It's often helpful to create charts that compare different types of data. For example, you might want to compare overall revenue with the number of units sold. To do that you need to know how to use different chart types in one chart and how to use a secondary vertical axis to plot values that are in a different value range. Read more to learn how. (Sample workbook included)

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We think the time is right to reimagine personal email. So today, we're introducing a preview of Outlook.com - modern email for the next billion mailboxes. We realized that we needed to take a bold step, break from the past and build you a brand new service from the ground up. You already know Outlook via the Outlook desktop application-for PCs and Macs-as the world's most popular application for reading email, managing a calendar, and connecting to people. And you may have used the Outlook Web App connected to Exchange Server in your organization. Now, in addition to a desktop application and a service for businesses, we're offering Outlook as a personal email service - Outlook.com.

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It happens. You made a mistake.

How do you "take back" or recall an Outlook email message that you already sent? How do you recall a message and replace it with another one? Go to your Outlook Sent Items folder first, and then recall that message! Quickly!

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First of all, this post is dedicated to my aunt Gayla who runs a small business and has a lot of trouble with this feature. This post is not dedicated to those who might use this feature for spamming. :) Mail merge is a feature of Outlook and Word that allows you to send a set of contacts a personalized e-mail as though they are the only person receiving the e-mail. With this feature, you can personalize the e-mail so that each of your recipients is the only person on the To: line and that the contents...

Yesterday we were alerted to an issue in Excel 2007 (and Excel Services 2007) involving calculation of numbers around 65,535. The Excel team would like to provide a description of the issue and explain what we're doing about it. Background Yesterday evening we were alerted to an issue in Excel 2007 (and Excel Services 2007) involving calculation of numbers around 65,535. The first example that we heard about was =77.1*850, but it became clear from our testing as well as additional reports that this...

(This post, originally published in 2010, announced the availability of the PowerPoint 2010 Viewer. This post remains incredibly popular because so people find the Viewer to be a useful tool. We're republishing it so readers of our blog can find and use it, too.) I’m excited to announce that our new PowerPoint Viewer is now available here for free download . By installing the PowerPoint Viewer, you can open and watch PowerPoint presentations in all formats, no matter what computer you’re...

My name is Jennifer Michelstein, and I'm a Program Manager on the Word team. I mainly work on academic features, like bibliographies and citations (see Joe Friend's blog ) and equations. In Word 2007, we took a ground-up approach to creating a new set of tools for editing and displaying equations. Here's a brief highlight of what's cool about the new Equation Builder: Equations are regular Word text (not objects), so they're integrated with regular Word formatting. High-quality display and typography...

In this post, I'm going to talk about equation numbering, one of our most highly-requested features. Setting up your equation numbering for easy one-click entry takes a few steps, so bear with me. You have to go through this process only once, and after that, you'll be able to insert equation numbers with just one click. Feel free to read the steps below, watch the video demos instead, or do both! Step 1: Insert a 3x1 table. Your equation numbers can go in the leftmost or rightmost column, and your...

Earlier this autumn, we shipped enhancements to Office Web Apps based on your feedback, delivering new features such as the ability to view ink in OneNote Web App, merge and autofit cells in Excel Web App, and print directly from the browser in Excel Web App. Today, the SkyDrive team is announcing some updates that are also based on your requests. Today’s SkyDrive updates will make it easier than ever to share and collaborate on Office documents using Office Web Apps on SkyDrive.

With today’s SkyDrive improvements, you can share individual files stored on SkyDrive, not just folders. Also, you can easily collaborate on Office documents through SkyDrive with anyone, even if you don’t know their Windows Live ID. You can even share directly with friends on Facebook and LinkedIn.

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Today’s Author: Eric Patterson, a program manager on the Excel team. Eric is going to discuss applying pattern fills to chart data points and includes a sample add-in for this purpose. Overview In Excel 2007, the interface for applying Pattern fills to chart elements has been removed in favor of the interface for applying Picture and Texture fills. Charts formatted with pattern fills in previous versions of Excel will retain and display the pattern fills when opened in Excel 2007. Here is an example...