Writing for sharing
Tag

MSOffice

Browsing
Microsoft

Activating correctly the Microsoft Office 2019 Home & Student edition

I am annoyed when companies literally design products to get the paying customer into doing things that are good for the manufacturer’s top-line and expensive for the customer. There is nothing wrong in upselling, but they need to be transparent on what is already provided and what’s the upgrade for. Unfortunately, this stealth mode operations are a common theme in the world of Windows PCs and Android Smartphones for decades. The excuse they provide is that there are wafer-thin margins in the business, unlike Apple, who operate on the higher-end of the market. Though I am not a fanboy of…

Read More
Apps

A quick Tamil Dictionary in Microsoft Word 2019

Microsoft Word - Tamil Translation

I just realised that I can use Microsoft Word’s translate feature as a quick Tamil to English Dictionary for getting meanings. It works surprisingly well and even for a sentence (obviously as it is a translation feature and not a word dictionary). I am using the latest version of #MSWORD that ships with Microsoft Office 365 subscription, but I suppose it will work many earlier versions too as the feature has been around for quite some time now.

Read More
Microsoft

Microsoft Excel – Auto calculation

Microsoft Excel

For the last two hours, I was going crazy, as none of my Excel spreadsheets were getting updating. It was frustrating to type in a number, press save and then wait to see the recalculated sum appear below. I got the same behaviour for the Windows and Web version. I have been using Microsoft Excel for decades, yet here I am, getting tripped – thankfully my subconscious memory was telling me I knew how to fix this. It turns out, somehow the setting for auto-calculation has reverted to manual. I had to go to File->Options-Workbook Calculation to set it back…

Read More
Microsoft

Be in the Current Channel of Office 365 Software

Microsoft Office365 subscription provides users with latest features every month. Like in the October 2016 release where new grammar checking and research features were introduced for Microsoft Word for PC. After waiting for months and even contacting Microsoft support I was not getting the new updates. After some research, I found out the reason. The Office 365 ProPlus software that I had downloaded and installed in my PC was set to “Deferred Channel”, so updates were happening on a slower cycle. I switched to be in “Current Channel”, in the updates that came I got the new features. To opt…

Read More
Microsoft

Microsoft Teams – the shiny new slack

It has been my experience that businesses especially those that are spread across the world need better collaboration and communication tools than what was made available in Enterprises. In the consumer side, whether it’s Facebook or WhatsApp we have apps that are feature rich, easy to use and constantly updated to get new features. Years back when Microsoft acquired Skype (2011) and then Yammer (2012) I thought they will integrate, improve around these products and address the need. Unfortunately Yammer was a disappointment, not in terms of its features but in terms of acceptance and adoption by users. At my firm Vishwak Solutions I…

Read More