Two new Microsoft keyboards have an Emoji key. Office-Watch.com has now tried one of these keyboards to see how the new key really works and hardware details. There are various layouts available including US layout. We bought a UK layout keyboard with the Alt Gr key. Firstly, it’s not an
Two new Microsoft keyboards have a dedicated Office key. Office-Watch.com has tested one of these keyboards to see how the new Office key really works. We have a full list of Office key shortcuts plus how it works inside Word, Excel and PowerPoint and geeky hardware info. Hard information about
Microsoft Word can now suggest alternative wordings for phrases and sentences in a feature called Rewrite. It’s ‘synonyms for phrases’ not just single words. Rewrite is promoted as ‘Say it another way’. If you want a different wording for an overworked phrase, Rewrite could help. Speaking of overworked phrases, here’s
The Microsoft Whiteboard app can now import pages from Word documents or selected slides from a PowerPoint deck. The new feature is better than it’s promoted because you can select pages/slides not just entire documents or decks. Start from the Insert menu where there are now options for Word document
Microsoft’s new Surface Buds are earbuds with links to Microsoft Office for voice control and transcription. The new product is a rival to the Apple Airpods and many other similar cordless earphones. What’s different is the touch surface with allow more integration with Windows and especially Office. Source: Microsoft It’s
Soon, Office 365 will warn you when the document, worksheet or presentation uses a document format that doesn’t support modern accessibility features. Accessibility features like alt text in images, color contrast, heading consistency, table structures are only available with the modern Office document formats ( .docx .xlsx .pptx etc). Office
Microsoft is releasing two new keyboards with new keys; an Office key and a dedicated Emoji key. Back in June we talked about the plans for an Office key to go alongside the existing Windows key. Here it is … Source: Microsoft The Office and Emoji keys are on the
The new iPad has a great price tag and good features but a hidden price trap for Microsoft Office users. It has a 10.2” screen with support for important accessories like an external keyboard and Apple Pencil. Source: Apple. The trap is in the screen size, at 10.2” it’s 0.1
Microsoft is pushing out a new Office app for iPhone and Android devices however most Office users won’t need to bother with it. Paid Office 365 subscribers already have better choices as part of their annual plan. The new app is called ‘Microsoft Office Mobile’ and it’s a single app
Outlook on the web is now blocking another 38 email attachments because they can be carriers of viruses. But Microsoft doesn’t block the most commonly used files for infecting computers. Far and away the most common infected email attachment is old-style Word documents, with .doc extensions. Excel .xls worksheets and
A recent forced disclosure by the US government demonstrates the use of NSL’s which access your personal data from Microsoft OneDrive and Outlook without a warrant or regular oversight, let alone notice to you. Microsoft, Google, Facebook and many other tech companies (including gaming services) have received National Security Letters
The Upload Center, that annoying little extra in modern Office is being closed down. It’s being replaced with ‘Files Needing Attention’ alerts within Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher and Visio. The Upload Center controls documents being uploaded from Office to online storage like OneDrive and SharePoint. If you haven’t noticed Upload
As we suspected, there are more holes in the Office Document Inspector. Our clever readers came up with some possibilities for revealing secrets in documents, worksheets and presentations. Document Inspector is good but could be better. As you’ll see, there really should be a warning about objects with multiple layers.
Surface pens will now turn on the Draw tab in Word, Excel and PowerPoint automatically. When you pick up a Microsoft Surface Pen, the Draw tab in Office 365 will automatically appear to choose color, thickness of the digital ink. There are a few requirements, but they are pretty obvious:
Word 365 for Mac is getting what’s called the ‘Edit PDF’ feature, already available in Word for Windows. Don’t get too excited, Word can’t really edit a PDF file and the results might not be what you want. The ‘editing PDF’ feature is now available to Office for Mac insiders
PowerPoint has many choices for printed/PDF handouts to go with a presentation. Here’s a guide to the options spread in different places on the PowerPoint ribbon and menus. Quick PowerPoint Handouts Under File | Print is the basic handouts option to print slides and lines for people to handwrite notes.
Here’s a list of the known Office install/update error codes with possible fixes. All thanks to a diligent and long-suffering Office Watch reader. Ron S has compiled these lists from web sites and forums based on experiences of other people. Doesn’t Microsoft have all this? Yes, they probably do but
The newer File | Open panes include a Search option to quickly find Recent Documents by name. That means it’s practical to expand the Recent Docs list to a higher or maximum value in Word, Excel or PowerPoint. In any of the three programs go to File | Options |
Here’s this months non-security bug fix updates.for Office 2016 and Office 2013. They are only for .msi installs, not ‘Click to Run’ modern installations. For most systems, they’ll be applied automatically. This is the full list with extra notes on a few fixes which caught our eye. Office 2016 updates
The error messages on Office 365/2019 setup and update are notoriously unhelpful, so here’s a guide to fixing Office install or update problems that work out here in the real world. Error messages like the infamous ‘Something went wrong” should be taken with a large pinch of salt. The error
If you get an error message when installing or updating Office 365 or Office 2019 there’s little help available beyond Microsoft telling you ‘Something went wrong’. What looks like specific error message are general statements that don’t identify the problem. These troubles aren’t any surprise to experienced Microsoft Office users.
Microsoft Word’s dictionary is updated more regularly, especially for Office 365 customers. A good example of that is the addition of Brexit related words. We typed into Word various words that the people of the UK are too familiar with, just to see what’s in the Microsoft dictionary. The same
The upcoming Rewrite feature in Word will offer alternative phrases or wording for your sentences. Rewrite is another cloud based feature so anything selected for Rewrite is sent to Microsoft. The feature is supposed to be in Office 365 for Windows Insiders build 1908 (11901.20018), English only but hasn’t appeared
Microsoft and some contractors listen to Skype calls but that shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. And Microsoft’s response was quite typical – they refuse to stop. Microsoft can and does let it’s ‘associates’ listen and read from Office documents and voice data. Word, PowerPoint and Outlook users are also