Sunday, June 21st, 2009
Twitter: Managing following and followers in bulk
There are limits on Twitter as to how many people you can follow before you’re stopped from following any more. The limit is reached when you are following 2,000 people if you don’t have enough followers of your own. When you reach this number you won’t be able to follow any new people.
This is a limit that you might encounter if you’re involved heavily in social marketing using Twitter. To cull your accounts so that people who you are following and who do not also follow you can be removed check out http://huitter.com/mutuality/.
At Huitter.com you can type your Twitter user name and password and select from one of the options to unfollow all who do not follow you back, to unfollow everyone (if you’re having a bad day – but be careful, tomorrow you might be disappointed you did this), and to follow everyone who follows you. This later option is handy if you suddenly decide that instead of being picky about who you follow you now want to follow everyone who is following you.
Using the exclude list you can list specific people by user name from the task so you still follow some people, for example, even if they don’t follow you.
When you click Go the program goes ahead and performs the task for you. This way you can make bulk changes to your Twitter account in a very short time and painlessly. This is something which you cannot do otherwise on Twitter short of doing it all manually.
For people interested in social marketing, http://huitter.com/mutuality/ is a great tool because it lets you determine instantly who is not following you so that you can weed them out of your list freeing you up to find more Twitter followers in future.
Labels: followers, following, managing followers, Twitter
Friday, June 19th, 2009
Cool excel printing options
Excel offers some cool options for printing worksheets. Here are six of my favorite techniques:
1 Printing grid lines (or not)
To print grid lines on your final printout, choose File, Page Setup, Sheet tab and enable the Gridlines checkbox. This prints horizontal and vertical lines much like you see on the screen in editing view.
2 Printing row and column headings
To print the letters A, B, C etc above the columns on your worksheet and the row numbers choose File, Page Setup, Sheet tab and enable the Row and column headings checkbox. This works particularly well when combined with printing Gridlines but can be used without gridlines too.
3 Setting your own page margins
You can configure the margins around the page by choosing File, Page Setup, Margins tab. Set the margin values and use the Horizontal and/or Vertical checkboxes to centre a small worksheet on a larger page.
4 Drag a margin into place
You can also control margins from the Print Preview screen. Click Margins to turn the margin indicators on. You can now move these into new positions by simply dragging on them.
5 Select an area to print
When a print area is set, this will print by default regardless of how big the worksheet is. Drag over the area to use and choose File, Print Area, Set Print Area to configure it. To clear the print area, so you can print the entire worksheet, choose File, Print Area, Clear Print Area.
6 Print a chart
When you click a chart on a worksheet to select it and choose File, Page Setup, the page setup dialog shows no longer contains the Sheet tab and, instead, contains a Chart tab. This shows options for sizing and printing charts. When you click Print, only the chart will print.
Labels: chart, excel prininting, gridlines, margins, print area, rows and columns
Friday, June 19th, 2009
Word 2007 – smart date entry
Word 2007 has some totally cool new tools for entering data in your documents. Trouble is they are hidden so most folks don’t know they are there.
To start, display the Developer tab by clicking the Office button > Word Options > Popular > Show Developer tab in the Ribbon.
Now click the Developer tab and, in the Controls area you’ll find entries for a range of tools including the Date Picker. To insert the date picker into your document click Design Mode and then click the Date Picker button. Click Design Mode again to exit that mode.
Now your user will see a Click here to enter a date option and, when they click the content control, a dropdown date picker will appear allowing them to select a date to insert into the document.
To ensure the date is formatted in a particular way return to the Developer tab, click Design Mode and click the Date Picker in the document. Click the Properties button on the Ribbon and from the Properties dialog select a date format to use. Make sure to deselect Design Mode before you return to your document.
Labels: controls, date picker, developer tab, Word 2007
Tuesday, June 16th, 2009
Word 2007 working with boilerplate text
One typical use for Microsoft Word is in offices where documents and letters are created by assembling a series of standard paragraphs from a range of alternatives. In the past Microsoft Word included the AutoText and AutoCorrect features and, like many users, you may have adapted AutoCorrect to use in creating boilerplate documents. Some other users tweaked the AutoText tool so they could use it to insert content, such as graphics and text.
The AutoText tool no longer appears in Word 2007 and it has been replaced by a Quick Parts Gallery which makes saving, organizing and assembling documents from stored paragraphs, aka Building Blocks, much easier to achieve.
Boilerplate text with Quick Parts
Find the Quick Parts tool on the Insert tab and click the down pointing arrow to open the Quick Parts Gallery. Here you have a number of options including Document Property which lets you insert some of the common document properties into your document by clicking on the one to insert. The Field option lets you insert fields much as you could in earlier versions of Microsoft Word.
The Building Blocks Organizer is the newest feature and this is a repository of text blocks which you can add to your Word documents. These Building Blocks can be sorted by Name, Gallery or Category. Some of the Building Blocks come built-in to Microsoft Word and others are legacy AutoText entries from earlier installations of Microsoft Word. You can insert a Building Block into a document by selecting the entry in the list and click Insert.
Create you own entries
To add your own paragraphs to the gallery, type the paragraph or open a document which contains it and select it. Click the Quick Parts button and choose Save Selection to Quick Part Gallery and, when the Create New Building Block dialog appears, type a name for the Building Block. This will be the name you’ll use to identify it in the list so make it self-explanatory of what the Quick Part contains. Select the Gallery to add it to, in most cases this will be the Quick Parts Gallery.
Select a Category from the list or click the Create New Category option to create your own subcategory of the Quick Parts Gallery. By creating sub categories you can organize your Quick Part entries so that they are easier to find. Type a description of the Quick Part, if one is needed to identify it, and, from the Save In list, choose buildingblocks.dotx which is the default setting. From the options dropdown list you can select to Insert Content Only, or insert the content in its own paragraph or its own page depending on how the content should be used. Click Ok when you are done.
In future you can insert the Quick Part into a document by clicking the Quick Part button and then select it from the dropdown list. If it does not appear in the list, click the Building Blocks Organizer and select the Building Block by name. You can locate building blocks in the organizer by sorting on the Gallery column and locate the Quick Part area which is where your building blocks will appear. Click the one to insert and click Insert.
Labels: boilerplate text., document assembly, legal documents, Word 2007
Saturday, June 13th, 2009
Formatting pictures in Word 2007
The picture formatting tools in Word 2007 are far more sophisticated than those in earlier versions of Word.
To see them at work, insert a picture into your document, click the image and choose Picture Tools > Format on the Ribbon. The Picture Styles are formats you can apply to your image and they include some attractive looking options including wide and narrow black or white borders and rotated options.
Once you have selected a picture style to use you can adjust other characteristics of the format such as the Effects which it are applied to it. So, for example, you can create a reflection by selecting the picture and choose the Picture Effects > Reflection to add a reflected edge.
You can recolor the picture border using the Picture Border option.
If you have formatted a picture to look the way you want it to look and you change your mind about the image to use, don’t panic. Choose Picture Tools > Format > Change Picture and choose an alternate image leaving your formatting unchanged.
Labels: Blog in Word 2007, format pictures, picture styles
Wednesday, June 10th, 2009
Multi colored Excel charts
It isn’t always the case that you want to chart multiple series of data on a single chart. Sometimes you only have a single series and Excel, by default, plots all the bars or columns so they are colored identically. Boring!
Luckily, in Excel 2007 a solution is at hand. Simply select and right click the series and choose Format Data Series > Fill > Vary Colors by Point. Excel colors each bar a different color. Best of all, the colors are linked to themes so you can change the colors by changing the Theme – the theme tools are on the Page Layout tab.
So, no more boring single color charts – ever – please!
Labels: chart, Excel 2007, multicolored, series
Friday, May 29th, 2009
Make your own font character – FREE!
If you’ve ever wanted to create a special font character for your company logo or a favorite shape you can create it using the Windows Private Character Editor utility which is available in Windows XP and Vista.
To run it, choose Start > Run > type eudcedit and click Ok.
When the character grid appears, double click any one of the empty boxes to open up a 64 x 64 pixel grid where you draw your character.
You can also copy an existing font character and edit that by choosing Window > Reference > Font and choose a font to copy a character from. Select the character, make a selection around the it and drag it onto your work area. You can now edit it using the tools on the toolbar.
You can also import any black and white image. Open your graphics software, open an image and size it down to 64 x 64 pixels in size and convert it to black and white.
Now copy and paste it into the Private Character Editor.
When you’re done editing, choose Edit > Save Character to save your character to your font collection.
To use your new character, open the Character Map tool by choosing Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Character Map. Choose All Fonts (Private Characters) from the font list.
To use your new character, click it, then click Select and then click Copy. Switch to your application, for example, a Word document and choose Edit > Paste.
Labels: custom font character, eudcedit, private character editor
Monday, May 25th, 2009
Publisher – Making Signs
Whether you need to make an open sign for your business or one to help find a lost pet, the basic premise is the same. You have a message you want to get across to your audience and you need to do this in the best and most effective way.
Signs pose difficulties not always present in other documents – you don’t have a lot of room to get the information across and often the sign will be placed where there is lots of other signage competing for attention.
Before you start
Before you make your sign, determine what you want to say and what information is most important for your audience to see. For example, for an Open sign, the word OPEN is critical and it will work without any other words very well. For a lost pet sign, the word Lost is important as it distinguishes the sign from others about pet grooming services, kennels etc.
Size of letters are important – a sign to be viewed from 3 yards/metres distance will need to have letters around 2.5cm/1 inch in height and you can add an extra 2.5cm/1 inch for every extra 3 metres/yards away your audience will be. The font size equivalent for letters 2.5cm/1 inch in height is around 72 points.
Colour is vital and it’s important that your sign be visible. The best colour combinations are high contrast ones such as black on yellow and white on black. Bad combinations are green on red or red on green – they’re indistinguishable to colour blind people and hard to read for the rest of us.
If you must use low contrast colours such as pale blue on white, add a black border around each letter to distinguish it from its surroundings.
When choosing fonts for your signs, stick to plain readable fonts and steer clear of script and other fancy typefaces. Fonts like Times New Roman and Arial and Verdana are good as they are clean and easy to read.
Capture interest
When you’re using photos to capture attention and to inform, make sure they are high quality and cropped to show the pet clearly. When typing information, group it logically so it’s easy to read. Include the details a person will need to have to contact you.
In the situation where immediate contact is crucial, creating tear off strips across the foot of the page is a good idea – a person can simply tear off the information they need and take it with them. However, make sure you also put the information on the sign as a person will need to have this available if the tear off strips are already removed.
Here’s how to create a sign with tear off strips.
Step 1
Start a new blank print publication. Choose File, Page Setup and set up full page printing and Letter or A4 paper size depending on the paper you will use. Choose Arrange, Layout Guides and adjust the margins to match your printers margins – the defaults are generally too big. Choose Arrange, Ruler Guides, Format Ruler Guides, vertical and add them at equal intervals across the page. Add one horizontal ruler across the bottom of the page.
Step 2
Create a text box and, in it, type the contact details for the tear off strip. Rotate the text by right clicking the shape, choose Format Text box, Text Box tab and check the ‘Rotate text within AutoShape by 90 degrees’ checkbox. Click the Colors and Lines tab and add a line to the top and right of the box. Drag the box into position and size it to fit. Hold Control as you drag a duplicate of the box to make the second box. Continue to complete all the boxes.
Step 3
Complete the rest of your sign by adding a large text message to attract a viewer’s eye. Add other explanatory text – make sure to include your phone number or contact details in the main notice in case all the tear off strips are removed. Focus on the important details someone will need to know. Add an image if desired to help attract attention.
Labels: making signs, Microsoft Publisher, publication, step by step, tear off strips, tutorials
Friday, May 22nd, 2009
Excel – print charts in black and white
Although your Excel chart might look great in color on the screen, if you’re printing to black and white or printing in color and planning to reproduce the charts in black and white you might be disappointed with the final result. Light green, light blue and light orange all look very different on the screen but are indistinguishable in black and white.
So, when your chart is destined for reproduction in black and white, set it up so it is guaranteed to be readible. To do this, select each series or data point by clicking on it, right click and choose Format Data Series (or Format Data Point)> Patterns tab > Fill Effects > Pattern and use a grey or a black and white pattern. Repeat for all the series and save before printing. The chart is guaranteed to look good when printed.
Labels: black and white, chart, Excel 2003
Wednesday, May 6th, 2009
What cell is that? Identifying table cells in Word
When you’re working with Word and doing math in your tables, you need to know the name of each table cell. In a largish table it can be difficult to keep track of everything.
Back in the days of Word 97 a macro shipped with Word that would tell you the name or cell reference of a given table cell. Here’s how to take a step back in time and get that macro, install and use it, with later versions of Word:
Visit http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q172492/ and download the file Wdtlupd.exe which is referred to on this page. This is a self-extracting zip file which includes various documents, the one we’re using is not version specific. Run this file and select a location to save the extracted files into.
Open the folder containing the extracted files and double click the file macros8.dot to open it in your version of Word. If prompted to do so, click the Enable Macros button and the file will open automatically in Word. Now choose Tools, Macros, Visual Basic Editor if you are using Word 2003 or earlier. In Word 2007, make sure the Developer tab is visible (Office button > Word Options > Popular > Show Developer tab in the Ribbon). Choose Developer tab > Visual Basic.
Locate the Macros8.dot file in the Project list on the left of the screen and click to open its Modules collection. Locate the module called TableCellHelper and double click it open the code window. Select the code and copy it by choosing Edit, Copy.
Locate the file Normal in the Project collection and click its Modules collection. Choose Insert, Module to add a new module, double click to open this new module and choose Edit, Paste to paste the copied code into the module. In the Properties area (choose View, Properties Window to display this if needed), alter the module name to TableCellHelper and, when you’re done, close the Visual Basic editor and close the file created using Macros8.dot.
In Word 2003 and earlier, run the macro by clicking somewhere inside a table and choose Tools > Macro > Macros from the Macros in list choose Normal.dot and locate and run the macro called TableCellHelper. In Word 2007 click the Developer tab > Macros and from the Macros in list choose Normal.dotm and locate and run the macro called TableCellHelper. The macro will report the cell address and the total number of rows and columns in the table.
If you’d use this macro repeatedly, add it as a button to your Word 2003 (and earlier), toolbar by right clicking a toolbar and choose Customize. Click the Commands tab, select Macros from the Categories list and locate and drag the macro TableCellHelper on to the toolbar. Right click the new button and edit the name so it is shorter and more helpful. Close the Customize dialog.
Labels: Blog in Word 2007, formulas, HP Tablet, Macro, macros8.dot, math, Table cell helper, Word 2003
Tuesday, May 5th, 2009
Word does Math – in tables!
Lots of folk do things like use Word for invoices simply because it’s easy to do. When it comes to laying out data for an invoice a table makes a good choice as everything looks very neat.
It is also a good choice because, once your data is in place, you can get Word to do the calculations for you.
So, for example if a column contains a series of numbers that you want to add up, click in the blank cell at the bottom of the column of numbers and choose Table > Formula (in Word 2007 choose the Table Tools > Layout > Formula button). Make sure the formula reads =sum(above) and click Ok. Now the total is in place in the cell.
If you change the numbers in the cells above, you’ll need to recalculate the formula. To do this, click in the cell containing the formula and press F9.
The Table Formula dialog also includes an option for formatting the numerical result so it looks the way you want it to – with numbers after the decimal point and even a leading $ or £ symbol.
Labels: formulas, table cells, Table math, Word 2003, Word 2007
Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009
Word 2003 – Disable the Insert key
If you still use Word 2003 or earlier you’re at risk of Word suddenly taking off and gobbling up text as you type. The problem is that the Insert key toggles insert/overtype mode and if you press it by accident you can end up in overtype mode so everything you type just replaces something else! Yikes it can be frustrating.
Now, Microsoft solved the problem in Word 2007 by disabling the Insert key so it no longer switches into overtype mode any more. That annoys some folks so I wrote a post here about fixing it so it goes back to its old behaviour. But this post is for hapless Word 2003 users and I’ll show you how to disable the Insert key so it won’t switch into overtype mode. The solution only affects Word so your other programs work as expected.
To disable your Insert key, choose Tools > Customize and click the Keyboard button. Scroll to find the All Commands category and scroll the Commands list to locate the Cancel option. In the Press new shortcut key box click once and then press the Insert key. Click Assign and then Close. This assigns the Insert key to the Cancel command so that it no longer operates OverType mode.
If you ever need to use OverType mode, double click the OVR indicator in the status bar to enable or disable it.
Labels: disable Insert key, overtype, typeover, Word 2003
Thursday, April 16th, 2009
Send to PowerPoint missing? Not really!
In Word 2003 you could create an outline in Word and then send it to PowerPoint where it would be converted to a PowerPoint slide show. Level 1 became the slide title and level 2 the first level bullet points and so on.
I hear a lot of grumbling that this feature has been removed from Office 2007 – not so! It just isn’t quite where you expect it to be. In fact, you have a few options in PowerPoint 2007 and Word 2007.
Option 1
You can add the Send to PowerPoint button to the Word 2007 Quick Access toolbar by clicking the Office button and choose Word Options > Customize and from the Commands not in Ribbon collection choose the Send to Microsoft Office PowerPoint option and click Add to add it and then Ok. Now you can click it to send the outline file to PowerPoint.
Option 2
You can also approach the task from PowerPoint 2007 which is really the better option. One alternative is to open the Word outline file in PowerPoint and the slides will be automatically created for you. To do this click the Office button and choose Open and from the Files of type list choose All Files so you can see and open your Word file.
Option 3
This is my fave!
Open PowerPoint 2007 with a new slide show and make sure your Word 2007 outline file is closed.
Choose the Home tab on the Ribbon and click the little arrow on the New Slide button. This opens a menu which includes the option Slides from Outline – select this and open your Word 2007 outline file. The slides are automatically created for you.
So, the option to Send to PowerPoint is not there in Word 2007 but you have so many more ways to complete the task now.
Labels: PowerPoint 2003, PowerPoint 2007, send to PowerPoint, Word 2003, Word 2007
Thursday, April 9th, 2009
Cool Word 2003 and 2007 Breakout Boxes
Breakout boxes or pull quotes are a great way to add visual variety to a very text heavy document. Even if you don’t have images you can use you can still add some color and interest to the page. To do this, you will need some text to use – ideally it will be an interesting quote or sentence or two from the document itself. You will copy this so it appears in the correct position in the text but so it is also a feature element on the page.
Create a textbox
Start by selecting and copying the text. Click outside the text so it is no longer selected and choose Insert > Text box and draw a textbox on the page. Click inside it and choose Edit > Paste to paste in the text on the clipboard.
Format the text
Text in a breakout box looks better if it is formatted differently to the surrounding document, for example you may want to center it, change the font and adjust the line spacing to double line spacing so that the text looks very different.
Format the text box
You can add a colored background behind the textbox by selecting the textbox and choose Format > Textbox and from the Colors and Lines tab select a Fill Color for the textbox. To remove the border line, choose Line Color > No Line (or choose a line option that you like), and click Ok.
Add quote marks
Adding an oversize pair of quotation marks helps delineate the breakout box or pull quote from the remainder of the document. In this instance it’s best to place the oversize quotation marks each in a separate textbox, format them so they are very large, set the textbox so that the fill color is set to No Fill and the line color to No Line and then drag it into position over the textbox that contains the breakout text.
Set the wrapping
If you set this small textbox’s wrapping to in front of text the text will not be forced to wrap around it and the textbox with the pull quote will control the wrapping not the double quote marks. Format the double quote marks in an interesting font that has an attractive shape for the quotes so that you create an interesting effect.
Labels: breakout box, pull quote, text box, textbox, Word 2003, Word 2007
Wednesday, April 8th, 2009
Accessing the Clipboard contents in Word 2007
In previous incantations of Word it was fairly easy to see, and therefore to know, that the Office clipboard contains more than just the most recently copied or cut item. In Word 2007 this is not the case and you need to know where the clipboard is and to understand that it contains much more of your document history than you might think it does.
How it works is that it retains everything you copy and cut to the clipboard during the current session. As you copy or cut something, all the other items are moved further down the stack leaving the current item at the top. This is the item that is pasted in if you choose the Paste option. However, you can paste anything that is on the clipboard, provided you can find it.
In Word 2007 click the Home tab and, below the Paste button you will see a small entry for the Clipboard and a flyout indicator. Click it and the clipboard will appear and all the items in it will be listed. The clipboard stores up to 24 items and as each additional one is added the one at the bottom is lost. You can paste any of the items that display in the list into your document by just clicking on it.
So, next time you know you cut or copied something a while ago and you need it back, check the Clipboard, chances are it’s there waiting.