MS Office 101

Give The Assistant A Vacation

Tired of the Office Assistant popping up every time you turn around?

Want to access the online help directly - no middle 'man" needed?

Well, if you've got a new version of Office (sorry - this isn't in the 97 version) then you're in luck!

To get the little guy to take a semi-permanent vacation then here's the scoop.

First, you need to get to the Assistant's options. You can right click on him and choose Options from the menu—or—you can just click on him and choose the Options button in the window.

Either way, once you're in the Office Assistant window you're looking for the Options tab.

The first section is titled "Use the Office Assistant". You should notice that this title is also a check box.

Uncheck the box.

Click OK.

Voila! Assistant all gone!

Change your mind—do you miss the little guy?

No problem.

Simply go to the Help menu and choose Show the Office Assistant from the list.

And there he is—smiling away at you like he'd never left!

Office Tip of the Day

Relocate In Seconds

Last month (November 4 and November 13, 2003 to be exact) we discussed charts—also known as graphs—in MS Excel. During the creation of the chart we had to pick a location, in other words, where did you want Excel to put the graph?

You had two choices: you could embed it as an object in a worksheet or you could put it on it's own chart sheet.

Ever find yourself wishing you'd made a different choice?

Maybe you put it on it's own sheet but now you've got second thoughts. Now you'd find it more useful if it was embedded in the sheet, displayed next to the data.

What do you do?

Start over?

I hope not! Nobody likes to do the same work twice—especially when there's a 30 second solution.

Interested in the solution?

Yeah, I thought so...

To change location of a chart you should first right click in the white space of the chart (called Chart Area).

When the pop up menu appears choose Location.

This will take you back to the last step of the Chart Wizard, that is, back to the step where you selected the chart location.

Choose a new location for the chart.

If you select "As new sheet" your chart will appear on its own sheet. You can choose to give the new sheet a name in the box or use the one suggested by Excel.

"As object in" will embed the chart in another sheet. Be sure to choose the sheet name from the drop down list on the right. It is possible to embed a chart on a chart sheet.

When you've made your new choice, click OK.

Poof—chart relocated without one ounce of that old "doing the same work twice" feeling.

~ April