Data nerds can have a lot of fun with the Australian election which has a lot of Excel compatible data for the 2025 and past elections. Daily updated stats as 2025 vote counting continues. Australian federal elections are run by an independent body, the Australian Electoral Commission. The AEC manages
Excel 365 and Excel 2024 let you control automatic text data conversions with stop mistakes creeping into your sheets. Whether you’re opening a CSV file or pasting from the web, you can now decide how Excel handles your text, numbers, and dates—finally putting you in charge of your own data.
AI systems have got a lot better at making and fixing Microsoft Office VBA code. We compare Copilot and ChatGPT to see which is best choice for coping with the complexities of Office VBA. Early in 2024 we tried asking ChatGPT for Office VBA code in some simple examples, the
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
Display scores or ratings visually in Excel using solid and hollow emojis or symbols, you can use a combination of simple formulas and conditional formatting. This approach is useful for representing ratings, progress, or performance in an intuitive and engaging way. With a little Excel trickery, you can show multi-colored
There’s a special new color called ‘Olo’ developed by scientists in Berkely, California. The nearest match to Olo is possible in Microsoft Office, including Word and PowerPoint. Olo can only be seen with help from a special laser that fires the color into the eye. It’s claimed to extend human
The Startup Boost feature coming to Word 365 is really a sly trick by Microsoft. It’s a trick that anyone can do with any Office app and any version of Office. Startup Boost starts the app but hides it away. Word lurks in the background until the user clicks on
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
Here’s how to make a message (letter or card) to make it ‘appear’ from a PowerPoint envelope graphic. This message can be personal or professional, depending on your preference. In Make your own Envelope graphic for PowerPoint we showed how to make an ‘open envelope’ graphic in PowerPoint with some
An envelope graphic—crafted entirely in PowerPoint! It’s a versatile design element that works for both personal and professional needs. Whether you’re communicating with customers, making special announcements, or enhancing presentations with a creative touch, an envelope icon is a powerful visual asset. It can also be used effectively to showcase
Maybe you’ve seen the little blue men appearing in the margins of your Word documents? They are Accessibility Recommendations and, yes, there is a way to get rid of them. There are two ways to hide these little creatures, both take a little digging. Right-click on any Accessibility icon then
Stricter requirements are coming on mass mailings to Microsoft hosted mailboxes including Outlook.com. The new rules also affect anyone with a Microsoft managed Inbox. Any organization (domain name) sending “over 5,000 emails daily” will have to comply with new rules from 5 May 2025. At the same time, Microsoft is
Emails you want to see might end up in Junk Email as Microsoft imposing new standards to ensure emails are legitimate. Microsoft isn’t allowing any way to bypass their new rules for emails you want. The new standards apply to senders but there are important and less well promoted effects
Paste text into Microsoft Word without unwanted fonts, colors, or styles can save time and frustration. There’s a (relatively) new keyboard shortcut to do that directly. This guide breaks down all the changed keyboard options made to make room for a Paste Text Only shortcut in Word on Windows and
There’s a little undocumented surprise on the right-click menu. Tucked away at the top is ‘Search the menus’ help. Sadly the underlying help system is still woefully inadequate. Right-click in a document (Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook) and the top item isn’t ‘Cut’ but a “Search the menus” box. This
The Oxford English Dictionary has a list of new English words for 2025. We’ve checked to see if the Microsoft Word dictionary understands all these new terms. Some of the ‘new’ words are very familiar (‘load’, ‘class’ or ‘terror’) but with new meanings. Others are quite new (‘gigil’, ‘ludraman’ or
There are better ways to chart differences between matching values like budget vs actual than the simplistic one offered by Excel. A variance chart in Excel shows differences and trends at a glance and is easy to make. In Excel, a variance chart visually compares data sets, such as actual
There are a few ways to quickly tell which OneNote app you have on Windows. The OneNote that will continue development or the OneNote for Windows app which is gradually being allowed to die. Previously we’ve explained about the upcoming changes for OneNote, including how Microsoft have decided to keep
Three Pie emoji 🥧 🍕🍰 in Microsoft Office (Windows or Mac) plus some Stock Images, one for ‘Pi’ and a lot more for ‘Pie’. Just part of our tongue-in-cheek Pi 𝜋 Day and Pie series of articles. Pi 𝜋 emoji There is no emoji for 𝜋 because it’s a text symbol
Trying to convert a Microsoft Publisher (.pub) file to Word (.docx)? We test Microsoft’s official recommendation, exporting the Publisher file to PDF and then importing that PDF into Word. It technically works but produces poor results in real-world tests. The conversion often ends up nearly unusable for typical editing tasks.
The reason Microsoft Word prefers ‘corporate speak’, phrases and language but there is more than one way to change Word’s grammar and style suggestions to suit you. Quite often on social media there are complaints about Microsoft Word’s grammar and style suggestions like this one. “MS Word suddenly dislikes the
Check out this headline ‘ramen’ font that looks great and has a clever name – Times New Ramen. Seine Kongruangkit made a font from photos of noodles, nifty use of Photoshop and an undying love of Ramen noodles <g>. Times New Ramen – you have to love it, just for
Shapes, images, and other items can be grouped together and often should be in Word, PowerPoint and other Microsoft Office apps. When you group shapes or objects, you can move, resize, rotate, flip them all at once, as if they were a single object. If you’ve ever had trouble moving
Don’t be scared of Master Documents – just very, very careful. Master Documents is useful and sometimes essential but it’s not the most stable or reliable part of Microsoft Word. What is a Master Document? In Microsoft Word, a Master Document is a Word document which has links to other
