Newsletter Archives

• Finding cheap Office

  Posted on February 19, 2025 at 03:00 CST by Susan Bradley • Comment in the Forums

  Not a day goes by that I don’t see one of these offers.  Get Office for cheap.  No subscription. Folks, I know this is really hard to hear — but there is no cheap Office.  Anything you get that touts itself as cheap, or below the normal retail price tag of Office, is a scam. Typically, these types of offers are tied to volume license keys or Microsoft 365 Education keys.

  The same goes for Adobe products on the cheap or without a subscription, such as a listing for “Adobe 2020” on eBay. Trust me on this one — don’t get it. It will fight you on Windows 11 tooth and nail and will not want to be your default PDF editor.  Yes, I know it’s expensive to get the real thing.

  Bottom line: if you are in business and need the Microsoft tools, there is no cheap way to get them.  Any cheap offering is a rip off and a scam.  Don’t fall for it.

  I also don’t suggest Windows 10 (or 11) LTSC — it’s not available to the masses. It’s a specialized operating system offered in the volume licensing channel. If you see it on eBay, it’s not a legit license. Beware.

  And to vendors out there? We don’t like subscriptions.  We get that you like the reliability of recurring revenue, but your customers do not feel the value in your “capex versus opex” argument.  We don’t want Outlook (new) unless you make it comparable to Outlook (classic). We don’t want Copilot getting in the way of our letter writing.  When we want AI, we will use it. So if we’re going to have to put up with these subscriptions, how about you pay attention to what we want?

  Office Patch Lady Posts

• How to dig into Excel files using the Office XML file format

  Posted on May 27, 2024 at 02:45 CDT by Mary Branscombe • Comment in the Forums

  

  ISSUE 21.22 • 2024-05-27

  OFFICE

  

  By Mary Branscombe

  The tools built into Excel assume colleagues might make honest mistakes. If you suspect something more nefarious, look in the XML of the file for clues.

  Last time, I looked at what’s inside an Office document. In essence, it is a package of different files that contain both the content and the formatting of your document, kept together in what is effectively a ZIP file.

  For Excel, this file collection also includes a lot of information about how a spreadsheet was put together.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.22.0, 2024-05-27).
  This story also appears in our public Newsletter.

  Office Excel, File Formats, Newsletters, Office, Office Open XML, XML

• Understanding Office document formats

  Posted on April 29, 2024 at 02:44 CDT by Mary Branscombe • Comment in the Forums

  OFFICE

  

  By Mary Branscombe

  Inside every Office file is a hierarchy of formats and XML markup.

  If you understand these structures, you can use that knowledge to extract information directly from most Office app files.

  When Word, Excel, and PowerPoint first came out, they stored documents in proprietary binary file formats, with text, styles, page layout, and multimedia all encoded in the same file. That was fairly efficient: the binary file is compact, and there’s only one file to copy per document when you want to move it around or share it with someone.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.18.0, 2024-04-29).

  Office Excel, File Formats, Newsletters, Office, Office Open XML, Open XML SDK, PowerPoint, Word, XML

• Save time with AutoCorrect!

  Posted on March 4, 2024 at 02:43 CST by Mary Branscombe • Comment in the Forums

  OFFICE

  

  By Mary Branscombe

  You can make AutoCorrect more useful by adding your own corrections and copying those to wherever you need them.

  Whenever you mistype one of several dozen commonly misspelled words while using Word and other Office apps (and even the Office Web apps), Office automatically corrects your spelling.

  Fortunately, AutoCorrect is a lot less aggressive than in the early days of Word, when a major investment bank famously found itself referred to in correspondence as “Goddamn Sachs.” And unlike smartphones, where you must rely upon spotting and then reversing embarrassing automatic text corrections before you send the message, Office gives you complete control over what gets corrected.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.10.0, 2024-03-04).

  Office AutoCorrect, MS Office AutoCorrect, Newsletters, Office, OneNote, Proofing, Spellcheck, Word

• Why not to use Outlook (new)

  Posted on October 30, 2023 at 02:43 CDT by Peter Deegan • Comment in the Forums

  OFFICE

  

  By Peter Deegan

  Underdeveloped and overhyped, a truly new Outlook is coming. But it’s not yet a proper replacement for either the Windows or Mac version of Outlook.

  As usual, Microsoft is hyping a product that’s still a work in progress. I’ll explain the dirty little secrets behind Outlook (new) — that’s one of its names — and why serious Outlook users should not touch it yet.

  Outlook (new) is now replacing Windows Mail and Calendar apps in new Windows 11 installations. Existing Mail/Calendar app setups will continue to work.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (20.44.0, 2023-10-30).

  Office Licensing, Microsoft 365, Newsletters, Office, Outlook, Outlook (new), Outlook Mobile

• Sometimes it’s the little things

  Posted on February 3, 2023 at 18:38 CST by Susan Bradley • Comment in the Forums

  Final setting up that new Windows 11 in the office and sometimes you forget the little things.

  Like disabling ‘Backstage’ view in Word and Excel.

  What is Backstage? It’s something that takes one more click per opening of a document out of your life that is slightly annoying.

  

  File, options, scroll down to the bottom and we uncheck that box.  We want to launch straight into word or excel and not into a ‘start screen’ view.

  So what do you do to customize the launching of your applications?

  Office Patch Lady Posts

• Tame your tech: Office

  Posted on December 12, 2022 at 02:42 CST by Susan Bradley • Comment in the Forums

  OFFICE

  

  By Susan Bradley

  We all have a love/hate relationship with Microsoft Office.

  Chances are, Word is not the first word processing program you started with. It’s the one that took over and became the de facto standard, dominating the market. (If you work in an attorney’s office, it’s possible you’re still using WordPerfect, because the company did excellent marketing to that segment.)

  My first — and, quite frankly, still the easiest — word-processing program was pfs:Write. Back when Lotus 1-2-3 was our go-to spreadsheet, pfs:Write was our go-to word-processing program. But, alas, today’s article won’t wax poetic about an old piece of software. Instead, we’ll once again try to tame technology that wants to do things its way, not your way.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.50.0, 2022-12-12).

  Office Newsletters, Office, Outlook, Patch Lady Posts

• Microsoft rolls out macro blocking again

  Posted on July 21, 2022 at 23:52 CDT by Susan Bradley • Comment in the Forums

  Microsoft announced they are once again beginning the rollout to block macros in Office files downloaded from the Internet.

  Personally I would make sure that you aren’t using any Office macros in files that you haven’t removed the “mark of the web”. Remember to right mouse click a file, go into properties and see if there is an “unblock” button. When in doubt you can upload a suspicious file to www.virustotal.com just to be sure it’s not a malicious file.

  Updated July 20, 2022: We’re resuming the rollout of this change in Current Channel. Based on our review of customer feedback, we’ve made updates to both our end user and our admin documentation to make clearer what options you have for different scenarios. For example, what to do if your users have files on SharePoint or files on a network share. Please refer to the following documentation:

  • For end users, A potentially dangerous macro has been blocked
  • For IT admins, Macros from the internet will be blocked by default in Office

  If you ever enabled or disabled the Block macros from running in Office files from the Internet policy, your organization will not be affected by this change.

  Thank you.

  VBA macros are a common way for malicious actors to gain access to deploy malware and ransomware. To help improve security, we are changing the behavior of Office applications to now block macros in files from the internet. Learn more in this blog post.

  This change only affects Office on devices running Windows and only affects the following applications: Access, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio, and Word.

  Key points:

  • Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 88883
  • Timing: We will communicate a new timeline via Message center.
  • Action: Review and assess impact

  How this will affect your organization:

  Previously, it was possible for end users to enable these macros by simply clicking a button on the Trust bar.

  Now, with this change, once a user opens an attachment or downloads from the internet an untrusted Office file containing macros, a message bar displays a Security Risk that the file contains VBA macros obtained from the internet with a Learn More button.

  
  View image in new tab

  The Learn More button goes to an article for end users and information workers that contains information about the security risk of bad actors using macros, safe practices to prevent phishing and malware, and instructions on how to enable these macros (if absolutely needed).

  What you need to do to prepare:

  Enterprises should evaluate their use of macros in files obtained from the internet to determine how this new default behavior will affect their users.

  To learn more about how to get ready for this change and recommendations for managing VBA macros in Office files, read this article for Office admins.

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