The FBI has warned of a new Phishing-as-a-Service (PhaaS) kit that is targeting Microsoft 365 accounts in a complex but easily accessible campaign.

The Kali365 PhaaS service allows hackers to gain persistent access to Microsoft 365 environments by stealing ‘OAuth’ tokens using AI-generated phishing emails that direct users to legitimate Microsoft verification pages.

Once the attacker holds the OAuth token, they can access Outlook, Teams, and OneDrive services without having to complete any additional verification or authentication mechanisms.

Phishing campaigns such as these rely on human-error in order to breach accounts, but luckily there are multiple steps to take to keep accounts and wider Microsoft 365 environments safe. Here are 3 ways businesses can protect themselves against the Kali365 PhaaS campaign:

1. Phishing Vigilance

Phishing emails come in a range of formats. They can be interview invites, document access requests, and everything in between. Hackers are using AI tools to make highly convincing phishing emails that can slip past spam detection filters and blend in with regular email traffic.

IT administrators should pay attention to the latest guidance provided from intelligence feeds on phishing email trends and ongoing campaigns. Additionally, staff can be trained to spot and report phishing emails through regular simulations that mimic the real world Tactics, Techniques and Procedures (TTPs) being used by hackers.

Users should also remain vigilant against unexpected Microsoft account authentication requests, especially when the user has not made an attempt to log in.

2. Conditional Access Policies

The FBI recommends enabling conditional access policies that block device code flow for all users. Blocking device code flow prevents the main Kali365 OAuth code interception from working.

In the Kali365 attack workflow, the hacker will submit a pre-generated device code from their device alongside a legitimate Microsoft verification page. The code submitted by the attacker is then typed into the authentication page by the victim, authorizing the attacker’s login to the victim's account. The attacker then steals OAuth access and refresh tokens to access Outlook, Teams, and OneDrive without the need for a password or authentication.

By blocking this authentication method, even if a victim falls for the phishing email and enters the code, the attacker’s login will fail.

But before applying a universal device code flow block, make sure to audit existing usage to identify where device code flow authentication is being used legitimately. Blocking legitimate usage could disrupt day-to-day operations in some circumstances.

3. Block Authentication Transfer Policies

In order to make life easier for 365 users, Microsoft included an option to allow a user to use a trusted device to scan a QR code displayed on a separate device to authenticate a login.

However, this convenient feature makes it easier for attackers to authenticate their own authentication on a victim’s account once they have stolen OAuth tokens. Once provided access to a victim’s account, the attacker can use their newly ‘trusted’ device to authenticate their own account access requests.

By blocking authentication transfer policies, not only does it stop attackers from authenticating their own sessions, it can also help to prevent employees from logging in to unmanaged personal devices that can put company data at risk.

Expert Guidance

Deborah Galea, Cybersecuity Expert at Filigran, commented on the Kali365 attacks:

“Phishing-as-a-Service (PhaaS) platforms like Kali365 are becoming more and more common, which is turning hacking into a highly commercialised subscription business. This means that bad actors can now utilise these ready-made kits rather than building infrastructure from scratch, significantly lowering the barrier to entry."

"Kali365 is especially dangerous since it bypasses Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) without stealing credentials and allows hackers to hijack Microsoft 365 accounts. We advise companies to implement preventative measures such as restricting device code flow, blocking authentication transfer, and implementing Phishing-Resistant MFA.”

Andrea Sivieri, Chief Product and Technology Officer at CoreView, also commented: 

"The FBI warning on Kali365 confirms a pattern we have been seeing in enterprise Microsoft 365 environments for months. Attackers are no longer breaking into Microsoft 365, they are logging in, using features Microsoft built for legitimate purposes. Device code flow exists for a good reason, it is how smart TVs and IoT devices sign you into your account. The attackers have simply realised it makes a beautiful phishing primitive, because the user is the one who clicks 'approve' on a real Microsoft page. MFA cannot save you from a flow where the user does the MFA themselves."

"The depressing part is that the FBI's top recommendation, blocking device code flow through conditional access policy, is something any Microsoft 365 administrator could turn on this afternoon. The reason most organisations haven’t done this is because conditional access in a real-world tenant, is a sprawl of policies edited by twenty different people over five years. Nobody is quite sure what blocking one flow will break. So the policy stays open, and the attackers stay in business."

"There is a bigger lesson here for any organisation running its business on Microsoft 365. The next breach at a large enterprise will not start with a hacker exploiting a vulnerability. It will start with an employee being asked, very politely, to perform a legitimate action inside a legitimate Microsoft product. The defence is not better technology, it is real-time visibility into what is actually changing inside the tenant, and the discipline to revisit the security policies that quietly age out."

• Claude is now available directly within Word, Excel and PowerPoint
• It is designed for more specific use cases than Copilot, at the moment
• You can connect Claude with Word whether you're using Windows, Mac or the web

Anthropic has launched a new add-in for Claude to embed its AI assistant directly into Microsoft Word, giving users an alternative to Copilot for asking questions about documents, editing and generating content.

Currently available in beta for Team and Enterprise plans, there's no word on a broader consumer rollout across the wider word processor scene as yet.

As for the add-in, it reflects Anthropic's broader push to embed Claude across workplace tools like Microsoft 365, offering third-party alternatives to existing built-in systems.

Anthropic's Claude add-in comes to Word

This particular plug-in will be of most use to document-heavy workflows, such as workers across legal, finance and HR, where the AI can summarize lengthy contracts, suggest edits and analyze changes between different versions.

The strategy of targeting high-value niches first, rather than going for the mass market, puts Claude in a slightly different category to Copilot, however evolutions of each product will ultimately see them both compete on a more level basis.

"[Claude] reads complex multi-section documents, works through comment threads, and edits clauses while preserving your formatting, numbering, and styles," the plug-in's description reads. It's available to install across Windows, macOS and the web, linking to Word itself rather than being platform-specific.

In a LinkedIn post, Anthropic stressed that "edits appear as tracked changes," making it easy to see changes and avoiding blurred boundaries.

While Microsoft 365 add-ons seem to be Anthropic's primary target, the company isn't avoiding other platforms. There's also a Claude for Google Sheets extension, while Claude itself can use sources like Google Calendar, Google Drive and Gmail as connected data sources to provide the regular chatbot with more context.

• A group of European tech giants is planning to launch a sovereign Office rival
• Companies and the community can all contribute to the open-source project
• It's a fork of ONLYOFFICE – Europe had concerns about that project

"A coalition of European enterprises and community organizations" have announced a new open source office software suite positioned to take on US hyperscaler rivals like Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, centered around the three core elements of documents, spreadsheets and presentations.

European tech giants like IONOS, Nextcloud, Eurostack, XWiki, OpenProject, Soverin, Abilian and BTactic are behind the initiative.

The news comes amid ongoing tension between the European Union and US Big Tech, bringing a sovereign option to support European innovation and reduce reliance on international technology companies.

Europe plans to launch its own open-source office suite

The coalition is planning a stable release as soon as summer 2026, with a tech preview already available to try.

With the so-called Euro-Office, the suite is designed to have a familiar user interface but falls under European governance, not US governance. However, rather than setting out to target consumers, Euro-Office is being marketed as a secure, sovereign option for the public sector, education and some enterprises.

"With the geo-political developments we have seen in the last year, there is a clear need for a reliable, fully Microsoft-compatible and easy to use sovereign office solution in Europe," IONOS CEO Achim Weiß wrote.

The announcement was shared by NextCloud, whose CEO stated that Europe already had the building blocks to create such a tool. It just lacked the "initiative to bring them together into a meaningful, comprehensive solution."

"We welcome contributions from anyone, including individuals, companies, public organizations and non-profits," the open-source project's GitHub page reads.

As for its foundations, it's not a brand-new project. Instead, it builds on existing ONLYOFFICE code but marks a fork and a steer away from that code for five separate reasons: blocked pull requests, controversial product decisions, a lack of transparency, non-open-source mobile apps and concerns about Russian ownership.

With the tech preview now open and the coalition collecting bug reports, testing common file format support and tweaking/adding features, the next few months will be about refining the products before version 1.0 is expected to land in the summer.

ONLYOFFICE response

Following our original publication of this article, ONLYOFFICE contacted TechRadar Pro to highlight that it was not aware of the launch, and that its code base was used without gaining prior consent.

The team shared an official statement outlining how although the project uses technology derived from the ONLYOFFICE editors, it fails to comply with the GNU Affero General Public License v3 (AGPLv3) and the company's required additional conditions.

It added that full compliance would mean preserving ONLYOFFICE branding, providing proper attribution to the original technology, and meeting open source distribution obligations - none of which took place.

"We believe working within a proper legal framework is the true foundation of open-source collaboration," ONLYOFFICE said.

I wouldn't have predicted as a kid that I'd someday employ powerful AI to create a tiny yarn doppelganger with suspiciously soulful button eyes, but Microsoft is encouraging exactly that. The company's new AI Restyle feature within its OneDrive platform gives Microsoft 365 Premium subscribers a way to transform ordinary photos with AI like so many others, but with a couple of notable extras.

The feature lets users “reimagine” photos into cartoon movie posters, watercolor artwork, anime, and more than a few sculpture forms. You just open a photo, tap the AI Restyle button, and either pick from a variety of options or write your own. What is interesting is that when you pick one of the presets, it doesn't just start making the image as the Google Photos Remix tool does, it writes out the prompt it intends to use and lets you edit it. That's helpful for customizing, but it's also almost a mini lesson in writing good AI image editing prompts. The option for "Crochet Art" came out as:

"Restyle as a handcrafted crochet toy, using yarn textures, stitched details, and soft fabric surfaces in a studio-lit background. Keep the color tone warm and avoid shiny or plastic-like finishes."

I quite like the result. It preserved my face surprisingly well, but translated it into stitched loops, soft fabric textures, and the kind of tiny handmade proportions that make you look like you should be sold at an overpriced artisan market

And the prompt was concise but had all the key elements. The result was much better than when writing "turn the person in the photo into a crochet doll," which honestly was a horror movie image. It put a yarn pattern over my skin and clothes, but my hair looked like yarn formed out of my real hair and made the nausea-inducing choice of leaving my human eyes and teeth like I'm being tortured by an evil wizard.

By comparison, the one made using the pre-generated prompt, while still looking recognizably like me, was more of an actual crocheted doll made by someone who liked me and had a lot of free time.

Better choices

Then I tried superhero mode, which is where things got a little more comic-book deranged in a fun way. This version pushed harder into cinematic cartoon territory. Amusingly, there's no copyright-skirting logo on my chest emblem, but I do appreciate that I'm the kind of hero who will keep his facial hair but wear a mask across my eyes as though that will ensure my identity remains hidden.

Dog style

The other notable element of the AI Restyle feature is that the preset options change based on the photo you look at to fit what OneDrive thinks will work with the image. So, when I looked at a full photo of my dog, several options appeared that weren't available with the one of only half my body, including a "Forest Scene" and a "Hologram."

Another was "Toy Model," which I went with and got the adorable figurine above. Her fur became plasticky, and the art on her bandanna was simplified, but it still looked like her.

The graffiti version was my personal favorite, mostly because it captured the exact chaotic self-importance my dog brings to every room. It looked like street art commissioned by someone who had been emotionally changed by a chihuahua.

What makes AI Restyle work, at least in this early form, is that it is fun but not overwhelming. And you can always mess with the prompt suggestions if you want. Just be aware that you might give yourself nightmares if you don't make it clear that you don't like to see dolls with human teeth.

• There was a nasty bug in the March update that broke a bunch of apps, including Edge, OneDrive, and some Office applications
• Microsoft has now fixed this glitch with an emergency patch for Windows 11
• Windows 11 users won't get this fix unless they've enabled a certain option, and most will need to manually download it

Microsoft has rushed out a fix for a recent bug in Windows 11, which broke some important apps, although you'll have to manually download the emergency patch, as it won't install automatically (for most folks).

The glitch, caused by the March update for Windows 11, meant that apps with Microsoft account sign-ins — including Microsoft Edge, OneDrive, some Office apps, and the free version of Teams — would fail with an error telling the user they weren't connected to the internet (which wasn't the case).

Windows Latest reports that the fix has been deployed as KB5085516, rolling out to those on Windows 11 24H2 and 25H2 who have installed the March update.

As this is an emergency or 'out of band' update — outside the normal pattern of Windows updates — it isn't the case that you'll receive KB5085516 automatically.

You may do so, but only if you've turned on the 'Get the latest updates as soon as they're available' option in the settings for Windows Update, as Microsoft explains in the patch notes.

If you haven't enabled that — and most Windows 11 users won't, as this means the PC gets optional (preview) updates, which can still be buggy — then you'll need to grab the patch yourself if you're suffering from broken apps due to this connectivity error.

To do this, check for updates in the Windows Update panel (in Settings), and you'll see KB5085516, whereupon you can click to download and install it.

After applying the patch, which typically takes about five minutes to download and the same length of time to install, according to Windows Latest, you should be good to go with the mentioned apps.

Analysis: a necessarily swift fix

Microsoft has got this fix out quickly, as the company promised. The software giant said the bug would be fixed in a few days, and that's exactly what has happened — KB5085516 actually started rolling out two days ago, at the weekend.

So, at this point, you should definitely see the patch if you check under Windows Update. You won't see this fix, however, if you haven't installed the March update (KB5079473) yet, as you won't need it (of course). Presumably, Microsoft will have directly applied this emergency patch to the March update, so anybody installing the latter going forward won't encounter the bug.

Are you tempted to switch on 'Get the latest updates as soon as they're available' because this should ensure you get emergency updates like this one automatically? After all, if you don't, it's true that there's a chance you might miss an important fix if you don't read about it in an article like this. However, what you must bear in mind is that enabling this feature means you'll receive all of Microsoft's optional updates, too. These tend to be buggier than the release versions of monthly updates, which, as we see with the March update, can already play host to some troublesome gremlins.

So just be aware of what you might be signing up for, and I'd be wary of doing this unless you're a more confident PC user.

• Windows 11's March update has an annoying bug
• It breaks some apps which use a Microsoft account login, including OneDrive, Edge and the free version of Teams
• Microsoft has a workaround, but doesn't sound fully confident in it – though fortunately a patch is already underway and should arrive soon

Windows 11's latest update suffers from a bug which has broken some apps that use a Microsoft account login.

Bleeping Computer reports that the March update released last week (known as KB5079473) has messed up the Microsoft account sign-ins for OneDrive and the Edge browser, as well as the free version of Microsoft Teams, Microsoft 365 Copilot, along with Microsoft Word and Excel.

Microsoft explains: "As a result of this issue, sign in attempts will display an error message with text similar to 'You'll need the Internet for this. It doesn't look like you're connected to the Internet'. This appears even if the device is connected to the internet."

As to what can be done here, Microsoft's advice is: "This issue occurs when the device enters a specific network connectivity state, and may resolve on its own. If you encounter this issue, restart the device while keeping it connected to the internet. This should repair the device connectivity state and prevent the issue from occurring."

This is a bug that hits consumers more, as it's Microsoft accounts which are causing the problem. Microsoft clarifies that businesses using Entra ID won't be affected, and this is just Microsoft Teams Free which has a problem (via Microsoft account sign-ins which are prevalent with that freebie version).

That said, Windows 11 Enterprise versions have encountered other bugs with the March update which Microsoft has been forced to release emergency patches for. This includes a problem whereby Bluetooth devices aren't visible, so you can't connect them to the PC.

Analysis: workaround sounds a little hit-or-miss, but thankfully a patch is imminent

If you've had trouble with Edge or OneDrive logins, or indeed one of the other mentioned pieces of software, since installing last week's Windows 11 update, now you know the problem. And it might be quite a nasty one to come across, as folks could well assume there's something wrong with their internet connection, and may end up having a frustrating time of trying to troubleshoot an issue that doesn't actually exist.

As for the supplied workaround from Microsoft, it is effectively that old standby: turn it off, turn it on again. However, it's not too heartening to read that Microsoft believes this 'should repair' the internet connection, which doesn't sound as definitive as I'd like. Keep your fingers crossed, basically.

Microsoft says it's working on a resolution for the bug and it should be patched in the "next few days", so the good news is that at least this particular network-related gremlin shouldn't be hanging around for long.

Note that the February preview update – the optional release just before the March patch – also carried a very nasty bug for Samsung laptops where access to the system (C:) drive was lost. This was the fault of the Samsung Galaxy Connect app, mind, and not Windows 11, but if you were unfortunate enough to be affected, here's how to extract yourself from that particular mess.

• Russian APT28 (Fancy Bear) exploited CVE-2026-21509 in Microsoft Office days after patch release
• Malicious DOC files sent to Ukrainian government agencies via themed phishing lures
• CISA added the flaw to its KEV catalog, urging immediate patching

Russian hackers have attacked Ukrainian government agencies using a high-severity Microsoft Office vulnerability mere days after a patch was released.

On January 26, 2026, Microsoft pushed an emergency fix to address CVE-2026-21509, a reliance on untrusted inputs in a security decision vulnerability, that allows unauthorized attackers to bypass Microsoft Office security features locally. The bug was given a severity score of 7.6/10 (high), and was said to have already been abused in the wild as a zero-day.

Just three days later, Ukraine’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-UA) said it saw cybercriminals mailing dozens of government-related addresses malicious DOC files that were exploiting the flaw. Some were themed around the EU COREPER consultations, while others spoofed the country’s Hydrometeorological Center.

How to defend against APT28

CERT says that the attack is the work of APT28, a Russian state-sponsored threat actor also known as Fancy Bear, or Sofacy. The group is linked with the country’s General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU).

The researchers based their findings on the analysis of the malware loader used in these attacks. Apparently, it is the same one that was used in a June 2025 attack, in which Signal chats were used to deliver BeardShell and SlimAgent malware to Ukrainian government employees. This attack was confirmed to have been conducted by APT28.

To defend against the attacks, CERT-UA advised government entities (and everyone else, basically) to apply the latest patches and update their Microsoft Office 2016, 2019, LTSC 2021, LTSC 2024, and Microsoft 365 Apps. Office 2021 users were also reminded to restart their applications after updating, to make sure the patches are applied.

The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) already added CVE-2026-21509 to its catalog of known exploited vulnerabilities (KEV).

Those that cannot install the patches should make changes in Windows Registry, as mitigation. Microsoft has provided a step-by-step guide which can be found on this link.

Via BleepingComputer

• Microsoft Office password-protected files are now fully compatible with Google Workspace
• Previously, users had to download the files and open them in other software
• Google's push for interoperability and removing vendor lock-in is evident

An important new update to Google Workspace means you can now edit password-protected Microsoft Office software files directly within Docs, Sheets and Slides – or in other words, within your company's primary ecosystem, without having to navigate to alternative software.

This is big news for Google Workspace users as it offers one more reason why they may no longer need to subscribe to two different licenses.

When opening protected files, Google now lets users input the password and enter view-only or edit modes.

Google Workspace boosts Microsoft Office interoperability

The move is part of a much bigger trend that we've been observing in recent months and years, and it's hugely favorable for consumers and customers. With multi-platform stacks now the norm in a hybrid working world, companies like Google and Microsoft have been improving interoperability and compatibility to prevent vendor lock-in.

Google has already made similar moves across other areas of Workspace, such as interoperability between Google Meet and Microsoft Teams/Zoom.

Better still, this update is coming to all Google Workspace customers, not just paying businesses, so individuals will also be able to use Google (if that's their preferred system) to access more Office documents.

"Prior to this, users would have to download and rely on third party applications to remove passwords or edit password protected Microsoft files," Google wrote in its update blog post.

The feature has already starting rolling out, but some domains may not get it until the end of January 2026.

This isn't the only feature Google has been working on to tackle vendor lock-in. Over the past year the company has made it easier for businesses to migrate their data from Dropbox and SharePoint.

• Reports have surfaced about a Microsoft Office rebrand, but it's not all it seems
• Microsoft's central app is for files, scanning, editing, and interacting with AI
• Customers aren't happy that AI is being pushed on them

There's a whole lot of confusion surrounding Microsoft's supposed rebrand of Microsoft Office - with some users noticing a new message on the Office.com website.

This message states; “The Microsoft 365 Copilot app (formerly Office) lets you create, share and collaborate all in one place with your favorite apps now including Copilot."

This is a change from the previous name, 'Microsoft Office', but this change happened in 2022. The change was implemented to push consumers into using the Microsoft 365 Copilot app which, for the last year has been used as an access point for the Office apps alongside Copilot.

Microsoft wants you to think 'Copilot', not 'Office'

It's likely that these changes have caused confusion because of Microsoft's extended efforts to push Copilot onto its customers, whether they like it or not.

The change (whenever it happened), has prompted concern amongst users and critics, who are worried this may not only cause some confusion but also end the Office name, which has become an industry-agnostic icon (as evidenced by its $30+ billion quarterly revenue).

This means that apps like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint will be accessed through the M365 Copilot app. But - it also marks an even bigger push for generative AI tools.

For example, Office.com now redirects to a new M365 page, which offers subscriptions for Redmond's popular Office apps with Copilot subscriptions included by default.

The rebrand confusion has also coincided with recent price hikes, adding to customer frustration.

Microsoft's central M365 Copilot app is being marketed as an all-in-one productivity suite, which can be used for accessing files, scanning documents, editing work, and interacting with Copilot.

Markets that don't currently have access to Copilot will make do without the Copilot tab in the app, but the Microsoft 365 Copilot name and icon will remain for branding consistency. Non-paying customers will also be restricted from accessing Copilot's AI features.

The app is different from the Copilot app, which is the native way to interact with Redmond's AI chatbot.

Office's rebrand also served as the perfect opportunity for Microsoft to start using its new domains – pages previously under the office.com and microoft365.com domains are now redirected to m365.cloud.microsoft.

Following CEO Satya Nadella's recent plea for people to stop concerning themselves with AI slop and to focus on the tech's meaningful impacts, the term 'Microslop' was coined. One that has also been used in response to the renamed app being pushed on users, regardless of their AI needs.

• Report finds Microsoft Excel maintains its dominance across generations, bridging the gap between young and old
• Younger finance professionals report higher emotional attachment to Excel
• Its speed and functionality make it preferable over cloud-first spreadsheet tools

Microsoft Excel continues to hold a firm place in finance and accounting departments, despite being first released in 1985.

Originally competing with VisiCalc and Lotus 1-2-3, Microsoft’s spreadsheet software has outlasted its early rivals and established itself as a central tool for professionals.

Even younger finance workers who joined the workforce long after Excel’s debut report strong loyalty, suggesting that the software has successfully bridged generational divides - with only 5% of finance professionals expressed purely negative feelings toward Excel.

Excel remains indispensable

Research from to Datarails (via The Register) found over half (54%) of finance professionals aged 22 to 32 report "loving" Excel, a higher proportion than among older generations, where 39% express similar enthusiasm.

89% of all users expect the software to remain as important or more important in the next decade, and most would hesitate to accept roles that prohibit Excel use.

The popularity of Excel stems from its combination of speed, functionality, and local performance advantages over cloud-first alternatives like Google Sheets.

While Sheets pushes collaboration, Excel is favored for large datasets and complex modeling tasks, which are often critical for financial planning.

Airbus, for instance, cites file size limitations as a reason it continues to rely heavily on Excel for its finance team.

Pivot tables, conditional formatting, and other advanced features remain core elements that professionals across generations rely on to perform essential calculations efficiently.

These figures indicate that familiarity with Microsoft’s spreadsheet software translates into both professional reliance and personal preference.

Microsoft continues to add AI functionality to Excel, including Copilot features embedded directly into cells.

The enhancements aim to streamline repetitive tasks and offer predictive insights for complex data.

However, experts caution that such integration must respect the workflow skills users have developed over the years.

Events like the recent Microsoft Excel World Championship illustrate the software’s widespread adoption and the affection users feel for it.

It shows that Excel is more than just a productivity tool; it is a central component of many professionals’ productivity habits.

Excel’s integration with other office software and compatibility with spreadsheet software standards help ensure continued relevance.

Emerging productivity tools can only challenge its supremacy if they deliver equally powerful features with improved collaboration and efficiency.

• Microsoft Word will start autosaving to OneDrive automatically
• More OneDrive changes also aim to make sharing easier
• New third-generation sharing options are on the way

A new update to Microsoft’s productivity suite will see Microsoft Word automatically save documents to OneDrive by default, to make sure your work doesn’t go to waste if you accidentally close an app or have a power outage.

Insiders are already seeing the cloud backup feature roll out, with more users set to get the update in due course.

Microsoft says the change is designed to improve cloud storage backups and cross-device syncing in a world where hybrid work has seen a rise in multi-device setups, BYOD and on-the-go work.

Word has started saving to OneDrive automatically

“Your work is protected, instantly shareable, and ready for real-time collaboration,” 25-year Microsoft veteran and Product Management VP Jason Moore wrote in a blog post.

“Every day, we create and share more content than we can manage. From documents, images, meeting recordings, design drafts, spreadsheets, and photos that capture our lives. The real challenge isn’t just finding these files but turning them into momentum,” Moore added, covering new Copilot and OneDrive changes announced in a mini update.

The company has also added a shortcut to make shared files and folders display in OneDrive to make it easier to see all your projects’ content in one place.

Given Microsoft only noted cloud-first creation for Word documents, it’s unclear whether PowerPoint, Excel and other apps will automatically save to OneDrive as well.

Moore noted the rapid evolution of intelligence file management, seamless collaboration and personal content organization – all things covered by the OneDrive and Copilot update.

Looking ahead, Microsoft is also looking to bring OneDrive Photos galleries to Windows in a bid to keep up with Apple’s Photos app.

A separate entry into the Microsoft roadmap, tracked as 492622, reveals work on a “third-generation” M365 sharing experience for a “seamless and consistent way to share” – but that’s not due until April 2026.

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• Microsoft has a support article tackling Windows performance issues
• One tip is to turn off OneDrive syncing, as it "can slow down your PC"
• This is possibly one of the biggest bugbears when it comes to sluggish File Explorer performance in Windows 11

Microsoft has admitted that syncing files between your Windows 11 PC and OneDrive can slow your system down, while providing a bunch of tips on improving the performance of your computer.

Neowin flagged that Microsoft's support account on X highlighted a post that contains said performance tips for Windows 10 as well as Windows 11.

The article in Microsoft's support portal notes that: "If your PC is running slowly, the following suggestions might help speed things up."

The tips are provided in order, so the first one is the most important and potentially impactful, and the others follow, with the suggestion related to OneDrive coming in at number seven. (The others are mostly the standard fare: update everything – which is number one – check disk space, disable unnecessary apps, tone down fancy graphics in Windows, and so on).

Microsoft observes that OneDrive sync is enabled by default in Windows 11 (and 10) – mirroring files on your PC to the cloud storage service – to let you access your files from any device, wherever you are (as long as you're online). It further explains that those synced files in OneDrive also serve as a backup.

However, Microsoft concedes that the flipside of these benefits is that the process of syncing files on your computer to the cloud "can slow down your PC," and then gives you instructions on how to pause OneDrive syncing temporarily. That way, if you're having performance slowdowns, you can stop this syncing and see if it resolves those hiccups.

If you're curious, the way to pause syncing is to find the OneDrive icon in the taskbar's system tray (far-right) – it's the cloud graphic – right click on it, and under the Settings cog, you'll see the option to 'Pause syncing'.

Analysis: exploring causes of sluggishness

There have been quite a few complaints about File Explorer running extremely slowly in Windows 11, something Microsoft has acknowledged, and it's also something I've experienced myself on my Windows 11 laptop. OneDrive may well be tied into these kinds of slowdowns in some scenarios.

On my main PC, which is Windows 10, File Explorer runs noticeably snappier. And notably on my backup PC, which also has Windows 11 – and on which I've decoupled OneDrive – it also runs slickly.

So, if you're plagued by slow performance when working with the files and folders on your desktop (File Explorer), it's certainly worth pausing OneDrive syncing to see if this helps.

This isn't necessarily just about File Explorer sluggishness, though, and closing down OneDrive syncing could help performance in other areas of your PC – running other software or PC games, perhaps. As ever, any impact of syncing may be variable based on your particular PC configuration, system settings, and the workload that OneDrive might be undertaking at any given time obviously has a bearing on things.

You don't have to use OneDrive with Windows 11 or 10, even though Microsoft wants you to for obvious reasons – if you're going to subscribe for cloud storage, the software giant wants you to choose its service (and isn't shy about promoting it, either).

You can unlink your OneDrive account from your PC, though, and then uninstall the OneDrive app should you wish to go further (that said, it may reappear via subsequent Windows 11 updates, or that's certainly been a complaint I've seen aired in the past).

Microsoft is right about the benefits of cloud syncing for backup (and potentially file access from other devices, too), but remember, you don't have to go with OneDrive – there are other cloud storage providers out there.

In fact, there are other backup solutions. Just make sure you have one, and always remember that storing your data in the cloud with any service can be a good idea in some ways, but it does give a certain amount of power to a third-party, so you need to consider it as part of an overall 3-2-1 backup strategy.

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• Will Microsoft never learn? Leaked OneDrive app sparks fears of more pointless bloat in Windows 11
• Fed up with your mouse cursor supersizing itself randomly in Windows 11? Thankfully this frustrating bug should now be fixed
• No, Windows 11 PCs aren't 'up to 2.3x faster' than Windows 10 devices, as Microsoft suggests – here's why that's an outlandish claim

• Microsoft apparently has a new OneDrive app in the works
• The software was leaked and comes with a slick modern design
• However, it's proving divisive in terms of what the point of the app might be – but maybe we're not seeing the full picture yet

Microsoft is seemingly working on a new OneDrive app for Windows 11 with a clean and modern interface.

Windows Central reports that it has seen this creation, which was leaked from Microsoft's own servers. It appears to be a dedicated app for OneDrive, Microsoft's cloud storage service, but is a web-based piece of software rather than one natively coded for Windows 11. As ever, we advise caution around leaks, but it certainly sounds intriguing.

Windows Central assures us that, despite being a web app,. this fresh take on OneDrive isn't a sluggish piece of software (unlike the new Outlook app, which is also a web app, but suffers on the performance front).

The new OneDrive app starts by presenting you with your photo library, although it has a switch to flick back to its file management panel, where you can view everything (images, documents, all your files in the cloud).

In the photo panel you can easily access your 'Moments' – pictures from past years taken on the current date – as well as photo albums, and a gallery view.

Windows Central observes that the gallery view is "new, and not currently available on the normal OneDrive website", but there is a gallery view with the OneDrive site. I presume that our sister site means it's 'new' as in 'tweaked', and the main difference appears to be a new floating menu bar that appears when you select a photo - although that carries much the same options as the top menu bar that's summoned on the current OneDrive site.

At any rate, the new gallery view does look slicker, as does the whole interface here, which is it's all very nice, shiny and modern looking. (Again, remember that we should take all this info with an appropriate dose of seasoning).

Analysis: what's Microsoft driving at here?

So, yes, this is a nice-looking take on OneDrive in a neat app package for Windows 11, and the fact that we're told it runs smoothly and in a performant way sounds good. It's nice to have the 'Moments' (historical photos) functionality easily accessible too. It's part of the phone app, and I get notifications on my Windows 10 PC for moments linking through to the OneDrive website, but they're strangely sporadic.

Overall, though, there's not much here which is all that different to the OneDrive website – not as far as this leak shows, anyway. Of course, the leaked software here may somehow be an older version of the app, or there might be more to reveal – and further info could be coming soon.

Why do I say that? Because, funnily enough, Microsoft has its 'Annual OneDrive Digital Event' on October 8, so that might be a fitting time for an unveiling. Interestingly, the blurb for that event mentions "OneDrive's latest advancements in AI" quite a bit, so perhaps this app will have some AI infused in there, too - that would hardly be a surprise.

This purported new OneDrive app is a bit of a head-scratcher in some ways, though, given that you can already access Microsoft's cloud storage locker directly through Windows 11's folders (File Explorer) - or the Photos app for that matter. OK, so those methods aren't as neat and tidy, but still, because of this, there are folks reacting to this leak with confusion. They're questioning why Microsoft would even bother with this new app – given that, as noted, it doesn't appear to do much different.

Maybe Microsoft will explain all next week, and we'll just have to wait for the official revelation and details of what the OneDrive app can really do.

Meanwhile, there are already groans from a number of Windows 11 users on social media and the usual forums about how this is just going to be another unwanted default app in the OS that they have to strip out. That chatter is combined with cries from the cynical that this is just another way for Microsoft to try and push OneDrive (and subscriptions therein – something the company has been keen on doing in the past, it must be noted).

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• Microsoft Excel celebrates 40 years as the spreadsheet that reshaped business and personal computing
• New AI-powered tools and creative communities extend Excel’s uses far beyond accounting
• Google Sheets presents the most serious challenge to Excel’s dominance

Microsoft Excel recently celebrated its 40th anniversary (although with old software it can often be hard to pin down an actual launch date), cementing its place as one of the most recognizable pieces of software in the world.

From finance departments to classrooms, Excel has become a universal spreadsheet tool for organizing, analyzing and presenting data. Everyone in an office environment has likely encountered it, if they haven’t fully mastered it.

The idea of the modern spreadsheet began in 1979 with VisiCalc, created by Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston for the Apple II. That became one of the first killer apps, convincing companies to purchase computers just to run it.

Excel excels

VisiCalc’s early success faded after Lotus 1-2-3 introduced features such as macros, which allowed users to automate repetitive tasks. Lotus soon dominated the market, only to be overtaken by Microsoft.

Excel first appeared on the Apple Macintosh in 1985. It sported a graphical interface from the start, unlike its text-based competitors.

Microsoft then ported Excel to Windows, where it quickly gained ground against Lotus and Borland’s Quattro Pro.

By the early 1990s, Excel had established itself as the clear market leader, a position it has clung on to ever since.

Over the years, Excel has gained features that extend far beyond simple number crunching.

The introduction of Visual Basic for Applications in the 1990s gave users the ability to write custom functions and automate complex workflows.

Later updates included pivot tables, 3D charts, and eventually the ribbon interface, which changed how users navigated commands.

While business remains its core, Excel’s reach has stretched into unexpected areas.

“There are so many fascinating ways people use Excel - far beyond the typical finance or accounting scenarios,” said Cuong Pham, who manages a global community of fans. Users have built art, games and even music inside its grid of rows and columns.

Excel has also inspired competitions. Latvian consultant Andrew Grigolyunovich founded the Excel World Championship, which became an arena event in Las Vegas.

Today, Excel has Copilot and AI features like Agent Mode, where users can generate full spreadsheets through simple prompts, and we can expect Microsoft to add more such functionality going forward.

Excel’s dominance is no longer what it once was however. Google Sheets, for example, has become the spreadsheet of choice in many classrooms and small businesses with its cloud integration and real-time collaboration.

Its lighter, browser-based approach appeals to a generation less tied to desktop software, and of course it’s free.

Microsoft has responded with Excel on the web, which mirrors much of the traditional program while adding online access, but Sheets remains the default option for many who start their work in a browser.

As Excel turns 40, it faces the challenge of adapting to a future where data work increasingly happens in shared online environments.

How well Microsoft integrates AI and advanced collaboration features into its software stalwart could decide whether it continues to lead or share the stage with Google Sheets.

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• Microsoft continues tribunal fight over legality of reselling Office and Windows licenses
• ValueLicensing claims Microsoft restricted resale market and seeks £270 million in damages
• Outcome could reshape the future of Europe’s second-hand software industry

Microsoft’s long-running dispute with ValueLicensing, a UK reseller of pre-owned licenses for products like Windows and Office, returns to the Competition Appeal Tribunal this week, with the US tech giant now arguing that selling pre-owned Office and Windows licenses is unlawful.

ValueLicensing says the trial will focus on whether the entire resale market for perpetual Microsoft licenses is legal, or indeed ever has been, and the result could have huge implications for Europe’s popular second-hand software market.

The reseller contends that if Microsoft’s argument succeeds, it would mean second-hand license trading should never have existed in Europe.

A change of stance

The case, which has been going on for several years now, stems from ValueLicensing’s claims that Microsoft restricted the availability of pre-owned licenses.

According to the reseller, Microsoft offered customers discounts on subscription services if they surrendered their perpetual licenses, limiting the stock available to firms like ValueLicensing.

It also alleges Microsoft inserted contract clauses that curtailed resale rights in exchange for further price cuts. This strategy, ValueLicensing claims, cost it £270 million in lost profits.

Microsoft’s defense rests on the claim that it owns copyright not just to program code, but also to elements such as the graphical user interface.

The tech giant says the European Software Directive does not apply to such components, meaning resale is not allowed.

ValueLicensing boss Jonathan Horley said Microsoft’s position had shifted dramatically, from denying anti-competitive conduct to arguing that the resale market itself should not exist. "It's a remarkable coincidence that their defense against ValueLicensing has changed so dramatically from being a defense of 'we didn't do it' to a defense of 'the market should never have existed,'" he said.

Microsoft’s stance draws on a precedent from the Tom Kabinet ruling, which found that software resale was allowed but that e-books were different.

Microsoft is seeking to place its own products outside the rules that allowed secondary trading by making the interface distinct from software code.

The tribunal’s decision could determine whether Europe’s thriving trade in pre-owned software survives or vanishes entirely.

Via The Register

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• Microsoft Word now saves new documents in the cloud by default
• Users no longer need to manually save before AutoSave works
• Some insider builds lack the feature, and new glitches prevent cloud saving if multiple sessions of Word are open

Microsoft has quietly introduced a default cloud saving feature in Word for Windows, a change which alters how new files are handled.

For years, users of Google Docs and Microsoft Word Online (the cloud version) have enjoyed automatic storage in the cloud from the moment a document is created.

Now Microsoft Word, one of the world’s most widely used word processors, is moving closer to that model, announcing that by default, new files are now automatically stored online with a date-stamped name, unless users actively choose a different location or title.

How it works and what's different

Previously, Microsoft Word required a manual save before the AutoSave switch became active, leaving documents vulnerable to crashes or user oversight.

The new option, labeled "Create new files in the cloud automatically," is enabled in the Save tab by default.

This means users will not need to take the first step of saving a document manually, as it will already exist in their chosen cloud folder.

The integration also extends to Microsoft’s Copilot, which can access documents as soon as they are saved, provided the user has the necessary license.

Despite the promise of reliability, the feature is not without glitches. If a new session of Word is launched while another remains open, the new file may not be saved automatically.

Likewise, disabling the “Show the start screen” option prevents the first file from being stored in the cloud.

Some users in the Microsoft 365 Insider Beta channel report that the feature has not appeared even in builds where Microsoft claims it should.

The company said if users save anything new, it will automatically save to OneDrive, SharePoint, or any preferred cloud destination.

However, the company has been vague about what it means by a "preferred cloud destination."

Whether services offering free cloud storage or decentralized systems will be allowed remains to be seen.

Nextcloud’s leadership has already criticized Microsoft for bundling its own services and limiting alternatives.

"Microsoft is further pushing user data into its cloud, boosting its control and monetization opportunities. To placate regulators, it allows a few big competitors as alternatives, but excludes decentralized options such as Nextcloud," Frank Karlitschek, Nextcloud founder and CEO, told The Register.

On the surface, default cloud saving looks like a practical safeguard, especially for those who rely on large documents tied to a cloud database. However, the move also raises questions around privacy, compatibility, and market dominance.

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• A Microsoft support document reveals a new twist on Windows 10's extended update scheme
• Even if you pay $30 for the program, you'll need to have a Microsoft account
• The good news is that up to 10 devices are supported with one license

We've had a surprise late revelation that Windows 10's extended update scheme will require you to have a Microsoft account, even if you pay for those updates (and don't take up the free offer).

Windows Central uncovered a Microsoft support document carrying this info, which has left more than a few people unhappy.

When Microsoft revealed its Extended Security Updates (ESU) program, the company made it clear that the cost would be $30 for an extra year of support, through to October 2026 (normal support ends this October). Then later, Microsoft relented and offered a free option, allowing Windows 10 users to instead choose to sync their PC settings to its cloud service - which, of course, is going to require a Microsoft account (to be signed into OneDrive, where the data is synced).

Folks assumed that if they went the paying route, spending $30 would be the only requirement - but it turns out that you'll also need a Microsoft account to avail yourself of the ESU in this way, meaning a local account on your PC won't suffice.

Microsoft tells us: "All enrollment options provide extended security updates through October 13, 2026. You will need to sign into your Microsoft account in order to enroll in ESU."

Elsewhere in the support document, Microsoft notes: "The ESU license is tied to your Microsoft account, so you may be prompted to sign in if you typically sign into Windows with a local account."

There is some good news here, though, which is that Microsoft also clarifies that this extended support program can be used on up to 10 devices. So, as long as those Windows 10 PCs are all signed in to the Microsoft account that has picked up the ESU offer, they're good to go.

Analysis: Local loss

Regardless of how you access the ESU scheme, the license you get must be tied to a Microsoft account. If you've forgotten those options, you can pay $30, sync your PC settings to OneDrive, as mentioned, or alternatively, use 1,000 Microsoft Rewards points (if you have them).

The reason for the Microsoft account requirement is doubtless so the software giant can police the 10-device limit, but as noted, this is going to cause some degree of bad feeling. Given that Microsoft has been pushing against being able to have a local account at all when setting up Windows 11 - and notably closing loopholes that are present to fudge your way around having to tie an installation to a Microsoft account - people are only going to be suspicious that this is just another way to shove them into getting a Microsoft account.

If you're paying $30 for the privilege of an extra year of support, shouldn't forking out that cash be enough? I think so, and Microsoft could always just warn you that if you don't use a Microsoft account, you'll only get support on a single device (the one you're signing up with). Then users could decide to proceed, or not, with linking to an account based on their preference in that regard.

If you do have multiple Windows 10 PCs, mind, it's no doubt good to know that you can cover them all with just a single sign-up for the ESU (even using the free offer).

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• Windows 11 users are seeing a positive change, but also a less-welcome one
• The good news is the 'second-chance out-of-box experience' nag has been streamlined considerably
• The bad news is there's a new nag pop-up in the Start menu that pushes you towards taking out a OneDrive subscription

Microsoft has tidied up one annoyance with Windows 11, but sadly appears to have introduced another - and more vexing – irritation in its place.

Let's start with the good news here, which Neowin flagged up and involves the 'second-chance out-of-box experience' (SCOOBE for short). That's fancy-talk for a nag screen that appears after booting to the desktop, trying to get you to configure elements of Windows 11 that you didn't bother with when setting up your PC originally.

Setting up your Windows PC is known as the out-of-box experience (OOBE), as in you just got the device out of the box and turned it on – so this panel is essentially pushing this stuff on you again, in the hopes you might use the Windows Backup app, for instance (or switch to Edge).

Now, as it exists currently, this SCOOBE nagging is a multi-panel affair that you have to click through (there are three panels, if my memory serves correctly).

However, in a recent preview release in the Dev channel for Windows 11 (build 26200.5722), Microsoft has changed the SCOOBE so it's just a single panel, and you can dismiss it with one click.

At least now when it appears – and if you leave parts of Windows 11 setup unfinished it'll keep popping up every few months or so – it'll be more painless to swat aside.

So, that's something (vaguely) positive – but unfortunately Microsoft appears to have introduced a new nag in its place.

Windows Latest noticed the new, more annoying, addition that has arrived in the Start menu of Windows 11 and consists of a pop-up that states: 'Action advised – back up your PC'.

Underneath that is some spiel about backing up your files, settings and so forth in the cloud, and if you click on the 'Continue' prompt Microsoft provides you'll be whisked off to Windows Backup. (And that backup app is facilitated by OneDrive – and with the low amount of free space included with Microsoft's cloud storage service, you'll almost certainly need a subscription, which is the crux of this prompt in terms of selling you something).

Analysis: SCOOBE Dooby don't

So, while this Start menu addition is a warning on the face of it, really it's just a way of trying to get you to take out a subscription with Microsoft. And while this could be a useful prompt to remind some people they need to back up their files, the problem is that others may well have already sorted out a backup via another app (or gone elsewhere in the cloud) – but if they've not used Microsoft's official channel, then they're going to get nagged to do so.

As Windows Latest makes clear, these prompts will likely keep appearing periodically – like the SCOOBE – and there's no way you can turn them off. That's because Microsoft has flagged this Windows Backup nag as a 'required' prompt, so it can't be avoided, unlike the SCOOBE, which you can actually switch off. (You can do so in Settings > System > Notifications > Additional Settings).

In my book, there should be no such thing as compulsory nags, and if you want to use Windows 11 without being pestered by a single pop-up along these lines, you should be able to tick a box to that effect. Interestingly, Windows Latest observes that with a test Windows 11 installation using an EU region, this alert didn't appear in the Start menu – so this change may not happen in Europe due to its data regulations (which are proving quite a boon in some ways).

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• Consumers given until January 2026 to update Office to retain support for voice tools
• A backend update means older versions will no longer be supported
• A broader Office/Windows update push is ongoing

Microsoft is warning users of older versions of Office that they will soon be losing access to certain voice tools, including transcription, dictation and read aloud, as of January 2026.

The dropped features include systems to read documents and emails aloud, speech-to-text conversions and voice-to-text input, but those who fail to update to Office version 16.0.18827.20202 or newer will lose out.

This is for most casual users, however Government Cloud users including GCC, GCC High and DoD environments will have an additional two months to apply the change.

Older Microsoft Office versions losing voice tools soon

"To ensure continued high-quality performance of the Read Aloud, Transcription, and Dictation features in Microsoft 365 Office apps, we're upgrading the backend service that powers these capabilities," the notice warned.

Microsoft justified the change by adding it is upgrading the backend service which powers these voice features, therefore older versions must lose support to ensure ongoing compatibility with newer versions.

Word, Outlook, OneNote and PowerPoint are among the most commonly used apps to lose support for voice tools, and there will be no local fallback once the deadline is passed. Perpetual license holders will already be used to limited functionality, lacking most cloud-powered voice tools already.

This isn't the only change that Office users are facing in the coming months – by October 14, 2025, Office 2016 and 2019 will reach end of extended support. Office apps on Windows 10 also lose support later this year, with Windows 10 itself going out of date in October too.

With numerous Microsoft-related deadlines all approaching at rapid speed, the company is finally seeing an uptick in adoption of its latest software. Windows 11 installs finally overtook Windows 10 installs for the first time in July 2025, after a moment of crossover in June.

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• Android phone owners can now quickly view Office files in a hassle-free way
• Previously, if you were sent an Office file, you had to sign in to your Microsoft account even to have a swift glance at it
• No login is required now, as has been the case with iOS for a while

Microsoft has just brought the anonymous file sharing ability that was already in iOS to Android users, so those phone owners can view an Office file that’s been sent to them without being forced to log in to their Microsoft account.

Currently, if you get sent a link to a Word file (or other Microsoft Office format such as Excel), when you access it on an Android smartphone, you’ll have to sign in to your Microsoft account before you can view it.

However, as Android Authority reports, Microsoft has now done away with that requirement, so you can simply click and view the Office file on your phone. But if you want to do anything else – like editing a Word document you’ve received, or popping in a comment – then you’ll still need to sign in, as those changes need to be attributed to you. (You will see a prompt informing you of this, by the way).

You’ll need an up-to-date version of Office on your mobile for this to work, though, with Microsoft noting in the blog post introducing the change that version 16.0.18827.20066 or later is required.

As Android Authority observes, the ability to click a link and open an Office file in this way, without being signed in, has been available on iPhone for a few months now.

Analysis: About time for Android

It took some time to provide this functionality for Android, then, which is a bit odd, seeing as you’d think that’d be a priority for Microsoft (with that mobile OS representing the majority of smartphones). Still, it’s good to see the feature debut, even if Android users have had to wait a while for this trick to be drafted across.

Obviously, it’s quite inconvenient to click a link on a file you’ve been sent and then be prompted to sign in, if all you want to do, perhaps, is have a quick glance at the document that’s been sent.

I should note that the sender of the file still needs to be logged in with their Microsoft account to share a file, of course, it’s only the recipient that can view the file (and only view it) anonymously, with no sign-in needed.

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• CSE-protected Word documents are to be supported in Google Docs (currently in beta)
• Some features may not be fully functioning to begin with
• Admins must apply for beta access

Google has announced a handy new update coming to its online productivity suite, allowing users to view and edit client-side encrypted Microsoft Word (.docx) files from within the Google Docs interface.

The benefit for users is that edits will continue to be saved in the original Word format, enabling the use of Google Workspace with all the familiar Word tools and formats.

Google's updated feature also maintains data confidentiality by keeping the client-side encryption (CSE) active, however there are some restrictions in place.

Edit CSE-protected Word docs in Google Docs

"This update makes it easy for you to leverage Google Workspace with the tools and formats you already use while preserving confidentiality of your sensitive data with client-side encryption," Google's announcement reads.

While the feature remains in beta, users will need to work within the feature's limitations. For example, it only supports .docx files (not other Word file types), and a maximum file size of 20MB applies. Some feature incompatibles may also occur – some Word features may be view-only or non-editable in Docs, and others may be lost or altered after editing.

Google confirmed: "As we continue to improve Office editing in encrypted Google Docs, you may encounter incompatibilities for certain features." The company said that notifications will appear if edits are expected to cause feature loss.

Google Workspace Enterprise Plus, Education Standard, Enterprise Plus and Frontline Plus will get access to the feature, however it requires admins to request access via a form. Once accepted, they'll get immediate access to the beta feature.

"Eligible Google Workspace admins can use this form to request access to the beta. We’ll share more specific instructions once you’re accepted into the beta," Google said.

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Businesses that don’t want to commit to long-term contracts for cloud collaboration services should check out HiDrive from web-hosting company Ionos. You can choose between four plans, and all are available on affordable monthly contracts so you can cancel them with minimum notice.

Ionos doesn’t offer free trials but you can try it out for next to nothing, with a one-year HiDrive Business contract currently costing a piffling 50p per month for five users and 1TB of cloud storage. We wanted to see everything HiDrive has to offer so we tried out the Pro plan, which costs £20 per month, starts with 2TB of cloud storage for ten users, enables support for the SMB/CIFS, FTP/SFTP, Rsync, SCP and Git protocols, and rounds it off with data backup services for users’ personal devices.

The HiDrive admin portal is simple to use, and you create new users by sending email invitations. For greater security, you can globally enable two-factor authentication (2FA) and assign admin rights to selected users, although roles aren’t supported so they will have full access to all settings.

After creating their account, users can download the Windows or macOS desktop syncing app. This worked fine on our Windows 11 clients, and the latest version sees a redesigned interface with easier access to all features.

Users choose the cloud folders they want synchronized to their local mapped drive and how to respond when external storage devices are inserted. Along with encryption of data in flight and at rest in the HiDrive cloud servers, the Pro plan enables end-to-end encryption, although this is left in the hands of each user who can choose to apply this from the desktop app and manage their own keys.

Device backups are also controlled entirely by users. They can enable this for selected folders, schedule it to run regularly and recover data from the app or their own portal. A concern is that total cloud storage is not per user but shared among them all and, as admins have no control over device backups, they’ll need to monitor usage closely.

HiDrive doesn’t do file versioning, but all plans provide automatic backup of cloud data. Admins can run this as often as every four hours, retain data for up to a year, and users can access the backups from their portal and restore selected items to a cloud folder or download them as ZIP files.

Each user has a personal repository in their portal for creating folders and uploading files to them. They can choose to share selected items in this area with anyone, including external collaborators, by emailing a web link with optional password protection, read/write privileges and expiry dates.

Sharing files between team members is handled by a “Common” area in the web portal. Only account administrators are allowed to create new folders within this and determine which users have read or read/write access, after which they become accessible in their own portal.

No Outlook or Gmail plugins are provided so all sharing and file upload requests must be sent from the user portal, with the latter limiting maximum file sizes to 2GB. HiDrive doesn’t integrate with any third-party apps, but users can load popular files such as Word documents or Excel spreadsheets from their portal and edit them in a browser without needing the relevant app installed.

Small businesses that want simple cloud file-sharing services will find Ionos HiDrive Pro ticks a lot of boxes. App integrations and collaboration tools are minimal, but it’s easy to use and, although cloud storage is shared, it’s still comparatively good value.

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• Microsoft 365 will start blocking ActiveX by default
• The “powerful” tool put users at risk of remote code execution
• Users won’t be able to create or interact with ActiveX objects

Microsoft has revealed ActiveX will be disabled by default in Microsoft 365 starting this month, citing security as the company’s key deciding factor.

In a blog post, Microsoft Office Security Product Manager Zaeem Patel acknowledged while ActiveX, which enables rich interactions within Microsoft 365 applications, is a “powerful technology,” however it’s also one that comes with associated security risks thanks to the amount of access it has to a user’s system.

From April 2025, Microsoft will disable all controls without notification by default across Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint and Microsoft Visio.

Microsoft starts blocking ActiveX by default this month

Patel criticized previous default settings for putting users at risk of being exploited by attackers through social engineering or malicious files.

A successful ActiveX attack could grant malicious actors access to remote code execution, putting a victim’s system and the entire organization’s network at risk.

Enabling ActiveX now requires manual action through the Trust Center, and that’s assuming system admin permissions allow access to this. Users without access will see the option greyed out, instead.

“When ActiveX is disabled, you will no longer be able to create or interact with ActiveX objects in Microsoft 365 files,” Patel confirmed.

Described as “small building blocks that create applications that work over the Internet through Web browsers,” Microsoft explains in a separate support page how ActiveX controls can be used for command buttons, list boxes and dialog boxes.

“Some existing ActiveX objects will still be visible as a static image, but it will not be possible to interact with them,” Patel added.

Beta Channel users are already being affected with the change, with Current Channel (Preview) users running Version 2504 (Build 18730.20030) or later also experiencing the change this month.

In an apparent acknowledgement that some users may not be happy about the change and the fact that there’s no real direct replacement, Microsoft is offering to collect feedback via File > Feedback in any Microsoft 365 app.

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Veritas Backup Exec (BE) has always been one of our top choices for on-premises data protection. It delivers a comprehensive range of backup and recovery services. The BE Simple licensing plans make it very affordable for SMBs, and BE 22.2 on review introduces plenty of new and welcome features.

Microsoft 365 (MS365) backups now support SharePoint and Teams as well as Exchange Online and OneDrive. Microsoft Azure Object Lock provides ransomware-protected immutable cloud storage, backups to ReFS volumes can be accelerated, anomaly detection protects backup scripts from tampering, and BE now uses the FIPs-compliant deduplication engine from Veritas’ enterprise NetBackup product.

The simple yearly subscription service is based only on compute instances, which can be a physical system, a virtual machine or ten MS365 users. The starter five-instance Simple Core Pack costs an agreeable £489 per year, and Veritas generously includes a bonus instance for an extra ten MS365 users.

Deployment is swift; we installed BE on a Dell PowerEdge R760xs Windows Server 2022 host in 20 minutes. After declaring our physical servers using their IP addresses, BE pushed the remote agent to them while for our Hyper-V systems, we just needed the agent loaded on the host to secure all its virtual machines.

Adding our VMware vSphere host was simple, and we only had to provide its IP address and credentials. MS365 couldn’t be any easier, either: we added our tenant using the link provided by BE and entered the unique device code it generated for us.

Backup job creation is simple, too: you just select sources from the list presented and choose from a range of predefined strategies. These include backup to disk or cloud, and you can add extra stages in the job for local and offsite backup, replication to other disk stores or conversion to VMs, and add an essential air gap by migrating backup data to tape drives attached to the BE host.

BE supports plenty of storage locations, including physical and virtual disks, cloud, tape, deduplicating stores and network shares. For our tests, we created a local store on the BE server, used a multi-TB share on a Synology NAS appliance and added immutable cloud storage using an Amazon S3 bucket with Object Lock enabled.

Veritas takes data protection very seriously, and the job wizard always advises you to enable encryption. You can choose from 128-bit or 256-bit AES encryption and, if required, only allow the user that created the key for a job to recover data from it.

Data restoration is another pleasant experience: you select a source, view its files, folders or volumes, pick a recovery point and decide where to send them. Creating a simplified recovery disk brings bare metal recovery into play, BE’s Instant GRT (granular recovery technology) is used to restore items such as SQL databases and the Instant VM Recovery feature takes seconds to create a new VM from a backup set. MS365 backups require a deduplicating store, and the best practice is to apply encryption at the store and not the job level otherwise data reduction may not be as efficient. We created one job to protect our Exchange, OneDrive, SharePoint sites and Teams data and used the restore wizard to recover data by choosing a component and selecting a time point.

SMBs that want every data backup and recovery angle covered will love Backup Exec 22.2. It offers a superb range of features, is a strong candidate for protecting virtual environments, cloud support is excellent and it’s very competitively priced.

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The ability to work from anywhere has become a necessity rather than a luxury. Microsoft Office Online provides this flexibility, yet many users only scratch the surface of what these web-based applications can offer.

Recently, I had to rely exclusively on these online versions for a month-long project, and what I discovered surprised me.

These applications are not just simplified versions of their desktop counterparts; they are powerful tools with unique advantages.

Whether you are a longtime Office user or someone who has primarily relied on Google's suite of tools, these insights about Microsoft's cloud-based offerings may change how you approach your daily workflow.

Here are five things I never realized about using Microsoft Office Online until I had no other choice...

Office Online has a built-in accessibility checker

Microsoft Office Online includes a built-in accessibility checker, which is a valuable tool designed to help make documents accessible for people with disabilities.

This checker thoroughly analyzes your documents to identify potential accessibility barriers. It highlights issues such as missing alternative text for images, poor color contrast, absent table headers, structural problems like missing headings, and unclear hyperlink text.

You can access this feature under the "Review" tab or by selecting "Check Accessibility" from the sidebar menu.

When you run the checker, it generates a detailed report that categorizes issues by severity, including errors, warnings, and tips, along with specific guidance for resolving each problem.

What makes this tool particularly helpful is its educational approach. It explains why each accessibility issue matters, helping users understand how different document elements impact individuals with disabilities. This understanding enables users to create more accessible content over time.

The "Tell Me" feature ... becomes Copilot

One of my favorite Office features was “Tell Me,” a versatile search tool that enhanced the overall experience beyond basic help functions. When you clicked on the Tell Me box, you can. quickly find commands, features, or help topics without having to navigate through menus.

Tell Me is no longer part of Office. Instead, there’s Microsoft Copilot.

Microsoft Copilot in Office Online significantly enhances productivity by integrating AI into your familiar web-based applications. It serves as an intelligent assistant that can assist you with a variety of tasks.

In Word Online, Copilot can help with drafting, editing, and summarizing documents, enabling you to quickly create and refine written content.

In Excel Online, it can analyze data, generate formulas, and create visualizations, streamlining data processing and analysis. While using PowerPoint Online, Copilot can generate presentations based on prompts or existing documents and suggest design layouts.

Additionally, across Office Online, Copilot can summarize email threads in Outlook Online and help with meeting summaries in Teams Online.

This AI-powered tool leverages your Microsoft 365 data, ensuring the assistance provided is relevant and personalized, while also adhering to your organization's security and privacy policies.

You can use Office Online to edit PDF files in Word

You cannot directly edit PDF files in Word using Office Online. However, you can convert the PDF to Word format first by using an online converter tool like Adobe Acrobat Online, which allows you to convert PDFs to Word without needing to install any additional software.

Another option is DocFly, which also enables you to convert PDF files to Word format, though there is a limit on the number of free conversions you can perform each month.

Once you have converted the file to a .docx format, you can open and edit it in Word Online through your browser.

After making your edits, save the document using Word's "Save As" or "Export" function to convert it back to PDF format.

There's a "Focus Mode" in Word Online that removes distractions

Focus Mode in Word Online is a valuable productivity feature designed to help writers concentrate on their content by minimizing distractions.

When activated, Focus Mode hides the ribbon interface, toolbars, and sidebars, creating a clean, distraction-free writing environment where only your text is visible.

This feature also adjusts the document view to improve readability, often providing a more comfortable background color and text size.

While in Focus Mode, basic editing tools remain accessible through minimal, unobtrusive controls that appear only when needed and otherwise stay hidden.

Users can customize certain aspects of the Focus Mode experience, such as page width and background color, to fit their personal preferences.

To activate Focus Mode in Word Online, you can typically find it under the "View" tab or by clicking the "Focus" button.

Exiting Focus Mode is easy; you can do so by pressing the Escape key or clicking the exit button.

This feature is particularly beneficial for writers who need to focus for extended periods or anyone working on lengthy documents who wants to reduce visual clutter.

You can record audio notes directly in OneNote Online

The web version of OneNote includes a dictation feature that allows you to use speech-to-text technology to create content.

To utilize this feature, simply go to Home > Dictate while signed into Microsoft 365 on a device equipped with a microphone and an internet connection.

Once you're set up, start speaking and you'll see your words appear on the screen.

However, the desktop version of OneNote offers more advanced audio recording features.

It not only records audio but also synchronizes your note-taking with time stamps during the recording process.

This means you can easily jump to a specific point in the recording by selecting a corresponding paragraph in your notes.

If you want to organize your notes in paragraph format while recording audio, you can type notes about the content of the audio during the recording. OneNote will automatically record the time stamp for each note.

When you want to play back from a specific paragraph, simply place your cursor in that paragraph, and a play icon will appear on the left. You can click this icon to start playback from that point.

• We used our WhatsApp channel to ask which online backup service our readers use
• 2,664 readers voted, and a staggering 1,300 choose Google Drive
• Let us know in the comments which service you use

To mark World Backup Day, we asked our TechRadar Pro readers which services they use through our WhatsApp channel (which you can join here!).

Most of us choose to backup our files online. It saves you from buying physical hard drives every time you run out of storage, and your storage is just one click away, making it super accessible. You’ve plenty of options too - with Apple Cloud, Microsoft OneDrive, Google Photos, and iDrive all amongst the most popular choices.

From our readers' responses, one cloud provider is by far the most popular, and that's Google Drive, with over 1,300 respondents choosing the service - that's over 50%. We’ve reviewed Google Drive, so this is not too much of a surprise - as the service is quick and simple to use.

Worryingly, the survey revealed 10% of our readers still don’t back up their files, so if you're one of those who need convincing, we’ve listed 5 reasons why you should backup your data to the cloud - be sure to keep your data safe!

Backup options

Apple Cloud also ranks very well, with 21% of our readers using this service. This service is very Apple centric, with only limited support for Windows and Android users, but is a great option for anyone with an ever more popular Apple ecosystem! Apple offers a tiered subscription service, and keeps your files safe with an encryption - check out our full review here to see just why this service is the most popular.

Another popular choice is OneDrive, with 377 respondents choosing this service (14%). From our testing, OneDrive has improved a great deal recently, and is particularly useful for anyone who already spends a lot of time using Windows. OneDrive has fantastic mobile app experience, and is integrated closely with Windows and Microsoft 365 - so check it out if you use these regularly.

Surprisingly, DropBox received fewer than 100 votes, despite being one of our best rated backup services. Although not the cheapest option, DropBox has plenty of useful file sharing options and an exceptionally smooth user experience.

Similarly, IDrive only received 16 votes from our readers, but is a very highly rated service by our experts. IDrive offers end-to-end encryption and a host of backup methods and device options, so take a look at our rating if you're looking for something new.

Whichever service you choose, making sure your data is protected should be a priority for both personal and business users.

"Data is the lifeblood of today's businesses, which means data loss can lead to catastrophic business failure," notes Alexander Huang, Director of Product and Customer Support at Laserfiche. "World Backup Day is a reminder to act now - before it’s too late. Organizations should evaluate their backup strategy today and safeguard your business against data disasters.”

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Agentic AI is the tech world’s latest obsession.

Now that we’ve gotten the hang of generative AI, we’re witnessing a rapid evolution of AI tools that can operate autonomously and take actions on behalf of users. As this tech grows in popularity at the consumer level, many business leaders are still hesitant to implement it. A recent survey by Prosper Insights & Analytics revealed that while 43.3% of respondents are leveraging AI to generate summaries or help them with research, less than a quarter (23.2%) are using it to execute work tasks.

What’s holding businesses back from using agentic AI to its full potential? As with any new tech innovation, there are a fair amount of misconceptions to sort through. For businesses to stay competitive and avoid leaving money on the table they must be able to confront these myths – and fears – head on.

Myth #1: Agentic AI is a rogue, uncontrollable technology destined to overthrow humanity.

In other words, the Skynet fear. And don’t get me wrong, AI is absolutely able to execute many tasks as well as (or sometimes better than) their human users. But let me be perfectly clear: it’s very difficult to build robots that can entirely replace human labor or ingenuity. In fact, agentic solutions work best when they’re used for the routine, rather than the creative or intrinsically human.

As an example, my wife and I have a household GPT called “Littknows.” It has all of our medical and insurance cards, our owner documents, our vendor information, and so on. When we first started using it, we asked it to field questions like “When does our car insurance policy renew?” or “What will my co-pay be at the dentist today?”

But more recently, we’ve started using it to take things off our plate. Littknows helps us make doctors’ appointments and book travel - it’s like having a household manager who can pick up our slack and keep us organized. This is a prime example of agentic AI helping us do more, better, and faster.

Myth #2: Agentic AI will replace knowledge workers, triggering a mass unemployment crisis

The fear that AI will replace human workers is perhaps the biggest detractor from widespread adoption, but this isn’t the first time innovation has led to concerns like these.

Think back to the invention of Microsoft Excel. When the pen-and-paper processes of the past were suddenly streamlined, bookkeepers were scared. They thought it was only a matter of time before they were eliminated completely by a faster, more efficient solution.

And, truthfully, the amount of bookkeepers did decline.

But then we saw an explosion of new roles. For example, having access to easily manipulatable data birthed Financial Planning and Analysis - an entirely new career path. People who started their careers in bookkeeping were able to upskill and find opportunities to be compensated three times as much. This technology made them more effective at their jobs, allowed them to improve their skill sets, and advance their careers in ways that weren’t available to them before.

We’re going to see a similar trajectory with agentic AI. The reduction of entry-level, admin-heavy jobs like sales and business development reps will usher in new, higher-impact roles better suited for humans and our unique abilities.

Myth #3: Agentic AI is a luxury for tech giants with a lot of cash

Adopting agentic AI doesn’t necessarily mean net new investments in prohibitively expensive tools. Many SaaS providers are working to incorporate agentic solutions into their existing products, which means the tech your company already invests in may soon offer powerful and intelligent capabilities.

Furthermore, agentic AI is becoming more accessible by the day. But say your business really doesn’t have the extra budget to put toward agentic tools. It could be the case that you’re looking for dollars in the wrong place.

Consider Klarna as an example. When employees leave Klarna due to natural attrition, the company doesn’t immediately backfill their roles. Instead, teams assess if they can automate a part - if not all - of the job. If so, the role is eliminated and a portion of the headcount savings are redistributed to increase the pace at which employee salaries grow.

As a smaller company, you can’t be expected to outhire your larger competitors. But you can and should be finding leverage with AI tools to make your smaller team that much more efficient. It’s not a matter of spending more, it’s a matter of being more efficient with the resources you already have. Just look at companies like ElevenLabs – which went from zero to $100M ARR in two years with just 50 people, all because they prioritized AI capabilities. The right investment is a game changer for driving growth.

Myth #4: Agentic AI is inherently unethical and biased, posing serious risks to fairness and accountability

Ethical utilization should be a priority whenever you’re implementing new technology. The reality: garbage in equals garbage out. If the data used to train an AI model is biased then you can expect to see those same biases reflected in the model’s outputs.

Now, this doesn't automatically spell trouble for businesses adopting agentic solutions. Unlike generative AI which can potentially produce biased text or images as a result of biased training data, agentic systems don’t have a creative output. They aren’t generating net new content, only making decisions and taking actions based on existing data. This doesn’t completely eliminate the risk of bias – it’s still critical to do your due diligence when selecting AI tools to ensure you know exactly how data will be applied – but it does greatly shrink the realm of possibility.

Myth #5: Agentic AI is just a passing fad with no measurable ROI

There’s an economic principle called Jevons Paradox that suggests when technological advancements make a resource more efficient to use, it leads to increased consumption of that resource. The paradox was originally proposed in the wake of efficiency improvements in steam engines: when coal-burning steam engines witnessed a massive technology unlock, they rapidly became 10x more efficient.

We can apply this same paradox to conversations around AI productivity. As more and more businesses unlock the power of AI-driven efficiencies, demand for AI-powered tools will increase in direct response to their wide availability and usefulness. Agentic solutions for salespeople, for example, provide immense and indisputable ROI when it comes to improving pipeline velocity and sales effectiveness. As these tools prove their competitive advantage, more sales teams will reach for them until we eventually reach a point where they’re an integral part of every sales team’s revenue stack.

Choosing the right agentic solution for your business in 2025

While agentic AI is quickly becoming a must-have rather than a nice-to-have, it’s critical to note that not all solutions are created equal. If your company is ready to embrace this latest AI innovation , here are a few tips for selecting the right agent:

Know your goals: What are you trying to achieve with this new tech? Evaluate different providers and how their capabilities map to your objectives.

Look at your tech stack: Odds are, the tools you already invest in are adding agentic features into their existing product. Dig into whether these improvements are on their roadmap. If not, make sure the solution you do invest in integrates with your current stack.

Stay on top of it: Watch product demos, talk with your teams, and test out different agentic products to see how they stack up against one another. With so many businesses investing in building AI-powered tech, it's inevitable that new solutions emerge and existing ones greatly improve. If you evaluated a solution last quarter and it wasn’t up to par, consider taking another look and seeing what’s new.

The agentic AI revolution is already upon us. No matter your industry, goals, or the size of your business, now is the time to embrace agentic solutions, or risk getting left behind.

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This article was produced as part of TechRadarPro's Expert Insights channel where we feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today. The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/news/submit-your-story-to-techradar-pro

PRTG Network Monitor is a mature workhorse in our best network monitoring tools roundup.

Paessler's flagship product offers comprehensive visibility across networks, servers, and applications through its signature sensor-based approach. The platform monitors everything from bandwidth usage to hardware health metrics in real-time.

TechRadar reviewers spend several weeks researching each major IT platform in the market. We've found PRTG particularly appealing for mid-sized organizations seeking robust monitoring without enterprise complexity.

While LogicMonitor remains our pick for the best network monitoring tool of 2025, thanks to its AI-powered automation suite for IT workflows, PRTG offers compelling value for teams prioritizing quick deployment and comprehensive device support.

Paessler: Pricing

• Note: Prices converted from perpetual licenses to monthly equivalents based on 3-year depreciation

PRTG's sensor-based pricing offers flexibility but can become expensive as monitoring requirements grow. The licensing model counts individual metrics rather than devices, with most devices requiring 5-10 sensors for comprehensive monitoring.

While this allows precise control over monitoring scope, costs escalate quickly in large environments.

Support requires additional annual fees ranging from $360-680 after the first year, which adds to the total cost of ownership.

Paessler PRTG: Features

PRTG’s feature depth justifies its position among leading network monitoring platforms. It mostly targets IT professionals managing diverse network environments, with particular strength in multi-vendor networks.

For example, it’s remarkably good at infrastructure monitoring, with over 250 native sensor types covering everything from SNMP devices to SaaS.

However, PRTG lacks the advanced AI/ML capabilities of some competitors like LogicMonitor.

Its pricing remains reasonable for smaller deployments, but sensor-based licensing can become quite expensive as monitoring needs grow.

Automatic network discovery

PRTG's automatic discovery feature simplifies initial setup by identifying all network devices and creating appropriate monitoring sensors automatically. The system recognizes servers, routers, switches, and printers without manual configuration. This significantly reduces deployment time and ongoing management overhead for IT teams.

Real-Time dashboards and visualization

The platform provides customizable dashboards with live status information and graphical data representation. You can create custom maps using the PRTG map designer to visualize network topology and performance metrics. These visual tools help administrators quickly identify issues and understand network health at a glance.

Multi-protocol monitoring

PRTG supports comprehensive monitoring through multiple protocols, including SNMP, WMI, NetFlow, and HTTP.

The platform can monitor physical network environments, virtual servers, cloud services, and applications from a single interface. This makes it suitable for hybrid infrastructure environments combining on-premises and cloud resources.

Alerting and notification system

The notification system delivers alerts via email, SMS, push notifications, and integrations with third-party tools. Administrators can customize alert thresholds and create escalation procedures to ensure critical issues receive appropriate attention. PRTG has achieved 91% satisfaction ratings for its alerting capabilities.

Reporting and analytics

PRTG generates customizable reports covering performance metrics, availability statistics, and trend analysis. Users can schedule automated reports and create executive summaries for stakeholder communication. The reporting functionality supports compliance requirements and capacity planning initiatives

Paessler PRTG: Ease of use

PRTG's interface strikes a balance between comprehensive functionality and user accessibility.

The web-based dashboard presents monitoring data through intuitive graphs and visual representations that help newcomers understand network status quickly.

Setup takes just minutes with the automatic discovery feature handling initial device identification.

However, the sensor-based licensing model can confuse new users who expect traditional per-device pricing.

And while the platform's learning curve remains manageable for IT professionals, customization requires a deeper understanding of both the infrastructure and the platform's capabilities.

Advanced features like custom sensors and complex alerting rules demand more technical expertise.

Most users praise the straightforward approach to adding devices and configuring basic monitoring, but note that fine-tuning alerts and managing large sensor deployments requires careful planning to avoid notification fatigue.

Paessler PRTG: Customer support

Paessler provides multiple support channels, including email, phone, and an integrated help desk accessible through the PRTG interface.

The company offers comprehensive documentation, video tutorials, and an active community forum for troubleshooting assistance. Premium support includes priority response times and direct access to technical specialists for complex issues.

Support quality varies by license tier, with basic plans receiving standard email support and enterprise customers getting dedicated account management. Response times typically range from 1-2 business days for standard inquiries, though critical issues receive faster attention.

The company charges additional fees for extended support beyond the first year, which some users find frustrating compared to competitors offering inclusive support packages.

Paessler PRTG: The competition

PRTG occupies a strong position in the network monitoring market as a feature-rich solution for mid-sized organizations.

The platform competes directly with SolarWinds NPM, ManageEngine OpManager, and Progress WhatsUp Gold in the traditional enterprise monitoring space.

PRTG's strength lies in its comprehensive device support and reasonable pricing for smaller deployments, making it particularly attractive for organizations managing diverse network environments.

For enterprises seeking advanced analytics and automation, LogicMonitor's AI-powered platform offers superior predictive capabilities and automated remediation.

Cloud-native organizations might prefer DataDog or New Relic for their modern architectures and developer-focused features.

PRTG remains the better choice for traditional IT teams managing on-premises infrastructure who value proven reliability over cutting-edge automation capabilities.

Paessler PRTG: Final verdict

PRTG Network Monitor delivers solid value for organizations seeking comprehensive network monitoring without excessive complexity.

The platform's extensive sensor library, intuitive interface, and quick deployment make it an excellent choice for IT teams managing traditional network infrastructures.

While the sensor-based licensing model may surprise newcomers, the flexibility to monitor specific metrics provides precise control over costs and monitoring scope.

However, PRTG falls behind newer competitors in AI-driven automation and predictive analytics capabilities. Organizations prioritizing modern features like intelligent alerting, automated remediation, or advanced machine learning should consider alternatives like LogicMonitor.

For traditional IT environments where proven reliability and comprehensive device support matter most, PRTG remains a compelling choice that balances functionality with accessibility.

Paessler PRTG: FAQs

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This article compares two productivity suites, Microsoft Office 2021 and Office 2024, focusing on key differences in features, system requirements, pricing models, and support lifecycles.

Here, we will explore the evolution of the software suite, highlighting improvements and new functionalities added to applications like Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint in Office 2024.

The article also evaluates whether upgrading from Office 2021 to Office 2024 is a worthwhile investment for various types of users, considering the benefits of the latest features alongside the costs and potential disruptions involved in transitioning to a new software version. Ultimately, this comparison aims to provide readers with the information they need to make an informed decision about which Office version best fits their individual or organizational needs.

Office 2021 vs Office 2024: features

Office 2024 has several enhancements over Office 2021. This includes integrating AI-enabled features in every application across all the apps. These include improved grammar suggestions in Word, data analysis in Excel, and automatic slide suggestions in PowerPoint.

Collaboration is another significant emphasis, with better real-time co-authoring and improved cloud integration through OneDrive and SharePoint. Furthermore, Office 2024 has a new user interface with a new look, smoother movement, and better performance.

Each of the applications is also receiving updates. New data analysis tools are added to Excel, more features for recording and playing back multimedia content are added to PowerPoint, and Outlook gets better email management. In all these ways, Office 2024 is a helpful step up for people seeking to improve their work efficiency, collaboration, and overall usability.

Office 2021 vs Office 2024: integrations

Both Office 2021 and Office 2024 provide integration features, but Office 2024 significantly enhances the integration experience by embracing modern technology and deeper connectivity.

While Office 2021 includes basic integrations with commonly used services such as OneDrive and Microsoft Teams, Office 2024 takes this a step further by offering more robust and seamless connections within Microsoft’s cloud ecosystem.

One of the standout features of Office 2024 is its improved integration with OneDrive, allowing for smoother file synchronization and access.

Users can effortlessly collaborate in real time, sharing documents and making edits simultaneously, which is especially beneficial for remote teams. The enhanced compatibility with Microsoft Teams ensures that users can communicate, share files, and collaborate efficiently without having to switch between different applications.

Moreover, Office 2024 is designed with advanced compatibility in mind, supporting newer technologies and APIs that may not be fully utilized in Office 2021. This opens up opportunities for a broader range of third-party integrations, enabling users to tailor their productivity suite according to their specific needs.

For instance, businesses can expect easier integration with project management tools, customer relationship management (CRM) systems, and industry-specific applications, which can streamline workflows and improve overall efficiency

Office 2021 vs Office 2024: pricing

Office 2021 and Office 2024 have different pricing models designed to meet various user needs. Office 2021, when available for purchase, was primarily available as a one-time purchase, allowing users to buy the software license upfront and use it indefinitely. This option is suitable for those who prefer a traditional ownership model and do not require the latest features or cloud services.

In contrast, Office 2024 offers both the one-time purchase option and the Microsoft 365 subscription model. The subscription-based model provides access to the latest features, regular updates, cloud storage, and other online services. This option is ideal for users who want to stay current with the latest technology and require collaborative tools and cloud integration.

Office 2021 vs Office 2024: verdict 

Office 2021 is tailored for users who prefer a traditional, one-time purchase software model, making it ideal for those who may not require the latest features or extensive cloud integration. This version stands out for individuals or organizations operating on limited budgets and those seeking long-term software stability without continuous updates. Additionally, it serves users with restricted internet access well, allowing them to use the software offline without any dependency on cloud services.

In contrast, Office 2024 caters to a broader range of users by offering a flexible approach that includes both one-time purchase and subscription options. The one-time purchase will still attract users similar to Office 2021, who appreciate the straightforwardness of a single payment and a reliable software version. However, the subscription model is where Office 2024 is likely to shine, particularly for users who crave access to the latest features and innovations.

Users can enjoy regular updates with the subscription option, ensuring they have the most current tools and enhancements. Cloud storage facilitates easy access to documents from multiple devices, promoting collaborative efforts among teams. This is especially beneficial for businesses and individuals prioritizing technology integration and seamless collaboration, as it allows for real-time editing and sharing features that significantly boost productivity.

In conclusion, while Office 2021 may be perfect for those seeking stability and a straightforward purchasing model, Office 2024 appeals to a broader audience that values cutting-edge features, constant updates, and enhanced collaborative capabilities. Ultimately, the decision between these two options will hinge on individual needs, budget considerations, and the specific features that matter most to the user.

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• Health New Zealand’s finances are being tracked with Excel
• The body operates 6,000 apps and 100 digital networks
• No immediate plans to modernize its systems

A recently published report has revealed Health New Zealand (HNZ) has been relying on a single Microsoft Excel spreadsheet as its primary financial management tool.

Established in 2022, HNZ was designed to replace 20 district health boards in the name of cost efficiency and service consistency, but until now, the body has been relying on basic spreadsheet software that has been deemed unsuitable for purpose.

A Deloitte report found HNZ lost control of “critical levers that drive financial outcomes,” which it blamed primarily on “the inability to identify and respond to the disconnect between expenditure and revenue” among other factors.

New Zealand’s healthcare was run off an Excel spreadsheet

HNZ reported a $1.013bn deficit against a breakeven budget in 2022/23, and by 2023/24, Doilette says financial challenges were “increasingly evident.”

Overall, the report specified five major issues with the Excel-based system: hard-coded financial data made updates and source tracing difficult; errors such as incorrectly released accruals were not picked up until later; changes to prior periods would not flow into consolidated data; limited tracking allows for easy data manipulation; and input and changes are prone to simple human errors, such as typos or missing zeroes.

“The use of an Excel spreadsheet file to track and report financial performance for a $28bn expenditure organisation raises significant concerns," Deloitte summarized.

Separately, Health Minister Simeon Brown recently revealed in a speech that HNZ operates an estimated 6,000 applications and 100 digital networks – he described the healthcare system’s digital infrastructure as “fragmented.”

Despite the damming report, the Health Minister has not revealed any immediate plans to replace Excel. A potential Health Infrastructure Entity is being considered for managing physical and digital assets, but no timeline has been set. TechRadar Pro has contacted Health New Zealand for a comment.

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Copilot has three main uses in Word: creating a draft for either an entire document or for sections of it, based on a prompt of up to 2,000 characters; rewriting selected text according to a prompt; and answering questions about a document’s content, including summarizing it.

When you create a new document in Word, you’ll see how much Microsoft wants you to draft using Copilot: it’s the first thing you see. And any time you make a new paragraph, the Copilot icon shows up in the left margin, letting you input a prompt to write a new section. If you select text, the icon shows up with an option to rewrite the selection. There’s also a Copilot icon in the Home toolbar, which opens a sidebar so you can ask questions about the open document, summarize it, or write additional parts.

The output quality of any big language model depends on the prompt you provide. If you aren’t specific or clear enough, Copilot Pro will produce dull texts that don’t match your voice. You must give sufficient details and context for it to understand your purpose and style, as well as information about the preferences of the audience, all of which can be tricky in a prompt limited to 2,000 characters.

Occasionally, it’s vague, drifts off-topic, or entirely ignores explicit instructions – for example, about word counts or facts you have told it to include. You must check and edit the texts that Copilot Pro writes to make sure they’re right for your goal and audience.

Copilot has its own little linguistic ticks, which you will probably need to be explicit about in prompts. It absolutely adores bullet-pointed lists, and will include them every time unless you tell it not to. Similarly, and likely reflecting the web content on which it’s trained, it loves to include “hints and tips” sections in virtually every kind of content.

Rewriting is also erratic. Although its grammar is impeccable (albeit with a penchant for the Oxford comma and American spellings), Copilot won’t catch and fix all the problems in your paragraphs; think coherence, structure and flow. It’s no replacement for a dedicated tool such as Grammarly or LanguageTool. I even found that Copilot added in things that Microsoft Editor thought were errors.

Copilot can still be handy in Word if you use it for what it’s good at. For example, instead of making it write a whole document, ask it to create an outline for you to work. This delivers solid results, and if nothing else avoids the blank sheet of paper issue.

I also found it handy to keep the sidebar open when working on a long piece; in one case, I needed to make sure that every chapter included a call to action at the end, and that’s something Copilot is great at. It’s also handy for those moments when you want to get suggestions for something, whether that’s as trivial as looking for an antonym or as complex as “give me five typical Russian male first names, popular in the 1950s”.

Considering that this is Microsoft’s first stab at Copilot for Word, it’s an impressive piece of work.

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If you want an example of what not to use Copilot for in PowerPoint, then I have just the thing.

You might think that asking Copilot Pro to “create a presentation about Copilot Pro in PowerPoint” would be an easy win for the AI. You would think wrong: instead, it came up with a presentation about a fictitious piece of software that appears to combine advanced aircraft flight planning with a collision avoidance system – which it illustrated with a picture of a car.

Of all the Office applications, PowerPoint probably benefits least from Copilot Pro when it comes to creating documents from scratch. This is down to it not having one of the key features that business users of Copilot get: the ability to take a Word document and turn it into a PowerPoint deck. PowerPoint is, fundamentally, an application for taking information and presenting it in a visual format, and a 2,000-character prompt just isn’t enough for anything except the shortest presentations.

What Copilot is good for, though, is taking an existing deck and improving it. If you don’t like a visual being on the left-hand side of a slide, you can just ask Copilot to move it to the right – although you also need to tell it to move whatever is already on the right to the left, too, if you don’t want a visual pile-up to ensue. Similarly, asking it to change the headline font on all slides to, say, Constantia – and it makes the changes in seconds – feels magical.

Wisely, Microsoft includes a set of pre-made prompts to get you started with the kind of things that Copilot is good at. For example, it can scan a deck for deadlines and list them all out, helping you avoid that moment when you realize you have combined two people’s work and got entirely different deadlines for a project in them.

Overall, stick to the preset prompts at first, and Copilot Pro in PowerPoint is a useful tool.

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There are three key features in Copilot for Outlook: summarization, drafting and coaching. Summarization is probably the feature you’ll encounter first, as every email you receive has a prominent “Summary by Copilot” bar at the top.

Click on this, and it creates a short, easy-to-read summary of the key points in the email. How useful this will be depends on the kind of mail you get. But if you spend a long time reading complex emails and trying to work out what the point is, you’ll love it.

The second main feature, drafting, is like the drafting feature in Word, in that you give it a prompt and it writes the email for you. You can vary the tone using pop-up options – direct, neutral, casual, formal or, erm, “make it a poem” – and set the length as short, medium or long. Beware: Outlook uses the last tone you selected, so if you do decide to write a poem, remember to change it before drafting an email to your accountant.

As with Word, I’d categorize the results as “something to start with and personalize” rather than the finished article. Tonally, it veers towards the extreme: formal is very formal, and casual is probably fine for sending to family and close friends only. In my tests, direct produced the best results, although some of its phrases required toning down to stop them sounding like the kind of email you get from the bailiffs chasing you for a late payment.

My favorite feature is coaching. This checks the content of an email you’ve written and gives you tips on how to improve it, with clear advice that’s actually useful. It advised me to make my tone more confident, which professional writing coaches have told me in the past.

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• Windows 11 is warning some folks to back up their PC with a banner in the Settings app
• This is a way of pushing Microsoft’s own Backup app which uses OneDrive
• Not everyone needs to hear about this, and some users are getting frustrated with the banner repeatedly appearing

If you use Windows 11, you’re doubtless accustomed to Microsoft’s attempts to prod you into using its various services, and there’s been another spot of nudging (or shoving, even) in the OS regarding OneDrive.

Windows Latest picked up on this one, and it works in a roundabout kind of way, meaning that it’s not a flashing banner telling you that ‘You must use OneDrive’ (that’s coming in next month’s update – not really, ahem, though you never quite know with Microsoft).

The tech site tells us that Windows 11 is pushing an ‘Action advised – backup your PC’ warning panel on certain users, at the top of the Settings app home screen. And when I classify it as a warning, that’s because it’s displayed in yellow with an exclamation mark to urge taking action.

According to Windows Latest, this warning is being presented on a regular basis to them (and others). So, what happens if you click on the ‘Continue’ button in the banner? Windows 11 will launch its built-in Backup app, a tool designed to fully back up your PC to the cloud.

But of course, it’s tied specifically to Microsoft’s OneDrive cloud storage locker, which is why this is an indirect way of promoting that service. The catch is that if you don’t have enough storage space on OneDrive – and the free allocation almost certainly won’t be enough – you might be tempted to buy more space in order to back up your PC, and then Microsoft makes a bit of extra cash.

Back off on the backups, Microsoft – or at least provide a choice here

Isn’t backing up your PC a useful thing to do, though, if you haven’t? Well, yes, very definitely, so to be fair, for novice computer users who haven’t taken any such steps to protect their data (or indeed system settings), this could be very useful.

But OneDrive isn’t the only way forward in this regard, and if you’ve already availed yourself of a third-party backup solution of one kind or another, then you might not – well, you almost certainly won’t – want to get nagged in this way on a trip to the Settings app.

And nagged you will be, apparently, as Windows Latest notes that this banner only appears in Settings for users who have turned off cloud syncing and backup settings in Windows 11 (which, of course, you’re likely to have done if you’re taking care of backup duties yourself, and not leaving it to the OS). The repeated nature of this warning popping up also makes it more irksome.

Don’t get me wrong, I actually like the idea of the Backup app, which Microsoft has done some commendable work on in recent times to make it a good way to transfer all your stuff from an old PC to a new one. It’s convenient and handy for less tech-savvy folks in that respect, for sure, despite some limitations (notably third-party apps aren’t included in the backup images, just software from the Microsoft Store).

Even so, this remains a case of overreaching with ‘recommendations’ from Microsoft (once again). Windows Latest further observes there’s a fair bit of chatter on the likes of Reddit discussing possible fudges and workarounds to turn off this warning, but we shouldn’t have to resort to that.

Really, at the very least, there should be a box to tick along the lines of ‘don’t show this again’ with the banner, for those who know what it’s all about, and have their backups well in hand themselves. Surely that isn’t too difficult to implement, Microsoft, while still leaving the nudge present for those who might genuinely benefit from it?

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Unlike the other Copilot Pro tools, Copilot for Excel is labelled prominently as “beta”. But even in this qualified state, it has the promise of being a game-changer for anyone who needs to work with data but doesn’t want to become an expert in writing formulas, working out the best way to pivot data or spotting trends in large data sets.

Copilot for Excel exists in the toolbar, but sometimes it’s greyed out. That’s because it only works on . xlsx or .xlsm files saved in OneDrive or SharePoint. When the button is green, hitting it allows you to write natural language instructions to create formulas, analyze data or highlight cells according to whatever criteria you want. If you’ve ever struggled with creating a complex formula (or even a simple one), you’re going to love it.

The first thing to note is that Copilot only works within tables; if your data is unstructured, it won’t let you do anything with it. This probably isn’t a big deal for most people (every serious Excel user I have known has lived or died by tables), but it’s a limitation that may affect some users of large and disparate data sets.

If your data is in a table, though, Copilot is miraculous. You can ask simple queries, such as how much you spent between two dates, or what categories you spend the most on. It’s also great at creating graphs: just type, “make a pie chart showing expenditure based on month”. And you can manipulate existing data, say by asking it to use conditional formatting to highlight specific ranges of numbers, something that’s easy to get wrong for people who aren’t Excel experts.

You can also use Copilot to look for outliers in the data and highlight them, which helps if you’re trying to clean up a dataset or are finding results just aren’t what you think they should be. If you’re using a big dataset, that’s a wonderful time saver. It’s nothing that you can’t do with Excel’s existing tools – but for users who don’t live in Excel, it would involve quite a bit of searching online to know where to start.

Where the real power kicks in is when you ask it to make formulas for you. I created a simple table of expenditure for a small business, tracking spending across a range of categories. But I also wanted to have a column indicating the running total of my expenditure. This isn’t an easy formula to make if you don’t know much about Excel because it involves a SUMIF function that’s based on the row’s date, comparing it to others in the table.

I asked Copilot to “add formula columns to summarize total expenditure so far in this date sequence”, and within seconds it had created a formula and added it to the end of the table.

This kind of formula creation is going to save users of Excel hours, and if you regularly work with data but wouldn’t call yourself an expert, it’s probably worth the money on its own. Even on occasions where I wanted to do something that I knew how to do, I found myself using Copilot instead because it created better results than the various hacks, shortcuts and cheats that I have learned over the years.

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• Microsoft CEO says AI is yet to have its Excel moment
• The real benefits should be measured in its GDP contribution
• AI will allow knowledge workers to focus on knowledge work

Satya Nadella has said that AI should be measured on its benefit to GDP, rather than “self-claiming some AGI milestone,” the Microsoft CEO said on Dwarkesh Patel’s podcast earlier this month.

“That's just nonsensical benchmark hacking,” he continued, stating AI was yet to find the application that would make the years of hype a reality.

“When we say: 'Oh, this is like the industrial revolution,' let's have that industrial revolution type of growth. That means to me, 10 percent, seven percent for the developed world. Inflation adjusted, growing at five percent, that's the real marker,” Nadella said.

Boosting GDP, enhancing “knowledge work”

Nadella used Microsoft Excel as a comparison for how AI is yet to find its proper place in the modern workplace, with physical documents and faxes delivering being an arduous task that would present a forecast “maybe just in time for the next quarter.”

“Then somebody said: 'Hey, I'm just going to take an Excel spreadsheet, put it in an email, send it around, people will go edit it, and I'll have a forecast.' The entire forecasting business process changed because the work artifact and the workflow changed. That is what needs to happen with AI being introduced into knowledge work,” Nadella said.

But the Microsoft CEO doesn’t think AI will replace knowledge work, but rather free up more time for knowledge workers to focus on higher-value tasks, asking “who said my life's goal is to triage my email?”

Many workers already live in fear of being replaced as companies see AI as a tool to reduce costs and increase profits. Luckily for us, the main obstacles to prevent AGI - or AI models with cognitive capabilities that exceed the human brain - from replacing human workers are legal issues.

“Today, you cannot deploy these intelligences unless and until there's someone indemnifying it as a human,” Nadella said.

Via TheRegister

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• Microsoft appears to be experimenting with ad-supported Office desktop apps
• They are limited in their functionality, and will require OneDrive syncing
• Word, Excel and PowerPoint could be going free

Microsoft appears to have released free versions of its core Office apps – Word, Excel and PowerPoint – although they are supported by ads and limited in their functionality.

The change was first spotted by Beebom, which revealed the free desktop apps show a persistent banner ad, as well as a 15-second video ad which plays “every few hours.”

However the company has already scrambled to clarify the launch is only a test, with a Microsoft spokesperson saying there were "no plans" for a wider launch.

Microsoft quietly launches ad-supported Office apps

“Microsoft has been conducting some limited testing,” a company spokesperson told PCWorld. “Currently, there are no plans to launch a free, ad-supported version of Microsoft Office desktop apps.”

Users looking to get access to the free office software will also notice that local file editing is not supported and that they’ll be guided to save files on OneDrive.

To access the free apps, users will need to skip the sign-in prompt and then agree to save their files in Microsoft’s cloud storage system OneDrive.

Being no-cost, these three free apps will be more limited in their functionality, lacking certain tools like Add-ins, Dictate, SmartArt, advanced formatting and Pivot Tables. The apps seem to plug a gap between the fully fledged desktop apps and the even more limited online web apps.

Beebom noted that for now at least, the free desktop apps are only available for Windows users, but they can still be used offline despite the requirement to save files in OneDrive.

Downloading the free apps is exactly the same as downloading the full apps, just that users will skip the sign-in stage that would otherwise get them access to all features.

In terms of availability, some users have reported not being able to access the free versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint, suggesting it could be in a testing phase, which adds up given that Microsoft has not formally announced anything on the matter. Moreover, there’s no Mac equivalent (yet).

For context, Microsoft recently raised the prices of consumer 365 subscriptions, so this could be one of the ways it’s justifying the change.

A company spokesperson confirmed with TechRadar Pro in an email: "Microsoft has been conducting some limited testing. Currently, there are no plans to launch a free, ad-supported version of Microsoft Office desktop apps."

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Infostealers are rapidly becoming one of the most dangerous tools in a hacker’s arsenal, particularly in environments where email remains a primary communication channel for enterprises. At their core, infostealers are a type of trojan designed by malware authors to harvest sensitive data such as login credentials, financial information, system details, and personally identifiable information.

These malicious files are engineered to extract as much information as possible, operating quickly and stealthily. Once collected, the stolen data is sent to command-and-control servers, where it can be exploited for various malicious purposes.

Infostealers in the wild

Some research suggests infostealers hit up to 10,000 victims per day; however Forcepoint research teams have observed increased activity from various infostealers recently, targeting victims in a number of ways.

The first is VIPKeyLogger, which circulates through phishing campaigns as an attachment that takes the form of an archive or Microsoft Office files. This exfiltrates data using Instant Messaging telegrams services or dynamic DNS services. Opening the attachment leads to a sequence of events that ultimately ends up in a series of data exfiltration such as recording keystrokes, collecting information like clipboard data, screenshots, browser history, and more.

Strela Stealer is also circulated via phishing campaigns containing attachments which further contains obfuscated script, and on execution of script, it performs malicious activity and harvests sensitive information including usernames, passwords, and other email configuration details, sending it over Command & Control servers.

Lastly, Rhadamanthys stealer was circulated in the holiday season and masquerades as travel industry emails with malicious document attachments. Clicking the documents triggers a chain of downloads and obfuscated scripts to steal user credentials and cryptocurrency wallet data. This campaign resembles the earlier Agent Tesla attacks, but uses novel obfuscation techniques.

Needless to say, infostealers are prevalent and appear in a number of different formats, making them harder than ever to defend against, which begs the question – how can you protect against increasingly sophisticated infostealers?

Protection against infostealers

If it wasn’t already clear, the rise of infostealers emphasizes the need for a sophisticated and holistic approach towards defending your organisation. To work most effectively, that approach must combine essential security measures, such as multi-factor authentication, with a proactive mindset. Cybercriminals are continuously evolving their tactics, so organizations must too in order to stay ahead.

Businesses need to make common practice out of minimizing vulnerabilities by encrypting data at rest and in motion to ensure only authorized individuals have access to sensitive data. Data loss prevention (DLP) solutions for email can help enterprises get control over inbound and outbound threats by supporting virus and malware blocking, spam filtering, content filtering and email archiving. And, of course, by regularly updating and hosting security audits, organizations can better understand if their security measures are effective and where they are lacking.

However, arguably one of the most important parts of an organization's defense is its people. Employees must be aware of their role in organizational security. This includes the basics such as maintaining strong passwords and leveraging technologies like MFA, but should also include their ability to be constantly cyberaware. This means organisations have a role to play in ensuring employees know how to identify and act when faced with an attack, otherwise they have the potential to unknowingly bring the whole kingdom down from the inside. Human error can be the weakest link in the security chain, so it is important staff are educated.

Infostealers represent a growing and insidious threat in today’s digital era, preying on unprotected organizations and unknowing individuals. By combining strong technical defenses with a culture of security awareness, businesses can significantly reduce the risk of becoming a victim to these cyberattacks. When all is said and done, proactive prevention and informed employees are the ultimate line of defense.

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This article was produced as part of TechRadarPro's Expert Insights channel where we feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today. The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/news/submit-your-story-to-techradar-pro

• Zoom's new Workflow Automation looks to save you time on repetitive tasks
• It won’t cost you any more, and is available now
• Zoom AI now alsosupports even more languages

Zoom has lifted the wraps off a new AI-powered tool designed to assist workers with repetitive and administrative work, freeing them up more time to produce meaningful outcomes.

The new Workflow Automation service centers around no-code automation templates that users can select and tweak to get certain tasks done for them, promising support for third-party apps as well as the company’s own software.

Head of Team Chat, Wei Li, described the feature as easy to use for workers who aren’t technically minded, adding: “Empowering people with AI to help them get more done is core to what we do at Zoom.”

Zoom on AI-powered productivity software

In its announcement, Zoom described how Workflow Automation could be used to generate summaries after meetings, and have that summary added directly into a Zoom Doc, Google Doc or Word document, before automatically sharing that document in a Team Chat channel, all without the involvement or direction of a worker (beyond the initial setup).

Zoom slated its competitors for requiring workers to possess a certain amount of technical knowledge, adding that its no-code technology can be used by virtually anyone for pretty significant productivity boosts.

At the same time, the California-based company previously known for its video conferencing software – which now wants to be known for its AI-enhance Workplace software – added new features to its AI Companion tool.

With hybrid working still commonplace in many industries, companion audi in Zoom Rooms promises to enhance the experience by using workers’ individual laptops as additional microphones for clearer audio, rather than requiring companies to invest in multiple in-room mics.

Zoom is also adding a YouTube app within Zoom Meetings “soon,” promising native and lag-free video sharing for each individual participant rather than a cumbersome screen sharing experience.

Furthermore, support for Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), French, German, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Korean, Indonesian, Polish, Russian, Swedish, Turkish, Vietnamese and Dutch (Netherlands) have all been added to extend the company’s reach into many of the world’s most populous countries.

Paying Zoom subscribers can now access Workflow Automation at no additional cost with versions 6.3.10 and above of the desktop app.

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• Microsoft’s ongoing EU antitrust saga is still ongoing
• It might have to make Teams-less Office plans cheaper
• That, or Microsoft may face a $24.5 billion+ fine

Microsoft is reportedly preparing to revise its Office subscription prices in order to broaden the gap between plans that include Teams, and plans that don't.

This is despite the company unbundling its video conferencing software from its office software and introducing separate charges after being faced with an antitrust investigation.

After unbundling Teams from its software in 2024, Microsoft is now facing pressure to make Office without Teams even cheaper, and that’s good news for consumers.

Microsoft adjusting Office prices

In 2023, the plan without Teams was €2 less per month than the plan with Teams, and the video conferencing app became a standalone subscription option for €5 per month.

It’s unclear whether widening the gap between the prices would result in a cheaper Teams-less subscription, a more expensive plan with Teams, or a combination of both.

The company has also been forced to revise its terms in order to improve interoperability with rivals.

Citing three individuals familiar with the matter, Reuters reports some companies have been invited by the European Commission to provide feedback before it decides whether to push things along and carry out a market test.

Although adjusting its prices could cost Microsoft money, it’s a relatively minor change when scaled up against an EU-issued antitrust fine, which could reach up to 10% of a company’s global revenue. Based on its fiscal 2024 revenue, that means the company could receive a maximum fine of $24.5 billion.

TechRadar Pro has asked Microsoft to add further context to the claims, and to confirm any Office pricing adjustments. We did not receive an immediate response.

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• Google Sheets is getting some speedy upgrades
• Faster loading and pasting times between spreadsheets now available
• Updates are rolling out now, so be ready

Creating your dream spreadsheets with ease could be about to get a whole lot easier thanks to some important upgrades for Google Sheets.

The spreadsheet software has revealed updates which it says decrease loading times and boost overall performance, particularly when it comes to calculations.

The news could be the next big shot in the arm for Google Workspace's tool as it looks to topple the likes of Microsoft Excel and become the most reliable workplace office software.

Google Sheets speed upgrade

The updates include improvements such as a 50% faster speed when pasting data from one spreadsheet to another, as well as spreadsheets loading existing data up to 30% faster.

Filter conditions can also now be set up to 50% faster than previously, giving users a much quicker way to access the information they need.

"These changes help various users work faster and more efficiently in a variety of scenarios," a Google Workspace update blog post announcing the news declared.

It outlined examples such as a data analyst being able to can paste small or large quantities of data from an existing spreadsheet to a new one much quicker, a campaign manager being able to add filtering conditions to better understand the performance of a campaign at a certain time faster, and a small business owner being able to quickly see their data load.

The news comes after the company announced it had doubled the calculation speed in Google Sheets in June 2024, boosting actions such as formulas, pivot tables, conditional formatting, and more, regardless of file size.

The updates are available now, and require no additional admin controls or changes. They will be available to all Google Workspace customers, Workspace Individual Subscribers, and users with personal Google accounts.

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• OCR and image recognition data are being stored insecurely in OneDrive for Business, expert claims
• Locally stored data is putting companies at risk of leaks
• Hybrid working amplifies the security challenges

Security expert Brian Maloney has criticized Microsoft for storing OneDrive for Business files insecurely on users’ devices.

He claims the popular cloud storage tool allegedly stores data obtained from image OCR in an unsecured database on account holders’ PCs, putting them at risk of data exfiltration.

Although there are benefits to storing data locally, it can pose security concerns if the storage is inadequately protected, Maloney has claimed.

OneDrive for Business storing files locally, but insecurely

Microsoft, together with other companies like Apple, uses OCR (optical character recognition) and image recognition to enhance search and other features.

In a series of X posts, Maloney wrote: “Just a heads up. M$ is OCRing all your images in OneDrive for business in an unsecured database on your desktop/laptop. Happy Friday. #DFIR.”

Because OCR is stored in plain text, attackers who are successful in obtaining access to the databases can acquire potentially sensitive information from unknowing victims.

vx-underground.org added to Maloney’s work on X, sharing: “Any image saved with OneDrive is stored locally in a SQLite file (for offline mode, or something).”

Although business-issued hardware typically involved additional layers of security, such as encrypted storage, biometric security, and access to company systems via protected networks such as VPNs, the rise of hybrid working now means that more workers are accessing their business accounts, including OneDrive for Business, from their own personal hardware, which might not have such strong protection.

TechRadar Pro has asked Microsoft to comment on its decision not to protect OCR databases, but we have not received an immediate response.

In the meantime, users should consider only enabling features that they intend to use in order to minimize risk. Employees should also be vigilant to attacks, including avoiding clicking on suspicious links and sharing credentials online.

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• Microsoft 365 will be unsupported on Windows 10 the same day the OS loses support - October 14, 2025
• Users warned to upgrade to new Windows 10 devices for the best experience
• Some apps will still work on many of the most popular browsers

In the latest step in its years-long battle to get customers to upgrade to Windows 11, Microsoft has confirmed it will no longer be supporting Microsoft 365 apps on Windows 10 beginning October 14, 2025.

“To use Microsoft 365 Applications on your device, you will need to upgrade to Windows 11," the company confirmed in a blog post.

The announcement mirrors similar moves made with Microsoft 365’s support on Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1, however it doesn’t mean the apps will cease to function entirely.

Windows 10 will soon lose Microsoft 365 support

As was the case with previous operating systems, the apps will continue to function and users will still be able to access their favorite productivity apps like Word, Excel and PowerPoint, it’s just they will no longer receive important updates.

In a separate help article, the company wrote: “Once you move to a supported Windows operating system all Microsoft 365 feature and security updates will resume as usual.”

Users who are not prepared to update their OS, which could involve buying a whole new PC, can still access fully functioning versions of the apps through Edge, Chrome, Safari and Firefox (though the latter doesn’t fully support Teams meetings).

In a bid to soften the blow, Microsoft stated PCs have “changed substantially” since previous OS launches, and they’re “faster, more powerful, and sleeker.” Microsoft sells its own Surface-branded laptops, including a handful of its own Copilot+ PCs that are optimized for Windows 11’s AI tools.

In December 2024, Windows 11 accounted for 34% of all Windows devices, down from 36% in October. Windows 10 is back up to 63% from 61% in the same two-month period (via Statcounter).

Principal Analyst Ishan Dutt, working for market intelligence research firm Canalys, recently predicted: “The PC market is set for accelerating growth, primarily driven by commercial demand as businesses prepare for the end of Windows 10.”

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• MobiSystems rebrands to MobiOffice
• Adds new MobiScan app for mobile document management
• Affordable pricing aims to attract a billion users worldwide

MobiSystems, known for its OfficeSuite software, has rebranded under a new unified platform to provide an integrated productivity experience that combines office software, PDF editing, and cloud storage within a single package.

The rebrand to MobiOffice will includes MobiPDF (formerly PDF Extra) and MobiDrive, all redesigned to offer a more integrated productivity tool experience.

With a user base of over 550 million worldwide, MobiSystems has now set its sights on the billion mark with the introduction of new products, including MobiScan, a mobile scanning app.

MobiOffice is here

MobiDocs offers a streamlined tool for document creation, supporting both basic text editing and advanced formatting options. Users can quickly create professional-grade documents, benefiting from customizable templates and an AI-powered paraphraser that adds sophistication and ease to the writing process.

For those focused on data management, MobiSheets provides straightforward tools for organizing home budgets and offers advanced data processing options like Pivot Tables for more complex business needs.

MobiSlides is designed to simplify the process of creating presentations, providing an intuitive design suite with customizable templates and options for animations, multimedia integration, and custom transitions.

Each of these components is also available as a standalone app on Windows, giving users the option to select the specific tools they need without purchasing the entire suite.

Formerly known as PDF Extra, MobiPDF lets users create and edit PDFs across platforms, including Windows, Android, and iOS. Built with an integrated mobile scanner, MobiPDF allows users to create high-quality PDFs from any document, including file conversion for over 20 formats, password protection, and advanced encryption, making it suitable for users who prioritize data security.

MobiDrive provides secure and scalable cloud storage, ranging from 20GB of free storage to 2TB paid plans. This service supports storage and conversion for over 1,200 file formats, making it a versatile option for users who need universal accessibility. MobiDrive is available on Windows, Android, iOS, and the web.

MobiOffice Premium is priced at $4.19 per month, or a one-time fee of $99.99 for lifetime access. For users who prefer individual apps, MobiDocs, MobiSheets, and MobiSlides are available at $2.49 per month each. MobiPDF is also priced affordably at $4.19 per month. Meanwhile, MobiDrive’s cloud storage options start at $4.99 per month for up to 2TB.

"In today’s fast-paced world, we provide a solution designed for everyone, helping people accomplish any task, from anywhere, on any device—so they can thrive in whatever they do," noted Justin Priestley, MobiSystems Chief Marketing Officer.

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• Amazon has paused its Microsoft 365 deployment
• The deal, worth $1 billion, will see 1.5 million Amazon employees get access to Microsoft Office
• Engineers from the two companies have been working to resolve issues

Amazon has reportedly delayed its deployment of Microsoft 365 following a Russia-linked cyberattack where threat actors were believed to have accessed some employees’ email accounts.

The deal, announced in October 2023, saw Amazon commit to a $1 billion spend over a five-year period to get access to Microsoft 365 applications like Word, Excel and Outlook for 1.5 million of its employees.

Amazon has asked Microsoft to make some changes to its software to protect against unauthorized access, including more detailed user activity tracking within the apps.

Amazon’s M365 rollout has been paused

The delay follows Russian hacker group Midnight Blizzard’s breach of Microsoft’s systems, which the company disclosed in January 2024. Amazon Chief Information Security Officer CJ Moses said (via Bloomberg): “At that time still, Microsoft wasn’t able to tell us if they had gotten the [hackers] out of their environment.”

Moses added: “We wanted to make sure that everything was logged, and that we had access to that logging in near-real time.”

The CISO reportedly gave Microsoft Security EVP Charlie Bell, who is handily an ex-Amazon engineering executive, a list of requests several months ago, and engineers from both companies are said to have been working together in an unlikely collaboration to address Amazon’s concerns.

Moreover, the delay reflects growing concern surrounding the security of cloud-based tools amid rising cyber threats, particularly as nations like Russia and China increase retaliation against Western restrictions like US chip sanctions.

Up until now, Amazon’s usage of Microsoft products has mostly revolved around installed copies of Office, rather than cloud-based and connected subscriptions.

Although some progress is believed to have been made, Amazon is yet to announce a new deployment timeline, however the company’s CISO has confirmed that the deal is unlikely to bew off: “We believe we’re in a good place to start redeployment next year.”

We haven’t heard anything about any regulatory action or approval process regarding the massive deal, but both Amazon and Microsoft have been treading carefully recently after facing numerous antitrust investigations and allegations of monopolistic behavior.

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• Security researchers saw corrupted files used in phishing campaigns
• These files bypass email protection solutions
• Word can easily restore them, presenting malicious content to the victim

Cybercriminals have found a new and creative way to sneak phishing emails past your onlinedefenses and into your inbox, experts have warned.

A new report from cybersecurity researchers Any.Run observed crooks distributing corrupted Microsoft Word files in their campaigns. Most phishing emails come with an attachment. That file can either be malware itself, or can contain a link to a malicious website, or download.

In response, most email security solutions these days analyze incoming attachments before the recipient can read them, warning the victim if they are being targeted.

Stealing login credentials

However, if the file is corrupted, security programs cannot read, or analyze it, and thus cannot flag it as malicious. So, hackers have now started deliberately corrupting the phishing files, before sending them out. The trick? Word can easily restore them.

Once they are restored, and readable, it is already too late for email security tools to scan them, and the victim is presented with the malicious content which, in this case, is a QR code leading to a fake Microsoft 365 login page.

Therefore, the goal of the recently observed campaign is to steal people’s cloud credentials.

"Although these files operate successfully within the OS, they remain undetected by most security solutions due to the failure to apply proper procedures for their file types," Any.Run said.

"They were uploaded to VirusTotal, but all antivirus solutions returned "clean" or "Item Not Found" as they couldn't analyze the file properly."

Phishing remains one of the most popular attack vectors on the internet. While there are many software solutions helping businesses minimize the threat, the best defense remains the same - using common sense and being careful with incoming email messages. This rings particularly true for messages coming from unknown sources, and messages coming with a sense of urgency.

Via BleepingComputer

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If you’ve used a computer, it’s almost certain you have used Microsoft Word.

The aptly named word processor is one of the most influential computer programs in history. From schools to businesses, it’s become a daily part of life for millions of users around the world.

Word rose to global ubiquity because it offered something unique. It was the first word-processing software to embody what Microsoft described as the WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) design philosophy.

The idea that what-you-see on the screen is what-you-get if you pressed print is taken for granted in the modern world. But it was a game changer at the time. Within a decade of its official release, Microsoft Word captured a 90 percent share of the word-processing market – officially marking itself as the one of the most successful software products of all time.

Last week, on October 25th 2024, Microsoft Word turned 41. It’s been a long time since it changed the game by delivering WYSIWYG. So what does the future hold for the world’s most popular processor?

Processing a milestone

Change is on the horizon for Word. But it’s not because we don’t need word processing software anymore.

Digital documents exist at the foundation of daily work for about 1.2 billion people. Knowledge workers - professionals who generate value for their organizations through expertise, critical thinking and interpersonal skills - use documents every day. The majority need some form of business document to turn the work they do into deliverable value.

So what’s changing?

Humans still need processors like Word. But in the era of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and automation - word processors no longer need humans as they have before. The practitioners (us) are being disrupted, rather than the processors. And this is a good thing.

Knowledge is power

Big businesses are the product of many small processes. But small processes can take a big toll on people.

Repetitive tasks not only negatively impact a business by absorbing hours of time from experts - but also reduce the happiness and productivity of employees. And this is why there is such a buzz around AI and Generative AI (GenAI) for businesses. AI could add £119 billion to the UK economy in workplace productivity alone by saving professionals up to 2.9 hours per day according to new research

AI and Generative AI (GenAI) is immensely powerful. But it isn’t anywhere near capable of doing what knowledge workers do - which requires human nuance, understanding and a deep appreciation of context. Knowledge workers solve unique problems every day. AI is only effective when it is supplied with large amounts of accurate information and context.

However - there are areas in which AI and automation excels.

Manually managing knowledge and driving value through processors like Word is a time consuming - but critical - daily task for professionals around the world. New technology platforms are filling the gap between AI and human knowledge work by automating document generation.

The impact of this is twofold. Firstly, by increasing the efficiency with which employees can complete small tasks, experts can get on with the stuff that delivers real value. Secondly, businesses themselves reduce the potential risk caused by human error - saving money and protecting reputation.

Banks, for example, are built on documents. Every financial institution has huge libraries of records, sales sheets, applications, and more. There’s a lot of information - and no margin for error. Consequently, UK banks and fintechs spend £21.4k per hour fighting financial crime and fraud, pushing the UK’s annual compliance bill to £38.3bn.

We’re entering the second wave of AI innovation. (Which may not be as exciting or flashy as the first). But in this era it is clearer exactly where AI and automation can have the greatest impact: allowing knowledge workers to focus on the things that drive value - and empowering businesses to become more efficient and secure.

Getting your docs in a row

Knowledge workers - whether working in a bank, or a law firm, or a consultancy - have been forced to become masters of tools like Microsoft Word. To construct a building, an engineer would first have to lay the foundation with documents.

But this is no longer necessary.

Microsoft Word turns 41, and it isn’t at risk of becoming defunct. But its future looks entirely different to its past. Document work is becoming automated. And this means us, the users, are being set free. Or maybe it’s Word that is being set free from us. Documents are here to stay. But document work is not.

We list the best Microsoft Office alternatives.

This article was produced as part of TechRadarPro's Expert Insights channel where we feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today. The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/news/submit-your-story-to-techradar-pro

• More Copilot-powered features coming to top Microsoft 365 tools
• Microsoft Excel gets new template-building tool
• PowerPoint can now build richer slides, and Outlook gets smarter calendar integration

Microsoft has unveiled a host of Copilot-powered upgrades to some of the most popular office software tools in use today.

The likes of Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint are all set for another AI-enabled update after the company revealed the news at its Microsoft Ignite 2024 event.

Microsoft says the changes will lead to greater efficiency and productivity across the board, freeing up more time and space for workers at all levels to focus on the tasks that really matter.

Copilot upgrades

Included in the new updates is a new Microsoft Excel tool which aims to make creating specialized spreadsheets more straightforward for workers at all levels.

The new "start experience" will let users tell Copilot exactly what kind of spreadsheet they are creating, whether it be a project budget, inventory tracker, sales report, or anything else, and the tool will suggest a template file.

This template can then be refined further with headers, formulae and even visuals, giving the user a kickstart on creating the perfect spreadsheet.

This feature will be generally available by the end of the year with Microsoft 365 Copilot in Excel.

Elsewhere, Copilot will soon be able to better integrate with a user's Outlook platform in order to analyze their calendar to pick and schedule the best time for events such as 1:1 meetings, or even just some focus time.

The tool, available by the end of November 2024, can even help draft an agenda for a meeting by prompting it with details about the goals of the event, for example, “The goal of this meeting is to review the next project and introduce a team member”, and create an agenda to help the meeting stay on track.

Microsoft Places will also get closer integration with both Outlook and Teams, bringing AI-powered location tools that will help workers get the most out of being in the office.

There are also a range of new PowerPoint tools enabled by Copilot that Microsoft says will help users create better presentations in a matter of minutes.

This includes Copilot's Narrative Builder feature, which will use information from a pre-established template and referenced file from the user to create a full-scale first draft presentation, including branded design, speaker notes and built-in transitions and animations.

Copilot can also now handle translation of PowerPoint presentations, with 40 languages initially available, all whilst keeping the slide design as intended, helping get your message across to colleagues around the world.

Narrative Builder is coming to Copilot in PowerPoint in January 2025, with translation coming to Copilot in PowerPoint on the web beginning in December and for desktop and Mac in January 2025.

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Microsoft Excel is, without a doubt, one of the most powerful and influential pieces of software ever released, across a huge range of industries and professions. But how do you scan in a document and input that data?

While we would love the ability to upload a PDF directly into Excel and have the software break down critical data to input, that sadly is not the case right now – although with Microsoft's AI Copilots, maybe it will happen in the future.

Today we'll go through a couple of methods to scan a document into Excel and get to work on the data contained within it, including using Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft OneDrive, and Microsoft Lens.

Tools and requirements

• A scanner
• Microsoft Excel
• Adobe Scan or Microsoft Lens
• A PDF or other document

Steps for how to scan a document in Excel

• Scan your physical document OR open the document
• Use an OCR app like Adobe Scan or Lens to get the data
• Convert the document into an Excel file
• Open the document in Excel

Step by step guide

FAQs for scanning documents in Excel

Final thoughts

Being able to work with different file types and with scanned documents is really handy for many different reasons when using Excel on Windows or Mac. In this guide, we've suggested some quick and simple ways to handle the most common types of files, and we hope they have helped improve your workflow and save time.

Microsoft Excel is one of the most powerful tools for organizing data, performing calculations, and creating charts, but when it comes to printing, it can sometimes be tricky.

Excel offers a variety of options that let you customize the print layout according to your needs and it is possible to print a single sheet, multiple sheets, or an entire workbook.

This guide will walk you through the steps on how to print from Excel using different methods and ensure your data is presented clearly and professionally on paper.

How to print from Microsoft Excel

Tools & requirements

• A computer with Excel installed
• One of the best home printers (Wi-Fi-enabled or connected via USB)
• The spreadsheet you want to print
• Internet connection (optional for cloud printing)
• PDF reader or Google Drive (optional for saving files as PDFs)

1. Print a Single Sheet or Part of a Sheet

One of the most common printing tasks in Excel is printing a single sheet or a specific part of a sheet. You may have a large table, a set of calculations, or charts that you want to print on one or more pages.

Steps to print a single sheet:

1. Open Excel and navigate to the sheet you want to print.
2. Go to the File tab in the upper left corner.
3. Select Print from the menu.
4. Under Settings, ensure Print Active Sheets is selected.
5. You can preview your printout on the right side of the screen.
6. Adjust any print settings such as page orientation (portrait or landscape), paper size, and margins as needed.
7. Ensure to check the margins in the print settings. It is very common for the margins to lose alignment when printing from Excel.
8. Click Print to print your sheet.

Steps to print part of a sheet:

1. Highlight the area of the sheet you want to print.
2. Go to the Page Layout tab, and click Print Area in the Page Setup group.
3. Choose Set Print Area from the dropdown menu.
4. Go to File > Print and verify that only the selected area appears in the print preview.
5. Adjust settings if necessary, and click Print.

This method ensures that only the relevant parts of your spreadsheet are printed, saving paper and making your document easier to read. Please note that after opening the Excel page, Ctrl P can take you directly to the print settings.

2. Print Multiple Sheets or the Entire Workbook

If your Excel file contains several sheets and you want to print more than one, or even the entire workbook, Excel makes it simple to do so.

Steps to print multiple sheets:

1. Hold the Ctrl key and click on each sheet tab that you want to print.
2. Go to File > Print.
3. Under Settings, select Print Active Sheets.
4. Verify the print preview and click Print.

Steps to print the entire workbook:

1. Go to File > Print.
2. Under Settings, choose Print Entire Workbook.
3. Review the preview to ensure that all sheets are formatted correctly.
4. Adjust print settings if needed, such as page orientation and scaling (e.g., fitting all columns on one page).
5. Click Print.

Printing multiple sheets or an entire workbook is convenient when working with larger data sets or reports that span multiple tabs.

3. Save Your Excel Sheet as a PDF and Print

In some cases, you may prefer to save your Excel sheet as a PDF before printing. This is especially useful if you want to ensure consistent formatting across different devices or share the document with others for printing.

Steps to save as PDF:

1. Open the Excel sheet or workbook you want to save as a PDF.
2. Go to File > Save As.
3. Choose a location on your computer, and in the Save as Type dropdown, select PDF.
4. Click Options to choose whether to save the active sheet, selected sheets, or the entire workbook.
5. Click Save.

Steps to print PDF:

1. Open the saved PDF in your preferred PDF viewer.
2. Press Ctrl + P or go to File > Print.
3. Adjust print settings as needed, such as page orientation or scaling, and click Print.

Saving your Excel file as a PDF allows for a more polished look, ensuring that formatting issues don’t arise when printing from different devices or printers.

4. Customize Print Settings for Better Output

Excel offers several print settings that allow you to control how your document appears on paper. These settings can help you fit large data sets onto fewer pages, ensure your headers are printed, and format your document for optimal readability.

Key Print Settings to Adjust:

• Page Orientation: Choose between portrait (vertical) and landscape (horizontal) layouts depending on the content.
• Scaling: Under Settings in the print menu, you can select options like “Fit Sheet on One Page” or “Fit All Columns on One Page” to ensure that your data fits neatly within the printable area.
• Margins: Set custom margins if you need more or less white space around your content. This option is available under the Page Layout tab.
• Headers and Footers: To add a header or footer (e.g., page numbers, dates), go to the Insert tab, select Header & Footer, and customize the text that appears at the top or bottom of each printed page.
• Gridlines and Headings: Under the Page Layout tab, you can choose to print gridlines and row/column headings, which may be useful for navigating complex spreadsheets.

Customizing your print settings ensures that your document is easy to read, properly formatted, and professional-looking.

Tips for Printing from Microsoft Excel

• Always use the print preview to check how your document will look before printing. This can save you from wasting paper on misaligned or poorly formatted pages.
• Use the Set Print Area option to focus only on the data you need, avoiding unnecessary blank pages or extra rows and columns.
• Go to View > Page Break Preview to manually adjust where page breaks occur, ensuring that your content flows naturally across pages.
• If your data spans multiple pages, try adjusting the scaling settings to fit more content on each page without making it too small to read.