Copying Excel Worksheets—Including The Formatting!
Have you ever tried to copy the contents of one MS Excel worksheet to another only to find that when you’re done pasting you’ve lost all your column and row formatting (such as column width and row heights)? How much time do you lose reformatting all those worksheets?
You just know there has to be an easier way, and of course, there is 
To… Continue reading
Excel Word Wrap For Many Cells
So, you’ve got a whole range of cells with a lot of text?
Maybe you’ve got a row or column of titles and the whole Alt + Enter thing would just take way too much time. I mean, who wants to go through cell by cell to get the word wrap set?
Not me either!
So what now?
Believe it or not, it’s as… Continue reading
MS Excel Wrapping In A Single Cell
We’ve all had them. They’re everywhere. They’re impossible to kill and hard to shrink. What am I talking about? (Sometimes I wonder about that myself.)
I’m talking about those column or row titles in Excel that are so long they’re awkward.
If you stretch the column width to accommodate the whole title, then the two-digit number looks ridiculous in the 3-inch wide column.… Continue reading
Inserting MS Word Bookmarks
Ok, so we’re all here to find out how to create and use MS Word’s Bookmark feature for quick navigation through our documents. With that in mind, let’s dive right in.
The first thing would be to decide where you need a bookmark. It could be a string of text, a picture or simply a blank space somewhere. (Whatever your bookmark location, make sure you have… Continue reading
I found a great program that…
I get email all the time from readers who want me to know about freeware and shareware programs that change the status of read only files, turn off XP Messenger Service , display hard drive contents, monitor open processes, and other simple tasks. Of course, we appreciate and encourage reader feedback and recommendations, but I had a few thoughts that I’d like… Continue reading
Comments | Filed under: Uncategorized |
Bookmark It!
Ever have a “monster” MS Word document?
Find it a bit of a pain to navigate?
Tired of the Page Up and Page Down buttons?
Yeah, me too. There’s just got to be an easier way to navigate through the entire mess, and, well, there is.
In fact there are several different ways to shortcut by all the navigational headaches—but today let’s discuss MS Word’s Bookmark feature.
First… Continue reading
Have you ever been surfing the web and had a sudden urge to send an e-mail to someone? Maybe you just stumbled upon a really cool page or some awesome information that you just gotta share.
Whatever the reason, wouldn’t it be cool if you could compose an e-mail without launching Outlook Express, fiddling around in the address book, then finally starting the message?
Well, where there’s a geek, there’s… Continue reading
Comments | Filed under: E-Mail Help, Using The Internet |
Using Word’s Hyperlinks With bookmarks
On Tuesday we covered MS Word’s bookmark feature—all in all, a pretty quick way to navigate through large documents.
But… wouldn’t it be wonderful to have the ability to set up links within the document so you can jump from location to location without all the Go To stuff?
You know, like a web page—you click on a marked link and poof!… Continue reading
Did you know…
…that in “Print Preview” you can choose to display more than one page at a time?
I’m sure we all know about the benefits of Print Preview, but wouldn’t it be nice to see how the pages are flowing one after another? You know, to see where page breaks are landing, how pictures, tables and graphs are placed on the pages. Basically to make sure that it… Continue reading
Comments | Filed under: MS Office Help |
Q:
For some reason when I went to open some of my documents, some of them came up with this little ~$ sign before the name of the document omitting the first one or two letters of the document. What does this mean?
A:
That is a hidden temporary file that is created when you have a document open. It’s where all the… Continue reading
Comments | Filed under: File & Disk Management |
Word: Sorting Data
Have you ever found yourself wishing that the list you just typed into MS Word was alphabetized? Or, for those of you who are good with Excel, you’re probably wishing that you typed the list in Excel in the first place (where it’s so easy to sort data).
Well, stop dwelling on the “should have, could have” stuff and smile. It’s very easy to sort data in… Continue reading
Q:
How do “secure servers” work? When I give my information, is it really safe?
A:
There are two things that indicate a secure web page:
First, you will notice that the domain changes to “https://”. Second, a little padlock appears in the status bar at the bottom of your browser.
When you log onto a secure server it communicates with your browser for a few seconds… Continue reading
Comments | Filed under: Uncategorized, Using The Internet |
Do you have icons scattered all over your desktop and want them lined up? Or maybe you have them lined up in neat little rows, but would prefer them grouped in different areas of your desktop. We will try to satisfy both with today’s tip!
To organize scattered icons in Windows XP: Right-click the Desktop and select “Arrange Icons”. You’ll be presented with a sub-menu that’s chock full of icon… Continue reading
Comments | Filed under: Desktop Enhancement |
Q:
Have you seen that awful font that many websites are using lately? It’s almost totally unreadable!
A:
Sure there are over a million amateur web page makers for every pro designer, but I think the reason so many web sites seem to be using an ugly font has more to do with your browser than the design skills of the person who made the site.
If your… Continue reading
Comments | Filed under: Using The Internet |
Word: Double Spacing
By default, MS Word documents are single-spaced, which is great for most of what we do. But, what about that small percentage of documents where you need things double-spaced?
Now, as I’ve said before, I’m a teacher. I have a lot of opportunities to see how people (both students and staff) are using their technology. I’m always amazed when I find someone using the enter key to… Continue reading
Word Pages With Pizzazz—The Basics
So, you’re working in MS Word and you’re trying to create a unique, eye-catching document.
You’ve been looking for just the right touch to make it grab their attention. Something that’s not too over the top but definitely says “Read me!”.
You’ve eliminated the idea of AutoShapes and pictures. No, you’re looking for something to tie it all together.
Hmmm…
Wait, I know, what about… Continue reading
XP Disaster Recovery
Microsoft says “XP” stands for eXPerience. I recently discovered it stands for eXPlode.
Here’s what happened: I installed some new software on my XP machine. It told me to re-boot the computer, so, like I good little geek I yelled “Affirmative!” and promptly re-booted.
At which point, XP would try to boot, get to some kind of blue screen chock full of error messages, and re-boot again… Continue reading
Comments | Filed under: Shortcuts & Keyboard Tricks, System Tune-Up Help |
Quick Excel Copying With Keys
If you’re looking to do some copy / paste work in Excel with adjacent cells, then here’s a quick trick for you.
If you want to copy the information in the cell immediately above use Ctrl + D.
Try it…
Whatever is in the cell above is immediately copied into the selected cell.
Need the information transferred into more that one cell?
Highlight all the… Continue reading
Q:
The other day, I was typing and went back and change a thing or two. I needed to put a space between a couple words and instead of moving the text to the right to accommodate the space, the text was overwritten! It did this no matter what letter I typed. I ended up having to re-type an entire paragraph because of it. After I rebooted, the problem
Comments | Filed under: Shortcuts & Keyboard Tricks |
Page Border Printing Problems
By now I’m sure more than one of you have run into a problem with your page borders (from last Thursday’s tip) that is when you print the page it’s not a complete border.
No matter how thin you make the bottom line, it seems determined to be uncooperative!
In fact, I bet you’ve seen this lovely little message a few times
Comments | Filed under: MS Office Help |
Custom Page Borders Demystified
So, if you worked through the tip from last Thursday (7-22-04) on Word’s Page Borders then you probably noticed the Custom Setting at the bottom of the list.
Some of you may be wondering “What’s that all about?” and I’d say that’s a very good question.
To put it simply, this is a setting that allows you to pick and choose between… Continue reading
Comments | Filed under: MS Office Help |
Now You See It, Now You Don’t
Ever have a beautiful MS Excel worksheet, I mean absolutely perfect, except that one column. You know, the one column with the necessary data for your calculations but not really a part of the presentation. We’re talking about the essential column that you must keep, but don’t want displayed for a presentation or on the hard copy.
Often, Excel users have a lot… Continue reading
Quick Table Splits
You’re working in MS Word and you’ve got a beautiful table—it’s perfect!
Well… almost perfect.
Unfortunately, for whatever reason, you’ve just come to the conclusion that it really should be two different tables.
Now what?
Are you having copy / paste nightmares?
Or, worse yet, you’re picturing a situation where you’ve got to create a whole new table and re-enter all that data!
Well worry no more.… Continue reading
Hide / Unhide Excel Key Combinations
In keeping with last Thursday’s theme (July 29, 2004) involving the hiding of rows and columns in MS Excel, I thought we might take a look at how to accomplish this task with some handy key combinations.
Hiding columns or rows is a good way to make necessary data “invisible”. This allows you to organize your worksheet the way you want… Continue reading
MS Excel Formatting Without The Mouse
I thought today might be a good time for an installment of keyboard shortcuts…
In MS Excel:
Outlook Startup Choices
Here’s a tip that comes to you courtesy of a reader’s question. She was looking for a way to force Outlook to open straight to the Inbox.
Sounds like a very relevant and legitimate concern.
I don’t know about you, but when I start up Outlook I’m looking for my email. Don’t get me wrong, there’s lots of other great stuff in Outlook, but 99.9% of the… Continue reading
Comments | Filed under: MS Outlook |
One-Click Cell Addresses
Did you know that there’s a faster way to enter cell references in Excel formulae… a way that doesn’t involve typing cell addresses?
Interested? (Yeah, I thought you might be.)
Here’s the scoop…
Next time you’re entering a formula and you get to a cell reference (like A5 for example), instead of typing A5 use your mouse and click on A5.
Some of you are already thinking… Continue reading
