For all the changes Microsoft has made to Search (aka Tell Me), they continue to ignore one basic that would make Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook a lot easier to work with. Here’s some examples of how Microsoft Office search badly needs fixing. Search (formerly called “Tell Me”) usually appears
Three ways to insert the Recycle symbol ♻ into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. There are many different and specialist Recycle symbols. We’ll focus on the standard, generic symbol, officially called “Black Universal Recycling Symbol” in three forms: Emoji or Unicode
Insert the Teardrop-Spoked Asterisk ✻ into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. Heavy Teardrop-Spoked Asterisk ✻ symbol has a circle in the middle with six ‘teardrop’ spokes around it. It has no specific purpose but is a more decorative alternative to the standard
Can you scan a picture or document directly into Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook? Certainly, but these days we’re spoiled for choice and have fantastic features like using a smartphone as a simple scanner. Back in the day, you could click a button in Word 2003 to scan a document
An easy and fast way to add pictures into Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. We mentioned a faster way to get a scanned image into Word via the ‘scan to clipboard’ option available in some scanning software. There are similar options available for copying existing image files into Word, Excel
There’s a bug in the latest release of Outlook 365 for Windows (Microsoft 365) which makes saving attachments slow to a crawl. Microsoft has a workaround to consider, if you’re desperate. The problem occurs when saving attachments to a network folder directly. There’s a long wait looking at this dialog
Windows Mail and Calendar apps will be replaced with the ‘new’ Outlook. That means a second ‘Outlook for Windows’ and plenty of confusion for customers and support people. Microsoft made this mistake before and seem determined to do it again. This ‘new’ Outlook is a Progressive Web App (PWA) formerly
The change of fonts in Microsoft 365 also means a change of default styles (normal and headings) are also changing. Here’s what the new styles look like and the exact settings Microsoft has chosen for Word, PowerPoint and Outlook. At the moment, these fonts and styles are in Microsoft 365
There’s been yet another failure of Microsoft’s Exchange Online service (aka Microsoft 365 hosted email) affecting customers around the world by stopping or delaying outgoing messages. Microsoft hid the extent of the problem by spreading the details across two separate bug reports. The first most people knew of the problem
How to insert the Grinning Face 😀 emoji into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. Grinning Face 😀 emoji is usually depicted as a yellow face, with open eyes and a wide smile. Conveys good cheer or humor, often to make
Some more Microsoft Word Find tricks. Select and Find, finding blank lines, search for special characters/emoji, find a certain font or formatting plus wildcard options. This article follows on from our introduction Find pane search secrets in Word Select and Find If you select some text in a document then
Add the Easter Island stone statue (Moai/Moyai) 🗿 symbol, 3D model or photo into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. Moai 🗿 symbol represents the famous stone statues of Easter Island. It can be used to show a deadpan, ‘straight face’
With the sale of fonts via the Microsoft Store and cloud fonts there’s now a complication in the familiar way fonts are managed in Windows 11/Windows 10 and how Office for Windows handles new fonts. There are now three different locations that fonts can be saved. For as long as
A Windows 11 update might stop Outlook or other Office apps from working because of a conflict with anti-virus software. The trouble started with KB5027231 a Windows 11 update released 13 June 2023 which, among other things, fixed a file copying bug. 15 days later Microsoft admitted there was a bug
Microsoft has released some information about what you’ll need to get their AI tools (called Copilot) when they are eventually released. Copilot is Microsoft’s name for their upcoming AI tools integrated into Office apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook) plus other services like Teams. As with all Microsoft’s Copilot announcements,
Microsoft Designer now has an image editing tool that’s been missing from Microsoft Office. Erase in Designer lets you edit images in an important way that’s not possible in Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook for Windows or Mac. Picture editing in Office has a lot of features but they mostly
Microsoft is offering some workarounds for a bug in Outlook for Windows which leaves it hanging on the opening screen and very slowly opening properly. According to Microsoft the bug is in the Outlook software part of Microsoft 365 for Windows. We suspect a similar problem might also be in
What can you do if there’s an outage or breakdown in Microsoft 365 email cloud services? If you’re prepared, you can continue working and communicating until Microsoft fixes the outage. Microsoft 365 breaks down occasionally, so do other online services. These outages have and will happen to even the best
Microsoft Outlook and Teams had a horror Monday (and now into Tuesday) with cloud service outages affecting many paying and unhappy customers. The peak trouble was around 11am (US Eastern time) Monday 5th June. UPDATE: As we type this, there’s a new Exchange Online (Microsoft 365 hosting) outage. According to
Hide that ‘Try the new Outlook’ option appearing in Outlook for Windows and why you should not click that button … not yet anyway. Microsoft has released the ‘new Outlook’ to some customers as an option because they want lots of unpaid ‘guinea pigs’. Each ‘new’ feature added to the
Insert the Right arrow → into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. The official Unicode name is ‘Rightward Arrow” → but it can be called ‘Right pointing’ ‘Right facing’ or just ‘Right Arrow’. Want more arrows or pointers? Check out all
Word and Office have several right “pointing hand” symbols available in some fonts. Here’s the Unicode options, index, backhand, sideways in white or black, all explained and shown. Want more arrows or pointers? Check out all 200+ Arrow or Hand pointing symbols and more in a searchable list. Index, Backhand
There are three main ways to run a macro in Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook). From the Macros list, from a button on a ribbon or from the Quick Access toolbar. We previously spoke about how to install an Office VBA macro, here’s how a macro can appear
Insert any of the chess piece symbols available in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and other Office apps. King, Queen, Bishop, Knight. Rook and the lowly Pawn all with different looks, depending on the font plus three pieces available in Microsoft Office icons and the single chess piece emoji. Chess Pieces –
