Word’s spell checker has some peculiar ideas about where an & symbol belongs. Susan S. writes with a question about the Word spell checker. She’s noticed that an ampersand next to a letter doesn’t trigger a spelling error in Word. We tried it out and she’s right: An ampersand next
Why is an obviously incorrect word not picked up by Word’s spell checker? Susan S. complains that her copy of Word has phrases like ‘ Thisis ‘ which aren’t showing up as a spelling error. In other words there is no red squiggly line when there should be. We’ve had
The Home Use Program continues to be ‘stonewalled’ for many eligible staff. People could save hundreds of dollars on Microsoft Office if their employers would let them. The Home Use Program is a great money saving option from Microsoft – it lets staff of organizations get Microsoft Office to use
TechNet is still a good deal for IT Professionals, but not as good as it once was. Microsoft’s TechNet program has changed with less software available for the same price. Technet is Microsoft’s program for IT Professionals to allow access to a range of software for testing and evaluation purposes.
What’s the difference between the WAH and HUP programs from Microsoft? Microsoft has two different programs to let staff use Office software at home, the Work at Home (WAH) programs and the Home Use Program (HUP). From the program names you might think they are similar but they are not.
There are only a few days left before the Technology Guarantee ends On Sunday 31st October 2010 the Office 2010 Technology Guarantee ends. This is the program where recent purchasers of Office 2007 can get a free copy of Office 2010. Qualifying Office 2007 sales finished at the end of
Why does Outlook 2010 make viewing unread messages so hard? The unread message view can be restored to Outlook 2010 fairly easily. In many past versions of Outlook there was a simple list of message views available and one of the choices was ‘Unread Messages’. It’s a popular option because
Another step towards cloud based MS Office with Office 365. Microsoft has announced ‘Office 365’ a further merging of Office software with online services, mostly aimed at small and medium sized businesses. Office365.microsoft.com Office 365 is a marketing bundle of online and, optionally, software licensing that can be paid for
In a few days the Office 2010 beta will stop working, what’s next? On 31 October 2010, anyone using the Office 2010 beta (sorry, Preview) will find it’s turned into a pumpkin. After that date the beta software will revert to ‘read only’ mode where it can open and view
There’s a portable version of Office 2010 you can carry on a USB stick. Many people would like a portable version of Microsoft Office that you can carry on a USB memory drive and run from any computer. It is possible for some people with Office 2010 on a new
How to quickly change to ‘Text Width’ view in Word. A useful view for Word documents is Text Width view but it’s not on the toolbar or ribbon so how can you switch to it quickly? Text Width view is good because it puts text across the available screen width
Can you run Office 2000 on Windows 7? Gene writes asking about running his Office 2000 software on his new computer with Windows 7. Office 2000 is shown as ‘NOT compatible’ on the official Windows 7 software compatibility list. Office XP (2002), Office 2003, Office 2007 and Office 2010 are
The second edition of “Office 2010: the real startup guide” is now available for new and past purchasers. We’re delighted to announce that a second edition of Office 2010: the real startup guide is now available for new and past purchasers. The new edition has over 150 extra pages covering
Macintosh users can get their ‘catch up’ version of Office soon. Office 2011 for Macintosh will be on sale from 26 October 2011. Office 2011 will have some interesting changes like a totally revamped Email and PIM program called ‘Outlook for Mac’ which will be able to integrate with the
Microsoft drops their own blogging service, what does that mean for its Office integration? Microsoft has announced that they are phasing out their ‘Windows Spaces’ blogging service in favor of WordPress.com Strictly speaking Microsoft hasn’t made that announcement; it was a carefully worded blog post. In the usual ‘PR Speak’
What to do about the latest email pest that Outlook isn’t detecting. The latest serial Inbox pest is fake messages that appear to come from the LinkedIn service. Outlook with the latest junk e-mail update doesn’t pick them up. The ‘From’ address is spoofed to appear to come from linkedin.com
Despite what the Microsoft web site says, TechNet packs has Office 2010 and then some. TechNet is a great program for IT Professionals that provides a wide range of Microsoft products for evaluation purposes, but if you check their web site it seems that Office 2010 isn’t included! A few
There’s hints of a Military Appreciation Edition for Canada – where is it? Ever since we first saw the licence agreement for Office 2010 we’ve been intrigued about this section: “CANADIAN FORCES SOFTWARE. You must be a “CANEX Authorized Patron” to license software marked as “Canadian Forces” edition.” (the full
Microsoft asks customers for their best calendar designs. Over at Office.Microsoft.com they are running a competition for the best calendar designs for 2011. The competition is for 2011 calendars using either Word, Excel or PowerPoint (2007 or 2010 editions). The entries appear online and the ‘winners’ will be based on the
Two ‘free’ update emails are scams but not detected by Outlook. We check out the ‘red flags’ you should look for in any suspicious or unexpected email. Two similar scam messages have arrived in the last day, they might fool some people and certainly don’t get caught by Microsoft Outlook’s
Live Mesh goes back to being Live Mesh with 5GB online storage. The bad news came when Microsoft announced that the wonderful ‘Live Mesh’ system had been renamed ‘Live Sync’ and emasculated into a shell of the popular system they were working on. Now the good news – Microsoft has
The next release of SBS will include Office Web Apps. We’ve always liked Microsoft’s Small Business Server – a relatively cheap way to get centralized email, document storage and sharing. You get the considerable power of Exchange Server and Sharepoint in an easy to configure system. Office Watch has used
A chance to get a laptop for 6 months plus a copy of Office 2010 to keep. Microsoft has an interesting program starting up headed “Wanted: Your Microsoft Office Story”. They are making up a group of people (from a broad cross-section of users) and giving each person the loan
Frustration at trying to link a Window Mobile device to a Windows computer Jo J. writes with frustration at trying to link a Window Mobile device to a Windows computer: “I go buy three products and I real love using office 2010, a breath of fresh air. But I cannot
