A smaller Surface machine isn’t coming soon but Office for Android surely is. The rumor mill is running hot about the Surface Mini (comatose, possibly deceased) and Microsoft Office for Android (in gestation). Microsoft did have a plan for a smaller version of their Surface computers but it was apparently
Join the list of testers for future versions of Microsoft Office. Microsoft has opened their waiting list for people to test future versions of Microsoft Office. Businesses and individuals can apply here http://prereleaseprograms-public.sharepoint.com/ There’s no guarantee you’ll be selected nor which version of Office you’ll be offered (Office for Windows,
Do the latest Microsoft data encryption promises mean much? Microsoft has announced more encryption services for customers but it’s more ‘papering over the cracks’ than a real effort to protect customer’s data. Microsoft has made some vague changes to protect the transmission of your emails and documents, but nothing to
Microsoft doesn’t see the main problem as they apologizes & explain the Lync and Exchange outages. In a blog post, Microsoft has explained what happened in the cloud service breakdowns earlier this week but exposes their lack of understanding for customers’ needs with cloud services. The break in Exchange Server
QuickOffice is no more but Google improves MS Office document support Google has announced improvements to their direct support for Microsoft Office document formats as part of a reshuffle of their apps. The Google apps for viewing and editing documents will be updated to include editing of Microsoft Office document
Email services for Office 365 and Exchange Online should now be resumed but Microsoft handled it really badly. In Microsoft’s world, damage to sales is far worse than any failure to meet customers service needs. So on that score, Microsoft has done well for itself in the last day or
Microsoft raises the bar for cloud storage quantity but not quality. Microsoft has laid down a serious challenge to Google, Dropbox and other online storage provider with big increases in OneDrive storage limits for free and paying customers. Sadly, no mention of improvements to OneDrive itself, especially security and privacy,
An interesting font idea from Spain – handwriting of homeless people turned into fonts. HomelessFonts.org is a series of fonts based on the handwriting of homeless people. For example, here’s the Francisco font. There are five fonts at present with more promised. Priced per font at €19 Euros for individuals
How can you tell which type of Office 2013 installation you have? Office 2013 comes with two quite different installation methods. Ideally there should be no difference between the two but the latest patch bug only affects some users with one type of installation called ‘Click to Run’. Since there’s
What does the new Amazon phone have for Office users? The new Amazon Fire Phone is interesting though it remains to be seen whether features like ‘Dynamic Perspective’ are useful or gimmicky. For us, the main question is Microsoft Office compatibility both for users of the Fire Phone and anyone
What’s in the latest Office 2011 for Max update? In late May, Microsoft quietly released an update for Office 2011 for Mac taking it to version 14.4.2. If this was Office for Windows, it would be called a ‘Service Pack’ but somehow, not Office for Mac. Update Secrecy One thing
Microsoft Word does badly against the National Spelling Bee joint champions. The Scripps US National Spelling Bee is over for another year with unprecedented joint winners Sriram Hathwar and Ansun Sujoe. Congratulations to both winners who were commendably gracious while sharing the trophy. Like last year, we were interested in
A simple solution to uninstall problems with Office 2013/Office 365. If you’re trying to uninstall Office 2013 you might get some unhelpful error messages like: Couldn’t uninstall OfficeWe’re sorry, Office couldn’t be uninstalled. Please try uninstalling Office again. ‘Try later’ isn’t a very useful suggestion. How much later? A minute,
The competition among cloud storage providers continues with Box improving their Android app. The competition among cloud storage providers continues with Box improving their Android app. The new Android app for Box includes ‘lightning fast’ document viewing including for Word, Excel and PowerPoint as well as PDF and images. Specifically
Does this Microsoft document give a peek at the touch screen version of Office aka Office Gemini? A document from Microsoft Research has got some people excited because it might reveal how Office software as a touch/Metro/Modern app (aka Office Gemini) will look. As part of a discussion about ‘Great
Behind the latest attempt to make Surface popular. Microsoft has announced Surface Pro 3, the latest incarnation of their tablet device. This time the focus is on replacing traditional laptops with something that has the power of a laptop but also portability of a tablet. There’s a larger 12-inch screen
How to change Word so it’s more to the Game of Thrones author’s liking. George R. R. Martin, author of the Game of Thrones series among other wonderful books* has revealed that he uses an old DOS program (WordStar 4) on a standalone computer to write. That’s great for him
A new way to publish PowerPoint presentations with videos, web pages and quizzes. Office Mix is a way to turn a Powerpoint slide deck into what Microsoft calls an ‘interactive online lesson’. It’s squarely aimed at the educational market. The idea is to expand a PowerPoint presentation into a full
Or survey gives results that suit those paying for the survey. It’s an old PR trick, put together some report or survey that will get lots of free publicity for the company that’s footing the bill. It’s easy copy for overworked journos so you can’t blame them for using them.
Microsoft likes us noticing changes – so why not tell us first? Jenny N. writes: ” I totally agree with you about Microsoft’s habit of making changes and fixing bug without telling customers. But it’s more ironic than you realize. Look at a comment from an Office for iPad product
Everyone can print from Office for iPad. An important new feature in Office for iPad is printing, at least to AirPrint enabled printers. The assumption is that printing is only available to Office 365 subscribers who get the full product enabled with editing. Printing is available to ALL Office for
One of the non-AirPrint options for iPad printing. Office for iPad now has printing but only Airprint which leaves a lot of printers not available to iPad user, especially if they have a Windows computer. One alternative is “Printer Pro”. Printer Pro for iPad supports printing to network linked printers
Group calling returns to the Skype ‘free’ list. Good news for Skype lovers, group calling has returned to the list of free features. You can now add group calling to our list of Skype hidden extras Group calling is having three or more people on the same video/audio call. Microsoft
Court confirms that any US controlled cloud server is vulnerable to US government access. Here’s a story that got little coverage but deserves a lot more. A US district court has confirmed what has been known for the last decade, that US companies have to supply data to the US
