Move a table in MS Word without using the mouse!
Question: In MS Word, how do I move from cell to cell in a table without using the mouse? (A cell being each “box” within the table.)
Good question.
Tuesday we discussed inserting tables. For those of you who tried you may have found that when you hit the Enter key the row height grew instead of… Continue reading
Excel Worksheet Protection
So, we’re all looking to protect our worksheets from changes—changes others may make or changes we may accidentally make.
Since we’re all here for the same thing, let’s get right to it.
To protect your entire worksheet from changes you need to go to the Tools menu, Protection submenu, Protect Sheet choice.
The Protect Sheet window will open – giving you choices as to what to… Continue reading
No Touch My Cells!
OK, so maybe that’s the way my nephew would phrase it, but isn’t that what we mean when we’re looking to keep an Excel worksheet from being changed?
You know what I mean, the file that others have to see but shouldn’t touch.
Or… maybe it’s you who is the culprit!
Ever find that you’ve changed a worksheet that you never meant to alter?
Yeah, me… Continue reading
Many Objects Into One
OK, so your drawing is all done and you’re ready to turn many objects into one—let’s get started.
The first thing you need to do is to select all the items to be grouped.
One way is to hold down the Shift key while you click on each individual item.
You should notice that all items selected will have their little “grabbers” displayed.
Another way—possibly… Continue reading
Get In The Group
So, you’ve just spent the last 15 minutes putting together drawn elements from the drawing toolbar and it looks great!
You’ve got it exactly right, except… well, it should really be larger and probably, now that you think about it, in a different location.
Oh no.
Can you imagine? All that work!
All those little elements to move, resize and place back together exactly as you… Continue reading
Tab It Up In MS Word Tables
So, you’ve created an absolutely beautiful table in MS Word and you’re trying to enter the table data. (Check out recent issues from March 30, 2004 and April 1, 2004 for more info on table creation.)
Along the way you needed to set a few tab stops within the cells. (You can revisit the… Continue reading
Quick Email Sorting
You’re sorting through a huge list of email, wishing you knew of a quick way to find the specific one needed.
Smile 
There is!
To get MS Outlook or Outlook Express to sort email all you have to do is click!
When you’re looking at your inbox do you see the column titles at the top? The ones that label the columns From, Subject, Received, etc…… Continue reading
Quick Keyboard Highlighting in MS Word
Are you the person always looking for a better way to highlight text without the mouse?
Yes? Then I bet you’re a pretty big Shift key user.
While I’m not sure about you, I know that I find it a bit annoying since I tend to change my mind about how much to highlight after I’ve released the Shift key.
So naturally I’d need… Continue reading
Vanishing Characters
So, there you are, happily editing your MS Word document. You’re in the middle of a paragraph adding in a new word here and another there… but wait. What happened to the text?
You had something like this:
MS Office & Tricks
Then realized that you forgot the “Tips” so you clicked back into the sentence to add it.
Somehow, someway, you got this…
MS Office Tipsicks
What’s… Continue reading
Merge vs. Split
Well, let’s get right to the “good stuff”, that is, how to accomplish a cell split or merge.
Let’s begin with cell merging.
How do you accomplish this magical wonder in MS Word? 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… Continue reading
More MS Word Table Talk
In a couple of recent issues (March 30, 2004 and April 1, 2004) we went over some MS Word basics.
I think it might be time to expand our knowledge just a bit…
Have you ever wanted to take several cells of a table and turn it into one?
Yes?
Yeah, me too.
That’s called a merge.
Or—have… Continue reading
Excel Drag & Drop Between Worksheets
So, you’ve got some data in an Excel worksheet that you need to move to a new location.
Within the same sheet—no problem.
I’m positive that we all know about highlighting the data to be moved and then using the mouse arrow on the very edge of the selected cell(s) to click and drag the data to a new location.
Quick, easy—what could be… Continue reading
Click, Click – Toolbar Docked
As I’m sure many of you know, in an MS Office Suite program you can choose to constantly display a “floating” toolbar by dragging it into the outer edges of the program window.
The toolbar then loses its window title bar, closing box X and is what we call “docked” on either the top, bottom, left or right of the window.
Handy little feature -… Continue reading
Hyperlink No More
Have you ever been frustrated with MS Word while putting together a document that contains email or web site addresses?
Tired of the way Word continues to automatically create hyperlinks of your addresses?
You know—the change of color and underlining. If you’re creating a document to be printed then this isn’t exactly what you’re looking for.
In fact, for printed documents, it can be downright annoying!
What… Continue reading
To Update Or Not To Update
Did you know that there’s a choice as to how you insert the date or time into an Excel worksheet?
Did you know that you could choose to have the date or time entered as a piece of data that doesn’t change or as a field that will be updated when you open the file or press the F9 key?
Well, as you can… Continue reading
Flagging Messages In MS Outlook
So, we’ve all decided that flagging email messages is a good idea to keep organized and on time, and since we’re all here for the same reason, let’s get started.
The first step is to locate an email message that needs to be flagged for future attention.
If you’re using MS Outlook 97 then here’s the scoop for you:
To mark the email with a… Continue reading
Red Flag It
You’ve done this a hundred times.
You’ve got an email that requires a follow up action on your part and then a response but it’s not due for a couple of days.
Well… It can wait. You’ve got other things that are a higher priority right now.
You’ll leave the message in your Inbox – you’ll remember to get the job done and respond on time.
Move… Continue reading
Quick Copy Of Appointments
Do you use MS Outlook’s calendar feature to keep track of your appointments and other projects / deadlines?
Have you ever found yourself constantly entering the same or similar information over and over again?
If you’re thinking “that sounds like me” and you’re tired of all the repetition then have I got a time saver for you!
Next time, instead of retyping or even copy /… Continue reading
Extending Your Chart Data
So, you’ve got a beautiful Excel chart (known to some of you as a graph) and it’s the perfect thing to display your data.
It’s got all the labels, colors, titles and every other aspect any good chart would have… but of all the bad luck, now you’ve got to start over.
Why, you ask?
Well, unfortunately you’ve got more data to add to the chart.… Continue reading
Remove & Copy Toolbar Buttons
Are you an Office Suite user who likes to customize your workspace?
Specifically, do you do a lot of toolbar customizing?
Well, here’s a couple of tricks for quick, anytime customizations that may help you along your way.
Have Excel Help With The Proofreading
So, you’ve just entered a formula into an MS Excel cell and you get this…
#NAME?
Now what’s that?
Well, it turns out that you’re looking at Excel’s way of letting you know that you’ve used a name Excel doesn’t recognize.
For me it most commonly means that I’ve entered the name of a function with a typo and now Excel is confused.
If… Continue reading
Need More Data?
Are you an MS Outlook user who often finds yourself wishing for more Contact fields? That is, maybe you’re looking to enter data that has no “pre-made” location?
Frustrating isn’t it?
What do you do?
I mean, you want the data recorded for future use, but where?
Let’s fact it, if you “slide” it into another field just to have a record of the information you could… Continue reading
Zoom, Inbox — Zoom, Outbox
Do you work in MS Outlook and find that you seem to flip between the Inbox and the Outbox frequently?
Tired of needing the mouse to jump back and forth between the two?
Yeah, me too.
So here’s just the key combinations you need to zoom from one to the other…
Ctrl + Shift + I will take you immediately to the Inbox.
Ctrl +… Continue reading
Going To The Edge
Are you an Excel user who often works with huge ranges of data?
Sort of annoying when you’re trying to move from one end of the range to the other, isn’t it?
You can scroll for what feels like an eternity (and then probably pass the end of the data up anyway) or hit the Page Up / Down key about “a million” times. But no… Continue reading
Wait — That’s Not What I Want!
Have you ever found yourself frustrated with the AutoCorrect feature found in the MS Office suite programs?
Yeah, I’m sure you have.
Most of the time they’re helpful little changes in spelling or things like capitalization and we’re thankful to have the program looking out for us.
But… what about the times when AutoCorrect is making changes that we really don’t want or… Continue reading
MS Excel Worksheets on Demand
Ever notice that an Excel workbook opens with many worksheets? (I believe my program was initially set somewhere around 10 sheets.)
Have you ever wished that a new workbook would open with more worksheets? Less?
Yep, you’ve got it. There’s a way to change the default number of worksheets. Another one of those “That was so easy, why didn’t I know about that before?” items.… Continue reading
Question: I hear the terms “workbook” and “worksheet” used frequently when people discuss MS Excel. What exactly is a workbook? A worksheet? Is there a difference?
Well, to begin with, there is definitely a difference. (But you knew that, didn’t you?)
A workbook is the MS Excel file in which you enter and store related data.
A worksheet (also known as a spreadsheet) is a collection of cells on a… Continue reading
