Back in 2015 we were amazed and dismayed to discover a privacy gap in Microsoft Office. Seven years later Microsoft has done nothing to fix or warn customers about. The problem is with images inserted into Office documents (Word, Excel, PowerPoint). The image ‘meta-data’ including GPS coordinates are retained with
Word field codes let you add automation or automatic content into documents. A simple example is the { DATE } field, which inserts the current date into a letter but there’s a lot more possible. Chances are good that you’ve already used field codes and not realised it. Date, PrintDate,
You haven’t heard about it? Don’t worry, even Microsoft has no information about this feature, unless you dig way back into its archives where you’ll find that the calculator – which formerly held a prominent position on the Tools Menu – was driven underground in Word 6.0 to make way
OpenDocument is another set of file formats for word-processing, spreadsheets and presentations. It’s an international standard that’s supported by Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Office. OpenDocument vs Microsoft Office docs While most people use the modern Microsoft Office document formats (.docx .xlsx .pptx etc) there’s a competitive set of Office file
Most readers of Office Watch will have a Microsoft account but is it as secure as it should be? Two-step authentication is becoming essential for the key Microsoft account. If you have Microsoft 365, OneDrive, Outlook.com, Windows 11/10/8.1/8, Windows Phone or (likely) Skype then you’ll have a Microsoft account. It’s
Did you know that you can link text boxes in Microsoft Word? Connect text in one box to another box, so that the text flows smoothly from one to the other. You can link text boxes on the same page or across different pages in your document. This way, you
Word lists have more power and, let’s face it, confusion hiding under the menus. How to start a new list, continue a previous list, reset the numbering and trying to figure out how a list numbering has been messed up. Many questions arising from our article on Word Autonumbering. Many
Word has an amazing range of options for automatically numbering your document headings or paragraphs. Even more amazing is my visit to an office. I found staff going through a long document, laboriously numbering headings and sub-headings by hand! They been doing this for years and weren’t happy when shown this
In 2018 Office for Mac took a huge step towards true document compatibility. Font embedding was finally added to Word for Mac (Word 2021, Word 2019 and Word 365 for Mac) and PowerPoint for Mac. Font embedding adds the font details into the document itself. When another computer opens that
VBA code or Macros can be copied between Microsoft Word documents and templates quite easily if you know where to look. We’ve seen people laboriously copying code between VBA editor windows, not realising there’s an easier way. It’s not entirely necessary but usually the two macro-enabled documents/templates are opened first.
There are risks when sending a Microsoft Word document to someone when you don’t need to, one landlord found that out the hard way. A Word doc can be changed if you’re not careful. We have some suggestions for avoiding unexpected editing traps. A tenant in the USA received a draft
Once you start delving into Microsoft Word, you find it can do all sorts of things that you wouldn’t expect. One of these is that it can be used to create barcodes, and it’s surprisingly easy to do. Once you’ve made your barcodes, they can be scanned with any barcode
Manual column breaks let you control exactly where Microsoft Word wraps text to the next column, instead of letting Word do it automatically. Here’s how to insert a column break, find one and delete it. To put your text into columns, highlight the text and go to Layout | Page
Here’s some power selection tricks in Microsoft Word for text, tables, pictures and more. You might think that selecting text and other things in Word is simple. Like many things in Office, there’s a lot more available than the simple methods that we all learn. There are quick ways to
Microsoft Word has almost all you need to make ‘hand written’ notes and letters for a fraction of the cost of a special service. Dig into some of the lesser known Word font and line spacing settings to get that ‘written by hand’ effect. The New York Times has a
Adding color gradient effects to your text, shapes and borders is a good way to give it a bit more zing to Microsoft Word, PowerPoint or other Office docs. The gradient feature is quite sophisticated, with a wide range of options and adjustments available but not obvious. To add a
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
PowerPoint has supported video within slides for many versions. Like many things in Office, the promises took many years to become a practical and easy reality. Here’s how to try again … with PowerPoint 2013 or 2016 for Windows. Easy Video Insert On a blank slide you’ll see the insert
Why you must use the Microsoft Office Document Inspector … and why you can’t completely trust it. The Office Document Inspector is an important tool for anyone who shares or sends out Office documents. It helps prevent legal troubles and personal embarrassment. Inspect Document is only in Office for Windows
Is there one space or two between sentences? Word lets you check the sentence spacing or ignore it completely. It’s a useful option for those of us who learnt on manual typewriters where double sentence spacing was standard. Switching to single spacing is hard for your fingers to remember. One
Section Symbol § can be typed into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. Section Symbol § is used for referencing numbered sections of a document, such as US legal code e.g “ 50 U.S. Code § 1861 “ . § in Footnotes
There are three different ways to add an image into a Word document or Outlook email. Insert is the most common but there’s also Link or Insert and Link ” When I make a web page I can link to any image on the Internet. In Word, it’s different. You
Find and add the Ukraine flag or national colors into Office documents, Word, Excel or PowerPoint, then use some Office picture tools to enhance the image. Ukraine Flag Image There are many, many copies of the Ukraine flag available. We’ve opted for the Wikipedia site because it has an SVG scalable version (preferred)
Why are the numbers on the numeric keypad are different from the number keys on the top row of the keyboard? How to use either set of number buttons in Microsoft Word. “I don’t understand why pressing a number on the main keyboard is different from the number pad (assuming
