Mona SteeleMicrosoft 365 tips, tutorials & troubleshooting

All articles

Browse every guide we've written, sorted by date.

Teams

Teams notifications are silent: the four toggles that actually control them

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Teams·

Teams notifications are silent: the four toggles that actually control them

When Microsoft Teams stops alerting you to messages or meetings, four overlapping settings — across Teams, Windows, Focus Assist, and your channel preferences — are usually fighting each other. Here is how to untangle them.

9 min read·By Mona Steele
Outlook

Outlook Search returns nothing: rebuild the index without losing email

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Outlook·

Outlook Search returns nothing: rebuild the index without losing email

When Outlook Search stops finding emails you know exist, the Windows search index is almost always the culprit. Here is the safe way to rebuild it — and what to do if that doesn't fix it.

10 min read·By Mona Steele
Excel

Excel is slow: 7 hidden settings that actually fix it

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Excel·

Excel is slow: 7 hidden settings that actually fix it

If Excel takes ten seconds to open a 200-row sheet, the culprit is rarely the file. Here are the seven settings — most of them buried — that bring Excel back to life.

9 min read·By Mona Steele
Word

'Locked for editing by another user' — when no one else has the document

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Word·

'Locked for editing by another user' — when no one else has the document

Word's ghost-lock error is one of the most common and least-explained Microsoft 365 frustrations. Here is what is actually holding the lock and how to release it without losing changes.

10 min read·By Mona Steele
Outlook

How to recall an email in Outlook (and what actually happens)

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Outlook·

How to recall an email in Outlook (and what actually happens)

Step-by-step instructions to recall a sent message in Outlook, plus the conditions that have to be true for it to actually work, and what to do when it doesn't.

7 min read·By Mona Steele
Teams

Make your Teams calls sound studio-quality with one setting

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Teams·

Make your Teams calls sound studio-quality with one setting

Microsoft Teams has a noise suppression setting that filters out keyboards, dogs, and street traffic — here's where to find it, which mode to choose, and what's actually happening to your audio.

8 min read·By Mona Steele
PowerPoint

PowerPoint videos won't play — codec, embed, and link fixes

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PowerPoint·

PowerPoint videos won't play — codec, embed, and link fixes

When a video plays on your machine but goes black on someone else's, the problem is almost always how the video was added to the slide. Here is how to make it portable.

9 min read·By Mona Steele
OneDrive

OneDrive 'Processing changes' forever — break the sync loop

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OneDrive·

OneDrive 'Processing changes' forever — break the sync loop

When OneDrive's status icon spins for hours, the cause is usually a single file the sync engine cannot finish handling. Here is how to identify and remove it without losing data.

10 min read·By Mona Steele
Excel

VLOOKUP vs XLOOKUP: which one should you actually use?

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Excel·

VLOOKUP vs XLOOKUP: which one should you actually use?

VLOOKUP is the formula everyone learns first. XLOOKUP fixes nearly all of its problems. Here's a plain-English comparison, real examples, and when to use each.

8 min read·By Mona Steele
Windows & Account

Microsoft 365 keeps signing me out — fix the trust state

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Windows & Account·

Microsoft 365 keeps signing me out — fix the trust state

If Office, Outlook or Teams keeps forgetting your account, the cause is usually a broken work-account trust state on the device. Here is how to repair it without nuking your Windows profile.

11 min read·By Mona Steele
Word

Why Word Styles will save your sanity (and how to use them)

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Word·

Why Word Styles will save your sanity (and how to use them)

Stop manually formatting every heading. Word's Styles feature is the single biggest productivity unlock for anyone who writes long documents — here's how they work, why they exist, and how to use them properly.

9 min read·By Mona Steele
PowerPoint

PowerPoint Designer turns ugly slides into nice ones in two clicks

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PowerPoint·

PowerPoint Designer turns ugly slides into nice ones in two clicks

Microsoft 365's Designer pane uses AI to suggest layouts for any slide you build. Here's how to summon it on demand, what it's good and bad at, and how to fix it when it disappears.

9 min read·By Mona Steele
SharePoint

SharePoint vs OneDrive: when to use which

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SharePoint·

SharePoint vs OneDrive: when to use which

OneDrive is for your stuff. SharePoint is for the team's stuff. Here's a clear way to decide where a file belongs.

9 min read·By Mona Steele