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
Microsoft’s promise of offline support in Outlook (new) is a lot LESS than it appears as the company continues to over-promise and under-deliver their Outlook replacement. We’ve said it before … Maybe someday new Outlook will really be ready for the public but it’s not there yet. See Outlook (new)
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
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.
How to stop Outlook grouping Inbox messages, most commonly by date. “Today”, “Yesterday” etc. which might suit some people but is a right nuisance to others. This is an option in Outlook (classic) for Windows which can appear, seemingly for no good reason. It’s not in Outlook (new). Some people
Excel is getting a new function TrimRange() which should solve a long-standing calculation performance problem. As well as speeding up workbooks, TrimRange() comes with some new range options that add to the well-known colon. Ever since Microsoft added dynamic arrays to Excel there’s been a problem … how to reference
Excel 365 has two new translation functions to identify language from text or translate text from one language to another. Let’s see how the work, some problems and unknowns. New in Excel 365 are: DetectLanguge() to identify the language of the text supplied, hopefully correctly (see below) Translate() converts text
Many people are moving away from Evernote due to the high prices. Here’s the simple way to migrate all Evernote notebooks to Microsoft OneNote. Why move from Evernote? Evernote’s pricing has risen to unrealistic levels. The cheapest paid plan “Personal” is now US$129.99 which is more expensive than Microsoft 365
Having trouble changing Microsoft Word defaults? The ultimate way to change defaults is sure to work. It’s has been around since the very early days of Word and works for Outlook too! We often hear from people having trouble changing Word’s opening (default) settings for a new document. Various places
Word can spell and grammar check in many languages, here are three ways to switch the language settings plus how to turn off the pesky automatic language switching. Microsoft Word has language settings that can apply to a whole document or just selected text. This is vital for multi-language documents
There’s a simple but not so obvious way for Excel to take a list of values and show them grouped into segments or groups. As an example, here’s the results of a class exam with their scores grouped into blocks of 20. It’s done with a tricky use of PivotTables
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
Paid Copilot plans have some innovations in the Word 365 interface with a better way to Make Changes to text plus more paste options too. These changes are in Word 365 public releases linked to a paid Copilot plan. We found them in v2407 build 17830.20138 with Copilot Pro. Auto
A PDF file made from Microsoft Office or Windows may not look right because of an ongoing PDF bug with variable fonts. It’s been around for years with no sign of a fix. The problem arises when variable fonts are in documents exported to PDFs (either Save As … or
The latest Outlook security hole is quite easy to exploit so it’s a good idea to quickly update Microsoft 365/Office for Windows. The security bug is easy to exploit. Infection occurs simply by downloading a small file from any web site or source and running it. Hackers know plenty of
As promised, Excel 365’s Regular Expression support has been extended to include both Xlookup() and XMatch() functions. Regex adds a huge amount of power to matching results from a table. Back in July, Excel 365 added three Regular Expression (regex) functions, RegexTEST(), RegexEXTRACT() and RegexREPLACE(). At the time Microsoft promised
This is how to change Word’s Zoom to your preferred Zoom settings instead of the defaults. Ray R writes … “I have been having some vision problems lately and have found that using Word’s zoom dialog to increase the displayed font size without changing it in the document or email
Excel 365’s Linked Data Types are technically impressive. However, the reliability of the data is a problem Microsoft doesn’t talk about. We discovered mistakes with the data without actively looking for them. In general, the data sources are ‘scraped’ from sites like Wikipedia which explains some, but not all, of
Excel 365’s Geography data type isn’t totally reliable or accurate. Looking at its results for the UK (United Kingdom) vs Great Britain is just one example of the problems you need to watch out for. If you’re not clear on the difference between United Kingdom and Great Britain, see below.
The BBC has released some high-quality images from their famous TV shows to be used as online meeting backgrounds or in PowerPoint slides. Pick from Doctor Who (old or new), Fawlty Towers, Yes Minster, Match of the Day, Eastenders and more. Consider using these BBC TV backgrounds in PowerPoint for
Some imported Outlook calendar items can’t be changed, here’s why and how to make the imported appointment editable. Understanding issues with an Outlook imported appointment can help you manage calendar inconsistencies. Usually an imported appointment (via a downloaded .ics file) can be edited just like most Outlook calendar items. Often
Microsoft says that the new Outlook for Windows is now generally available, but everyone should ignore that. Outlook (new) isn’t truly ready. It lacks vital features and has serious security shortcomings which are likely to frustrate anyone who relies on it. On 1 August 2024, Microsoft declared that Outlook (new)
Microsoft’s eventual replacement Outlook (new) for Windows supports Gmail, Yahoo and other accounts but there’s a privacy trap that Microsoft does its best to hide. Outlook for Windows privacy is a major concern. According to Microsoft, it’s easy to add Gmail, Yahoo and other accounts to the new Outlook, all
Can Microsoft Word handle a newly famous name “Walz” or does Word think it’s a spelling error? What about the other VP candidate, “Vance”? In the last few hours, we’ve seen social media posts like this: “ Okay, word people, now would be a great time to put a “Walz
