Well, that’s been an ‘interesting’ year for all of us <sigh> . Here’s some of the articles that have been popular with our worldwide audience over 2020. Getting more from online video calls With the global lockdown, Office Watch switched roles for a while and added lots of advice for
Microsoft has announced some changes to the Editor feature in Word and Outlook to improve access to spell-check and grammar tools. Look for these changes in upcoming releases of Word and Outlook for Windows and later for Mac. Many reports on these changes say that the Editor is a ‘new
NewEgg is offering a 15-month new or renewal of Microsoft 365 Family for just $75 saving about $45. There’s a special discount or promo code that we’ll tell you below. UPDATE The price has changed to $99 which is still a good deal on a 15-month Microsoft 365 Family. $99
Pantone has announced not one but TWO ‘colors of the year’ for 2021 and, as usual, we’ll explain how to use those exact colors in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. The colors of 2021 are … Illuminating and Ultimate Grey As usual what’s more amazing than the color is the description
Microsoft has released some ‘sweater’ backgrounds for Christmas, Hannukah or anytime of year. The PNG images are intended as backgrounds for Teams calls but can be used anywhere. A PowerPoint slide, Word background, Zoom call background or whatever. Adding Virtual Background or blurred video to TeamsAdd your own background image
The only specific 2020/2021 calendar template in Microsoft Word is an academic calendar from August 2020 to July 2021, here’s how to use it and make it better. In File | New search for ‘academic calendar’ there are a few options. We’re looking at ‘Academic year calendar’. A few notes
Microsoft Office 365 and 2019 for Mac (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook) now work directly on the new M1 chip. There are a few ‘gotchas’ but support for Apple Silicon is almost complete. Apple is moving away from Intel chips to their own ‘Apple Silicon’ hardware, starting with the M1
PowerPoint Mobile for Android is getting an ‘Outline View’ but it’s not like Outline View in Windows or Mac versions of PowerPoint. This Outline View is really an ‘Outline to Presentation’ wizard that lets you make an outline or bullet point list then choose a slide theme to quickly make
You don’t have to write directly onto each PowerPoint slide. Instead write an outline of headings and text, then convert into slides. There are two ways to do it, with Word or directly into PowerPoint. Outline View View | Outline View shows each slide title with bullet points within a
The Microsoft 365 Productivity Score has been raising concerns about staff privacy and intrusion into their ‘Work from Home’ life. We’ll look at what Productivity Score actually does, how it’s changed after public pressure and why administrators might prefer to be intrusive. Productivity Score applies to Microsoft 365 hosted organizations.
The Microsoft 365 logins on top executives are being sold on the dark web, allowing hackers direct access to the emails and files of chief executives, directors and managers. ZDnet is reporting that a forum for hackers has an offer to sell login details for Microsoft 365 / Office accounts
Discounts on Microsoft 365 Family (formerly Home) are rare these days but Amazon UK has a Cyber Monday offer worth grabbing. Save more than £30 on the regular price of a one year renewal. Amazon UK are selling the £79.99 package for just £47.99 on Monday 30 Nov only. The
If you’re thinking about getting Microsoft 365 email hosting with full Teams and SharePoint, Microsoft has a limited time offer this week only. However, before you jump into their deal, there’s another very similar option that’s even cheaper. Until 30 November 2020, Microsoft is offering 25% discount on their Business
Short Stock videos are coming to PowerPoint 365 slides and backgrounds. Instead of searching the web or making your own little videos, they are now available from PowerPoint itself. All the videos are short (around 10 seconds) and automatically loop by default. Here’s four of them as a sampler ..
Adding a video as the background of a PowerPoint slide is surprisingly easy. You might expect that it requires special features but it doesn’t. There are some tricks to know if the slide gets muddled up. A true PowerPoint slide background has to be still a solid color, gradient, pattern
Some people have way too much time on their hands …. and this was pre-lockdown! Hunter Hobbs decided to find out how long it takes to scroll down to the very bottom row of Excel. That’s row 1,048,576. It only takes a moment and two keystrokes to get there, but
The Quick Access Toolbar (QAT) is located on the left side of the Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook title bar. You can add commands, options and even symbols for easy and quick obvious access By default, the QAT only has Save, Undo, Redo and Touch/Mouse commands but you can cut down
A quick way to type a ü tick or check mark character in Word. Another great Autocorrect suggestion from Morris B. ” … the one that I have found the most useful is to replace ‘./’ with a tick (wingdings 252 – or wingdings 254) “ Using the fullstop/period is
One of the eternal questions to Office Watch is about adding characters to an Office document. Symbols and characters not on the keyboard. The most common requests are for adding currency symbols like Pound £ Euro € or Yen/Renminbi ¥ but can also include the @ symbol which can, even
Excel’s Conditional Formatting is getting two small but much needed changes that will make it a lot easier to use. According to Microsoft, the latest Insiders releases of Excel 365 for Windows has two changes to the Conditional Formatting Manager dialog. Resizable The dialog is now resizable from the handle
Apple is releasing a new version of MacOS, for all Mac computers, called ‘Big Sur’ or version 11. What does that mean for Microsoft Office compatibility and stability? Big Sur is the latest MacOS operating system (version 11) for Mac computers. It’s rolled out from 12 November but you can
Apple’s new Macbook’s use a totally new type of chip, the M1 or Apple Silicon. What does that mean for Microsoft Office and other programs? We’ll explain what Apple Silicon Macs are and why they are better. Microsoft Office compatibility with the new machines (it’s messy at the moment) and
Designer, a quick formatting feature in PowerPoint is now available in Microsoft Word. Here’s how to find and use the new feature. Word’s Designer works a little differently to the PowerPoint Designer but the basics are the same. A side-pane offers some templates that will reformat the entire document. Some
The new Apple iOS 14.2 adds 117 new emoji to use but be careful now you use them because not even all iPhone and iPad can handle them, let alone non-Apple devices. We explain how they work, how the emoji appear on receiving devices and include a full list of
