The popular employee discount program for Microsoft 365 (Workplace Discount Program or Home Use Program) has some changes in 2025 at the same time as the price rise and Copilot addition to the Family and Personal plans. Office Watch compares the two options with a suggestion about what to do.
Calculating a simple percentage increase in Excel seems simple but, as usual, there’s a traps for the unwary. Here’s a smarter and more consistent way to figure out % change. First we’ll go over some basics which you’re welcome to skip … The formula for calculating a percentage change is
Excel has a slightly different order of calculation to the BODMAS rule taught to us at school. Those variations are important and can give a result you didn’t expect. Ray E from Iowa asked about one of those tricky algebra questions that appear on social media and generate heated arguments
Delete the unnecessary licenses and get Microsoft Office working properly. It’s possible to have more than one Microsoft Office license installed on a computer but that can lead to problems. There are several situations where it’s necessary or recommended to remove old or extra Microsoft Office licenses saved on a
Ignore the clickbait headlines and social media experts, Microsoft Word still has a Thesaurus feature. A slightly related feature has gone but Synonyms is still alive and kicking. Here’s Word’s Thesaurus or “Synonyms” still in Word 365 using Microsoft’s example word. And here’s Synonyms in Word 2024, using a more
Microsoft sent a promo email headed “Your Microsoft 365 subscription just got better”, be aware of the details that Microsoft either missed. ‘forgot’ or buried in the fine print. That email explains about Copilot arriving in Microsoft 365 but little on the severe limitations and nothing on the price rise.
Microsoft is slowly adding an option to disable Copilot AI from their Microsoft 365 apps, Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Here’s what you’re supposed to see on your computer, but won’t necessarily. An option to disable Copilot is being rolled out to Microsoft 365 for Windows and Mac. First in Word
Microsoft has fixed an embarrassing bug that caused Microsoft 365 applications and Outlook (classic) to crash on Windows Server 2016 and Windows Server 2019 systems. The problem stemmed from a recent Office update that integrated the React Native framework to support certain Microsoft 365 apps’ features. The impact was limited
There are two new special Microsoft 365 plans for consumers called “Microsoft 365 Classic” that Microsoft only mentions in passing. We explain what it ‘Classic’ is, what it costs and how to get it. Microsoft 365 Classic is a hidden part of the changes to Microsoft 365 in early 2025,
See how the price of Microsoft 365 Personal and Family has risen in USA, Canada, UK, Europe and many other countries. The new prices for Microsoft 365 consumer plans include Copilot with many limits and a high price. In some countries, it’s the first price rise in many years, despite
Microsoft 365 customers around the world are waking up to a new look in their Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook apps. It’s part of Microsoft’s huge changes to Microsoft 365 Family and Personal plans which include a very limited Copilot AI service and a big price rise. Microsoft 365 users
Here’s two ways to make a running total column in Excel. The way you were probably taught and a much better and more flexible choice. Running or Accumulative Totals are a very common thing in spreadsheets. Here’s a really simple example in columns C and E. Here’s two ways to
All your choices for deleting or hiding comments in Word documents. An essential step before sending a document out. Comments in a Word document are really great for making side-notes or even discussions between people working on a shared document. It’s also great for adding your own notes to a
How to prevent Microsoft from pushing a change from classic Outlook for Windows to their new and incomplete Outlook (new). Microsoft is pushing customers to use Outlook (new) even though the software doesn’t have basic features like proper offline support or interactions between mailboxes. New Outlook also has a serious
Microsoft 365 Family and Personal plans are getting Copilot AI integration into their Office apps but it comes with a big price increase and many limits to what people get for the extra cost. Customers in Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand have seen massive prices rises in
Once upon a time there was just one ‘Microsoft Outlook‘ but these days there are at least eleven current programs or services under the ‘Outlook’ name * and two programs called “Outlook for Windows”. That’s before counting past versions that are still supported. You’re totally excused for being confused because
Word field codes let you add automation or automatic content into documents. A simple example is the { DATE } field, which inserts the current date into a letter but there’s a lot more possible. Chances are good that you’ve already used field codes and not realised it. Date, PrintDate,
Microsoft Word’s English dictionaries can be confusing because they don’t always mark incorrect spelling differences between US and UK English (like color/colour). We did some tests with surprising results. English spellings can get screwy as you move between countries and there’s a lot more overlap than many people realize or
Excel 365 is getting new functions that bring the power of Regular Expressions (RegEx) into spreadsheets. It’s HUGE news and a big step forward for Excel. We’ve spent some time trying out the new functions and we’re genuinely excited by the possibilities. Unfortunately, almost six months have passed since the
How and why to remove words from the main Microsoft Word dictionary. The Office Exclusion List ensures a red squiggly underline appears to warn you about an unwanted word. Sometimes the supplied Office dictionary has words you don’t want or you’d like a warning about. Here’s how to put the
The new Outlook for Windows has a safety setting that might stop you seeing images in emails and is another privacy breach by Microsoft to snoop at customers data. It’s buried deep in the software and turned on automatically. Deep in the Settings for Outlook (new) is a way to
The many different Microsoft Outlook versions have a way to block images linked to emails, that includes the so-called ‘spy pixels’ used by many companies. See ‘Spy Pixels’ email epidemic, the good and the bad You can choose to view pictures in an Outlook email by clicking a button at
2025 is a special number, as various social media posts have pointed out. It can be calculated in some interesting ways like (20 + 25)2 = 2025. Naturally we had to convert these into Excel formulas. 2025 is 45 squared, in other words, a ”perfect square”. This last happened in
Let’s take a deeper look at the latest announcement about the change to a new Outlook for Windows “Outlook (new)”. What it says, what Microsoft does NOT say and a close look at the much quoted ‘2029’ date. Here’s a few things that occur to us after carefully noting what’s
