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…

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…

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…

As the saying goes that 80% of users of a product like Microsoft Office use only 20% of it’s features. I thought myself to be a power-user of PowerPoint, but it turns out there are simple features in that I am aware of. It happened this week when accidentally I clicked on File->Share option in PowerPoint 2013. There was this feature “Present Online”. What this allows you to do is to present your deck to a remote device, with the remote user needing only a web browser, no plugin or app is required. It’s extremely handy when you are doing…