Have you ever felt frustrated when working with MS Word’s tabs? I mean, you’re trying to set up your tab stops, but you’re finding it difficult to ensure that they are placed properly between the margins.
You’ve got the ruler displayed (View menu, Ruler choice – or – View tab on the Ribbon, check the Ruler option), but it’s still a bit of a pain to double… Continue reading
When you’re working in PowerPoint there’s a whole lot you can do with font… a lot of color choices, shadowing, rotation… basically the works.
But, if you look through all those easy settings you won’t really see anything metallic…do you?
No, me either but fortunately I did run across a blog that contains a download of a PowerPoint slide that contains text with effects… Continue reading
As any regular user of MS Excel can tell you, the Merge & Center command is truly a handy feature.
It allows you to select multiple cells then by using the command the cells are merged into one large cell and the cell contents are center justified.
I love it – makes for easy table titles centered above all the columns of data and… Continue reading
When you use MS Outlook 2007 to either forward or reply to a message are you ever astounded at the number of error the Spell Check finds … and most of them aren’t even yours!
I mean, it’s going through and checking absolutely everything, which means that you’re busy trying to correct the mistakes of others.
Now, maybe you don’t mind the… Continue reading
Do you use MS Word’s ruler feature with your documents? (You know… View menu / Ruler choice or View tab of the Ribbon / Ruler checkbox.)
Ever find yourself wishing it was in a different measurement unit? (Let’s say it’s in inches and you want it in centimeters). Or, maybe you weren’t even using the ruler, because the way it measured just isn’t the way… Continue reading
Have you ever found it annoying that MS Word highlights text in lines? That is, it moves the highlight through the document one line at a time.
Ever wish you could just create a quick rectangle at any location and copy only what’s in the rectangle? You know, maybe the first half of many lines of text or the middle of a paragraph.
The… Continue reading
We all know that in MS Excel the bottom right corner of a cell selection is called the Fill Handle.
It’s an extremely useful tool. With just a drag and drop of the fill handle will copy information or continue a series of data in consecutive cells without the need for the whole copy / paste thing.
What could be… Continue reading
Do you want to use a desktop email client so that you can read and reply to Gmail emails without opening the browser all the time? Using a desktop email client has its own advantages. First, you can manage all your email accounts at one place. Second, you can read emails and write the responses when you do not have an internet connection.
The biggest… Continue reading
I’m sure that all of you MS Outlook users know how to sort your e-mail messages by clicking the column title.
Furthermore, if you click the column title again it will begin to toggle between an ascending and descending sort.
Works great, love it, use it all the time but… did you ever need to sort by let’s say sender… Continue reading
I don’t know about you buy when I’m working with a presentation in MS PowerPoint I often find myself duplicating slides so that I can easily keep formatting consistent throughout. Content replacement and minor changes from slide to slide is then easily accomplished.
I’m sure that many of you have found the Duplicate Slide command in some menu or tab of the Ribbon but I have two… Continue reading
As many MS Excel users know, you can highlight a column and then through the Format menu, Column sub-menu choice (for Excel 2007 it’s the Home tab of the Ribbon, Cells section, Format button), you can choose the AutoFit Selection option. What this does is make the column just wide enough to fit the longest piece of data in the selection.
It’s a great thing, with no… Continue reading
Sometimes it’s just a good plan to have the lines of your Word documents numbered.
They could come in handy if you’re trying to communicate with someone about specific portions of the document or maybe they would be useful for your own editing notes.
Whatever the reason, sometimes it’s just a good idea to have them and that makes it an even better idea… Continue reading
Do you use MS Office’s drawing tools and the “snap to grid” feature?
If you’re like me, the whole “snap to grid” thing works out okay and it helps me keep my things a bit more organized, but sometimes there’s just that fraction of space you want to use and can’t, because the object is snapping back into place on the grid.… Continue reading
Navigating an Already Selected Range
Have a large range selected in MS Excel?
Need to move the selected cell, within the highlight, to another location to check data or functions?
I know you’re not considering the idea of simply clicking somewhere else, taking a look at your data and then reselecting the range all over again, are you?
Let’s hope there’s a better way!
Here’s a list
Moving Backwards
Ever find yourself about to hit the Enter key in MS Excel and realize you need to move up a cell to fix something?
What did you do?
Most people go ahead and use the Enter key and then use the arrow keys (or mouse) to move back to the cell above.
This works, but doesn’t it seem like there should be a more efficient
Ever copy text from the Internet or an e-mail into MS Word?
Did something come along with the text that you weren’t necessarily expecting or hoped wouldn’t?
Yeah – I hear you – all those hyperlinks are a big pain at this point, aren’t they?
I mean, you’ve got the information in Word, you’re creating a document (not a web page), you have all these
More Or Less
Find yourself either inserting or deleting a lot of rows and/or columns in MS Excel?
Tired of looking for the correct button on the Ribbon or command from the Insert menu?
Yeah, me too.
So here’s an alternative that you just might find as helpful as I do.
To begin, highlight the number of rows or columns you are looking to insert. (Be sure to highlight the… Continue reading
Yep – you read it correctly… you can extend the data used to create an Excel chart using a copy / paste maneuver.
Previously we’ve discussed using the data outline to extend what is included on the chart. (Click here to view the tip using this technique.)
I’ve got to say that extending the data outline is definitely an easy route to… Continue reading
Every try to open an MS Word document only to have the program tell you that it can’t open the file because it’s corrupt?
Come on, if you use Word with any frequency then I’m betting that you’ve run into this gem a time or two.
Made your day, didn’t it?
I mean, what better way to spend your… Continue reading
or two weeks… or maybe just every other day…
Ever find that you need to have a list of dates that are evenly spaced apart. Maybe Wednesday of this week and the dates of all the Wednesdays that follow?
Whatever the pattern of the dates, it sure would be nice to not need a calendar or counting day-by-day to find them all the time… Continue reading
Have an appointment in your MS Outlook Calendar that was just rescheduled?
Looking for a quick way to move the information to the new date?
I bet you’ve already figured out that you can change the appointment time within the daily detail with a simple drag and drop to the new time, but did you know you could also change the date of the… Continue reading
I can’t speak for everyone but I know that when I’m at work I find myself constantly revising the Word documents that I use. Being a teacher, most times that a document is used I find adjustments to the lesson that need to be made for next time.
All those adjustments result in the need for revision dates so that a new version isn’t accidentally replaced with… Continue reading
Have you invested quite a bit of time creating custom key combinations for various tasks in Word 2007?
If you’re anything like me then the number of key combinations can be many and I will go through phases where the newest ones are needed daily so the older ones are sometimes forgotten.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have a printout of all those key… Continue reading
Show Them No Menus
How many times have you found yourself using a PowerPoint presentation and in the middle you accidentally hit the right mouse button?
I don’t know about you but the resulting menu does not exactly make my day nor does it give the smooth impression of a well-put together presentation.
In my opinion, and I know there are lots out there who do not agree, but the… Continue reading
Did you know that when working in MS Word, there is no need to highlight an entire paragraph to make changes to paragraph traits (such as tabs, justification, line spacing and indents?)
All you have to do is click anywhere inside the paragraph and the changes will automatically apply to the entire paragraph.
Have more than one paragraph to work with?… Continue reading
Have you ever looked at an MS Excel worksheet and wondered how long it was going to take you to select only those cells that contain text or formulas or numbers or those cells that have errors?
Plus, while you’re wondering that, you’re just dreading the old Ctrl key + click, click and click some more on all cells that meet the criteria.
Maybe… Continue reading
Find yourself printing an Excel worksheet just for editing purposes? Let’s face it, not everyone does their best editing on the screen… some people just need to have it on paper with pen in hand to do quality editing work.
However, if you’re like me then it begins to feel like a waste of resources.
Ink and toner aren’t cheap so printing… Continue reading
