There are many ways to make a paper/PDF version of a PowerPoint slide deck, this is the quick ‘only a few clicks’ option. There are other choices that we’ll cover in upcoming articles. PowerPoint has some ‘Handouts’ features but they aren’t all in the same place and some aren’t even
The venerable SUM() function in Excel is simple, really too simple. It just adds up a range of cells with no way to filter or limit what’s included. SumIF selects what to add-up from a longer list. SumIf sometimes confuses people because they, understandably, expect the range to be SUMmed
The long-standing Ursnif trojan is back in a new form to infect computers and steal personal information, all via a Microsoft Word document. To begin, we’ll repeat a warning we’ve been making for years … No .doc files DO NOT open .doc files from any source (not .xls or .ppt
There are two similar text formatting options in Excel. The well-known Merge & Center and the hidden away Center across selection. Both have their advantages, the choice is yours. Merge & Center Most Excel users know ‘Merge & Center’ because it’s atop the Merge list at Home | Alignment |
A recent Windows update is causing VBA code to fail in Excel, Access and other VBA parts of Office. The culprit isn’t Office, but the version of Windows that it’s running on. After the 2019-08 Cumulative Update KB4511553 is applied, some VBA code will stop working. The patch bug is
Despite all the possibilities for importing or sharing appointments, most of the time we have to manually type in new appointments or events. Here’s some tips to do it faster and get it right. We’ve all been there, a web page or email (below right) with details that need copying
The Format Cells dialog can be accessed from Home | Alignment | Orientation, or by right-clicking on selected cells and selecting Format Cells. See Excel’s text and number alignment choices Text formatting in Excel with wrapping, line breaks and merging This dialog gives you more detailed options to choose from than
Under Excel’s Home | Alignment ribbon you can change the indents, alignment or angle of the text in selected cells. As usual, a seemingly simple set of buttons have some hidden tricks. See Text formatting in Excel with wrapping, line breaks and merging Alignment Adjust alignment of the text, both
It’s amazing to see how people use Excel in ways probably not dreamt of by the programs makers. We usually think of Excel as a financial tool either for businesses or personal budgeting or managing lists. Anything to do with numbers or lists has a place in Excel, like a
Office-Watch.com reader Jeffrey J. offers this look at Emailmerge.cc an add-on that fixes some limitations in the Word/Excel/Outlook mail merge system. “ Outlook email merge function does not allow multiple To line addressees, nor allows creating any cc or bcc addressees. And you cannot customize the Subject line. Manually adding/modifying
Word allows you to insert other files with data and functionality from another document or program directly into your Word document. Microsoft calls these additions ‘Objects’ which makes it sound overly technical and difficult but it’s not. Don’t get fazed by all the nerd talk about ‘objects’, that’s programmer speak
A newly promoted UK politician has his own special style guide for staff, here’s some Word features that can help ensure your documents are approved by the boss. The Right Honourable Jacob William Rees-Mogg (to give his new full title) proudly affects an old-fashioned demeanor and has been described as
A new Windows 10 (October 2018) patch fixes a bug with Office 2010 and updates Brazil time zone data used by Outlook. The patch KB4505658 fixes a long list of Windows 10 v1809 bug fixes. Sorry, they aren’t bug fixes, the euphemism is ‘quality improvements’. Two changes stuck out for
Microsoft Word has several ways to quickly insert placeholder text into documents. Sometimes you want to add some random text to a document as filler, but don’t want to think of something to write yourself. While there are websites that will generate placeholder text for you, it is also possible
Our articles about saving past events with anniversary reminders begs the question; How far back can Outlook save an event. The answer in Outlook for Windows, Mac and online is 1 April 1601. Trying to enter a date before 1st April 1601 brings up an error: “You must specify a
Here’s a practical example of how to share an appointment or event with reminders using the iCalendar .ics standard. Some Apollo 11 events ready to download and add to your calendar (in Outlook or other software). Outlook supports .ics files and so does most other calendar programs. They are small
Here’s the enhanced Apollo 11 mission timeline as an Excel worksheet. Office Watch newsletter readers asked for it after last weeks articles using the NASA web page as a data source. Complete Apollo 11 timeline in Excel Things to do with the Apollo 11 timeline in Excel Apollo 11 suggested
An Excel worksheet with Apollo 11 timeline can be used to analyze and breakdown the astronaut’s movements plus answer the big question: what time was it when Armstrong walked on the moon? See how we put the Apollo 11 timeline into Excel using Get & Transform or the older Copy/Paste
One way to get a web table into Excel is simply to copy the page from your browser into an Excel workbook. This method works for all versions of Excel back more than a decade. It’s been superseded by Get and Transform with PowerQuery which does a much better job
The 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 is our excuse to show-off some features in Outlook for Windows/Mac. How to add past events, post events in other time zones, get reminders of upcoming anniversaries and set reminders for longer times than Outlook allows. Adding Past Events Outlook can save details of
Back in the 16th Century, italic fonts were invented and that trick can still be used today in Microsoft Word. Italics let you fit more text into the same space. An innovative Venetian publisher, Manutius, needed to make small and affordable books. Paper was expensive so anything that put more
It’s time for the July roundup of patches for yet more security bugs in Microsoft Office including Office 365 and Office 2016 for Windows plus Office 2013 and 2010. Plus the latest example of confusing documentation errors. Office 365 and Office 2019 A bug which lets Office Javascript doesn’t check
Word lets you translate an entire document in one go, either right click anywhere in the document, right click and select Translate, or go to Review | Translate | Translate Document. As with translating a selection, the Translator will open in a sidebar, where you can select the languages to
Word has a feature to translate text from one language to another. Whilst the translation may not be perfect, it does give you a starting point to understanding what the text says. You can either translate a selected piece of text, or the whole document. Translate works slightly differently depending
