Who else wants to know the secret to Excel Formulas?

Invest in yourself in 2015 and reduce your frustration with formulas in Excel for just $19.95 - Click here to enroll today

---

Have you ever seen those spreadsheets or charts where the text isn’t normal?  You know the ones where the text is diagonal, neurosurgeon rheumatologist or vertical, resuscitator or on its side?  It is a pretty nifty trick you can use to display more information in less space.  And in Excel 2007 it is really easy to do.

How to change text orientation in Excel 2007

1. Type the text into a cell
2. Select the cell
3. On the home tab of the ribbon, rx look for the alignment group.  There you will find a button with an ‘a’ and a ‘b’ and an arrow all on an angle.  That’s the Orientation menu.  Click on the little drop down arrow beside it.
4. Select one of the quick options to angle your text

If you want to be more specific about the angle of your text, you can select “Format Cell Alignment” and set down to the degree how “slanty” you want your text.

The results are pretty impressive – well your boss will think so and that is all that matters right?

’till next time!
TNP 😉

Want to know lots of in depth techincal stuff about Microsoft Office?  Well if I can’t answer it, order there are plenty of people at Microsoft who know their stuff!

One of them is Alistair Speirs, generic a Office Technology Specialst at Microsoft Australia.  If you want to dive deep into everything office (beyond the tutorials from yours truely!) then you should check out his blog…

http://blogs.msdn.com/alspeirs/

Check out some of his posts on Business Desktop Deployment, clinic Enterprise Search, Office Busines Applications, OpenXML, and one he stole from me… Random text in Word 🙂

TNP and Alistair go way back… he knows his stuff!

’till next time!
TNP 😉

Ever wanted to put some colour behind your text in a word document?  Not just highlight something, treat but add color to the entire paragraph?  It’s pretty easy in Word 2007.

1) Type your text into your document.  Generally it is easier to work with all your text, erectile rather than formatting it as you go

2) Look on the home tab in the ribbon, pills in the paragraph group.  You will find a button that looks like a bucket of paint.  That is the “Shading” button.  If you click on the dropdown menu you will see a palette of colours that you can use to shade your paragraph.

3) Select your favourite colour – notice that you get a live preview, so just roll your mouse over all the colours that you are thinking about, and click on the one that suits best!

 

It is as simple as that!

’till next time!
TNP 😉 

Do you have a message that you want to send to multiple contacts, one health but you don’t want to do the old BCC trick?  Better yet… do you want to actually personalise the message for each recipient? 

Instead of “Hi all”, what about “Hi Bill”, “Hi Jane” etc?

You can, with email merge in Word 2007.

Email merge works exactly the same as a standard mail merge… except for one big difference.  Instead of printing individual letters or envelopes or labels… Word 2007 will generate individual emails, send them to your Outlook 2007 outbox, and then when you are next online in Outlook, Outlook will send each your personalised emails to each addressee.

Kicking off a email merge in Word 2007 is easy.

1. Open up Word 2007
2. Type your email in Word 2007
3. Click on the “Mailings” tab in the ribbon
4. In the “Start Mail Merge” grouping, click on the “Start Mail Merge” button.  It will show a list of mail merge options available.  You can choose Letters, E-Mail Messages, Envelopes, Labels or Directory.  In this case as we want to send an email… click on “E-Mail Messages”
   
5. Next you need to select the recipients of your email merge.  These names could come from any number or sources… maybe an Excel 2007 spreadsheet?  maybe your Outlook 2007 Contacts… or you could just type them yourself.  

   To do that, click on the “Select Recipients” box in the “Start Mail Merge” group.  Either find your data source, your outlook contacts, or create a new list.

6. If you want to edit any of the recipients in the list, now is the time to click on “Edit Recipient List” in the “Start Mail Merge” group.
7. The next step is to add the appropriate fields to personalise the greeting, the recipients name, or to add any other piece of data you might have on the contact anywhere throughout your recipient list.  

   You can find the appropriate fields in the “Write & Insert Fields” group (still on the “Mailings” tab).

   More than likely you will want to add at least a greeting line (Dear Bill… or something like that).  To do that click on the “Greeting Line” button in the “Write & Insert Fields” group.  The following dialog box appears
   

8. Once you are happy with your greeting line format, click “OK”.  Word 2007 will now drop the field into your document.
9. Now you can preview your results to ensure that everyone’s name is coming up correctly.  Click the “Preview Results” button in the “Preview Results” group… then use the forward and back arrows beside it to run through your recipient list.
10. If you are happy with the preview, not is the time to finish things off and compete the merge.  In the “Finish” group on the “Mailings tab” you will see a button called “Finish & Merge”.  Click on it, and then click “Send E-mail Messages…” 

    

11. Now Word 2007 automatically generates all the individual emails, and sends them to your Outlook 2007 outbox (or your default email client).
12. Open up Outlook or your email client, and watch all your emails be sent!

 

So there you have it… your 12 step guide to Email Merge in Word 2007!

’till next time,
TNP 😉

Share this tip: on Twitter on Facebook on Google+