Or survey gives results that suit those paying for the survey. It’s an old PR trick, put together some report or survey that will get lots of free publicity for the company that’s footing the bill. It’s easy copy for overworked journos so you can’t blame them for using them.
A smart move by Microsoft, but not a big deal. A clever move from Microsoft today, having their Office Online web sites added to the Google Chrome App Store. That’s led to excited headlines like “Microsoft Office hits Google’s Chrome Web Store” which will please Microsoft. Sure, you can now
Microsoft is keeping ‘good’ secrets from customers – why? There’s a few blog posts about the Windows 8.1 Update changes … but not all the changes. For reasons passing understanding, Microsoft won’t release a full list of the Windows 8.1 Update changes The Windows 8.1 Update is a curious beast.
Microsoft’s gift to history Microsoft has released to the public domain the source code and documents for an early version of Word, Word 1.1a for Windows, as well as DOS 1.1 and 2.0. The Word for Windows has both C source code and some documentation. The documents are in original
What’s in Windows Phone 8.1? Windows Phone 8.1 is now being pushed out to compatible Windows Phones. Some changes of interest to Office users. Password protected documents are now supported in the Office apps – at last. S/MIME is available to secure and identify emails – again long overdue. Calendar
Non-business users can edit Office documents on their iPhone or Android phone for free. On the same day as Office for iPad was released, Office Mobile for iPhone and Android was also updated. The usual unstated bug fixes but the major news is that Office Mobile for iPhone and Office Mobile
If Microsoft can read Outlook.com email, they can read your Office documents too. The news that Microsoft read the email of a Hotmail/Outlook.com user without his knowledge raises the question of access to OneDrive data Microsoft Office and Windows 8 encourage people to save documents and pictures to Microsoft’s OneDrive
Which way is best? Share a document by email or cloud? There are two main ways to share a document that needs editing or proofreading. Send it via email and get a revised document back or post to a cloud service like OneDrive, Dropbox or SharePoint. But which is best?
When Microsoft feels the need, they read cloud emails on Outlook.com (aka Hotmail) or other Microsoft 365 hosted email. Microsoft has been caught reading private data stored on their cloud servers and it’s all quite legal. In 2012 screenshots of the, then unreleased, Windows 8 had been leaked and Microsoft
Does it matter if there’s an Office for iPad? Only if it’s a decent app that works properly. Microsoft is quietly delighted with all the coverage for a product they haven’t even admitted exists – Office for iPad. First there were stories about ‘internal divisions’ about whether to release Office
A list of Microsoft Office versions and their latest Service Packs. If you don’t have Office 2013, don’t worry, you’re not alone. Here’s a list of the latest service packs for each version of Microsoft Office going back more than a decade. For the recent versions of Office, at least
Don’t get excited about an ‘Office for iPad’ until we see it. The online commentariat was alight with news about the coming Office for iPad. Not much news really, just a rumor that Office for iPad was still ‘coming’ and probably before a version of Office for Windows 8 touch
Making Windows Explorer’s Recent Places feature a whole lot better. Recent Places shows the folders you can recently visited in Windows Explorer. By default it’s in the Favorites section. Unfortunately the standard Recent Places view isn’t a lot of help: The Type and Size columns are irrelevant because they will
Better login security for some Office 365 users. Microsoft has expanded two factor authentication to more Office 365 users. Called ‘multi-factor authentication’ is now available for Office 365 Midsize Business, Enterprise plans, Academic plans, Nonprofit plans, and standalone Office 365 plans, including Exchange Online and SharePoint Online. There’s no extra
Upload photos automatically from smartphones. One of the features of Skydrive/OneDrive is the ‘Camera Roll’ or ‘Camera Backup’, it’s a simple and automatic way to copy photos between some devices. Is it ‘Camera Roll’ or ‘Camera Backup’? Microsoft uses both terms, depending on where you look. Most commonly from your
How to recover deleted files in OneDrive. Skydrive/OneDrive retains deleted files for 30 days or until the Recycle Bin exceeds 10% of your allowed storage space. This feature works much the same way as the Recycle Bin in Windows and it’s called ‘Recycle Bin’ down on the bottom left of
One of the best Dropbox features – Camera Upload One of the nice features of Dropbox is the ‘Camera Roll’, it’s a simple and automatic way to copy photos between devices. Most commonly from your smartphone (Apple, Android) to your computer. It works automatically and often takes only seconds from
How to recover files deleted from Dropbox storage Dropbox retains deleted files for 30 days. You can see those files from the web site. Click on the ‘Show deleted files’ button top-right. Click on the ‘open’ trash can to hide deleted files. Click on a deleted file to see the
If you put a file up on Dropbox, how does anyone know it’s there? If you put a file up on Dropbox, how does anyone know it’s there? Obviously you can tell them, by email, phone or even face-to-face! Or they can check the shared folder for anything new. Happily
Use Dropbox for sharing Office documents and collaboration on editing, but it’s not ideal. Another use for Dropbox is sharing Office documents and collaboration on editing, but it’s not ideal. With Office 2013 you can do this better with Skydrive because Microsoft’s own cloud storage allows simultaneous collaboration – in
Getting the free Dropbox software. The free Dropbox program is available for Windows, Mac and Linux. It will synchronize your cloud storage with local folders, saving you the hassle of manually uploading/downloading each file. All the file transfers happen in the background. Dropbox software is the best and easiest way
Microsoft’s online storage service gets a court mandated name change. Last year, Microsoft lost a court case over the name ‘SkyDrive’ so now it’s being renamed ‘OneDrive‘. SkyDrive will be called OneDrive SkyDrive Pro becomes OneDrive for Business Hopefully the switchover will be seamless for users like those who save
Screen reader software now available for Office 2010 and Office 2013 users. Microsoft has done a deal with GW Micro to make their Window-Eyes software available free to licensed users of Office 2010 or Office 2013. Details of the offer are at http://www.windoweyesforoffice.com/ Window-Eyes is screen reader software for the
See a word translated across a map of Europe You have to hand it to The Guardian newspaper, they have an impressive Data Store section with both raw data and interesting presentations of it. Their latest is a clever use of the Google Translate API to present a map of
