Tuesday, March 20th, 2007

Vale BoxOver?

Yesterday morning I was investigating this cool tool, BoxOver. It’s a JavaScript routine for making the most wonderful popup boxes that appear over the contents of your web page.

In what was to become a classic “snooze and you lose” scenario I planned to return later that day to get the code.

Yeah! right. Like the planets were all in some sort of weird cosmic alignment on that one. By nightfall, the site was gone. Seems like the owner probably didn’t pay their domain name registration and it expired – the very day I was planning to download their utility. So, the site is gone and because you could only download the tool from that site, I now can’t have it.

I’m off to check the registration expiry dates on all my sites, this one, http-design, my namesake, helenbradley.com and my ecommerce site backgroundartz.com. It’s a salutary lesson on the importance of making sure you pay your registration fees on time or there are squatters out there who will move in within seconds of the time expiring – there’s no late fee payable, when you’re over time, you’re out.

If anyone knows where BoxOut can be downloaded from, I’d love to hear from you!

In the meantime – check your domain name expiry dates. Mark your calendars and pay up well in advance or the next person who loses years of good will could be you.

<rant ends>

UPDATE: BoxOver is back! Well, sort of.. read on..

Actually, on reflection, I think BoxOver never really left. You see, it comes and goes… it’s there one time you visit and not the next. So, first off, snaffle a copy while you can… it’s the neatest utility around – if it’s there when you visit the site, grab it and don’t think twice!

I think the site probably has a daily download limit and when it exceeds this it closes down and you get a funky portal view which is useless. The solution is to get up really early (or, my preference, stay up really late!) and snag it when a new day begins and the site is up.

Anyway, short answer is – it’s there, you just have to be lucky and if you miss it once, try again later.

For more tips and tricks and helpful Office columns, visit Projectwoman.com

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 3:52 pmNo Comments links to this post

Monday, March 19th, 2007

Shrink to size Excel Printouts

When you’re working on a very big worksheet in Excel sometimes it happens that when you print it out you get a stray row or column on a single sheet of paper. It’s not only a nuisance but it’s also a waste of paper.

To ensure that this doesn’t happen choose File, Page Setup and click the Page tab. The Fit To option lets you specify the number of pages wide or tall that a worksheet is. Select the measurements that you want to fit, for example fitting to one page wide by one page tall will print everything on a single page.

What if you don’t know both measurements? Don’t worry, if you know you want it one page wide but don’t know how tall that will be, select Fit to 1 Page Wide and leave the Tall box empty – that means delete anything that’s in it.

This works the same if you know how tall you want it to be but not how wide. It’s a smart way of saving trees and frustration and it looks much neater than handing someone something with a skerrick of info on the last page.

For more tips and tricks and helpful Office columns, visit Projectwoman.com

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 5:20 pm1 Comment links to this post

Sunday, March 18th, 2007

PowerPoint 2007 Torn Photo Edges

One of the cool things about PowerPoint 2007 is the way that you can create fab photo edges with no work at all.

To see this at work add a new slide using the Home tab, click New Slide and then from the Layout list choose Picture with Caption. Now click on the icon in the middle of the slide to add your picture.

Go to the Design tab and choose one of the designs to use for your slide. You’ll see that designs like Opulent create a stacked photo effect, Paper creates a rough paper edge effect, Solstice creates an effect where the photo looks adhered with sticky tape (this is soooo cool!), Concourse has an interesting shadowed edge effect, Flow tips the image on an angle, and Foundry rounds the opposing corners.

From here you can click the picture and then click the Picture Tools, Format tab to add other picture effects to your image such as a reflection or soft edges.

There’s really an almost unlimited number of variations available. I dare you to stop at just using one!

For more tips and tricks and helpful Office columns, visit Projectwoman.com

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 5:12 pm1 Comment links to this post

Saturday, March 17th, 2007

Soft Focus Portrait in Photoshop

Portraits typically look much more flattering when they have a soft focus look. This is a fix that will give even a so-so portrait a lift. The colors in the image will be more muted and softer and more flattering to the subject. And, when you’re done, crop the final result very tightly to get that professional look.

Start by duplicating the background layer on the photo – choose Window, Layers to view the Layers palette, right click the background layer and choose Duplicate Layer and then Ok. Click the top layer and choose Filter, Noise, Median to smooth the image on this layer – choose a value of around 5 for the radius. Now apply a slight aging effect to this top layer by choosing Image, Adjustments, Hue/Saturation and reduce the saturation and use the Hue slider to create a slightly aged yellowing of this layer I set Saturation to -50 and Hue to -10 and click OK. Now experiment with the layer opacity of this top layer to vary the result – you want something softer than the original.

To finish, make a elliptical selection around the subject, invert the selection using Select, Inverse and add a feather using Select, Feather and add a large feather to the selection. Blur the result to soften the area around the subject and then crop the photo to size to finish.

For more Photoshop tutorials and techniques visit www.projectwoman.com

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 4:39 pmNo Comments links to this post

Saturday, March 17th, 2007

Any shape Excel Comments

I like to use comments in my Excel worksheets but sometimes the square yellow boxes just don’t do it for me.

Luckily with a little bit of imagination and skill, I can change the shape of my comment boxes.

Here’s how to do it yourself:

Add a comment to your worksheet and click the cell that contains the comment, right-click and choose Edit Comment and then click on the border of the comment so you have it selected.

Now, from the Drawing toolbar click the Draw button and choose the Change AutoShape option in the menu. You can select from all sorts of shapes including stars and banners and flowchart symbols.

When you’re done just click outside the comment and the change will be created for you. Neat stuff? I think so.

For more tips and tricks and helpful Office columns, visit Projectwoman.com

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 4:36 pmNo Comments links to this post

Friday, March 16th, 2007

Axing Word Smart Quotes

I like Word smart quotes most of the time but sometimes, like when I’m preparing an email or some code, they’re not needed and can make a mess of the project.

You can, quite easily, stop this happening if you choose Tools, AutoCorrect Options, AutoFormat as you Type tab and disable the checkbox for “Straight quotes” with “smart quotes” and click Ok. Now you’ll have straight quotes in your document.

Reverse the process to get them back.

This simple macro, attached to a toolbar button can do the toggling work for you (just make sure you put everything between the Sub and End statements appears on one line:

Sub changeQuotes()
Options.AutoFormatAsYouTypeReplaceQuotes = Not (Options.AutoFormatAsYouTypeReplaceQuotes)
End Sub

For more tips and tricks and helpful Office columns, visit Projectwoman.com

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 6:27 pmNo Comments links to this post

Thursday, March 15th, 2007

Inserting Images in Word

In recent implementations of Word they broke the image insertion tool. When you insert an image it comes in as “Inline with text” which means it won’t move, it breaks up lines and, in general, looks awful.

Luckily it’s fixable and permanently so. To do this, choose Tools, Options, Edit tab. From the Insert/Paste pictures as dropdown list choose something like Square or In front of Text (in fact anything other than In line with text). Click Ok and the change will be permanent. Although you can, of course, always change the setting for any inserted image if you really do want to put it inline with text by selecting the option from the Picture toolbar on an image by image basis. My bet is you won’t ever do it though!

For more tips and tricks and helpful Office columns, visit Projectwoman.com

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 6:19 pm1 Comment links to this post

Wednesday, March 14th, 2007

PowerPoint Guides

If you’re a perfectionist like I am (on a good day, anyway), you will want everthing lined up neatly on your PowerPoint slides. To do this, use Drawing Guides. To do this, choose View, Grid and Guides and enable the Display Drawing Guides on Screen checkbox.

You’ll see two cross hatch grid lines. To move them simply hold your mouse over them and move one. To create a new guide, hold the Control key as you drag on an existing guide. To remove a guide drag it off the slide.

You can now neatly line everything up that needs to be lined up.

For more tips and tricks and helpful Office columns, visit Projectwoman.com

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 5:46 pmNo Comments links to this post

Wednesday, March 14th, 2007

Layer Masks in Phototshop Elements

Hmm, if you’re like me you’ve looked in vain for layer masks in Photoshop Elements. Now there’s evidence for the fact that you should be able to use them. Try adding an adjustment layer – what’s that to the right of it? Yes, got it! it’s a layer mask. Ditto if you add a new fill layer. But not for regular layers – to me that just sucks.

Well it did, until I stumbled on the free download from Hidden Elements – a site dedicated to unearthing all sorts of Photoshop Elements secrets. And, in my case, when the tool simply isn’t there, they give you a way to put it there. Download and install a small program, close and reopen Photoshop Elements and on your Artwork and Effects bar is a new group of features including a one click Layer Mask.

It’s simple to install and very easy to use and, better than a workaround you have to remember how to perform from one session to the next, it’s now a clickable option.

It’s the next best thing to having the Layer Mask feature built in.

For more Photoshop tutorials and techniques visit www.projectwoman.com

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 2:04 amNo Comments links to this post

Tuesday, March 13th, 2007

Smaller spaces on PowerPoint Slides

Sometimes there is just too much space between the edge of the slide and the bullet character that PowerPoint uses.

However, luckily, there is a way to fix the problem and to make the space smaller. Start by displaying the ruler by choosign View, Ruler. Then select the text to alter and, on the ruler you’ll see the marker that controls the positioning of the bullet. Drag it with your mouse, if you need to do this in small amounts, hold Control as you do it.

Which is a bit strange really, because in Word, for example, holding Alt is how you get to fine tune spacing.. hmm! well, if nothing else, these crazy mixed up keystrokes keep some of us in business.

For more tips and tricks and helpful Office columns, visit Projectwoman.com

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 8:37 pmNo Comments links to this post

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