Windows has some nice features for quickly showing your appointments, calendar and contacts/people lists so why don’t they show that information that’s in Outlook for Windows on the same computer? In Windows 10, clicking on the date/time in the bottom right-corner (the taskbar) you’ll see the monthly calendar and either
=Rand.old() is a Word trick which adds common sentences that use all, or most, of the letters in that language’s alphabet. Here’s what Word does in English, French, German, Danish, Polish and many other languages. It’s useful filler text for testing formatting or other Word features just like “Lorem Ipsum
Behind the simple Mark Index feature in Word are some useful but almost hidden options. These give you many choices for making and formatting your document index. Getting started with indexes in Word? Check out our starter, Simple Indexing in Microsoft Word. Indexes are as much art and judgment as
Yes, there are bunnies and other secular Easter graphics waiting for you in Microsoft 365 and Office 2019. Icons and Illustrations (both types of SVG) have some Easter or at least bunny related graphics. Stock Images also have some choices. Religious choices are missing but there are Christian or Latin
The BBC has a ‘long read’ about hidden information inside almost all photos. Office Watch has talked about this problem many times before including how the extra image data hides in Microsoft Office documents, despite the ‘Document Inspector’. It’s too easy just to think of an image as just what
A more efficient way to mark index entries in Microsoft Word is with a concordance or AutoMark file. It’s a separate document with a table of words to be found in the document coupled with their index entries. See Simple Indexing in Microsoft Word for an intro to Word’s indexing
A man has been jailed for two years after sabotaging a company by deleting 80% of their Microsoft 365 accounts – email, calendars, contact lists, docs, the lot. What did he do and what organizations should do to prevent a similar catastrophe. Deepanshu Kher worked for an IT consultancy and was
A new Windows component WebView2 is being quietly installed on Windows computers, mostly for Microsoft Office. Here’s what WebView2 is and that the acronym WVRT means. Most people won’t have noticed a new ‘optional’ feature added to their Windows 10 in the last week or so. Go to Settings |
You’ve received a document, but when you try to open it, the file stubbornly won’t appear! We explain how to fix it. Our editor-in-chief saw that problem in an Internet cafe‚ in Ketchikan, Alaska and was surprised when neither the manager of the store nor the cruise computer ‘expert’ knew the
How to insert the Black Right Pointing index ☛ into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. Black Right Pointing index ☛ symbol can be used for pointing a direction on a sign or as a different bullet symbol. There’s also a
Type the Broken Vertical Bar ¦ in Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. Broken Vertical Bar ¦ symbol was sometimes used in computing. These days there’s no specific use for the broken vertical bar but it’s good to keep in mind
The March 2021 Windows patches have caused at least two major bugs (sorry ‘issues’) that can affect Office users or anyone trying to print. Here’s the fixes and workarounds. Printing bug This is a nasty bug caused by the Windows patch KB5000802 not being properly tested before release. An update
Mouse without Borders is a little-known Microsoft Garage project, it’s worth keeping in mind if you’re trying to work with two or more Windows computers. All these situations can be handled easier with Mouse without Borders … Maybe you have a desktop and laptop computer side-by-side? Working with another computer
Excel in a web browser has some new improvements, many of them are familiar Excel desktop features moved online but one is unique to the browser-based version. Version history for collaboration, more zoom options for keyboard and screen, multiple range selections and changing regional settings are all now available online.
Microsoft has added more protections against nasty Excel 4.0 macros aka XLM macros. XLM or Excel 4.0 macros are an older pre-VBA system that’s still available in modern Excel 365 for Windows and Mac. XML macros have been around since 1992 but gradually replaced by VBA which debuted only a
There are types of Office documents that you should NOT open, even if they come from someone you trust. Here’s the full list of file extensions for the older Office document formats which are much more likely to be ‘malicious’ docs from hackers and criminals. We’ve talked about the risks
Microsoft Exchange Server software has been comprehensively hacked over the last few months, focusing on US systems but spreading across the world. What happened, who needs to act now and what everyone should watch out for. Exchange Server is the mailbox technology used by many, many companies around the world.
Without notice, the main forum for Office customers to tell Microsoft what they want has disappeared. No explanation of what’s happened and what, if anything, will replace it. For many years, Microsoft has boasted about their UserVoice pages such as https://office365.uservoice.com/ but it’s gone dark. All the years of suggestions
WhatsApp desktop extensions (Windows and Mac) can now make and receive voice or video calls. Until now the desktop apps where limited to texting and sending attachments. If you use WhatsApp (or Signal), the desktop extensions are really great. Instead of pecking away on a tiny screen, you can type
Gmail has a very different way of organizing mail to the Outlook/Microsoft system of folders. Gmail’s Labels, Important and Categories have different or no meaning in Outlook for Windows. Labels Gmail has Labels which are tags that can be applied to messages. Outlook shows those labelled messages as if they
You can choose which mail folders are synchronized with Outlook but you won’t find this option with the rest of the Gmail account settings in Outlook. Instead go to the heading of the Gmail account in the folder pane, right-click and choose IMAP folders. Subscribed folders Let’s stop for a
No need to right-click to see spelling and grammar suggestions in Word and Outlook 365. It’s changing so only a single left click will show the suggestions, corrections and more. On the downside, fewer options are initially displayed. Useful features are now multiple clicks away and hidden from view. It’s part
Word online (in a web browser) can now embed live web content like videos from YouTube or a quiz from Forms Embedded content is fully interactive within the Word document. Play the video, fill in the form/quiz. No special command or ribbon button necessary. Just paste in the web link,
Word online (web browser) is getting a way to convert a Word document into a PowerPoint presentation. For the moment it’s available as a preview feature in Word online. See if you have it at File | Transform. Transform document to presentation Start from File | Transform | Transform to
