Microsoft has announced some truly important improvements in what you get with Office 365 Home, Personal and University plans. The Home plan will be available for six family members instead of five. How Microsoft calculates use of Office software is changing and for the better. All these changes apply from
Microsoft’s Project Natick now has two live camera feeds showing fish around their underwater data centers. One of the big problems for server farms is heat. All those computers generate a lot of heat that must be dissipated somehow. Microsoft’s servers store your OneDrive files, Azure data, run Office cloud
Microsoft is rearranging, rerouting, it’s ‘Roadmap’ for the future of Office into a merged ‘Roadmap’ for Microsoft products including Windows and Office. The Office 365 Roadmap is joining with Windows, Azure and other products to become the Microsoft 365 Roadmap (more like a multi-lane superhighway with complex interchanges) Artists impression
Microsoft has released their Whiteboard app for Windows 10. While it’s better than last year’s preview app it has a lot of problems and a fatal flaw which makes it impossible for anyone except those with a childlike trust in Microsoft. We were harsh about the preview version, it was
If you get an error message when trying to activate Microsoft Office, settle in for a difficult time. Microsoft doesn’t make activation easy to understand, let alone fix activation problems. Office activation is where newly installed Office software is authorized by Microsoft’s servers. Without activation the software only has very
When you buy Microsoft Office there’s no CD or DVD with the software to install. The vital thing you’re getting is the Product Key. The Product Key is that the 25 character code which unlocks or activates the software. This applies to both Office 365 ‘subscriptions’ or single-purchase Microsoft Office packages.
The latest Office 2016 Insiders release version 1808, Build 10730.20030 shows off some upcoming additions to Outlook, Access, Project and Visio Outlook – block forwarding in meeting invitations When making a meeting invitation in Outlook, go to Response Options and deselect ‘Allow Forwarding’ to stop that invitation being forwarded to
After the report of buying illegal Microsoft Office via Amazon (and Amazon’s initially poor response) here’s what to do if you’ve bought an illegal, pirated or at least non-working Office Product Key. Credit Card as separate transaction Whenever possible, pay by credit card. The MS Office purchase should be a
“More of the same” in August 2018’s round of security fixes for Microsoft products including Windows, Office, Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Overall there a sixty security flaws fixed this month alone, including two ‘zero-day’ bugs not previously known to the public. We’ve all become accustomed to this never-ending stream of
Here’s the sad tale of a Californian woman who bought a pirated copy of Microsoft Office from an Amazon retailer and the hassle she had getting Amazon to do the right thing. There’s a happy ending but only because a local TV station intervened. That’s not an option for all
There are a dozen bug fixes for the Windows versions of Word 2016 buried among the non-security updates for Microsoft Office this month. And an extra feature for PowerPoint 2016 and 2013 for Windows. We’ll look at this important Word 2016 update first before listing the other bug fixes for
Microsoft seems to be moving towards a name change for ‘Office 2016’. They haven’t announced anything directly, but their documentation is changing for Windows and perhaps Office for Mac as well. If you’re confused, don’t feel bad because Redmond isn’t making it easy. They are moving gradually towards naming Microsoft
Microsoft has announced a 10% price increase for the Office 2019 commercial / volume licences. Sorry, it’s not an increase it’s a ‘price adjustment’ <sigh>. Office 2019 client, Enterprise CAL, Core CAL, and Office 2019 server products are all up 10% from 1 October 2018. These are all single-payment /
You’ve probably seen the headlines about the new ‘Outlook’ Dark Mode but there’s much less to this feature than all the hype suggests. It only applies to one of the many ” Outlook’s ” out there. We’ll explain what Dark Mode is, which Outlook it applies to and how to
Here’s how to make a custom ribbon tab in Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook and how Microsoft has left customers shortchanged for the last decade. We’ve already talked about customizing the Quick Access Toolbar (QAT) for certain documents. You can make the QAT adapt according to the document you’ve
Microsoft’s second quarter 2018 results came out with some pleasant surprises for the financial analysts. Both earnings per share and overall revenue beat market predictions. No wonder MSFT stock price went up 4 percent after the results went public. Office commercial products and cloud services revenue increased 10% mostly driven
A faulty Microsoft Windows security update not only didn’t fix the bug in VBScript, it opened another way for hackers to access a computer. Patching software is a complex thing, but this blunder is unforgivably bad and the delays make it even worse. It undermines confidence in Microsoft security testing
The Information is reporting that Facebook is considering moving from Office 365 to Google Apps for their 27,000 employees. The report from two sources would mean a “180” by Facebook which moved away from Google to Microsoft Office 365 only two years ago. Follow us on Facebook, it just takes
Microsoft Teams is primarily a cloud and web-based service with software or apps available for the main platforms. Teams features appear to be introduced first to the browser based Teams then added to apps later on. We’ve had considerable trouble with the Teams apps during testing. Perhaps that because of
Microsoft Teams truly is for everyone, now there’s a free plan available. Of course it’s aimed at businesses, ‘coz that’s where the money is. But with Teams now available free it’s open for small business and non-business uses. Small business Small or even tiny business can use Microsoft Teams for
There’s a somewhat confusing range of parts inside Microsoft Teams, here’s a guide to things like Teams, Channels, Chats, Wiki and other goodies. In How Microsoft Teams fits together we explain the Microsoft Teams structure from an teams. The Best Way to learn Microsoft Teams Dive in and try it. Teams
It’s taken Microsoft some time but their collaboration service Teams is now available for free to all comers. The popular collaboration service, Slack, built its business on their free offering. Many businesses adopted Slack after discovering their staff had setup Slack groups of their own. A lot of short term
We’ve said for a long time that buying direct from Microsoft is the most expensive way to buy their hardware or software. Redmond has found another way to trick more money from customers buying a Surface product. When you choose a Surface Go from the Microsoft Store, Microsoft adds TWO
Let’s have a hype-free look at Microsoft’s new Surface Go tablet, Microsoft’s pricing tricks, how to buy and which model. Also your Microsoft Office options with the Surface Go. What is it? Surface Go is clearly targeting the Apple iPad with the advantage of being able to run ‘real’ Microsoft