Archive for May, 2007

Everyone has their favourite line spacing!  Some like as much information as possible crammed into a page and go for single line spacing, whilst others like their white space and go for double (or even TRIPLE!) line spacing.  Line spacing can make a document easy to read, or can make it an absolute nightmare to edit.

Lets have a look at how easy it is to play around with line spacing in Word 2007.

To change Line Spacing in Word 2007:

1. On the home tab of the ribbon, look for the paragraph group.  Then click on the Line Spacing button, as shown in the image below.

   

2. Select your desired line spacing.  By default in Word 2007 the line spacing is set to 1.15.  From this menu you can select to have your line spacing set to 1, 1.15, 1.5, 2, 2.5 or 3.  If you want a more granular line spacing (say 1.63, 1.05 or maybe 12pt or 23pt or anything like that), you can click on the Line Spacing Options item in the Line Spacing Menu.

   

Below is an example of what each of the various line spacing options look like.

So there you have it… how to control line spacing in Word 2007!

’till next time,
TNP

[tags]Word 2007, Help, Tutorial, Line Spacing, Desktop Publishing[/tags] 

A lot of organisations have had a chance to play around with Office 2007 for a while now, and are now walking down the road of deployment.  But where to start?  Deployment has changed a little from previous versions of Microsoft Office, so it might be a good idea to brush up on a few things before kicking off that Office 2007 deployment project.

First step is to visit the 2007 Microsoft Office System Plan and Deploy with Confidence site.  This site includes Webcasts (from level 100 through to 400), Virtual Labs, and Podcasts to help you get you complete your deployment successfully.

Secondly, check out some of the articles on deployment from media outlets such as Computerworld.  These start to give you a real world perspective on the types of issues you might face during your deployment.

Thirdly, if you are ready to go now, check out articles from experts in the community, just like Aaron Parker’s post on Deploying Office 2007 with Group Policy Startup Scripts.

Finally, once your deployment is complete, make sure you let everyone in your organisation know about Thenewpaperclip.com – so they can get up to speed quickly with the new features of Office 2007!  Remember… the key to a successful deployment is not the deployment itself, but the training and adoption that takes place afterwards.

’till next time,
TNP

Just a quick update to let you know that the Getting started with Word 2007 guide has been updated.

If you, or someone you know is learning Word 2007 and does not know where to start, I suggest checking out “Getting started with Word 2007 – The Ultimate Guide” today!

’till next time
TNP

Do you want to make your PowerPoint 2007 presentation look a little fancier than normal?  Well you can add some very cool slide transitions!

A transition is what happens when you move from one slide to another.  The transition could be as simple as a fade or a dissolve… or it could be much fancier using  a “push and cover”, stripes and bars, or something totally random!

To insert a transition into your presentation, on the Ribbon in PowerPoint 2007, select the “Animations” tab, and then look for the very big “Transition to This Slide” group.

The easiest way to add a transition is to move your mouse over one of the dozens of transitions that appear in the transition gallery, and see what it look like (thanks to live preview!).  If you like it, then click on that transition!

Here is an example, where I have put my mouse over the “Newsflash” transition, and I am seeing a live preview of it in the background.  Very cool

So there you have it – an introduction to using transitions in PowerPoint 2007!

’till next time,
TNP  

[tags]Transitions, Presentations, Layout, Help[/tags]

Have you ever read a book, or a fancy brochure and noticed that the first letter of a chapter is really big (and goes across a few lines) and the rest of the text looks normal?  That is called a “Drop Cap”, and you can insert one really easily in Word 2007.

How do I insert a drop cap in Word 2007?

Firstly, you need some text in your document.  Generally you would only add a drop cap after you have written your document.  Here is an example of some plain text that I have inserted into the document

Secondly, you need to find the Insert Drop Cap button.  Go to the “Insert” tab on the Word 2007 Ribbon, then go across the the “Text” group.  You will find the “Drop Cap” button there.  If you click the button there are three options, plus an options menu.

Obviously if you have Drop Cap set to “None”… you will not have a drop cap.  If you click on “Dropped”, you will get…

Pretty cool huh!  Now your document looks like a professionally published book (well almost!).  The other Drop Cap option is “In Margin”, and basically drops the first letter into the margin, which looks something like this…

Which one looks best?  Dropped or In Margin?  I don’t know, you need to decide on that!

Drop Cap Options

There are a few options you can play with when creating a drop cap in Word 2007.  For starters, you can make the drop cap a different font, make it span more (or less) lines, and set the distance it sits away from the text of your document.

If you click on “Drop Cap Options” in the Drop Cap menu, you get this dialog box to the left.  The options under position are just the same as those that I have mentioned earlier in this post.  Dropped means that the first letter of the paragraph will appear larger than the rest of the text, and displace the text a little.  In margin, the first letter will like larger than the rest of the text, but sit in the margin.

The Options section is where you can have some fun.  Your first choice is what font you want the drop cap to be.  Depending on how many fonts you have installed on your computer, this could be a very hard decision.  Unfortunately we don’t have live preview here (Note to Microsoft – Please, please, please, add live preview to the drop cap options menu!), so you might have to use a little trial and error.

The second option is “Lines to Drop.”  This basically lets you choose how big your drop cap is.  The smallest you would want to go is 2 lines (otherwise it wouldn’t be a drop cap!) and the most would depend totally on the size of your font.  Generally 3 looks good, but I have seen some very cool drop caps work over 10 lines, with a small body font.

Finally the last option is the “Distance from text”.  This is handy if you want to put a little space between your drop cap and your body text.  Again you don’t want too much of a space here, otherwise it will be difficult to read the first word!

Here is an example of my custom drop cap.  I chose “Blackadder ITC” as my font (it is one of those really really old curly fonts!, lines to drop as 3, and distance from text as 0.2cm.  This is what I got…

So there you have it – a quick start guide to how to insert a Drop Cap in Word 2007!  Just be careful not to go overboard, drop caps look good when used well, but if you go crazy, your document will look very, very ugly!

’till next time
TNP

[tags]Desktop Publishing, Word 2007, Tutorial, Help, Guide, Drop Cap[/tags]

So you have a worksheet with some numbers, but they are not your standard type of number… maybe they are a dollar figure, maybe they are a date or time, percentage or fraction.  To make sure Excel 2007 interprets them the way you interpret them, you need to format the number properties the cell.

How to change the Number Formatting of a cell in Excel 2007

Firstly, you need to find the Number group.  You can find it on the “Home” tab of the ribbon.

In the number group you have a number of different options you can use to quickly format the numbers in your selected cells.

The first option is the big drop down box that says “General.”  This drop down box lets you select the type of number formatting you want for the cell, which could be: Number, Currency, Accounting, Short Date, Long Date, Time, Percentage, Fraction, Scientific, Text, or many more.  The drop down list looks like this when you click on it…

Below that drop down box you have a number of other options.  The first is to format the cell as a specific currency.  Using this button you can not only format the cell as an Accounting Cell, but also select the specific currency you want.

The next few options allow you to format the cell for percentages, and set the cell to follow comma style (ie. 2,432,455.00).  The final two buttons allow you to move the decimal point in the cell to the left (increase the number of decimals after the point), or move the decimal point to the right (decrease the number of decimals after the point).

If you want to do some tricky number formatting, you can do so by clicking on the little “Square and Arrow” in the bottom right hand corner of the Number group… or right click on your selected cells, and click “Format Cells”

’till next time,
TNP

[tags]Accounting, Spreadsheet, Formatting, Help[/tags]

Here is a quick tip that will make you more productive.  When you receive an email in Outlook 2007 that you need for follow up at a later time, simply click the little flag beside the email in the inbox.

To keep track of all the emails that you have flagged in your inbox, make sure you have the “To-Do” bar open.  All your flagged items appear in your task list (with all your other formal task that you may have created, or had assigned to you).  You can then manage your flagged emails by either assigning a follow up date, or marking them as complete.

 To assign a follow up date to a email that you have flagged… double click on the entry in your task list in the “To-Do” bar to open the email, and then in the “Options” group on the Ribbon, click on “Follow Up”.  By clicking on this menu you can select a due date for when you need to follow up this email, be it today, tomorrow, this week, or next week.

There you have it – easy email follow up task management in Outlook 2007.

’till next time,
TNP

[tags]Personal Productivity, Outlook, Flags, Tasks[/tags]