Microsoft Office 365 and 2019 for Mac (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook) now work directly on the new M1 chip. There are a few ‘gotchas’ but support for Apple Silicon is almost complete. Apple is moving away from Intel chips to their own ‘Apple Silicon’ hardware, starting with the M1
Google’s Gmail can now directly edit Microsoft Office documents arriving in email attachments. It’s available to all Gmail users, free and paid accounts. It removes a lot of the hassles of exchanging Office documents with Gmail and Google Docs/Sheets/Slides users. No more document conversion hassles … at long last! Email
The usual security fixes for Microsoft Office this month include some unexpected patches for Office 2010 which is a pleasant surprise. Office 2010 is now officially out of support (since 13 October 2020) but still works fine. That’s supposed to mean there’s no more patches. Microsoft hasn’t explained their reason
Microsoft Teams users are getting similar ‘Insider’ or ‘Beta’ options to trial new and changed features. It’s setup similar to the existing ‘Insider’ options for Windows and Office. The naming of Insider levels is similar, but not the same as for Office. Public Preview Channel – the last step before
The Microsoft 365 Productivity Score has been raising concerns about staff privacy and intrusion into their ‘Work from Home’ life. We’ll look at what Productivity Score actually does, how it’s changed after public pressure and why administrators might prefer to be intrusive. Productivity Score applies to Microsoft 365 hosted organizations.
The Microsoft 365 logins on top executives are being sold on the dark web, allowing hackers direct access to the emails and files of chief executives, directors and managers. ZDnet is reporting that a forum for hackers has an offer to sell login details for Microsoft 365 / Office accounts
Discounts on Microsoft 365 Family (formerly Home) are rare these days but Amazon UK has a Cyber Monday offer worth grabbing. Save more than £30 on the regular price of a one year renewal. Amazon UK are selling the £79.99 package for just £47.99 on Monday 30 Nov only. The
If you’re thinking about getting Microsoft 365 email hosting with full Teams and SharePoint, Microsoft has a limited time offer this week only. However, before you jump into their deal, there’s another very similar option that’s even cheaper. Until 30 November 2020, Microsoft is offering 25% discount on their Business
Microsoft can’t help themselves when it comes to naming their ‘Insiders’, ‘Preview’ or beta test versions. The names change for no good reason and timing is different for each platform rather than all Office apps changing at the same time. The latest changes are for MacOS, iOS (iPhone/iPad) and Android
Short Stock videos are coming to PowerPoint 365 slides and backgrounds. Instead of searching the web or making your own little videos, they are now available from PowerPoint itself. All the videos are short (around 10 seconds) and automatically loop by default. Here’s four of them as a sampler ..
Claude Almer 1950-2020 We’re devastated to report the passing of Claude Almer who died in Sydney, Australia, on November 19, 2020 after a long illness Claude was technical and personal support for Office Watch since well before the newsletter started in 1996. Whenever in-depth analysis of some virus code was
The famous Bodleian Library in Oxford is a lovely place to work and now you can pipe that ambience into your ‘Work from Home’ area. More than a few Office Watch articles are written in libraries including the old British Library Reading Room (alas been closed for some years), the
0Patch is stepping in where Microsoft has left by offering continued security updates for Office 2010 after official support was dropped a few months ago. Newly discovered high risk security bugs in Office 2010 will get micropatches from 0Patch. These unofficial updates change the existing program files to prevent the
The Quick Access Toolbar (QAT) is located on the left side of the Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook title bar. You can add commands, options and even symbols for easy and quick obvious access By default, the QAT only has Save, Undo, Redo and Touch/Mouse commands but you can cut down
A quick way to type a ü tick or check mark character in Word. Another great Autocorrect suggestion from Morris B. ” … the one that I have found the most useful is to replace ‘./’ with a tick (wingdings 252 – or wingdings 254) “ Using the fullstop/period is
One of the eternal questions to Office Watch is about adding characters to an Office document. Symbols and characters not on the keyboard. The most common requests are for adding currency symbols like Pound £ Euro € or Yen/Renminbi ¥ but can also include the @ symbol which can, even
Excel’s Conditional Formatting is getting two small but much needed changes that will make it a lot easier to use. According to Microsoft, the latest Insiders releases of Excel 365 for Windows has two changes to the Conditional Formatting Manager dialog. Resizable The dialog is now resizable from the handle
Apple is releasing a new version of MacOS, for all Mac computers, called ‘Big Sur’ or version 11. What does that mean for Microsoft Office compatibility and stability? Big Sur is the latest MacOS operating system (version 11) for Mac computers. It’s rolled out from 12 November but you can
Apple’s new Macbook’s use a totally new type of chip, the M1 or Apple Silicon. What does that mean for Microsoft Office and other programs? We’ll explain what Apple Silicon Macs are and why they are better. Microsoft Office compatibility with the new machines (it’s messy at the moment) and
Designer, a quick formatting feature in PowerPoint is now available in Microsoft Word. Here’s how to find and use the new feature. Word’s Designer works a little differently to the PowerPoint Designer but the basics are the same. A side-pane offers some templates that will reformat the entire document. Some
The new Apple iOS 14.2 adds 117 new emoji to use but be careful now you use them because not even all iPhone and iPad can handle them, let alone non-Apple devices. We explain how they work, how the emoji appear on receiving devices and include a full list of
Plus + , disposable or instant alias email addresses are now available for Microsoft 365 hosted mailboxes and Outlook.com accounts. Here’s how to get this useful email trick for your mailbox. Outlook.com All Outlook.com accounts have plus addresses automatically. It was introduced to Hotmail (‘as was’) back in 2013. It’s
Outlook for Windows/Mac has features that work well with email plus or disposable addresses. Plus addresses let you make sub-addresses that come to the same mailbox see What are email Plus addresses and how to use them for details. Outlook Rules with plus addresses Most Outlook Rules are based on
Those ‘award’ logos with the laurel or fern on each side can be made in Word or PowerPoint. The ‘awards’ can be serious or joking. Here’s the thing we mean, you’ll often see them on theatre or movie posters. Format The standard wording for these logos is: Award organization (Academy
