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General Office Tips
This page will contain archived tips about Microsoft
Office programs and other types of office suites.
Topics
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2/27/2004 |
Microsoft Office Updates
Recently, Microsoft announced security and stability issues with some of it's
Office products. It therefore provided updates for these issues. The
products supported are Office 2000, Office XP, and Office 2003. It is
highly recommended that you download these updates for your Office programs,
which can be obtained from this site.
Microsoft Office Downloads. Click on the "Check
for Updates" link in the Office Updates window near the top of the page.
Your computer will then be scanned, and the suggested updates for your version
of Office will appear. You may need your original Office CD to install the
updates, so keep it handy. Also, to help prevent any possible installation
problems, disable or turn off your virus software and any other programs that
are running in the background. Obviously, you will need to remain
connected to the Internet, so don't turn off your browser software.
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12/19/2003 |
Print Last Page First
Some printer manufacturers
understand that people read documents starting with page 1 and, armed with this
knowledge, build printers that stack your pages precisely in order. However,
other printer manufacturers build printers that stack your pages in reverse
order--the last page face up on the top--so that you have to reorder them by
hand.
If you have the latter type of
printer, don't worry. MS Word and other word processing
programs offer a little feature that lets you print your pages in the
proper order, whether your printer wants you to or not:
 | Choose
File + Print. |
| Click
Options. |
| Under
Printing Options, select Reverse Print Order. |
| Click OK
and then click Print.
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Your pages should then print in
the proper order.
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8/08/2003 |
Sending and Receiving
Outlook Attachments
I have noticed a number of questions
concerning the inability of users to send or receive attachments in Microsoft
Outlook. Security service packs were issued by Microsoft that limited
users from doing this to help prevent the spread of viruses. Many people
thought that this was unfair, especially those who needed to share files and
kept their antivirus programs updated. Here is a method to turn off that
protection. Make sure you backup your Registry first! Click
here for backing up the
Registry.
Outlook
2003, Outlook 2002 and Outlook 2000 SP3 (but not Outlook 98 or earlier Outlook
2000 versions) allow the user to use a registry key to open up access to blocked
attachments. (Always make a backup before editing the registry.) To use this key:
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Run Regedit (click
Start, Run..., type "regedit" without the parentheses, click OK) and go to
this key: HKEY_Current_Users\Software\Microsoft\Office\10.0\Outlook\Security
(change 10.0 to 9.0 for Outlook 2000, or to 11.0 for Outlook 2003). |
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Under that key
(Security), add a new string value named Level1Remove. No spaces. |
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For the value for
Level1Remove, enter a semicolon-delimited list of file extensions. For
example, entering this: exe;mbd;url will unblock executable files,
Microsoft Access files, and Internet shortcuts. Add as many extensions
as you like. Close the Registry and restart your computer. |
If you need more detailed instructions on using the
Registry, email
me. Remember to
backup the Registry and update your virus
programs.
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5/30/2003 |
Keep it Simple with PowerPoint
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Use contrasting colors for the
text and the background so the text will be easy to read. |
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Use font size large enough to be
seen from the back of the room where the presentation will be held. A font
size of 24-point or larger is recommended. |
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Use short phrases and sentences
to convey your message. |
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Use simple slide transitions. Too
many different transitions will distract your audience from the subject of the
presentation. |
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Avoid cluttering the slides with
too much text or graphics. Your audience should hear what you have to say and
not be distracted by a busy screen. |
Keep text simple and easy to read
by not using many different text effects such as bold, italics,
underlining, larger font size for emphasis within a sentence, or a different
font all on the same slide.
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04/05/2002 |
Adding Footnotes
Having to put footnotes into a
document is a real hassle with some word processors, but not with Word. You
don't even have to worry about formatting or numbering the footnotes. Click
where you want the footnote to appear and then choose Insert/Footnote. When the
Footnote and Endnote dialog box opens, click OK to select the default
settings--Footnote and Automatic numbering. When the Footnote window opens, type
in your footnote text. When you finish entering the footnote, click Close to
close the Footnote window. You don't have to worry about footnote numbering if
you move or delete a footnote--Word automatically renumbers them. To view a
footnote citation from your document text, just move the mouse pointer over the
citation number you wish to view. A pop-up box appears to display the footnote
text. You can also choose View/Footnotes to open the Footnote window for viewing
or editing.
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03/17/2002 |
Printing
Tip
Word,
and other word processing programs, enable you to
print a single page, a range of pages, or even some hodgepodge collection of
random pages from within your document. To print a range or group of pages,
follow these steps:
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Click on the File, Print... command
in the menu bar. |
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Click the Pages button in the Page
Range area of the Print dialog box. |
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Type the page numbers and range of
page numbers. (To print pages 3 through 5, type 3-5, or to print pages 2
and 6, type 2,6). |
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Click OK. |
The
pages you specify -- and only those pages -- print.
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02/08/2002 |
Ellipses
This is not about drawing an ellipse with Word's Drawing tools. This is about
typing an ELLIPSES in your document. You probably think you can create your own
ellipses by simply typing three periods in a row. While this would be enough to
satisfy your most slovenly audience, trained eyes know that a real ellipses is
an ACTUAL SINGLE CHARACTER, made up of three more widely spaced periods.
Word knows this, too. In fact, if you have AutoCorrect turned on, Word
automatically replaces any three consecutive periods you type with a true
ellipses character. And if you DON'T have AutoCorrect turned on, you can insert
a true ellipses as follows:
Press Alt + Ctrl + . (a period).
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02/01/2002 |
Precise
Selecting in MS Word
When you select text with
the mouse, by default Word selects a word at a time--which makes it EXTREMELY
DIFFICULT to select PART of a word. If you select partial words often enough
that this annoys you, by all means do the following:
1. Choose Tools + Options.
2. Click the Edit tab.
3. Deselect When Selecting, Automatically Select Entire Word.
4. Click OK.
From now on, you can select one character at a time. And when you want to select
one WORD at a time, just double-click the first word you want to select.
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01/25/2002 |
Change
the Default Font in Microsoft Word
The Default Font sets the look of most everything you type. You don't have to
stay with the font selected by Microsoft. Go ahead and change it.
1. Open Format, Font.
2. Click the Font tab.
3. Choose the font you want, then click the Default button.
4. Click OK.
Note that this will also change the look of documents you've already made,
changing the default font for them as well.
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10/27/2001 |
Outlook Express And Blank Messages
In the last tip, we discussed the
problem of blank email messages. If you use Outlook Express 5 or 6 (not sure
about earlier versions), you can automatically move all blank messages to a
special folder.
Run Outlook Express and choose File|Folder|New. When the Create Folder dialog
box opens, click "Local Folders" to select it and then click in the "Folder
name" entry box and enter Virus. Click OK to your new folder and close the
dialog box. Choose Tools|Message Rules|Mail. When the dialog box opens, click
the Mail Rules tab (if necessary) and then click New. Now, select the check box
labeled "Where the message body contains specific words."
Next, select the "Move it to the specified folder" check box. Under "3. Rule
Description" click "Contains specific words." Now, type in a and press Enter,
then type e and press Enter. Repeat this procedure for i, o, and u. This adds
all the English vowels to the list.
Next, under "Apply rule if," select the radio button labeled "Message does not
contain the words below." Click OK to continue. Under "3. Rule Description,"
click "specified" and then double-click the new Virus folder. Click OK to close
the dialog box. Back in Message Rules, click OK to save your selections and
close the dialog box.
Outlook will now move any message with no text into the Virus folder.
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08/17/2001 |
Using Bold,
Underline, or
Italic Text Formatting
Making text bold (or
underlining or italicizing it) isn't a problem in Word. To make all subsequent
text appear in bold, press Ctrl-B and start typing. For underlined text, press
Ctrl-U. And, to set the text in italics, press Ctrl-I. You can toggle off all of
these
commands by
repeating them.
If you need to change the format of existing text, select the text and then
choose the appropriate command to change its formatting.
Actually, these commands will work in a lot of programs that use text.
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07/13/2001 |
MS Word: Spell-Check on the Fly
If you want to quickly check the spelling of a single word, double-click the
word to select it and press F7. If the word is spelled correctly, a
dialog box will open offering to check the remainder of the document. Click No
to continue working. If the word is spelled incorrectly, you'll get a dialog box
showing alternate spellings from which you can select a correction (or the
dialog box may tell you that it can't find any alternate spellings). In any
case, after you make your correction and click Change, you'll get the dialog box
offering to check the rest of the document for you. Tell it No.
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07/06/2001 |
MS Word:
Adding the Date to Documents
There are several ways to add the current date to a Word document. If you press
Alt-Shift-D, Word will insert the date as a field. However, you have no control
over the date format; it will be in the form MM/DD/YY. If you want to control
the date format, choose Insert, Date And Time. When the dialog box opens, choose
the format you prefer, then click OK. You can also control the format if you
insert the date in a field. Choose Insert, Field, and when the dialog box opens,
select Date under Field Names and click Options. Now click General Switches and
select the date format you want. Click Add To Field and click OK twice. Word
will insert the date in the selected format.
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05/31/2001 |
The Maximize and Minimize
Buttons in Word
It's easy to get confused by Word's Maximize and Minimize buttons. The main
program itself has each of these buttons in its top-right corner.
The Minimize button is the button with the single line. The Maximize
button is the button with the single square. (If you see a button with
two overlapping squares, you're seeing the Restore button, which appears in
place of the Maximize or Minimize button when your window is already as small or
as large as it can get.) When you click the Minimize button, Word shrinks to a
name in the taskbar at the bottom
of the computer screen. When you click the Maximize button, Word grows to take
up the entire screen.
Here's the tricky part: Each document you open in Word also has its own window,
and each of those windows has a Maximize button and a Minimize button. When you
click a Maximize button in the document, that document takes up the full Word
window--which might be the full
screen or only some small part of the screen. When you click a document's
Minimize button, the page shrinks to a short title bar at the bottom of the Word
window, which is above the taskbar at the bottom of Windows itself.
In other words, documents can only be as large as Word and can hide within it.
Word can only be as large as the screen or can shrink itself--along with all its
documents--to a single space on the taskbar.
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03/28/2001 |
Inserting Clip Art Into Word
To insert clip art into a document, follow these steps:
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Switch your document to Print
Layout view by choosing View, Print layout in the menu bar. |
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Position the toothpick cursor in
the spot where you want your picture to appear. |
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Choose Insert, Picture from the
menu. |
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Choose ClipArt from the submenu. |
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Choose a ClipArt category. |
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Click the image you want. |
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Choose Insert Clip. |
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Close the ClipArt dialog box. |
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02/10/2001 |
MS WORD: Clear the Most Recently Used File List
If you want to clear the list of most recently used files in Word (located on
the File menu), choose Tools, Options, and when the Options dialog box appears,
click the General tab. Deselect the Recently Used File List option and then
click OK. To reactivate the list, repeat the steps, this time selecting the
Recently Used File List check box. Now the list is cleared but activated, so
newly used files will appear on the list.
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01/12/2001 |
Speeding up Word
DON'T WORK WITH FILES ON
FLOPPY DISKS.
Floppy disks run much more
slowly than your hard disk; in fact, in most cases working with a file on a
floppy is UNBEARABLY slow. Instead, copy files from floppies to your hard disk
and THEN open them in Word. Here's how:
1. Insert the floppy containing the file you want to work on into your
computer's floppy drive.
2. Click the Windows Start button and choose Programs + Windows Explorer.
3. In the right pane of the Explorer window, click the 3 1/2 Floppy (A:) icon.
4. In the left pane of the Explorer window, find the file you want to work on
and drag it to your Word document folder (usually My Documents) in the right
pane.
Now start Word and open the file. You'll see a huge difference.
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12/21/2000 |
Word's Spell
and Grammar Checking
Which would you prefer: that Word constantly nags you
about your spelling and grammatical errors or that Word runs faster? Doesn't
seem like much of a contest to us--so
why not turn off Word 97 or 2000's automatic spelling and grammar checking and
enjoy a small but noticeable performance benefit?
1. Choose Tools + Options.
2. Click the Spelling and Grammar tab.
3. Deselect both Check Spelling as You Type and Check Grammar as You Type.
4. Click OK.
Of course, this DOES
mean that you need to spell- and grammar-check your documents yourself, before
you print them or pass them.
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12/15/2000 |
Alphabetizing or Sorting in Word
A client asked this very
reasonable question: "Is there a command in Word 97/2000 that I can use to
alphabetize words?"
Indeed there is: You can use the SORT command to alphabetize words if the words
are in a list or arranged in a column of table cells.
1. Select the list of words or table column containing the words.
2. Choose Table + Sort.
3. Under Sort By, choose Ascending (to sort from A to Z).
4. Click OK.
Word arranges the words in alphabetical order.
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10/01/2000 |
Excel: Using Drag and Drop
Although most of us know that you can
select Word text and then use the mouse to drag the selected text to a new
location, many users don't know that you can do the same thing in Excel.
To see how drag and drop works in Excel, open a new worksheet and type "First
Cell" ( without the quotation marks) into cell A1. Now type "Second Cell"
into cell A2. Select the two cells and move the mouse near the edge of the
cells. When the cursor changes from a plus sign to a pointer, press and
hold the mouse button. Use the mouse to drag the cells to a new location
and then release the mouse button.
When you use the drag-and-drop technique in Excel, you must make sure to grab
just the edge and do so only after the cursor turns into a pointer.
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08/18/2000 |
MS Word: Now Where is That Document?
At the bottom of the File menu in Word, is a list
of Recently Used Files. With this list, you can open a file without using the
Open command and working your way through folder directories. Just
choose a file from this list. If you find that your Recently Used Files list
doesn't list enough-the default is 4-of your recently used files (for example,
you frequently work with a half-dozen or more files and only two or three are
listed), you can set things right:
1. Choose Tools + Options.
2. Select General.
3. Make sure the Recently Used File List box is checked.
4. Put the number of files you want listed into the Entries text box.
5. Click OK.
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08/05/2000 |
Word:
Superimpose Text on Pictures
Want to add some text inside a picture in a Word document? Here's one way to do
the job--frame the picture. To do this, right-click the picture. When the menu
opens, choose Frame Picture.
Now for the text. Choose Insert, Frame. The cursor will turn into a crosshair.
Use the crosshair to draw a new frame. Now add text to your new frame. At this
point, since both the picture and text are in frames, you can place them both
wherever you want, and placing the text frame over the picture frame is no
problem at all.
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07/23/2000 |
Take Ctrl and Go Straight to the
Top
If you want to quickly navigate to the very top of a document
or web page, press Ctrl-Home. To get to the end, press
Ctrl-End. And, just in case you don't already know, Ctrl-A will select the
entire document; Ctrl-C will copy the selected text (or graphics); Ctrl-X
will cut selected text (or graphics); Ctrl-V will paste data from the Clipboard;
and Ctrl-Z will undo the last operation.
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03/18/2000 |
TrueType Comes Closest
TrueType fonts look nearly the
same on-screen as they do in print. Non-TrueType fonts don't always look the
same on screen and paper. And some fonts are only available on-screen.
If you use these types of fonts, your computer has to substitute other fonts
when it prints. To tell whether you're using a TrueType, look for a TT beside
the font name in the Font drop-down menu. TT appears beside each TrueType
font.
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01/31/2000 |
Be Safe When
Cutting
In fact, don't cut. When you want text from a
program's document, you can copy and paste that text into
another. The Cut command does essentially the same thing--except that it
deletes the text from the original document. That may not sound
like a big deal--unless you have some kind of trouble when switching between
programs or when saving the document you pasted the text into. Then you're lost.
So play it safe and use the Copy command instead so that, if you need that
original text again, you'll have it.
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12/18/99 |
MS Word's Toolbars
Microsoft Word has more toolbars than most users ever
realize or use. In fact, Word has so many toolbars that they can
crowd the screen, leaving little room to work. Having only the Standard and
Formatting toolbars open for most work is generally fine, but for more complex
work, try to get in the habit of putting on-screen the toolbars you need to do
the job:
1. Choose View + Toolbars.
2. Select the toolbars you want to appear and deselect the ones you don't.
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12/13/99 |
Quick Ways to Highlight Text
Do you have a word processor on your system? Of course you do (at a minimum, you
have Notepad and WordPad)! And if you're like every other word processing
individual we know, you frequently need to highlight text. Before
you start all that cumbersome clicking and dragging, try these shortcuts on for
size:
- To highlight a word, double-click it.
- To highlight a line of text, click once to its left (in the left margin).
- To highlight an entire paragraph, double-click to its left (again, in the
margin).
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10/20/1999 |
Fitting an MS Word
Document on a Single Page
"I have a
document that is a sentence or two too long to fit on a single page. I
have trimmed it all I can, but it still won't fit. Using a smaller font
size is not a good option for me.
"Someone in the office told me
that there is an easy way to make such a document fit on a single page, but
nobody seems to know how. Could you cover this in one of your tips?"
Yes, MS
Word has a Shrink To Fit option. To use this, run Word and
load your document. Now choose File, Print Preview. When the Print
Preview window opens, click the Shrink To Fit button in the toolbar (its icon is
two pages with an arrow pointing at a single page).
This method works very well, as
long as you don't have too much extra text. If you don't like the looks of
the change, press Ctrl-Z to undo it.
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(Disclaimer: Compeds lists these tips only as suggestions. We
will not be responsible for any damage or adverse
changes to your system or software in their use or misuse.)
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"Love grows as a spark in
one's heart, just as a seed grows to be a flower in the garden. Both need
to be nourished and cared for to become as beautiful as they are."*