For the first time we can remember, Microsoft is publicly advertising the Office 365 Home Use Program. The Home Use Program changed in February 2019 to an ongoing discount on Office 365 Home plans for staff of organizations with Office volume licenses. That’s instead of a very low price on
The WhatsApp security bug made a lot of headlines this week. As the virtual dust settles, what should you do and what is there still to worry about. A company discovered a bug in WhatsApp which they packaged up and sold to various parties. The Pegasus bug allowed hacking of
They’ve done it again … Microsoft released a bug fix for Office 2016 that caused a bug in the software! The faulty patch is KB4462238 which applies to Office 2016 installed with the older .MSI method, not the more usual ClickToRun method and not Office 365 customers. After installing the
Reports that Microsoft has removed Office 365 from their flagship Windows 10 / Microsoft Store seem to be overstating things a bit. Both Office 365 Home and Personal are for sale, at full price via the Microsoft Store. Here’s the result of our search. Sometimes a big ad for Office
Unclear date formatting in documents, worksheets, presentations and other media is a pet peeve of ours. These days it’s bad practice to show dates in digits only such as 01-05-2019 12/3/18 etc. Yet we often see these formats used in booking confirmations and other documents. Either of those dates can
Microsoft has released in preview a new type of security policy advisor for business customers using Office 365 ProPlus. Unlike past tools, this new cloud offering promises to be more tailored to individual businesses. It will continually monitor Office software use, making changes in security settings as appropriate. The Security
Office 365 for Windows has new look privacy settings, hidden deep in the menus where, presumably, Microsoft hopes customers won’t find them. These changes are in conjunction with the renamed Office cloud features now called ‘Connected Experiences’. They apply to Office 365 for Windows build 1904 and later. A series
Office 365 customers will be seeing a set of opening screens about how Microsoft gathers and uses customer data. Those screens are carefully worded to avoid some hard truths about modern cloud connections and cover Microsoft from legal liability. Cloud features can be great and very useful. Companies do their
Microsoft has something ‘new’ in Office 365 they call ‘Connected Experiences’. It’s really a new, fancy name for things we already have. Connected Experiences is the new catchphrase for the cloud services already in Office 365 software or apps. It’s the various features which require customer data sent to Microsoft’s
Windows Sets would have been an important innovation for Office users but has now been killed by Microsoft. Sets was a proposed and tested Windows feature which would let you group different programs together in a tabbed interface. Think of the familiar tabs in a browser except each tab had
Readers asked us about Window 10 naming, version and builds after Overdue changes to Windows 10 available now. Some told us we were wrong while others are confused, with both groups quoting various Microsoft sources for their ‘truth’. The sad fact is Windows naming, version and builds are a confused
The upcoming update to Windows 10 represents a major shift by Microsoft. While the company won’t admit it, the October 2018 update was a disaster. So many bugs in the update, including some that destroyed customers files. Somewhat chastened, the Win10 May 2019 update is being deployed in a much
Microsoft has admitted a security breach which allowed hackers to access the accounts and data of customers. The admission from Microsoft isn’t complete and the hackers say it’s worse than the company is saying. Who is affected? Some people with a free Microsoft accounts like Outlook.com, Msn.com Hotmail.com etc. Microsoft
Google has announced that their G Suite customers will be able to edit and collaborate with Microsoft Office documents. It will be available to all G Suite users by the end of May 2019. Source: Google. Until now, a clumsy Office compatibility app for Chrome allowed Microsoft Office documents to
Slack, the popular collaboration service, has added better integration with Office 365 hosting and OneDrive. Office 365 tools were inevitable because Microsoft now has Teams, its own rival to Slack. There are two new tools, Outlook email and calendar plus nice previews of Microsoft Office documents. Office document preview Now
It’s income tax time in the USA and that means a new round of email scams and infected Excel documents to watch out for. IBM Security Intelligence reports on a series of scam emails courtesy of the Trickbot hackers. All the emails look like legitimate messages from big companies like
Microsoft continues to struggle with their support for Japanese Era date format in Excel. The new Imperial Era, ‘Reiwa’ is known but the necessary changes for Excel aren’t released yet. New Japanese Imperial Era changes in Excel and Office explains how to add the new Reiwa era without waiting for
The lesser known version of SVG icons is the smaller, compressed, SVGZ format. Here’s how to use SVGZ in Office 365/2019 despite no direct support for the format. Most SVG icons arrived uncompressed in plain XML text using the .SVG extension. We’ve shown before how SVG’s can be edited in
Microsoft has never been great about documenting patches and bug fixes but this month they have sunk to a new low. Maybe it’s a delayed April Fool’s prank with Microsoft ‘taking the Mickey‘ or treating Office customers with contempt? Sustained Engineering isn’t sustained Maintaining Office software is the thankless job
We hope you enjoy our little 1st April satire, Office 366. Office 366 was fun and, along the way, reminded people of some important points about Office 365 plans. ‘Office 366’ is the, not impossible, idea that Microsoft would make Office 365 customers pay for leap day in 2020. https://office366extra.com/
The current Google Drive plug-in for Microsoft Office will stop working near the end of June. There’s an improved update already available for some customers and an alternative for the rest. If you’re using the Google Drive plug-in, you’ll start seeing a warning about the plugins death on 26 June
An update for Excel users on the upcoming new Imperial Era in Japan and how to type the Reiwa era name in Office documents The Japanese government has now announced the new Era name that will coincide with new Emperor. From 1 May 2019 we’ll be in the 令和or Reiwa
Some people might be surprised about Office 366 and the loss of services for a day, but they shouldn’t be. It’s a demonstration of the much tighter control Microsoft has over Office 365 customers. Office 366 is a price slug for Office 365 customers Office 366 exclusive interview The switch
Office Watch met with Office 365 spokesman, Morrocos Fieffit, for a few drinks and this exclusive interview about the changes and fees with Office 366. Quickly, what’s Office 366? “Office 366 is an enhancement to Office 365 to deal with the extra day in the 2020 leap year. Office 365
