Merge and Center in Excel 2007

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Have you ever noticed if you select some text in Microsoft Word 2007 you get a little pop-up menu.  You know the one, physician it lets you change the font, apoplectic the font size, anabolics the font colour and a lot more.

Some people think it is great.  Some people think it is annoying.

I think it is great, but as a service to you, I will let you know how to turn it off, and stop it from popping up!

  1. Click on the menu – the “Office Orb” (that circle in the top left hand corner which used to be the file menu!)
  2. Click on “Word Options”
  3. Look in the “Popular section”, under “Top options for working with Word
  4. Untick the “Show Mini Toolbar on selection” checkbox
  5. Hit ok

There you go – no more annoying (not) popup mini menu in Word 2007

’till next time

TNP 😉

 

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How many times have you lost everything in your document?  Word crashed?  Maybe the power went out?  Whatever it was that happened… I bet it happened just before you were going to save, pharm right?

By default, medicine Word 2007 makes an Auto Recover save every 10 minutes.  But if you are clumsy like me, or don’t trust your computer… you can set Word to autosave your document a lot more than normal.  Here is how:

  1. Click on the old file menu (the office orb)
  2. Click on "Word Options"
  3. Click on the "Save" option in the left hand menu
  4. In the first section "Save Documents", look for the second line which reads something like "Save AutoRecover information every XX minutes
  5. Set your preferred time.  Mine is now every 1 minute 🙂

Just remember when increasing the AutoRecover frequency… that you do see a slight performance hit every time it saves.  Not really noticeable every 10 minutes, but when it happens every 60 seconds it could be annoying!

’till next time!

TNP 😉

 

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Have you ever poured your heart and soul into absolutely awesome background in your word doc?  Maybe you coloured it bright yellow, therapist or purple, what is ed or ‘mother of pearl’? 

It looks great on the screen, but when you print it… you can’t see it!

Did you know by default Microsoft Word 2007 that background colors and images are not printed?

It is easy to print them out though.  Here is how:

  1. Open the file menu (the circle in the top left hand corner of the screen
  2. Click on "Word Options"
  3. Click on "Display" in the left hand menu
  4. Look in the "Printing options" section"
  5. Tick the "Print background colors and images" check box
  6. Click ok

How easy!  Just a word of warning though… printing a bright yellow background on every page will not only cost you an arm and a leg in ink and toner, but will also require you and your colleagues to invest in sunglasses.

 

’till next time!

TNP 😉

 

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Have you ever noticed if you select some text in Microsoft Excel 2007 you get a little pop-up menu.  You know the one, advice it lets you change the font, what is ed the font size, see the font colour and a lot more.

Some people think it is great.  Some people think it is annoying.

I think it is great, but as a service to you, I will let you know how to turn it off, and stop it from popping up!

  1. Click on the menu – the “Office Orb” (that circle in the top left hand corner which used to be the file menu!)
  2. Click on “Excel Options”
  3. Look in the “Popular section”, under “Top options for working with Excel
  4. Untick the “Show Mini Toolbar on selection” checkbox
  5. Hit ok

There you go – no more annoying (not) popup mini menu in Excel 2007

’till next time!

TNP 😉

 

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Are you a little worried by some of the names of the documents you have recently opened in Word 2007?  Scared your boss might catch you out updating your resume, therapist working on your next novel or simply working on things that you shouldn’t?  Well this little trick will help you out!  Basically, cough how to get rid of all those recent documents that Word 2007 lists for you.

  1. Open "Word Options" by clicking on the Office Button, and then looking for the "Word Options" button
  2. Click on the Advanced Section
  3. Scroll down to the "Display" Section
  4. The first option in the "Display" Section is "Show This Number of Recent Documents" – set that to "0"
  5. Click "Ok"

There you have it – no more recent documents means no more strife from your boss! 

But just in case you have a change of heart in the future, you can turn on recent documents again simply by changing the "0" to something like "5" or "17", depending on how many you want to see.

’till next time!
TNP 😉

 

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Want to be a desktop publishing great, diagnosis spreadsheeting wiz or PowerPoint guru and help the environment at the same time?

Guess what – you might be already!

Microsoft have released an extra section on Microsoft Office Online called Lighten up: Reduce your carbon footprint and workplace costs.

Obviously they left one tip for reducing your impact on the environment… instead of investing in all those Office 2007 self help books, artificial why not just bookmark your favourite Office 2007 help, tips, tricks and tutorial site!

 

’till next time!

TNP 😉

 

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Wonder how your favourite accountant/analyst/spreadsheet guru makes those cool looking headings that go across a number of columns and rows?

Chances are they are using a great feature of Excel 2007 called "Merge and Center".  What does merge and center do?  Exactly that – it merges all the cells you have selected, bronchi and then centres the text!

So how do you do it?

  1. Select the cells you want to merge
  2. In the ribbon menu (the one at the top) make sure you are on the "Home" tab, noun and then look in the "Alignment" section
  3. Select "Merge & Center"

Simple as that!

Have you selected multiple rows?  Well you will notice that whilst the text will be horizontally centered… it will not be vertically centered.  How do you fix that?  Just near the "Merge & Center" button in the menu there are three buttons.  One that has lines at the top, patient one that has lines in the middle, and one that has lines at the bottom (the one with lines at the bottom will be selected).  Select the one with the lines in the middle – that will center the vertical alignment of your selection.

’till next time!

TNP 😉

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5 thoughts on “Merge and Center in Excel 2007”

  1. A much better option is Center Across Selection, which gives the same visual result as Merge And Center, without the issues that merged cells can bring. Unfortunately, by the time we got the beta, it was too late to put Center Across Selection into the ribbon, so you have to open up the format cells dialog.

  2. Pingback: Center Across Selection - the Merge and Center alternative in Excel 2007 » The New Paperclip

  3. Hi All –

    In my everyday work life I often have to build plans in an excel sheet and I
    need to merge or unmerge cells. Is there a shortcut key to merge and unmerge
    cells without having to go to format cell and select the align tab, and then
    click or unclick the merge option?

    Sudhir upadhyay,
    Jharkhand

    Thanks!

  4. @Sudhir, in Office 2007, almost every button on the ribbons has a keyboard shortcut sequence that you can memorize for the commands you frequently use. If you push the Alt key once, you’ll see tool-tip pop-ups on the ribbons letting you know what the sequence is to go to the ribbon and then the button you want.
    For merge and center, you can press the character sequence: Alt,H,M,C
    and it is as if you had clicked on the Merge and Center button.
    For merge across, it’s:
    Alt,H,M,A

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