Copilot is now appearing on the Microsoft Word title bar as part of the combined search and help, now called “Copilot Search”. The Copilot ‘ads’ for blank documents keep changing too. In the latest Word 365 Insiders builds the Search box (which combines Find, Help and broader Searches) is now
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
Microsoft has introduced a new feature allowing users to upload images directly from their mobile devices to Microsoft 365 Copilot. A nice trick but there are other ways to do the same thing, including two from Microsoft itself! The idea is to streamline tasks such as transcribing handwritten notes, summarizing
Excel is getting Value Tokens but what are they good for? Do they add any ‘value’ or are they just a ‘token’ extra? The ‘Value Token’ appears in the formula bar when you select a data linked cell e.g. Stocks, Currencies, Geography or custom data types. According to Microsoft “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
Two new Microsoft 365 “mini-apps” are being rolled out to some customers. People and File Search are coming for business and enterprise customers. Microsoft buries the important limitations of the two new apps, so we’ll put them first to save you wondering. Microsoft 365 Companions Both File Search and People
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
Get two extra months of Microsoft 365 Personal or Family for no charge. Microsoft can offer a ‘free’ extension to your plan if you try to do something the company doesn’t like. There are some parts of Microsoft 365 Personal or Family that make the plans very profitable for Microsoft.
The new Outlook for Windows has what Microsoft calls “Mail Merge” which could be useful but bear NO relation to the standard Word/Outlook “Mail Merge” to send many emails. In the new message Options for Outlook (new) is an enticing button “Start Mail Merge” but don’t get too excited. This
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
Back in 2015 we were amazed and dismayed to discover a privacy gap in Microsoft Office. Seven years later Microsoft has done nothing to fix or warn customers about. The problem is with images inserted into Office documents (Word, Excel, PowerPoint). The image ‘meta-data’ including GPS coordinates are retained with
Outlook (classic) for Windows, the one we’ve all used for many years has been dropped from some Microsoft 365 installations even though the replacement Outlook (new) is still a “work in progress”. Here’s how to still get the ‘real’ fully-functioning, classic Outlook. Outlook (new) is the eventual replacement for what’s
Microsoft is testing a free version of Office for Windows with limited features, an important requirement and ads to ‘pay’ for the software. It’s three Microsoft 365 for Windows apps but with restrictions on what it can do and where documents are saved. If you download from this page at
Microsoft 365 apps are changing the ‘Pinned’ document list to ‘Favorites’ but why is Microsoft bothering at all? For many versions of Office/Microsoft 365 you’ve been able to keep regularly used files in a ‘Pinned’ list for faster access. The Pin icon lets you add a file to that list
Here’s how to stop Copilot prompts appearing in your documents, sheets and slides. Microsoft 365 customers are now seeing “Copilot Clutter” appearing in their Microsoft 365 apps, Word, Excel and PowerPoint. There is now a way to Disable Copilot available to some Microsoft 365 customers A Microsoft executive expressed surprise
