Microsoft released an interesting new tool for Office 2013/2016 which promised to be a major improvement on current ‘speech to text’ options. Most media have just reported Microsoft’s hype, we actually tested Dictate and here’s what we’ve found. What made Dictate different is the use of Cortana voice recognition technology.
Microsoft Office 365 and Office 2021 let you save images to SVG format from either images/graphics, charts or whole slides from PowerPoint. Originally ‘Save As SVG’ was only in PowerPoint 365 Windows but it’s quietly spread to Word 365, Excel 365 and Outlook 365 as well as the Office 2021
It IS possible for Outlook 2013 (and earlier Outlook 2010 and Outlook 2007) to connect with Google Gmail accounts, despite what you may have heard. We’ll explain what’s happened, why and how login is still available for older Microsoft Outlook’s. There’s a lot of misinformation about changes in Gmail’s login
Type the three different types of Ellipsis … marks in Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. Ellipsis … symbol is used for a gap or break in some text, usually to drop out some irrelevant text or speech. The same applies
Like it or loath it but the comma ellipsis has arrived ,,, as an alternative to the more common ellipsis with dots. Here’s how to use it in Word and Office. The comma ellipsis is a modern, more casual version. It’s used as a more dramatic, even annoyed trailing off
If you thought the modern world could not get any stranger, we’ve got bad news. Microsoft Office and Oreos (the chocolate cookie) have combined for a marketing stunt with online events (sorry “snack breaks”), special packs, tchotchke and emoji. Poor old Clippy has been dragged in as well. On the
Type the Yen ¥ currency symbol into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. Yen is used for Japanese currency and the Chinese Renminbi / Yuan. Microsoft Excel also offers the Yen symbol for Mongolia even though the tögrög currency uses another
There is a way to add an online calendar (aka webcal) to Outlook for Mac, even though it’s not directly possible. It’ll also add the subscribed calendar to iPhone and iPad. Subscribed calendars are really useful for adding in events like sports and club meetings. There are webcal:// links available
What is ‘link unfurling’, an upcoming feature in Microsoft Outlook An unfurled link appears in an email as an interactive preview card – not just a preview but something the receiver can update. Link unfurling is already in Teams, now it’s coming to Outlook 365 for Windows. Here’s Microsoft’s example
Outlook can handle more than one calendar and has three options for easily viewing them, either individually or combined. Calendars can be displayed side-by-side or the more useful Overlay option. There’s also the ‘New Window’ option. Choosing the Outlook calendars to view In Outlook calendar view, use the check boxes
Outlook can link to external, shared, calendars and copy any updates to that calendar using either a .ics tile or a webcal link. An Internet calendar can be for public events, holidays, sporting fixtures etc. They can be a one-time copy of event details or you can setup Outlook
Occasionally you’ll get someone who sends lots of messages you don’t want to see. Outlook has a few options for refusing or politely ignoring messages from certain email senders – either individually or automatically. Most commonly these are enthusiastic zealots on some subject and are trying to ‘spread the word’
Meeting or party invitations don’t have to be plain, old white background emails, go for something a little more fancy or useful. Officially, Microsoft suggests using their Stationery themes to change the look of an email. But that’s not available for invitation emails. There are some formatting choices also missing
We’ve warned against incoming ‘old’ Office documents (.doc .xls etc) because of the virus risk, so how can you setup Outlook to warn you about emails with those attachments? Sadly, it’s not easy. Outlook has automatic Rules to check incoming messages, but none of those rules can test for the
Many of the dangerous emails arriving in your Inbox have one thing in common — they use the old (and risky) Word .DOC format. .DOC .XLS or .PPT are exactly the sort of email attachments you should avoid. The main ‘red flag’ is the email attachment of a .DOC file
How to make mail links on web pages or emails open in Outlook for Windows instead of some other mail app. Fix this in Windows 11, Windows 10 and earlier Windows. Sometimes Outlook ‘forgets’ that it’s the place for all email work. You click on an email address and get
Microsoft is hyping a new “Outlook for Windows” as a coming replacement to the familiar Windows program giving both the same “Outlook for Windows” name even though the two programs are completely different and the proposed replacement is quite crippled. Let’s start with a little naming explanation because Microsoft seems
Microsoft’s proposed “Outlook for Windows” replacement has some additional features but still lacks features that most people would think are essential for any mail program. This “New Outlook” can’t do things that the Outlook apps for Windows, Mac, Apple and Android could do from the start. The “New Outlook” is
Microsoft Word has a simple and quick way to reveal the Unicode value or character number for any letter, symbol or emoji using the Alt + X shortcut. As you may know, each character shown on a computer is really a number. There’s an accepted list of symbols called Unicode
A small but very welcome change to the File menu in Office 365 for Windows to handle the overflow at the bottom of the window. It’s one of those changes that Microsoft doesn’t promote or even mention. Maybe because it’s quite small or perhaps because it fixes an embarrassing design
Here’s how to apply the same formatting, borders and picture styles to more than one picture or graphic in Word, PowerPoint or Excel. There’s an unexpected and easy way to do it. Picture Format tools don’t have custom styles (Microsoft please note) only the in-built pre-sets. If you want to
Put the Reference Mark ※ into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. Reference Mark ※ or reference symbol is used in Asian writing (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) like the Asterix * in western languages. It marks some additional notes to text. It’s called
Quickly type the Euro € currency sign into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. Euro € symbol is easy on some keyboards but for other keyboards there’s no specific key for Euro. You can [copy content=”€” text=”click here to copy Euro
Two new Windows PowerToys are especially useful for many Microsoft Office users. One is a better way to type accented characters, the other grabs text from images. Quick Accent, Text Extractor and, to a lesser extent, Screen Ruler are all additions to the PowerToys collection that can be useful for
