In Excel there are various options for making sure a text label singular (e.g. person) or plural (people) matches the quantity. There’s the standard answer (IF() functions) or clever cell formatting tricks. For example if the cell has 1 item you want the singular label: 1 cookie But if the
You might think that the hyphen is a simple small horizontal line … but no. There are NINE different hyphen or short horizontal line choices in Microsoft Word. The common ones (hypen, En-dash and Em-dash) have shortcuts in Word, Windows and Mac. Let’s start with the standard hyphen, actually called
When will your version of Microsoft Office stop getting security bug and software bug fixes, what Microsoft calls the “end of support“. This is important because software updates are necessary for Office apps. Mainly because outdated versions are more vulnerable to hackers, particularly in the case of opening malicious emails,
There’s a little trap in Excel when figuring out the number of days between two dates. Excel has one way, but the real world has two others. It’s easy to forget the differences and it can matter when the date calculation is close to some limit, for example in a
Tired of Comic Sans but still want a casual, friendly font? Microsoft Office has better built-in alternatives or there’s many other fonts that keeps the charm without the cringe. Here’s a quick guide to upgrading your documents. The Wall Street Journal has a history of Comic Sans, the font that
Office Watch reader Steve G is having a problem in Word. The F9 key isn’t updating fields in a Word document. He suspects a buggy patch of Windows or Office. Here’s how to find the source of the Function key or any keypress problem and fix it. Hint – it’s
Use these handy Excel formulas for circle and sphere calculations! Whether they’re a distant memory from school days or a recent discovery, you can easily compute them using Pi (π), or as Excel dubs it, PI(). Many formulas rely on Pi 𝜋 so Excel has a simple function Pi() which
Fast access to important Outlook features! The ribbon in Outlook isn’t the only way to efficiently things done. Use the keyboard shortcuts that have been available in Outlook (Windows or Mac) for Microsoft 365 or Office 2024 and many earlier versions. Outlook for Windows Here are some keyboard shortcuts that
How and why to remove words from the main Microsoft Word dictionary. The Office Exclusion List ensures a red squiggly underline appears to warn you about an unwanted word. Sometimes the supplied Office dictionary has words you don’t want or you’d like a warning about. Here’s how to put the
The many different Microsoft Outlook versions have a way to block images linked to emails, that includes the so-called ‘spy pixels’ used by many companies. See ‘Spy Pixels’ email epidemic, the good and the bad You can choose to view pictures in an Outlook email by clicking a button at
Word can do simple calculations because Word for Windows has its very own built-in calculator. Calculate in Word has some nice tricks but also problems and traps. Type a calculation, hit the button (see below) and the result appears in the status bar AND it’s loaded into the clipboard ready
You can sort paragraphs, lists and tables in a Word document with all manner of tricks available under the simple ribbon button. Following our look at different alphabetical orders, here’s a look at the sorting options in Word. Select the list or paragraphs then choose Home | Paragraph | Sort.
Here’s the basics of Styles in Word for paragraph, character or both (Linked) plus Tables and Lists. I know talking about styles in Word makes eyes glaze over but they are a really useful part of Word (plus Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook). Today I watched an ‘experienced’ Word user reformatting
How to lock your Excel worksheet from editing – the whole thing or some cells. Allow some people to edit a few cells, leaving the rest of the cells and formulas untouchable by others using the worksheet. Here’s a very simple example: Anyone opening the worksheet can enter a US
Quickly insert symbols, characters and emoji in Microsoft Word and Outlook without taking your fingers off the keyboard using a feature that’s been in Word (for Windows) for many years. Inserting Symbols into Word documents is a pain, go up to the ribbon Insert | Symbols | Symbol which takes
Having trouble changing Microsoft Word defaults? The ultimate way to change defaults is sure to work. It’s has been around since the very early days of Word and works for Outlook too! We often hear from people having trouble changing Word’s opening (default) settings for a new document. Various places
This is how to change Word’s Zoom to your preferred Zoom settings instead of the defaults. Ray R writes … “I have been having some vision problems lately and have found that using Word’s zoom dialog to increase the displayed font size without changing it in the document or email
Here’s the complete step-by-step manual method of replacing text with filler or anonymous words in Microsoft Word. This is quite easy, the main thing is to be careful with the Find and Replace expressions. It will work with any version of Word that has the ‘wildcards’ / Regex option which
A US government department has accidentally revealed a secret by overlooking the obvious in Office document security, the file name. Microsoft Office helps you scrub documents of private or secret information before sending. It’s easy to overlook the obvious data leaks that ‘Inspect Document’ doesn’t cover. ‘Inspect Document’ checks for
Clear Formatting lets you remove extra text formatting in Word documents. As usual in Microsoft Word, there’s a lot more happening behind a seemingly simple feature. Sometimes the formatting of some Word text gets very confused but there’s a simple way to get it back to plain formatting. Word has
Has there been a change Microsoft Word’s Footnotes settings or has the ‘Numbering’ choices (Continuous, Restart each page or section) remained the same? How much of Microsoft Office is really new, despite appearances? Office Watch reader “Joe L.” has done a big Microsoft Office leap from Office 2010 to the
There are many ways to make pictures smaller, in both senses of the word. Here are three more options including great news for Windows 11 & Windows 10 users plus an important warning. Converting images into a smaller file size is sometimes essential. The large digital camera images (can be
At an important UK inquiry, a lawyer claims that he didn’t know how to save an email attachment. The evidence suggests that he might be telling the truth about that minor detail. We explain how Outlook prints an email attachment. This is a small part of the inquiry into the
Computers are being infected with at least eight different viruses in an attack that uses steganography to hide nasty code in images linked from Word and Excel documents. But there’s good news for most Office users. Steganography is a way to hide text or code in an image or object.
