Excel can make bar charts in-cell without bothering with the full Chart system. Despite what you might have seen, there’s plenty of options in Excel Data Bars. The usual example of Excel Data Bars has the colored bar in the same cell as the value. In this article we’ll show
It’s not enough to setup two-factor security for your Microsoft account. Make sure your recovery settings are checked and up to date. Do it now before it’s too late. Today we’re helping someone trying to login to their Microsoft account after losing their password. Many, many hours of frustration and
The new version of Microsoft Office 2024 is now on sale to the general public all around the world. This is the ‘perpetual licence’ or single purchase release with no subscription fee. Office 2024 is now available direct from Microsoft.com and some retailers at the same prices as Office 2021.
Here’s how Office Watch reader, Erik and we drilled down into Windows and Word to narrow down the source of the Word language bug. Erik’s tests are with Office 365 on Windows 11 Pro 23H2 but the same behavior has been reported by others in many versions of Word and
Sometimes Word will switch to another language despite all the settings saying otherwise. With the help of an Office Watch reader, we’ve dug into the details to find what might cause the bug in Word and suggest some possible solutions. Word and Office should obey the default language setup in
Ever wondered what font is used in a famous logo? There’s a fascinating collection of familiar brands with their names replaced with the font name. Emanuele Abrate has made Logofonts, for example the Starbucks logo with the font name, FreightSans Black. Nike uses Futura. WhatsApp with HelveticaNeue. YouTube uses AlternativeGothic
An 85-year-old blunder has just been fixed at Westminster Abbey to change the spelling to Brontë with the important diaresis. Here’s how to type an ë in Word and other matters arising. Here’s how the memorial to the Brontë sisters looked in Poets Corner until a few days ago. For
There are plenty of audio and music options available in PowerPoint if you want to give your audience a break from your voice. We’ll go beyond the simple ‘adding music’ help to give some practical advice for audio in presentations: You will find the audio basics at Insert | Media |
The BBC has a great collection of over 16,000 sound effects that you can add to your PowerPoint presentations. Use them as a trigger sound for a click on a presentation, as a novel background noise or even an alert sound on your computer or smartphone. Sound Effects Galore Exploring
Add something special to the start of your Word document with a banner image with text. We’ll explain how to do that with free tools like Copilot or Designer. We were inspired by a Microsoft promotion which wrongly said that a Microsoft 365 subscription with Copilot Pro is required, when
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
What to do if Excel’s columns have numbers across the top instead of letters. There’s a simple setting to switch between two different ways of labelling cells. You open an Excel workbook and the column headings look all wrong – instead of letters (A, B C …) there are numbers.
In-cell charts in Excel provide a powerful method to visualize data trends and patterns. They allow you to quickly derive insights within a worksheet, making information interpretation more straightforward without fussing about with full charts. We’ll explain how to make in-cell charts and then go further and show how to
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
An old and unsafe Microsoft technology, ActiveX is finally being dropped from Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Office. As usual, there are details and niceties behind the major announcement. For starters, ActiveX isn’t really being discontinued. Microsoft is disabling ActiveX as a default. If you need ActiveX, a menu, registry or
Discover how to adjust bullet point spacing in Microsoft Word with the two key settings to achieve precise bullet point alignment and formatting. Learning the techniques to perfect your bullet points can make a significant difference in readability and presentation. There are TWO places to change the position of the
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
Microsoft has announced (indirectly) that Microsoft Office 2024 will be released in October 2024. Don’t buy Office 2021 now, better to wait until Office 2024 is released to get some more features for the same price. This nugget of news came via a Microsoft update announcement to administrators about the
An often-repeated myth says that Word’s spelling or proofing language default is locked into the Windows language setting. Officially that’s not true and never has been since the first Word for Windows in 1989. In practice there’s a bug in Word which is why this persistent myth keeps being repeated.
We went hunting for koalas in Microsoft Office. Found more than 18 of the cuddly marsupials for Word, PowerPoint or Outlook. There are emoji, Office icons, SVG, online images and more making a colony or cling of koala (either can be the collective noun for koala). None of the endangered
Pronouncing the name “Kamala” is a source of confusion even to Microsoft Office’s Read Aloud feature which needs a little tweaking. How does Word’s grammar check handle the possessive, it is Harris’s or Harris’? Kamala Harris has a Sanskrit based name which is simple to pronounce once you know the
There are two ways the fallout from the Crowdstrike troubles might affect people even if their computers didn’t ‘die’. First, some organizations are still recovering or are dependent on businesses that are recovering. Keep that in mind if there are problems with a company. (On the other hand, some organizations
New malware is spreading under the guise of a Microsoft Office download and installation. Just the latest example of why Office should only be downloaded from Microsoft. This new way of distributing malware poses as a version of Microsoft Office or Windows activation tool. They might do that but also
Put on the Glasses or Eyeglasses 👓 symbol (emoji) or icon into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. Glasses 👓 symbol is used for all manner of things like a graphic to illustrate “Look here” or “See this” or, of course,
