While a lot of Word, Excel and PowerPoint might appear to be the same for decades, there’s a lot of work happening ‘under the hood’ to keep Office working. Gilad Oren at Microsoft has written an interesting piece on how the whole real-time collaboration feature in Microsoft Office has been
For yet another way to make AI images, perhaps with a different look, you can now try Google Bard. Bard is Google’s AI helper, now available in ‘most countries’ (Google’s wording) but only in English for the moment. It does all the things we’ve come to expect from a broad
Two economics professors have been caught using Excel’s Autofill feature to fill in the blanks to complete a published academic paper. A study on green innovations and patents in 27 countries by two professors has come under scrutiny by a student as reported, by Retraction Watch. The paper was said to use
Keyboard shortcuts for special characters that work outside Office and without special setup on any Windows computer. It’s possible to enter any character into a Windows program using the Alt key plus the number pad (usually on the right side of a larger keyboard). This is a handy shortcut to
More than five ways to type characters with accent, grave, circumflex, tilde, umlaut, dieresis or cedilla in Microsoft Word and Outlook when they aren’t on the keyboard such as á ã à ä Ç ç ē é ê è ë â ê î ô û and many more. Typing accented
There are at least two ways to switch away from the new Aptos fonts in Microsoft Word and back to the old Calibri fonts or something else. Microsoft has forced a change to Aptos as the new default font in Word but that change doesn’t suit everyone. In particular, Aptos
Switch from the new Aptos default font in Outlook to another font that you prefer and is has better readability in Outlook desktop (Windows or Mac) and Outlook (new). Personally I’ve tried to like Aptos fonts but after a few months they still offend my eyes, especially in emails. It’s
Microsoft loves to boast about their “Copilot Copyright Commitment” but what does it really mean and how much protection do customers really get? There’s a concern that AI generated content might be subject to intellectual property (IP) law suits. Perhaps because an AI image or text is too similar to
Here’s a combined ‘one-click’ way to force an update to both Windows and Microsoft Office at the same time. Normally Windows and Office both update themselves automatically and in the background so you don’t have to worry about it. But there are times when you need to ensure both are
Microsoft is ending Wordpad on Windows 11 … not right away but sometime soon. Here are your options for a replacement. WordPad has been in Windows since 1995 as a basic word-processor with Word document compatibility. It was never much loved but still has an important place. It’s the only
According to Microsoft, AutoSave is the ‘greatest feature of all time’. That’s ‘over the top’ even for Microsoft and it only highlights the self-serving limitations of the current Autosave feature in Office. “Autosave is the greatest feature of all time and you can use it across your M365 apps. That’s
Let’s take a moment to explain, without the hype, what Copilot is and what it can do for you and all Microsoft Office users including Office 2021,2019 and earlier. We’ll explain some ways Copilot can save time and money doing simple tasks for anyone with Microsoft Office. Beleive me that
We’ve been using Copilot and Copilot Pro for a little while and here’s our first impressions of Microsoft’s paid AI services as they exist today. In other words, what you get for your money right now. It’s hard to justify paying upfront $360 per user for a year commitment to
What you need to know about Copilot for Microsoft 365 which brings AI technology into Microsoft Office including Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. Here’s how to get Copilot for Microsoft 365 and the secrets to getting it working. What is Copilot for Microsoft 365? Copilot for Microsoft 365 applies to Microsoft
There are two ways to try out paid Copilot for less money. If you’re not sure but want to try the enhanced AI features in Office there are a smart ways to get Copilot without dropping a lot of money in advance for unknown benefits. Let’s face it, Microsoft is
The Microsoft Readiness Toolkit for Office add-ins and VBA is being cancelled (‘retired’) from the end of March 2024. The toolkit has been around for some years to help “identify compatibility issues with your Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) macros and add-ins that you use with Office”. The download
Until now, Excel for iPad could use PivotTables already setup in desktop Excel. Now you’ll be able to make and edit PivotTables too. An Excel for iPad PivotTable looks the same as in other Excel’s Being able to make last minute changes to a PivotTable on the iPad is very
RobinAI, a legal add-in for Microsoft Word has received $26 million in new funding from a Singapore investment firm. The Word add-on uses AI tech to help drafting, reviewing and negotiating contracts. There’s a contract repository with a search option to let you pull out relevant text from similar past
Many different ways to type or insert laundry care symbols, which appear on clothing labels, into Word, Excel or PowerPoint. Laundry care symbols can be for laundry area signs or for fun like this t-shirt. Or alternative symbols in a PowerPoint slide. All five symbols were black laundry care icons.
There’s a new Microsoft patch to fix a bug in OneNote 2016 which crashes when syncing with other versions of OneNote. The problem is in OneNote 2016 but only the ‘MSI’ installed version. Not the more common ‘Click to Run’ installs, which includes OneNote that comes with Microsoft 365, Office
Catch Up is Microsoft’s new way to present the latest changes, comments, mentions and tasks in a collaborated document, sheet or slide deck. When a document is being managed by many people, there can be a lot happening. Edits to the doc, sheet or slides, comments and @mentions including tasks
How to get and use the copyright free Mickey Mouse and other public domain creations in Microsoft Office. Add to Word documents or PowerPoint slides. There’s been a lot of stories about content that is now in the public domain, especially Mickey Mouse. That copyright expiry applies to the USA
There are special web links to make a new Office document (Word, Excel or PowerPoint) with a single click. Microsoft has bought some .new domain names like https://word.new . When you click on a .new link, a fresh document is created for you. Word, Excel or PowerPoint files are created
Microsoft Office has many, many print calendars to choose from, if you know where to look. There’s a trick to choosing the right calendar for your needs, made by Word, Excel, Outlook or PowerPoint. Printing out calendars or adding them to documents/slides is possible in Microsoft Office though the selection
