Articles about Microsoft

Microsoft 365 is the default software in SMEs, and understandably. The software offers a comprehensive set of productivity tools; flexible, scalable, and affordable licensing options, and compliance and security capabilities. However, given the ever-growing and persistent threat of cyberattacks, for email security, the standard security safeguards offered are insufficient.

Analysis of over 1 billion emails worldwide shows that emails are the preferred vehicle of cybercriminals. Email-delivered malware remains a favorite, increasing by 276 percent between January and December of last year. Additionally, attachments are growing as a threat. In Q4 of 2023, EML attachments increased 10-fold. Criminals are sending malicious payloads via EML files because they get overlooked when attached to the actual phishing email, which comes out clean.

Continue reading →

Multiply your productivity with the world's most straightforward guide to the world's most popular office software.

Microsoft Office 365 contains straightforward tools for virtually every office task you could possibly think of. And learning how to use this powerful software is much easier than you might expect. With the latest edition of Office 365 All-in-One For Dummies, you'll get a grip on some of the most popular and effective office software on the planet, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Access, Publisher, and Teams.

Continue reading →

It is easy to complain about Windows 11; oh, so very, very easy. But while there are many reasons for feeling frustrated at the operating system, there is also cause for hope -- not least of which is that Microsoft appears to be paying heed to feedback from users.

This is evident in the latest beta build of Windows 11 released to Windows Insiders where the company has made important changes to Explorer and Widgets in the taskbar. Explorer improvements sees the return of drag-and-drop functionality to breadcrumbs.

Continue reading →

Microsoft is working on a redesign of the All Apps menu of the Windows 11 Start Menu. The current iteration of All Apps was introduced in Windows 10. Users could activate the section to get an alpha-numerical list of all installed applications.

Critics argue that the layout is not practicable. It has a lot of whitespace and only one entry per line. Users who prefer improved layouts may switch to Start Menu alternatives such as Start11 or StartAllBack.

Continue reading →

Five-hundred-and-eighty-eight in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 10 and 11 on the Microsoft Store and elsewhere in the past seven days.

Microsoft released the March 2024 optional update for Windows 11 this week. It includes all the changes of the Moment Update 5, which adds more AI to Windows and also changes for European Economic Area users.

Continue reading →

Powering 75 percent of the PCs on the planet, Microsoft Windows is capable of extraordinary things. And you don’t need to be a computer scientist to explore the nooks and crannies of the operating system.

With Windows 11 All-in-One For Dummies, anyone can discover how to dig into Microsoft’s ubiquitous operating system and get the most out of the latest version.

Continue reading →

Windows 10 may be in the later stages of its life, but Microsoft has still not given up on it. With just 18 months of support left, the company has released the KB5035941 update which adds Windows Spotlight to your desktop background as well as new lockscreen widgets.

The new additions come despite Microsoft's previous assertion that nothing new would be added to Windows 10. This non-security update also includes a number of fixes and changes, such as updates for Windows Hello for Business.

Continue reading →

It is the time of the month when Microsoft releases preview versions of the next month's updates for Windows 10 and Windows 11. And for Windows 11 users, the newly launched KB5035942 update is an exciting one.

As this is an update preview, there are no security fixes included in the patch but there is a lot more. With the KB5035942 update, Microsoft is enabling all of the features of the Moment 5 update for all users by default. There are also fixes for a range of non-security issues.

Continue reading →

While Windows Subsystem for Linux is widely recognized as being one of Microsoft most impressive achievements in recent times, WSL is not without its flaws.

Now in its second iteration, WSL makes it possible to install Linux distros within Windows 11 but it has a major obstacle that is stopping it gaining mass appeal -- it remains a text-based tool. But this could be about to change. Microsoft is exploring the possibility of introducing a new GUI to simplify the installation and management of distros.

Continue reading →

Despite all of Microsoft's talk of it being a modern operating system, Windows 11 remains firmly rooted in the past. There are numerous elements of the interface that have not changed in years, and there remain options that are only accessible though the old-fashioned Control Panel.

But there is a surprising hangover from days of yore that has just been highlighted by the developer who created the interface for the Format dialog. The design of the UI, the list of options, and even the 32GB size constraint of a FAT volume, were only ever meant to be temporary -- and yet they are still here three decades on.

Continue reading →

Microsoft -- yes, Microsoft -- is set to address an issue that has plagued the look of text in Chrome running on Windows 10 and Windows 11. While this is not a problem that affects everyone, there are large numbers of people who have long-complained about strange-looking fonts in Google's web browser.

The font troubles stem from a font rending incompatibility which Microsoft is finally getting around to fixing. The ClearType Tuner of Windows is ignored by Chrome, but Microsoft's tweaks mean that the browser rendering will be noticeably improved.

Continue reading →

Microsoft has announced that is it transitioning Test Base for Microsoft 365 to end-of-life in just a few weeks. The EOL process for the service started at the beginning of March and will be complete by the end of May.

As Test Base for Microsoft 365 is not something that everyone will have heard of, Microsoft explains that it is "a cloud-based app testing service on Azure that evaluates the compatibility of applications with new Windows releases or updates". The company has decided that it is no longer needed because so much work has been done with Windows 11 that app compatibility issues are rare.

Continue reading →

Not for the first time, Microsoft has released a patch-for-a-patch after a recent update was found to cause memory leaks in Windows Server.

The problems stemmed from the KB5035857 update -- the March 2024 security update -- for Windows Server, which Microsoft acknowledged as having known issues. Now the company has released the out-of-band KB5037422 update which affected users will have to manually seek out and install.

Continue reading →

Five-hundred-and-eighty-seven in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 10 and 11 on the Microsoft Store and elsewhere in the past seven days.

Microsoft announced two new Surface devices for business yesterday. The new Surface Pro 10 for Business and the Surface Laptop 6 for Business are up to two times faster than their predecessors according to Microsoft. They are optimized for AI and come with the Copilot key.

Continue reading →

Following complaints from large numbers of system administrators, Microsoft has finally acknowledged that there are problems with the recently released KB5035857 update for Windows Server.

The March 2024 security update was released 10 days ago, and it did not take long for users to start experiencing problems. Now Microsoft has confirmed that it is aware of an issue with Kerberos requests on domain controllers which may cause LSASS memory leaks. [UPDATE: there is now a fix available]

Continue reading →