Tired of endless nested IF statements in Excel? The CHOOSE function offers a cleaner, smarter way to pick from multiple options using a single, simple formula. Learn how to replace complex conditional logic with CHOOSE(), streamline your spreadsheets, and make your formulas easier to read, maintain, and debug. Choose() an
Make sure your Microsoft Word documents look the same everywhere by embedding fonts, just in case the right fonts aren’t installed on recipients’ systems. How to embed fonts in Word on both Windows and Mac plus the options and alternatives for font embedding. Allow anyone opening the document to see
How to lock certain cells in an Excel workbook and allow people to edit ranges of cells. In part one we covered the basics, how locking works with protection to stop unwanted editing of your worksheets while leaving them visible. Now we’ll cover some more, locking certain cells in a
Protecting an important Excel worksheet from careless editing, or allowing only specific cells to be modified is all part of a powerful and highly flexible feature in Microsoft Excel known collectively as “Protect”. It’s been there for a long time but is little understood, so we’ll do our humble best
Transform how you format Word documents with keyboard shortcuts—going beyond the built‑in ones for Headings 1–3 by adding your own for Heading 4, 5, 6 (and beyond) that Microsoft has forgotten. With these simple tweaks, your document structuring becomes faster and more consistent. Word’s in-built Heading styles come with some shortcut keys, but
In Excel there are various options for making sure a text label singular (e.g. person) or plural (people) matches the quantity. There’s the standard answer (IF() functions) or clever cell formatting tricks. For example if the cell has 1 item you want the singular label: 1 cookie But if the
You might think that the hyphen is a simple small horizontal line … but no. There are NINE different hyphen or short horizontal line choices in Microsoft Word. The common ones (hypen, En-dash and Em-dash) have shortcuts in Word, Windows and Mac. Let’s start with the standard hyphen, actually called
What to do if you see one of those ‘square barcodes’? How can you convert that into something useful like a web link or phone number? You see them in ads, signs, billboards, test and trace signs and even menus – little square blobs like this: What are QR Codes and how
Create and save custom sort orders for Word, you easily apply them when list changes. You can also set up different sort orders that can be applied with a single click, streamlining your workflow and enhancing efficiency. Brian D writes with a question about custom sorting a table, in his
Fast access to important Outlook features! The ribbon in Outlook isn’t the only way to efficiently things done. Use the keyboard shortcuts that have been available in Outlook (Windows or Mac) for Microsoft 365 or Office 2024 and many earlier versions. Outlook for Windows Here are some keyboard shortcuts that
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
How to get greater accuracy out of Word’s in-built calculator. Recently, we unearthed Word’s hidden calculator. Word rounds its calculator results to two decimal places. This time, we’ll take a look at the two ways to improve the accuracy of Word calculator results. Use an old maths trick or change
Yes, Microsoft Word lets you select vertical (up or down) text blocks. Most text selection in Word involves selecting horizontally – selecting a line or a paragraph of text. Sometimes, though, you need to select a vertical slab of text. To do that, hold down the Alt key while you
You can sort paragraphs, lists and tables in a Word document with all manner of tricks available under the simple ribbon button. Following our look at different alphabetical orders, here’s a look at the sorting options in Word. Select the list or paragraphs then choose Home | Paragraph | Sort.
Here’s the basics of Styles in Word for paragraph, character or both (Linked) plus Tables and Lists. I know talking about styles in Word makes eyes glaze over but they are a really useful part of Word (plus Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook). Today I watched an ‘experienced’ Word user reformatting
Quickly insert symbols, characters and emoji in Microsoft Word and Outlook without taking your fingers off the keyboard using a feature that’s been in Word (for Windows) for many years. Inserting Symbols into Word documents is a pain, go up to the ribbon Insert | Symbols | Symbol which takes
The Background Removal Tool in Microsoft Office lets you neatly delete the background of images with just one click. It makes the photo subject stand alone with a transparent background. We’ll explain how remove background really works, it’s not quite as simple as Microsoft’s demonstrations make out. Windows 11 Paint
Here are 12 suggestions and shortcuts to let you navigate a Word document faster. Word has many ways to navigate a document, most of which are hidden away and not obvious to the casual users. Once a document gets past a few pages, you need options for moving around that
Clear Formatting lets you remove extra text formatting in Word documents. As usual in Microsoft Word, there’s a lot more happening behind a seemingly simple feature. Sometimes the formatting of some Word text gets very confused but there’s a simple way to get it back to plain formatting. Word has
Don’t fall for the myth that’s stopped you from more secure online accounts. For some years we’ve been banging on about Two-Factor Authentication. ‘2-fac’ is one of the main protections against online hacking and identity theft. Savvy online users have 2Fac for their main online accounts: Microsoft/Office 365 account, Google.
How to choose more than one Microsoft Office file or document to open at the same time. One of the frustrations about the ‘pane’ interface in Office for Windows is the failure to include all the features that customers were accustomed to from the standard File dialog boxes. Microsoft added
PowerPoint offers compression embedded video and audio files, reducing the overall file size. But these options aren’t where you might expect to find them, aren’t selective and need to be used with care. There is compression option for media files (video or audio) to a suitable quality level and make
Drop in some Easter flavor to your documents, slides or emails from right inside Word, PowerPoint, Outlook and Excel. Either religious (Ascension, Crucifix etc) or secular (eggs, chocolate, bunnies) images and graphics are available. Modern Office, especially Microsoft 365 have stock images and icons from a large collection compiled by
More than five ways to type characters with accent, grave, circumflex, tilde, umlaut, dieresis or cedilla in Microsoft Word and Outlook when they aren’t on the keyboard such as á ã à ä Ç ç ē é ê è ë â ê î ô û and many more. Typing accented
