Microsoft Minutes

By default, MS Word online is set to automatically detect the proofing language and adjust. The problem is that, if you type something in a non-English language, it does not like to change back to English. I typed in the title of a piece of 15th century music ("À cheval, tout homme à cheval"), and MS did a great job of figuring out that it was in French. The problem was that I couldn't talk it out of using the French rules for checking my English grammar/spelling in the rest of the document. One bit of good news is that the change to French was only for this document, not for everything I write. If this happens to you, here is your way out of the woods: Look in the lower left of your screen. You will see the page count, the word count, and the proofing language. Click the proofing language. A new window titled Language should pop up, with hundreds of language choices. You need to do two things. The obvious one is to choose the language you really want for the re...

Microsoft is using two-factor authentication to verify your identity for Blackboard and Office 365. This means that after you give your username and password, you must do something else to prove that it’s really, really you. Typically, after you do the usual login stuff, a screen will pop up with a two-digit number that you must key into your cell phone. You need to download an app to your cell phone and key the number in there. Go to your phone’s place for downloading apps and look for Microsoft Authenticator . There are several questions you need to answer when you set up this app, so it will take a few minutes. When you want to get into Blackboard, you will need your phone nearby. You do the usual login routine on your computer, then when that screen shows the two-digit number, grab your phone and open the Authenticator app and key in the two-digit number. That number expires in just a couple of minutes, so if you...

The drop-down menu for sending an attachment in Outlook has moved. Now you can find it by clicking Message at the top. They give you several choices for places to browse, but the only two you need to know are "OneDrive" (if you are attaching a file you made in Microsoft 365) and "Browse this computer" (if you are moving a file you saved some other way).

This is going to be a very nuts-and-bolts blog. The point is that both Microsoft 365 and Blackboard make frequent changes in the User Interface (UI)—the way the product looks and works—and the changes are hard to follow. Apple Pages, Google Docs, and LibreOffice are much more stable, but the two products we use most frequently are very difficult to keep up with. There is a reason that you can't find online tutorials for these products: the changes come so frequently that nobody can keep up. I'm going to use this blog to post changes as I run into them, hoping to help you keep your sanity.