and very worrying.
Coming soon is a new version of Windows, the Windows 10S. What does it mean for Microsoft Office users? The 10S is a stripped down and limited version of Windows 10. Some advanced features aren’t available while others are set to Microsoft’s preferences automatically. To buy 10S is cheaper than
Adding fonts into Microsoft Office is easy but the standard advice doesn’t always work. We’ll show you how to install a font and avoid the trap. Font installation has nothing to do with Word, Excel or PowerPoint. It’s all done in Windows. Firstly, download the new fonts. There are many
Last week, Microsoft released the Dubai font to their Office 365 customers only. Now the city-state of Dubai has released it to everyone. Dubai is a new font which has both western and Arabic characters in the one package. It was created by the Dubai government with assistance from Microsoft.
At last the cries of eager Signal supporters have been heard – the latest releases allow secure transfer of Office documents, PDF and more. Signal is a well-respected, very secure and private messaging system. The makers of Signal licence their open-source encryption to other messengers like Google, Facebook and WhatsApp.
The Dubai font inspired us to look at the currency symbol for the United Arab Emirates – the Dirham. A quick guide for those of us who don’t know any Arabic! There’s no direct symbol for the Dirham – unlike the dollar, Euro or Yen/Yuan. The usual prefix is DH
Hyped as the first city to get its own font, Dubai and Microsoft have released the Dubai font. Office-Watch.com looks beyond the press releases for the details on the new font and Dubai font alternatives. Dubai is a sans-serif OpenType font available for Windows and Mac. It’s not a full-range
If you can’t get the new Dubai font, there are many alternative fonts. The closest match we could find was FF Fago by Ole Schäfer. Among the fonts supplied with Windows/Office, the most similar is Lucida Sans. It’s on the drop-down list of fonts in Windows and Mac. Here’s Lucida
Microsoft puts corporate pride and weasel words ahead of their customers safety and security. Hackers take advantage of Microsoft’s patch release scheduled to release a virus as widely as they can in the days before fix was available. The Dridex security bug was known to Microsoft but they stubbornly stuck
After the recent docs.com scare we’ve had a few readers asking the basic questions: What is docs.com? What’s the difference between docs.com and OneDrive? In short, use OneDrive for all your cloud storage needs. Consider Docs.com, if you have a document that you’d like to share with the public or
One of the colors in the Crayola box is being dropped. Never fear, the color Dandelion can be part of your Office documents as can any other Crayola color. It’s not the same as the smell and feel of a Crayola crayon but it’s better than losing the color entirely.
Even today, despite the public outcry, a document saved to docs.com will automatically be available to everyone. The privacy choices aren’t obvious and the ‘public’ default isn’t clear either. Here’s what you see when uploading to docs.com You have to click the ‘three dots’ menu button then scroll down a
If you’ve ever used http://docs.com it’s a good idea to check what’s saved there and what public access is set. Login with your Microsoft account (or other login) and check the list of saved documents (click on your name at top right. Depending on your wishes you can: Leave as
One of the latest Excel patches causes more trouble than it’s supposed to solve. Patch ‘KB3178690‘ is supposed to fix some non-security bugs in Excel 2010, ironically bugs that cause Excel to crash in certain situations. Guess what the patch does to Excel 2010? That’s right – Excel 2010 crashes.
The Google Docs apps have a useful option for making new documents, worksheets and presentations that are Microsoft Office compatible. JR Raphael at ComputerWorld pointed out the option in the Google Docs app for Android, we poked around to find the equivlalents in Google Sheets and Google Slides Under Settings there’s
You’ve chosen an image, now you have to get it into your Office document. You’d hope there was a single way to do that but, as usual, there’s plenty of options. Outlook has its own special needs, different from Word, Excel and PowerPoint. There’s also privacy and image size issues
Here’s the complete list of non-security updates for Office 2016 for Windows and Office 2013 plus our notes on some bug fixes that caught our eye. As usual, these updates will be pushed to most Office computers automatically. No action is necessary. Unexpected Issues Microsoft is always using different words
Microsoft announced Touch Bar support with much fanfare back in October 2016. Over 3 months later and paying customers are still waiting. There’s been lot of talk about this feature including web sites with ‘tips’ on using Office with the Touch Bar without noting that it’s not got into ‘insider’
In How to share a single Excel worksheet or tab we explained how to send or share a single Excel worksheet or tab from a larger workbook. That’s OK as a one-off measure to send out a sheet but how can you do it easily as a share or ongoing collaboration?
