Excel 365 for Windows and web have a different font for the formula bar. The monospace font should be easier to read and understand. For as long as there’s been Excel, formulas have been shown in a proportional font. Probably to fit as much text into the available screen space.
Excel 365 for Windows and Web is getting a great new feature called Value Preview. You’ll be able to see the current value of any formula part just by hovering over it. It’s simple and most people won’t even notice it except by accident. Just hover the mouse over part
There’s a nice little Excel function that will calculate the rate of return on any asset like a stock or fund including income/dividends with purchases and sales over time. The secret sauce is XIRR() a function which calculates an internal rate of return with uneven interest or dividend payments. In
Can you scan a picture or document directly into Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook? Certainly, but these days we’re spoiled for choice and have fantastic features like using a smartphone as a simple scanner. Back in the day, you could click a button in Word 2003 to scan a document
Comments in Word documents can now have a quick response from others just by clicking a ‘Like’👍button. Why just one button when other Microsoft apps have more? Instead of writing a short reply adding to a Word comment thread, you can now just click a Like👍button on an existing comment
With a few PowerPoint keystrokes you can move, rotate or resize an object in any direction in tiny amounts to get it where and how you want it. Positioning objects in PowerPoint applies to PowerPoint for Microsoft 365, PowerPoint 2021/2019 (Windows and Mac), PowerPoint 2016 and PowerPoint Online. Change size,
Placing graphics on a PowerPoint slide is simple but getting them positioned “just right” needs a ‘nudge’. Smart Guides and Gridlines Mostly positioning images and other objects is easily done with the Smart Guides (look for the faint red or gray lines as you move about an object) or use
Now you can copy a document from Microsoft Word to the Kindle ebook reader in one step with the arrival of “Send to Kindle” inside Word 365 for Windows and Mac. We’ll also explain how to convert and transfer a Word document to Kindle without the latest Office innovation. It’s
Transcribe is the ‘speech to text’ option in Microsoft Word. It lets you record live or upload an audio file and convert it into text. Here’s a complete guide to using Transcribe and dealing with its annoyances. Record a speech, lecture or meeting then later get a written transcript from
Get real Microsoft Office running on Linux in four different ways – a virtual machine, remote access, browser apps or Wine. There’s no ‘Microsoft Office for Linux’ and unlikely there ever will be. That doesn’t mean a Linux machine can’t access the full power of Office for Windows or Mac
What is an interrobang ‽ and how to use it in Microsoft Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint. Also the Inverted Interrobang ⸘ that can be used with ‽ Interrobang or interabang ‽ is a non-standard punctuation mark – a combination of a question mark and exclamation mark in a single
An Outlook.com or Microsoft hosted mail storage quota can be anything from 2GB to 100GB. Here’s a full list of the mailbox limits, how to check your current usage and total allowed size. We’re talking here about Microsoft mailbox hosting services including Outlook.com. NOT the various and confusing types of
Microsoft has two new formula helpers in Excel. One to suggest the right function (Formula Suggestions) and the other to automatically insert copies of a formula (Formula by Example). For the moment, these two features are in Excel on the web but are likely to spread to other Excel’s during
There’s a faster way to clone or reuse slides from existing PowerPoint presentations. Reuse Slides lets you pick a slide and copy it in a flash. Which sounds great unless you’re an unlucky person who hits a useless and unhelpful Microsoft error message. Reuse Slides is mostly promoted as a
Back in August we told you about the interesting ‘Show Changes’ feature in Excel which tracks not only edits made to a workbook but who made them. Since then eager Excel users have wondered when it’ll appear in Excel 365 for Windows or Mac … and so are we. According
A new Excel tool might help with very large, sluggish workbooks but don’t expect a lot despite the promising name “Check Performance”. It took us just minutes to find some undocumented strangeness in this cautious addition to Excel. “Check Performance” looks for unnecessary formatting, metadata and styles that might be
Let() is a new function in Windows and Mac versions of Excel 365 and Excel 2021 (plus Excel Online) which is popular with makers of long, complicated functions. The function lets you name a temporary variable to use within a formula. That might seem a strange thing to do but
Excel users are rightly interested in Lambda() a very powerful addition to Excel. Lambda lets you create user-defined functions without VBA. No need for .xlsm files with all the security concerns they entail. A long formula can be written once then referenced anywhere in the workbook by a short name of
Microsoft Word’s collaboration features are changing, again, with Track Changes cards appearing for each edit in a document with a preview option in Word 365 for Windows. Track Changes cards are already in the browser-based version of Word. They are now coming to Word 365 for Windows and Mac. With
Let’s take a moment to see where customers stand with Dark Mode options in Microsoft Office in Windows, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Android and web. It’s easy to get confused about Microsoft 365 and Office 2021 dark mode or theme options. Microsoft has announced ‘dark’ developments so many times it’s hard
Adding comments to Microsoft Word documents isn’t just for groups, use them yourself for your own reminders and side-comments while you’re working on a doc. Word has a feature to let you add ‘side’ comments to documents – comments that don’t show up in the final document, don’t effect the
You can translate a Pantone PMS code or name into something Microsoft Office; Word, Excel or PowerPoint understands? Sometimes you’re given a specific color using the Pantone color scheme. Most commonly this happens for a corporate logo. The Ford car company specifies ‘PMS 294C’ for their blue logo. McDonald’s uses
Word in a web browser has a Designer feature, like Designer in PowerPoint, to quickly make great looking documents. Designer uses Microsoft’s templates collection to suggest formatting and design change for the document. One problem with Designer, like similar Office features, is that they can be overused and too many
Suggested Images and Add Visual Emphasis options have appeared in our Microsoft Word … looks like a new but not yet announced feature. We’ve been editing Word documents with Word in a browser, when a small blue diamond icon appears in the left margin: ◇ Clicking on it added a