MS Office 101

Undo / Redo Many Steps At Once

Many of us know about the Undo and Redo buttons located on the Standard toolbar. (Left arrow is "Undo" and right arrow is "Redo".)

What do you do if you've got a lot of steps to undo?

Do you click the button again and again until you are finally returned to the place you're looking for—or, do you hit Ctrl + Z until you've reached the right spot.

Not a lot of fun and can take quite a bit of time.

Ever wish for a faster way to undo many changes in one maneuver?

If you said "Yes!" then you're in the right place because that's where we're going today.

OK, so you've seen and used the buttons, but did you ever notice the little down arrows in each button?

Run your mouse pointer over one of the buttons, notice how the down arrow has its own section?

Click it.

A list of actions available to be "undone" should appear.

Run your mouse pointer down the list selecting all actions you want reversed as you go. (There's a scroll bar on the right if you've got a really long list and aren't seeing it all right away.)

When you've got everything selected, click.

Poof!

Instantly all those steps are reversed (or redone, depending on the button)—multiple clicks not needed!

PS: You'll find that the pictures here are for Word 2000, the items in the list are pretty specific and easy to follow. For users of Office 97 you'll find that the list isn't as specific but still serves the same purpose.

Office Tip of the Day

Clearly We've Got Some Options

So... you're working in MS Excel with some data and you've got some changes to make.

If you need to delete data you would simply highlight the cells and hit the Delete key.

But, let's suppose that you don't want the data deleted but instead want the formatting removed. What do you do then?

You could spend time reformatting the cells or undoing whatever formatting has to go. This could take a while, so I bet you're looking for a quicker method. (Of course, undo only works if the formatting steps were the last things done.)

The truth is that you do have choices about what you clear from a cell without all the extra steps. Ready to see how?

Good—then let's look at our options.

The first thing you need to do is to highlight the cells to be affected.

Next you're looking for the Edit menu, Clear choice.

Clear brings up a submenu with 4 options.

"All" will clear out everything—and I do mean everything—data, formatting, comments and all.

"Formats" will remove all formatting—the cell's contents and any comments will not be affected.

"Contents" is the same as the Delete key. It will remove the cell's contents (data, formulas, labels, etc.) only and leave intact any formatting and/or comments.

Side Note: Another quick way to clear contents is to highlight the cells and right click.

Choose Clear Contents from the pop up menu that appears.

"Comments" removes all comments attached to the highlighted cells. All cell contents (data, formulas, labels, etc.) along with formatting are not affected.

So, we clearly have some choices. The questions is to delete or to not delete.

~ April