This might rate as the most nerdy Microsoft Office news item of the year … Microsoft is changing the build number format for Office from four significant digits to five. Please try to contain your excitement … The current MS Office for Windows public release has a version/build like this:
Excel has three PercentRank() functions to give you the percent ranking of a value in a list of numbers. It’s different from the Excel rankings we’ve discussed before, because this is a percentage or percentile ranking Let’s start with a simple example. There’s a list of values from 1 to
There’s an amazingly simple but effective way to bypass some security scans used by Office 365 hosting and possibly infect a computer. Called BaseStriker, this trick is so simple. It’s amazing that any professional security software doesn’t check for it already. It hides a dangerous link from Microsoft’s own and
One of the recent security patches from Microsoft is being actively exploited by hackers hoping to trap people who don’t update their computer quickly. The security bug can use an Office document to infect your computer. The security hole is in the Internet Explorer browser and the VBscript engine. It
Another month, another set of security bugs in Microsoft Office. It’s Microsoft’s version of Groundhog Day. The May 2018 dump of patches involves 102 updates covering: Office versions from Office 2010 to the latest Office 2016 Core Office features Word Excel Sharepoint and Project server. Most people don’t need to
Microsoft has announced upcoming new features in Office for Windows, Office 365. We’ll be looking at them in detail but here’s Microsoft’s summary. We’ll start with the important rollout information, these features aren’t in Office yet, they are coming to Insiders first and later to regular users. Here’s the Microsoft
Microsoft Outlook 2016 for Mac (Office 365) is getting some ‘new’ features or, at least, features that other Office users already have. Quick Reply The Reply/Reply all options in the reading/preview pane are promised ‘later this summer’. Time Zone support Outlook for Mac finally gets time zone support but, unfortunately
In an entirely predictable move, Microsoft is dropping the full OneNote desktop program from their lineup. OneNote 2016 for Windows, the traditional Windows program is being killed. It’ll be a slow death but it’ll still be dead. OneNote 2016 for Windows will be supported with security patches until October 2025
Jeff Bezos doesn’t like PowerPoint or any other slideshow system at Amazon meetings. That’s what leapt out at us from his 2017 Letter to Amazon shareholders (published in April 2018). “We don’t do PowerPoint (or any other slide-oriented) presentations at Amazon. Instead, we write narratively structured six-page memos.” Those memos
Last Friday, Office 365 customers in Europe and especially the UK had to stop working as the Microsoft hosting servers stopped working. When trying to use email online, users only saw an ‘AADSTS90033’ error, and the message: “Service is temporarily unavailable. Please retry later.” As usual, Microsoft’s communications were mixed.
Remember that court case where Microsoft sued the US government over a warrant to collect someone’s cloud data? Well, it’s over and the result isn’t good for anyone who likes to keep their documents, databases, photos or emails private. The case was about data saved on Microsoft’s cloud service in
Options to easily import live data about stocks and locations into Excel are coming. Microsoft is uncharacteristically quiet about these new features and not using their usual hype. Microsoft is soft pedaling these features by talking about ‘new data types’ which sounds very dry and complicated. It looks more interesting
Apple’s announcement of special ‘education’ prices for iPad and Macbook Air opens an opportunity for almost anyone to get the cheaper prices. Not that we’d suggest lying to Apple. No, never. Telling fibs to a gigantic company is wrong. It’s not as if big companies like Apple have ever lied
If we’ve said it once, we’ve said it a thousand times … ignore or delete any .DOC .XLS .PPT files you get via email or shared. The main carrier of virus infection is Microsoft Office documents, a fact that Microsoft doesn’t like to talk about. What Microsoft doesn’t say is
The Microsoft To Do app hasn’t got near customer expectations, let alone Microsoft’s promises. Now there’s some hints about why. To Do was born from Wunderlist, a popular app that was bought by Microsoft. Redmond summarily closed Wunderlist, to the annoyance of the apps many fans. Microsoft promised the app
Microsoft is updating the rules which govern use of their services including Office 365, OneDrive, SharePoint, Cortana and Xbox. Despite what you might have heard, there’s nothing really new or changed, just some clickbait headlines. There are reasons to be concerned about the Microsoft Terms and Conditions, but they are
A recent New York Times article about Microsoft Word has good information but the headline is quite wrong. The article is called “How to Format Documents While Barely Lifting a Finger” so we expected a piece about how to reformat a document using themes or styles. Instead it’s about dictation
Blackberry got a rare stock price boost when they announced a collaboration with Microsoft Office yesterday. Blackberry will use their Dynamics product to provide a higher level of security and administration of the Microsoft Office mobile apps. Blackberry Dynamics is a way for organizations to deploy trusted mobile apps to
Timeline was a new feature in Windows 10. It was a way to see which documents and files you’ve opened across all your devices. What you won’t hear is that Office already has a similar feature. The Office team has already synchronized the Open / Recent Documents lists across Word,
Libraries is a great Windows feature that Microsoft introduced and promoted in Windows 7 but now regrets and hides in Windows 10. We’ll explain why they’ve changed their mind and why you should still use Libraries to manage your Office documents. A Library bring together the contents of many folders
Here’s some better VBA code for converting a private document (contract etc) into one with anonymous words. A useful trick if you’re trying to fix a Word formatting problem but can’t share the document. Legal numbering problems is a common issue that this macro can help with. Office-Watch.com has already
Microsoft has announced that the long standing Outlook Mobile App is being dumped from 15 May 2018. A thinly-disguised attempt to get more people using their insecure Outlook App. Naming of Microsoft’s email services is (deliberately) confusing so here’s a quick primer Outlook Mobile App (OMA) is a app/application to
An Office-Watch.com reader asks about the emails promoting Outlook.com that are heading his way. All of a sudden, I’m getting emails asking me to sign up for “Outlook.com”. Do you know what that is all about? I already subscribe to “Office 365” following the purchase and update information that you
Amazon US has a deal bundling current US Tax software with Office 365 Home or Personal. It’s just an example of how Office 365 bundle offers should be checked closely. Office Watch has always been wary of any deals combining Office software with other products. Too often the combined price
