Archive for March, 2009

Do you love using copy and paste in Word 2007?  Well if you do, you might know that your clipboard can keep up to the last 24 things you have copied, just in case you want to use them again.

But how do you see what is still on your clipboard, and more importantly, how do you use those “clips” again?

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

2) Look for the “Clipboard” group – it should be the one on the left hand side

3) Click on the little square that looks like it has an arrow pointing out of it, in the bottom right hand corner of the “Clipboard” group

4) A box showing everything in the clipboard will appear

Now all you need to do if you want to use something on the clipboard is simply click on it in that clipboard box!  How easy is that!

And if you know you wont use something in the clipboard again, you can delete it to make room for other things.  Simply right click on the clip you want to get rid of, and click “Delete”

‘till next time!
TNP

Are you an active user of Groove 2007, and are constantly bombarded with alerts telling you manner of things have changed!  Well there is an easy way to stop the insanity, the annoyance, and be more productive.  All you need to do is “Suppress” the alerts:

1) Look at the Groove 2007 Launchbar

2) In the “Common Tasks” section, simply click on “Suppress Alerts”

If you get bored and want your alerts back, simply go back to the Launchbar, and click “Show Alerts”

‘till next time!
TNP

So you have upgraded to Word 2007, but none of your friends, colleagues, co-workers, family, pets, neighbours, local government officials or industry tycoons have upgraded yet!  

And even worse still, they are all too lazy to download the Office Compatibility pack!  Can you believe it!

So what are you to do?  Well if you are one of the many people out there in this situation, about all you can do is save your Word 2007 documents in the old Word 97-2003 .doc format.  Only problem is every time you go to save, you need to use a few extra mouse clicks to make it happen.  If only you could set Word 2007 to default to save as a .doc file? 

Well guess what – you can!  Here is how:

1) Open up Word 2007

2) Click on the Office Menu (the circle button in the top left hand corner of Word 2007)

3) Click on “Word Options”

4) Click on the “Save” button in the left hand column

5) Look at the very first option on that screen – it lets you select the default save format.  It will be currently set to “Word Document (*.docx)”.  You want to change it to “Word 97-2003 Document (*.doc)” using the drop down menu.

6) Click “OK”

There you have it!  Now Word 2007 will automatically default to save your documents in the old Word 2003 format.  And more importantly, all your friends, colleagues, workmates etc will now want to talk to you again!

‘till next time!
TNP

Have you or a creative genius close to you built an unreal shockwave/flash animation and you want to show the world?

Did you know that you can show off that animation using PowerPoint 2007?  Bet you didn’t.  That being said it isn’t the simplest of things you can do – but it does work.  Here is the step by step guide to doing it!

1) Open PowerPoint 2007 (obvious right!)

2) Make sure you can see the “Developer” tab in the “Ribbon”.  If you can’t, click on the Office menu (the circle button in the top left hand corner), then click on “PowerPoint Options”, and make sure that you check the “Show Developer tab in the Ribbon” box!

3) Go to the slide you want the .swf file to appear

4) Click on the “Developer” tab in the Ribbon

5) Look for the “More Controls” button in the controls group.  It is the one with a spanner and a hammer with three dots underneath it.  Once you find it – click on it

6) The “More Controls” box will appear.  Scroll down until you find “Shockwave Flash Object”.  Click on that, then click “OK”

7) You will notice your cursor is now a cross, and no longer an arrow.  That means you can now draw where you want your Shockwave/Flash file to appear on your slide.  Simply draw with your mouse, and use the adjustment handles on the box to make sure it is just the right size and position on your slide.  When you are done you should see a wireframe box with a big “X” through the middle of it

Now we want to link your .swf file into your PowerPoint 2007 presentation.  Click on the box you just drew, then right click, and select “Properties”

9) In the properties box that appears, look for the “Movie” property, and then add the location of your .swf file (for example c:\temp\test.swf)

10) Quickly run your presentation and watch in awe as your shockwave file hits the big screen in your PowerPoint 2007 presentation

So how did you go?  Sure it is a little complicated to get there, but boy does it look good once you have that file playing through PowerPoint.

Just a word of warning though – this only LINKS to the .swf file, so if you email or share the presentation with others, chances are the link will break and you will need to go through the above process again to re-link the PowerPoint deck to the .swf

That being said… it is well worth the effort!

‘till next time!
TNP

So you have typed all your data into Excel.  But your numbers don’t have those commas that you had on paper?  How do you add commas, or thousands separators to your numbers in Excel 2007?

1) Select the cells you want to have the commas (or thousands separators)

2) Make sure you are on the “Home” tab in the “Ribbon”

3) Look for the “Number” group

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

‘till next time!
TNP

Do you spend hours making your cells in Excel look pretty?  Well maybe not pretty, but do you use colors, font sizes, borders etc etc to make certain cells in your spreadsheet stick out?

Well instead of spending all your time trying to be one of those creative folk in Marketing, you can focus on doing what you do best… driving those formulas!

All you need to do is use Cell Styles in Excel 2007!

1) Select the cell you want to highlight!

2) Make sure you are on the “Home” tab in the “Ribbon”

3) Look for the “Styles” Group

4) Click on “Cell Styles”

5) Select your favorite cell style!

It is as simple as that!

‘till next time!
TNP

So you have created your PowerPoint masterpiece!  But now you want to make sure a couple of the slides you put in don’t show up when you do your presentation.  Or maybe you have a few slides that are “work in progress”?  Either way there is a quick and easy way to make sure those slides do not show up on the big screen!

You can hide one, two, three, four, five, ten, twenty, in fact as many slides as you want!  Here is how

1) Select the slides you want to hide

2) Right click on the slides you have selected, and click “Hide Slide”

Simple as that!

There is another way using the “Ribbon” if you prefer to do it that way

1) Select the slides you want to hide

2) Make sure you are on the “Slide Show” tab in the Ribbon

3) Look for the “Set Up” group

4) Click on the “Hide Slide” button

There you go!

But now you want to make your slides appear again?  Just do exactly the same!  Select the hidden slides you want to unhide, then click “Hide Slide” again!

‘till next time!
TNP

Do you want a little extra space before a paragraph?  Or maybe you want a big break after one?  Well lucky for you you can change the spacing before and after each of your paragraphs in Word 2007.  And the best part is that you can be very granular in how much space you want there to be!

Here is how:

1) Select the paragraph or paragraphs you want to change the paragraph spacing of

2) In the “Ribbon”, make sure you are on the “Page Layout” tab

3) Look for the “Paragraph” group

4) Simply enter how much space you want before, or after your paragraph.  You can use “pt” points (just like your font size), or you can use cm, mm, inches.

Now you can get your paragraphs to sit exactly where you want them to!

‘till next time!
TNP