Announcements

WOW! Awesome Speakers!

I love digital music, don't you? You can take a bunch of different CDs, copy your favorite tracks to your hard drive, then listen to the whole slew of them - right through your computer. It's all great, until you to turn on those speakers...

Most of the computer speakers I've seen are the chintzy, tinny-sounding things that are included when you purchase the computer. (They have to include speakers, so why get by as cheap as possible, huh?) They sound like a 1940s radio if you ask me.

Sure, you can go out and buy better computer speakers, but you're going to part with $50-$100 for a good set. Unless you subscribe to this newsletter :-)

We just came across a fantastic deal on some higher-end Polk Audio speakers. Before we decided to sell these, we - as always - had to test them. So, we hook up the speakers, pop in a CD, and WOW!

All jaws were dropped (wish I had a picture :-). We couldn't believe how good these sounded! We expected they would be better than standard computer speakers, but these were way better than what any of us had anticipated. They sounded as good as my stereo back home (and way better than my car)! In short, we were all blown away by the full, rich sound that was being produced. I know they are some of the best sounding computer speakers I've ever heard.

Your price on these is fantastic - just $29.97, free US shipping. For a comparison, our Cindy went to one of the big chain stores (you know, "Best ***" or something like that ;-) with our description in hand. She went to the computer dept, showed our printout, and asked if they had something similar.

The guy looked at the specs and said he couldn't even get close to the price for that caliber of speaker. He had some that were almost as good for $50. Then he told her to be careful ordering on the internet, since you'll probably get charged $20 in shipping. That's when Cindy pointed out the "Free US Shipping" note on the page. The guy saw that and said she'd probably be better off buying from WorldStart.

I couldn't agree more ;-)

Anyhow, here's the link for more info:

http://www.worldstart.com/store/polk-audio-speaker.htm

PS - Two things. First, remember that if you don't absolutely love the sound from these (don't worry, you'll love 'em), you can return them for a refund within 30 days - nothing to lose. Second, quantities are limited and this is an incredible price. Be sure to get to the site quickly

MS Office 101

Wrong Way!

Have you ever found yourself happily working along in MS Excel only to realize that you've set the data up totally wrong?

You know, what should be vertical is horizontal and vise versa.

What do you do?

Start retyping?

I hope not!

Do you start copy / pasting each cell's contents to its new location? Or maybe you just drag each item to its new home?

Either way, it's time consuming.

Would you like a quick way to make a data direction change?

Good—I was hoping you'd say yes.

Here's the deal—switching direction is all in the way you paste.

Yep, I said paste. But don't worry, we get to copy and paste entire sections of data all at once—not item by item.

• To begin with, highlight the data to be switched.
• Now copy the data.
• Select the cell where the data should begin.

  (Be careful with this next step—this is where things get different.)

• Go to the Edit menu, Paste Special choice. (Alt, E then S will work too.)
• At the bottom of the Paste Special window you're looking for the option to Transpose the data.



• Make sure to check the Transpose box and click OK.

Instantly you should be returned to your worksheet with the data pasted in the new direction.

It's almost like a U-turn for Excel without the risk of a traffic violation.

Office Tip of the Day

Just Like New

Well, we've spent a couple of days customizing our Word menus and it's time to talk about "undoing" our changes.

For those of you who have tried these tricks as we went along, you may find yourself in a predicament. Are you wishing you could put it all back?

Did you make changes you now regret and want to start all over?

Or, the unthinkable might have occurred, you may have accidentally removed an entire menu from the list! (I bet that one is driving you crazy.)

Whatever the problem, I'm here to help you fix it up and make Word like new.

Let's begin with resetting menus to their default configurations.

The first thing you need to do is to open the Customize window. (Yeah, I know, we're always doing that, but it's just so useful!) You remember how—you can open this with the Tools menu, Customize choice -or- Alt, T then C -or- right click on any toolbar and choose Customize from the bottom of the list.

Any way to choose, just so long as the window is open, you're ready for the next step.

With the Customize window still open, put your mouse pointer over the name of the menu you want to reset and then right click.

A pop up menu will appear.

From the list choose Reset.

You can reset as many menus as you want, just keep repeating this process.

When you're done click Close in the Customize window.

Voila! New menus ready for you to modify all over again. (Hopefully into a format you'll want to keep.)

Now let's move on to the missing menu syndrome.

If you've inadvertently pulled an entire menu into the document, then you've probably noticed that "Poof" it's gone.

The first time I did that I was pretty miffed at myself—there seemed no easy way to put it back—it was just gone—or so I thought.

But then I stopped panicking and stumbled across my solution. So let me save you the panic time and get straight to the solution.

Once again you'll need to open the Customize window.

You're looking for the Command tab.

In the Categories list (left side) scroll to the bottom and find the Built-in Menus choice.

From the Commands list (right side) choose the menu you've misplaced. (You might have noticed that there are a couple of extras you may want to add. If you find a new one you like then Word could be even better than new.)

Click-hold-and-drag the menu back to the top of your Word window - placing it wherever you like.

Finally, click Close on the Customize window.

That's it—you're ready to roll. All menus present and accounted for.

~ April

P.S. You will also find that a lot of the menu flexibility we've discussed recently is available in other MS Office Suite programs. I found that the original key combination tricks wouldn't work but that I could make changes while the Customize window was open. So... get busy in whatever program you prefer and customize to your heart's content.