Archive for August, 2007

Ever wanted to put some colour behind your text in a word document?  Not just highlight something, 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, rather than formatting it as you go

2) Look on the home tab in the ribbon, 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  

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

One of them is Alistair Speirs, 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, 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

Have you ever seen those spreadsheets or charts where the text isn’t normal?  You know the ones where the text is diagonal, or vertical, 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, 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