Over Easter there was a three day serious breakdown in Outlook.com for Australian users among many. The problems were first acknowledged by Microsoft about 1pm Sydney time on Saturday 11 April and continued for around three days! Mostly Aussies were affected with pockets of trouble in Europe and USA. A
The April 2020 security fixes for Microsoft Office come with a warning that some VBA code will stop working. There are workarounds to let some references through. The KB4557055 security fix blocks VBA references that link to Internet or intranet sources or have been downloaded from the Internet. That will
PowerPoint includes quick access to character spacing features that make slide titles stand out. In PowerPoint there are two useful features to make a slide title jump out at the viewer. Character Spacing is quickly changed on the Home tab. More subtle is Kerning. When it comes to Design, and clarity in Design, Space is almost as important
Modern Microsoft Word (Office) has some picture tools which can convert an image into an outline that kids can use for coloring in. We’ll be the first to admit, the image to outline options aren’t great but they are serviceable, quick and easily done with tools you have in Microsoft
It is possible to send and receive faxes without a fax machine. At least you can send a fax from your computer without a fax machine because there are online services to do that for you. We’ve noticed some press reports were overwhelmed offices have reverted to faxes because their
Amazon UK are selling Office 365 Home for very near their lowest price, saving ₤28 on the usual price. As we type this, the price is ₤51.09 here. That’s as good as you’re likely to get. Microsoft will sell you exactly the same thing for ₤79.99! That’s the Home (soon
A new report suggest that many organizations are paying too much for Microsoft 365 (Office 365). The same might apply to some individuals with Microsoft 365 Family/Home. The Coreview report identifies three costly mistakes with Microsoft 365 licencing. Buy too many licenses; ‘err on the side of caution’. Not assigning
Snap Camera is a way to ‘fancy up’ your webcam with fancy effects including the now infamous potato. There are other subtle effects that will work with Zoom, Skype, Teams or any other online calling service. Also a color slider inside some lens effects. Get Snap Camera from https://snapcamera.snapchat.com/ it’s
Some lighting, positioning and other tips for looking your best and more professional during an online call or meeting. Where to put the camera The camera should be about the same level at the top of your head then tilted down a little to your eyes. In other words, have
Find and add the Indian flag into Office documents, Word, Excel or PowerPoint, then use some Office picture tools to enhance the image. The same help applies for any other national flag, just look for a different source. Get the Indian Flag Image There are many, many copies of the Indian flag available. We’ve opted for
Word and PowerPoint allow you to not only put a colored border around a picture, instead try a pretty gradient effect for single color or multi-colored rainbow effects. Like most of the fancier border effects, you can access gradient border settings in the Format Picture pane, by going to Picture
Many café, restaurants and other businesses are closed due to the pandemic but still missing an opportunity to keep in touch with customers. Here’s a sign and tips to help recover when restrictions are lifted. There’s a lovely café near us which has closed for the duration. It would be
Excel’s Workday() function counts working days before or after the starting date. The counted workdays automatically excludes weekends (Saturday and Sunday) and can account for holidays. We previously explored the NetworkDays.Intl() function in Microsoft Excel to calculate the number of working days between two dates. Workday() is similar but returns the date (past or future) after the number of workdays. It is useful
Microsoft has rushed out a new Skype feature that lets you setup an online meeting or group call with a single shareable link. Of course there a good things about this option and some very bad things. As usual, the setup is more complicated than Microsoft makes out. This new
Zoom has problems but there are easy settings that will fix your online calls and meetings. It’s time to balance some of the excessively worrying Zoom coverage of recent days. Some people and extreme groups are taking advantage of the open defaults on Zoom. There’s an organized effort to share
If you get so sick they send you to hospital, you’ll be too ill to get ready. ‘Prepare for the worst’ by making up a hospital ‘go bag’ with what you’ll need. Visitors to hospitals are being severely restricted so make sure you have communication options. Prepare your computer for
If you have words or longer sections of text that you type frequently and don’t want to have to type in full each time, Word allows you to set your own shortcuts to automatically enter this text in a few keystrokes either AutoCorrect or AutoText. There are two ways to
Google Sheets can be handy for sharing and working on spreadsheet files with other people, but sometimes you just really need that file in Excel. No problem – it’s actually really easy to convert them. All you have to do is download the file and save it as an Excel file. If
A lot of misleading talk about the Microsoft 365 change makes it seem a lot bigger and more of an upheaval than it really is. Time for a reality break … breath regular everyone. Headlines like these are all ‘bollocks’ as the British say, nonsense: Office 365 major shakeup Replacing
Zoom has some clever tricks available to make a meeting more efficient and fun. Virtual Backgrounds, sharing screens, files, chatting on the sidelines, raising your (virtual) hand and changing the boss of the meeting (aka Host). Also an important tip for PowerPoint in a Zoom meeting. Here’s some Zoom tricks
Here’s a readable and searchable version of the Microsoft 365 summary table that came with Microsoft’s announcement of the rebranding from Office 365 to Microsoft 365. It shows the differences between ‘free’ Office (with a Microsoft account), Microsoft 365 Personal (formerly Office 365 Personal) and Microsoft 365 Family (formerly Office
Microsoft has dumped a lot of news in a single day. As a result there’s a lot of misunderstanding and, sorry to say, misreporting. Journos not accustomed to Microsoft’s PR tricks have fallen for them. We’ll try to ‘unpack’ what’s been announced into what’s happening now, in the known future
Microsoft is dropping the Office 365 branding and switching to Microsoft 365 plans for annual ‘subscriptions’ to the Office programs and related services. These changes happen on 21 April 2020 but don’t mean any major change for customers. As we’ll see the new plans are almost the same as the
The Office 365 Business plans are changing name to the new Microsoft 365 branding with a somewhat confusing switch of names. It’s part of the switch from ‘Office 365’ to ‘Microsoft 365’ which happens on 21 April 2020. Goodbye Office 365, Welcome Microsoft 365 Same, same but different As they say
