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Awesome Set Of Financial Tools!

Here's one that you'll like. It's a set of financial tools that everyone should have!

The program is called, appropriately enough, Financial Tools. It's basically a very handy, all purpose, financial assistant.

It includes a loan calculator (solves for weekly, bi-weekly, and monthly payments), a mortgage calculator, a bond calculator, a retirement planner, and savings calculator. It even has a financial glossary to help you through some of the terms you may not understand.

Although I really liked the calculators, the part that was the most intriguing was the retirement planner. You just put in some basic information (how much you're investing, est. rate of return, etc) and it can show you how much you'll have at retirement. (It even adjusts for inflation!)

As if that wasn't enough, it can also show you graphs of your loan calculations, save sessions, even password protect your information. It's a great little package.

The price? Well, it retails for $29.95, your price is only $10.97 and shipping is FREE if you live in the US! It's a super deal and a really handy program to have on your computer. Here's the link for more info:

http://www.worldstart.com/store/financialtools-MST.htm

PS - Don't miss out. After all, how many times have you wondered about how much the payment on this or that would be? Quantities are limited and we can't get any more once these are gone.

MS Office 101

Question: For the last two newsletters we've been using the Tables and Borders menu. I know what a table is, what's a border?

A border is a printable edge to a table, cell within a table, paragraph, page, word, or just about anything you can think of, in a MS Word document.

Borders are great for separating information, drawing a reader's attention to a specific area or jazzing up the overall look of a document.

To explore your border options go to the Format menu, Borders and Shading choice.

In the window that pops up, you should find one tab labeled Borders. The options set on this tab can be set to affect a paragraph, several paragraphs, a word or other highlighted items.

The Page Border tab allows you to set borders that surround the printed area on a page or pages.

Borders for a table a discussed below - so stay tuned….

Office Tip of the Day

MS Word Table Mania - Part 3- Additional Table Options

Welcome back to our ongoing discussion of MS Word tables. So far we've learned to create tables and a whole lot about formatting within the table. Today I thought we'd wrap the discussion up with a few of the options that really make a table a versatile and attractive tool.

First, I'd like to discuss the ability to either split or merge cells.

Merging means to have MS Word remove the breaks between two or more cells, bringing them together as one larger cell.

The first picture is of a table containing 4 rows and 4 columns. There are 16 cells total.

The following is the exact same table, after merging the center cells. It is now a table with only 13 cells. The middle 4 cells were combined into 1 large cell.

How do you accomplish this magical wonder? Believe it or not, with only 2 clicks of the mouse.

First you will need to highlight the cells to be merged. (Click, hold and drag until all cells to be merged are highlighted, then release the mouse button.)

Next you should click on the Merge button from the Tables and Borders toolbar. (You could also go to the Table menu, Merge Cells option.)

Viola - many cells into one!

The next topic is exactly the opposite of a merge. Splitting cells. This takes one or more cells and makes them into many. MS Word may have to expand row or column sizes to accommodate the split. (Cells have a certain minimum size that must be maintained.)

I believe that an illustration is in order. Here's our table from above, in its original state.

Here it is again after a couple cells were split in different ways. Notice the increased row height to accommodate the split into 4 rows.

Completing a split is much the same as completing a merge.

Highlight the cell or cells to be split. Then click on the Split Cells button. (Or use the Table menu, Split Cells option.)

A Split Cells window will open. In the window select the number of rows and columns the program should create in the cell(s) you've highlighted. Click OK.

And once again, just a touch of magic is performed. (OK, so it's not exactly magic. But, to the person who sees your document and has no clue how to make all this happen, it's magic :-)

Finally, I'd like to go over your options in table borders.

You can determine what the borders on your table should look like as well as how each cell will be outlined, if at all.

Your options in this regard are many. You can choose the line style, size and placement or you can choose to remove the line altogether. (If you remove the border, the cell is still the same size, it simply no longer has a printable border on that edge.)

The very first opportunity to change border style is when you first draw the table. (That is, If you choose to draw the table instead of using a menu or button to insert the table.)

Just after the eraser tool on the Tables and Borders toolbar, there are two menus and one very important button. These 3 items allow you to draw a table with the borders as you desire from the very beginning.

The first drop-down menu allows you to select the line style. Scroll through this, there are a lot of choices.

The next drop-down menu contains your choices for the line width. The options in this menu will change for each line style.

The button after the second menu allows you to pick the border color. (A very useful tool when trying to get someone's attention.)

As I said before, setting each of these choices just prior to drawing your table will allow the table to be created exactly as you desire. (Doesn't that eliminate the time and effort needed to change them later?)

Ok, so what if you decide after the table has been created to change its look? What then? Starting over is not an option and fortunately it's not necessary.

One way (and the way I tend to prefer) is to work on the borders through the All Borders button on the Tables and Borders toolbar.

To make border changes using this button first select all of your choices for line style, size and color (as described above).

Then highlight the cell(s) to be affected.

Finally, select a border location choice from the All Borders button drop-down box.

You should find that the new border is the style of line, size and color you've selected. (Not magic - but really cool :-)

Well, that's it on MS Word tables. We'll switch to new topics next week. I encourage all of you to give them a try. Play with the options. There are other things that can be done with a table. This 3-part discussion is truly just a place to start.