Wednesday, April 4th, 2007
Vertical text in Word
Ever been confused about how to create vertical text in Word. You deserve to be. There is this neat looking Text Direction tool that never seems to be active so you can use it. Fact is – it works on text in a table, but what if you don’t have text in a table?
Luckily it works just great on text in a text box. So, to make a vertical block of text, drag a text box (Insert, Text box) onto your page. Now click inside it and type your text. Click in the box and choose Format, Text Direction and choose one of the two vertical options – Voila! instant vertical text.
Labels: Microsoft Word, text, vertical
Monday, April 2nd, 2007
Checkboxes in Word
Stuck and need a checkbox in a Word document? Simple!
Click where the checkbox is to go and choose Insert, Symbol, Symbols tab. From the Font list choose the Wingdings font. You’ll see at character positions 113 & 114 are two checkboxes. Click the one you want and choose Insert and then Close. If you’d use it a lot, create an AutoText or AutoCorrect entry for it so it’s only a word away.
Labels: checkbox, Microsoft Word, special symbols.
Sunday, April 1st, 2007
Snap an Excel range
Did you know you can take a photo of an Excel range? Well you can and it’s one cool way to get around the problem of needing to print bits of two worksheets on the one piece of paper, something as smart as Excel is, it just can’t do.
To do this, right click a toolbar and choose Customize, Commands tab. From the Categories list choose Tools and from the Commands list click and drag the Camera icon up onto a toolbar. Now select a range on a worksheet and click the camera. Then click where the ‘photo’ should go.
Repeat this to assemble bits of lots of worksheets onto one page for printing. And the best bit? the photos are ‘live’ if the data in the worksheets changes, the photo does too!
Labels: camera, Excel 2003, range
Saturday, March 31st, 2007
Data labels on Excel charts
Data labels on your charts show your viewer the values they’re looking at and after all – isn’t that the purpose of the chart?
To add Data Labels to a chart, click the chart and choose Chart, Chart Options. Click the Data Labels tab and choose a style that will look good on your chart. Typically values is a good choice but, for pie charts, for example, a different type might work better.
Labels: chart, data labels, Excel 2003
Friday, March 30th, 2007
Go Ahead – Make My day!
Ok, so this post is seriously off topic but I just had to write it. I subscribe to a great email newsletter written by horseman Doug Emerson and which you can find here: www.profitablehorseman.com.
He writes great stuff, common sense, smart and very business oriented. I don’t know anyone who couldn’t benefit from his ‘pearls of wisdom’ whether or not you know what end of a horse the food goes in.
Ok so what about the Make My Day bit. Well, I took the time to write to Doug today to say hi and thanks for his stuff. It was just a short email, a few lines but very soon a reply came back and in it he said “you made my day!” – that’s exactly what I feel when someone who has read an article I wrote writes to say “Hi and Thanks”. When the “Hi and Thanks” comes without strings, no questions attached, just an out of the blue pat on the back it really does just that, it makes your day, whoever you are.
So, my challenge to you? Go ahead and make someone’s day. Next time you read something and think “that was good/cool/interesting/well written…” email them. Say hi and thanks. Pass the good word feelings around, curiously, I think (in the process), you’ll find it makes your day too!
Labels: Unshamedly Off Topic
Thursday, March 29th, 2007
Getting alignment right (or left), in PowerPoint
Let’s face it, it’s easy to dump pictures, text and charts on a PowerPoint slide but it can end up looking like the dog’s breakfast – at least what I imagine a dog might eat for breakfast.
When you want your slide to look good, you need to have everything aligned neatly on it. To do this, click on the first object to align and Control + click on the second. From the Drawing toolbar choose Draw, Align or Distribute and then an option such as Align left to align both objects so they’re lined up along the left edge of the object that is further to the left on the screen.
In a few simple clicks you can restore order to an unruly slide.
Labels: alignment, PowerPoint
Wednesday, March 28th, 2007
Seeing double – split windows in Word
Long documents are harder to manage than short ones, and it can be difficult to cut and paste an item on page 1 all the way to page 20. I find it easier to do when I can see the source and target area on the screen all at once. That’s why I love the Split window tool.
Here’s how to use it, position the document on the screen where you want it to be split in two and choose Window, Split. Now click where you want should be. You’ll get two horizontal panes each with its own scroll bars and you can move around the panes independently and show different places in the document in each. You can also drag and drop between panes.
When you’re finished editing, choose Window, Remove Split.
Labels: Microsoft Word, split
Tuesday, March 27th, 2007
Excel and the taskbar
I like to see each individual worksheet I have open named on the taskbar – well, that is unless I don’t. When I have one of those “redecorating the desktop” days, I opt to have one indicator for Excel and then use the Windows menu or Control + F6 to switch between them.
Changing how I view my Excel interface is easy. Choose Tools, Options and click the View tab in the Options dialog. Disable the Windows in Taskbar checkbox to view one Excel indicator on the taskbar. Click Ok. Reverse the process to switch back.
Labels: Excel 2003, taskbar, window.
Monday, March 26th, 2007
Change the color of unread Outlook messages
Outlook highlights all unread messages in your Inbox using bold type. If you’d like something more flashy or subtle, simply change the formatting option. To do this, click your Inbox and choose View, Arrange By, Current View, Customize Current View. Click Automatic Formatting, click Unread Messages and click Font and set the color, font and size to use for unread messages. When you’re done, click OK – simple, and from now on, very colorful!
Labels: .msg format, Outlook 2003, unread messages
Friday, March 23rd, 2007
Excel Freeze Panes
When you’re working on a very big spreadsheet it can get confusing as to what the headings are for the various rows and columns when you move away from the top most cells.
A simple way to solve this problem is to freeze panes – it’s a funny term for something that actually is very handy. Move so that cell A1 is located in the top left corner of your worksheet area and then position your cell pointer just below the set of headings that you want to see and just to the right of the column headings if they’re important too.
Choose Window, Freeze Panes and Excel will freeze the area above and to the left of where you are working. Now if you move around the worksheet wherever you happen to go the cells on the left and top of the worksheet will always be there.
If you need to undo the effect choose Window, Unfreeze Panes and it will all be back to rights. My guess is that you’ll like it so much that you won’t want to change it anyway.
Labels: Excel 2003, Freeze panes, window.
Wednesday, March 21st, 2007
Too cool for school – Office 2007 SmartArt
New to Microsoft Office 2007 PowerPoint, Excel and Word is the SmartArt feature which is one you’re just going to love.
To test it out add a new slide to a PowerPoint presentation, for example, and select the blank layout. From the Insert tab on the Ribbon, select SmartArt and then one of the SmartArt objects.
I like the one called Staggered Process which I’ve shown here as it makes a great display for a simple step-by-step process. Select your choice of design and then you’ll see text brackets appear on the screen. Click in them or click the double-pointing arrows at the left of the SmartArt object and type your text in the special dialog.
Once you’ve got your bullet points in – and you can add more than the default three if you need more – you have a simple step-by-step graphic. But – this is only the beginning.
There are lots of different looks for your graphic including beveled edges and 3D effects, and you can choose these from the SmartArt styles dropdown list in front of you. You can also change the colors used in the design which, of course, are based on the current document Theme colors. Change the Design Ttheme and the look of the project changes with it.
It’s about as simple as it’s ever going to be to add great looking step-by-step graphics to a PowerPoint slide. They are, seriously, way cool…
Labels: Excel 2007, Office 2007, PowerPoint 2007, SmartArt, Word 2007
Tuesday, March 20th, 2007
Naming Ranges in Excel
When you’re working with different areas on an Excel worksheet it sometimes helps to name the area or range as Excel calls it.
You might do this so that you can easily select a print area from a number of different printing areas on the worksheet or where you want to move very quickly to a named area which is in an out of the way place on the worksheet.
To name a range, select the cell or range of cells to name and choose Insert, Name, Define and give the cell or range a name. You can use whatever name you like, it just must be a single word name with no spaces and it can’t start with a number. When you’re done, click OK.
Now look up to the top left corner of the screen to the left of the formula bar you will see a small Name dropdown list. You can dropdown the list and select the named cell from the list and you will automatically go to it and, if it is a range, it will be automatically selected ready, for example, for printing.
Labels: Excel 2003, named range
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.
Labels: BoxOver, domain name registration, Rant
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.
Labels: Excel 2003, print to fit, shrink
Thursday, March 22nd, 2007
Pictures inside Excel comments
In a previous tip of the day, I showed you how to create shaped comments in Excel but today I’m going to go one step further and create pictures inside the comment.
As you might expect, start off in Excel and add a comment to a cell. Right-click the cell and choose Show comment and then click the border of the comment to select it. Choose Format, Comment and, from the Colors & Lines tab’s Color dropdown list choose Fill Effects and then the Picture tab and click Select Picture.
Find a picture to add to your comment from those in your My Pictures folder, enable the Lock Picture Aspect Ratio checkbox and click OK twice. You’ll now have the image inside your comment.
Depending on the image that you have used you may want to change the format of the text, for example coloring it a different color and sizing it large enough so that it can be easily seen.
For more tips and tricks and helpful Office columns, visit Projectwoman.com
Labels: comments, Excel 2003, images
posted by Helen Bradley @ 6:27 pm0 Comments - links to this post