One of the eternal questions to Office Watch is about adding characters to an Office document. Symbols and characters not on the keyboard. The most common requests are for adding currency symbols like Pound £ Euro € or Yen/Renminbi ¥ but can also include the @ symbol which can, even
The new Apple iOS 14.2 adds 117 new emoji to use but be careful now you use them because not even all iPhone and iPad can handle them, let alone non-Apple devices. We explain how they work, how the emoji appear on receiving devices and include a full list of
Plus + , disposable or instant alias email addresses are now available for Microsoft 365 hosted mailboxes and Outlook.com accounts. Here’s how to get this useful email trick for your mailbox. Outlook.com All Outlook.com accounts have plus addresses automatically. It was introduced to Hotmail (‘as was’) back in 2013. It’s
Outlook for Windows/Mac has features that work well with email plus or disposable addresses. Plus addresses let you make sub-addresses that come to the same mailbox see What are email Plus addresses and how to use them for details. Outlook Rules with plus addresses Most Outlook Rules are based on
Those ‘award’ logos with the laurel or fern on each side can be made in Word or PowerPoint. The ‘awards’ can be serious or joking. Here’s the thing we mean, you’ll often see them on theatre or movie posters. Format The standard wording for these logos is: Award organization (Academy
Put the Sound Recording Copyright ℗ or Circled P character into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. Sound Recording Copyright ℗ symbol (aka Circled P ) is used to mark musical copyright. The ‘P’ stands for ‘Phonogram’ or the modern ‘Phonorecord’
Adding a continent map is easy in Word, Excel or Powerpoint, in fact there’s a few ways to get them for the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia and Antarctica. It depends on the quality you need and version of Office. Continental Icons Among the many icons are silhouettes of all
There are 87 different security breaches fixed in this months rollout of Microsoft bug fixes, including an important one for Windows. Also a Critical fix for Outlook and patches for Word, Excel. We’ll start with a very critical Windows bug that’s important to patch right away. Vital Windows 10 bug
Are your Excel worksheets ready for negative interest rates? The world is seeing historically low interest rates. So low that they can drop to zero or even lower rates. Not only can Excel worksheets break with unexpected negative percentages but modelling can accidently move into negative territory. Interest rates might
Excel’s Sparklines have a good range of options for highlighting high and low values, text or calculated overlays, changing axis and handling blank or zero values. Sparklines are in Excel for Windows and Mac. Excel Mobile (iPhone, iPad, Android) shows existing Sparklines made elsewhere but they can’t be changed, only
Excel isn’t the best way to store a large database but it’s a great way to sort, filter, analyse, chart and PivotTable from it. Here’s the best way to import and update a large database into Excel. The standard way to store a list in Excel is to import CSV’s
The UK has been embarrassed (again) with the news that around 16,000 COVID-19 test results were missing from the official database and so contact tracing wasn’t done. The culprit? Excel. Or, to be fair, bad use of Excel is to blame. Not understanding it’s limits and how to workaround them.
A strange name but Sparklines is a useful new part of Excel which makes simple single-cell graphs in Excel for Windows or Mac. Mea Culpa – we thought that ‘Sparklines’ was a fancy name made up by Microsoft after a long liquid lunch … Office Watch readers, John F, Nick
There are several ways to fill in a PDF form and add your signature with Microsoft Word, Acrobat Reader or online services. All these tips are free with nothing to pay. It’s possible to ‘sign’ a PDF form and return it without making a paper copy. Paper forms are so
Common programming tools can be used to make malicious Office workbooks which bypass both online security checks and Microsoft’s own protections in Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Access. We’ll explain what’s happening and what Microsoft could do better. VBA Purging or VBA Stomping are clever tricks to make an Office documents
Stop duplicate names, email addresses or product SKU’s from being added to an Excel list or Table. Adding more rows to an Excel Tables can be done while preventing accidental duplicates creeping into the list. Excel Tables or lists can grow to hundreds or thousands of rows, there’s a risk
Microsoft is releasing a ‘Quick Poll’ option in Outlook ignoring the very similar, voting buttons, option that’s already in Outlook for Windows and Outlook for Mac. Use Voting Buttons to ask a question and Outlook will automatically collect responses. Office Watch also explains how recipient see the voting options and
Type the Left Right arrow ↔ into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. How Left Right arrow ↔ looks in different fonts. Here’s some examples of how Left Right arrow ↔ looks in common Office fonts. Left Right arrow ↔ codes
How to make an Excel chart that changes as you add more cells or rows is really simple these days. Forget all the old stuff about named ranges or changing the Chart data. Setup your Excel list correctly and any linked charts will update automaticall. In a recent article we
The secret to a timeline chart in Excel is the data. Emily writes asking “How can I make an Excel chart with dates on the X axis with a proper time scale – even if the dates aren’t regular? “ We could not understand Emily’s question until we asked for
We’re happy to release a new version of our Subscriptions Manager that’s compatible with Excel 2007-2016. Subscriptions Manager is a way to list and manage the many online plans we sign up for; HBO, Netflix, Amazon, Spotify and so many more. You can track who pays (in a family) and
Change the look of Microsoft Word footnotes and endnotes. You can change the look of footnotes and endnotes using their linked styles: Footnote Reference Footnote Text Endnote Reference Endnote Text The two ‘… Reference’ styles create the look of the numbers, usually just superscript positioning of the default paragraph font.
The Notes Pane is the key to some useful Footnote and Endnote options Now that Print Layout is the main editing view in Microsoft Word, the Notes pane has been somewhat forgotten but it’s the home of details in the Footnotes and Endnotes. Get to the Notes Pane Switch to