Microsoft Word has a powerful grammar checking system but how does it handle changes in English usage like the rise of non-binary or non-specific pronouns like ‘they’ and ‘them’? We took put sample words and sentences in Word to see how ‘woke’ it is. As a bonus, we’ll explain Pibling
The Office.com web page is getting some changes in the near future, here’s the details. Many of these updates apply to people using Microsoft 365 Business or Enterprise plans that looks like this now. Here’s details of the updates, according to Microsoft. Home page updates Recommended actions to help you
Type the White Right backhand pointer 👉 into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. It’s officially called “White Right Pointing Backhand Index”. White Right Pointing Backhand Index 👉 symbol is great for signs, simple hand graphics in slides or an alternative
Excel’s Paste Special feature can be used to modify multiple numbers at once. Paste Special is more commonly used to paste only values or formatting, it has other tricks to offer. We’ll show you firstly how to multiply numbers in Excel by using Paste Special then add, subtract and division.
Word 365 is getting another improvement to the Search feature, now you can speak your question or search. Look at the Search box on the title bar, now or soon there’ll be a microphone button at right. Click on the microphone icon and speak your search terms. Assuming your microphone
Styles in Microsoft Word would be very cumbersome if you had to set up each one individually. To make it easier, styles have inheritance. A new style is usually a copy, linked to an existing style with just some changes to selected items. Here’s an example of inheritance in a
There are good reasons to avoid the Normal style for the main text in a Word document and use the hidden ‘Body Text’ style instead. The standard Microsoft Word document structure has Headings (Heading 1, Heading 2) … with paragraphs of text in the Normal style. It sounds good but,
There’s a new “File Card” look coming to the Office ‘all in one’ app for iPhone and iPad which shows document thumbnails and other information. File Cards use the document thumbnails that are in most, but not all Office documents plus PDF files that are stored on OneDrive. Microsoft says
Adding thumbnail or preview image for Word, Excel or PowerPoint Office documents is easy, though you won’t find the choice anywhere obvious. We’ll dig into how thumbnails work for some nerdy extra detail. Thumbnails are the small images that appear in File Explorer and elsewhere instead of the standard icons
The work of Eric Gill is controversial these days, for good reason. Microsoft Windows and Office have fonts based on Gill’s work so users might need to think twice about using Gill Sans and similar fonts. Gill Sans MT and Gill Sans Nova are supplied with Windows and Office but
Office for Mac users yearn for the day when their software matches ‘feature parity’ with Office for Windows. “Two platforms, One Office” is the dream. But is it possible or even likely? We’re inspired by this tweet from José Rodríguez-Suárez. If Microsoft responds, we can predict what they’ll say, because
The right-click menu is a powerful part of modern computers. It lets you quickly access options in Windows, Mac and Microsoft Office. Right-click is such a basic part of personal computing that it works even on devices without a mouse! We love ‘stupid’ questions because they’re rarely stupid at all.
insert the Black Right Pointing Backhand Index 🖝 into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. Black Right Pointing Backhand Index 🖝 symbol can be used as a creative bullet symbol in lists or to point a direction on a sign. It’s
To play a selection of different audio tracks, one after another is surprisingly clumsy even in Microsoft 365 PowerPoint. For example, you might like to have multiple tracks from a single album or several movements from a symphony. We expected that a simple Animation would work with the second music track
A common request is for music to play throughout a PowerPoint presentation. Handy for automatic and kiosk slideshows. That’s easy in PowerPoint these days. Insert the audio then look on the Playback tab. There’s a choice ‘Play in Background’ that does the job in one click. ‘Play in Background’ is just a way of turning on
Almost Equal sign ≈ can be typed into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. The Almost Equal symbol ≈ is commonly used within Mathematics to indicate two values are roughly equal, but not exactly equal. Or use it whenever you need
How to move rows or columns up, down or across an Excel worksheet. There’s a quick way but it’s not obvious. Excel has a variety of different ways in doing this, but it’s important to know the fastest and easiest way, to save you a lot of time and hassle.
Word has many calendars in the File | New templates supplied by Microsoft. Search for “calendar” in the File | New pane then make simple changes to suit you. In Microsoft Word’s File | New pane, search for ‘calendar’. There are two basic calendar designs: Start of Week Some have
Here’s how to choose good looking font pairs for your Word headings and body text or PowerPoint titles and text. We’ve shown you how to use Google Fonts in your Office documents. The Google Fonts site itself is little help but others have curated suggested pairings. Most of the suggested
WOFF are a new-ish type of font that you might have seen mentions or downloads. Here’s how to use them in Microsoft Office; Word, Excel or PowerPoint. WOFF is Web Open Font Format designed to be compact and easy to download. WOFF is for web sites and mobile apps, not
There’s a strange, almost prudish, feature in the Microsoft Word spell checker aka Microsoft Editor that’s used in many of the company’s products. We’ll explain Microsoft seeming avoidance of ‘Naughty Bits’ and why it’s happening. Warning! This article is unusually explicit (NSFW) for Office Watch. If sexually explicit but standard
Type Up Down Arrow with Base or underline ↨ into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. How Up Down Arrow with Base ↨ looks in different fonts. Here’s some examples of how Up Down Arrow with Base / Underline ↨ looks
There are three symbols that Microsoft won’t put in their fonts for Windows and Office. They are obscure and you’re unlikely to need them. It’s an interesting bit of trivia and example of the differing corporate cultures and judgements. (This article includes an image that might offend some people. NSFW,
An important Microsoft Office related security bug fix has been bypassed by hackers in an embarrassingly simple way. Back in September 2021, Microsoft released a fix for a security bug which involved accessing a web page within a Word document (docx or rtf). That web page then downloaded and ran
