Office 2007 & 2010 Help – The New Paperclip

You know how that box always pops up whenever you have a reminder in Outlook 2007?  Well if you accidentally close it, and want to review all the reminders you currently have, there is a quick way to make the reminders window appear again.

1) Click on “View”

2) Click on “Reminders Window”

Easy as that!

‘till next time!
TNP

Do you prefer to use commas when you write long numbers?  Those commas are called “Thousands Separators”, and you can quickly add them to the cells in your Excel 2007 spreadsheet.

To turn on the thousands separator:

1) Select the cells you want to apply the commas to

2) Make sure you are on the “Home” tab of the ribbon

3) Look for the “Number” group – in the middle of the ribbon

4) Click on the button that looks like a comma!

‘till next time!
TNP

If you have ever printed handouts for your PowerPoint presentations before, you know that they can be pretty bland.  Just the slides all stacked up on a page, with plenty of whitespace.

Well did you know that you have complete control over how those handouts actually look?  You can add your company logo, or a copyright statement, or remove the date or the page numbers.  You can do whatever you want!

All of this is controlled from what is called the “Handout Master”.  Those of you familiar with the “Slide Master” will know exactly what we are talking about.  The easiest way to describe the handout master is that it is the template for all the handouts printed from the presentation.

To access the Handout Master in PowerPoint 2007:

1) Click on the “View” tab in the ribbon

2) In the “Presentation Views” group on the left hand side, click on “Handout Master”

Once you are in the master, you can control all manner of different things, including the page setup, the handout orientation (portrait or landscape), the slide orientation on the handouts, and how many slides will appear on each page.

To get out of the “Handout Master” view… simply click the “Close Master View” button on the right hand side of the ribbon

‘till next time!
TNP

Do you want to quickly insert a blank page into your Word 2007 document?  Instead of hitting enter 40 times, why don’t you use the Insert Blank Page button?

All you have to do is:

1) Make sure you are on the “Insert” tab of the ribbon

2) Look for the pages group – on the left hand side

3) Click on “Blank Page”

Now you will see a blank page appear in your document where your cursor was.  To add multiple blank pages, just keep clicking that “Blank Page” button!

‘till next time!
TNP

Do you find it hard to prioritise emails when all you are looking at is a long list of who the email is from, and what the email subject is?

Well using the “Auto Preview” feature in Outlook 2007, you can now view the first couple of lines of an email – giving you all the information you need to triage and prioritise the long list of emails in your inbox.

To turn on (or off) Auto Preview in Outlook 2007:

1) Click on “View”

2) Click on “AutoPreview”

Simple as that!

‘till next time!
TNP

Have you ever wanted to quickly know what cells are impacted on when you change a value of a cell in Excel 2007.

By using the “Trace Dependents” feature, you can very quickly understand exactly the influence a cell has in your spreadsheet.  The best part of this feature is, that you will see big arrows that enable you to visually see the relationship, so you don’t have to decipher formulas and cell names to make sense of it all.

To turn on Trace Dependents:

1) Select the cell you want to see the dependents of

2) Make sure you are on the “Formulas” tab of the ribbon

3) Look for the “Formula Auditing” group (about 3/4 of the way along the ribbon)

4) Click on “Trace Dependents”

Now you will see arrows pointing you in the right direction!

‘till next time!
TNP

Are you bored of bullets that just look like… well… bullets?  Did you know you can change the look of the bullets in your bulleted lists in Word 2007?

To do so…

1) Make sure you are on the “Home” tab of the Ribbon”

2) Look for the “Paragraph” group

3) Click on the little arrow beside the “Bullet” button

4) Select a bullet design from the “Bullet Library”, or click on “Define New Bullet”

If you are defining a new bullet, you will see that you can select any symbol or picture that you want!  You could literally use a mug shot of yourself as a bullet if you really wanted to!

That could be too much fun!

‘till next time!
TNP

Are you sick of clicking your mouse, hitting a key, or pressing next on your wireless presenter?

Well in PowerPoint 2007, you can set up your presentation so that each slide automatically advances after so many seconds.

To make a slide automatically advance after a certain amount of time:

1) Make sure you are looking at the slide you want to apply the timing to

2) Click on the “Animations” tab of the ribbon

3) Look for the “Advance Slide” section at the far right hand side of the ribbon

4) Check the “Automatically After:” box, and then input the number of minutes and seconds you would like the slide to be visible before advancing to the next.

If you are unhappy with automatically advancing slides, don’t worry – you can still use the mouse click to move to the next one.  And if you really hate it, you can simply uncheck the “Automatically After:” check box to stop the timed slide advance from occurring.

‘till next time!
TNP

Word 2007 has some fairly powerful translation features that can help you quickly understand what a word is in a different language.

By using the “Translation ScreenTip” you can see the translation of most words simply by moving the mouse over them!

Translation ScreenTip works for the following languages:

• Arabic (Saudi Arabia)
• English (United States)
• French (France)
• Spanish (Spain, International Sort)

To turn on Translation ScreenTip:

1) Make sure you are on the “Review” tab of the ribbon

2) Look for the “Proofing” group

3) Click on “Translation ScreenTip”

4) Select the language you want to see the translation for, or click on “Turn Off Translation ScreenTip” to turn the translation off.

‘till next time!
TNP

Have you ever noticed whenever you reply to an email the font colour isn’t black, but a dark blue?

Well like most things in Outlook 2007, if you want you are able to change the default reply font color.

To do so:

1) Click on “Tools”

2) Click on “Options”

3) Click on the “Mail Format” tab

4) Click on “Stationery and Fonts” – about half way down the “Options” dialog box

5) About half way down the “Signatures and Stationery” dialog box that appears, you will find  a section called “Replying or forwarding messages”.  Click on the “Font” button directly below that, and then select the font colour you would like to use. 

6) Click “OK” three times to close all the boxes.

You can also change your default reply font and size using this technique

‘till next time!
TNP