Archive for November, 2009

So if you have been reading The New Paperclip for a while, you will know that the guy behind The New Paperclip is Paul Woods. Recently he delivered two presentations at two separate events – Microsoft’s TechEd Australia Conference, and the community driven OfficeDevCon09. Here are the two presentations available on Slideshare…

I hope you enjoy!

’till next time!
TNP

Do you want to win a copy of “2007 Microsoft Office System Inside Out” by John Pierce – valued at $USD 49.99?  If so… read on…

This month is a great one here at The New Paperclip, for a number of reasons:

1. The first month where I have had over 50 000 unique visitors, who just like you are trying to solve their Office 2007 (and now Office 2010) challenges;
2. I delivered a session at OfficeDevCon09 where there wasn’t a single spare seat in the room; and just today…
3. I have launched a Facebook Fan page, so you can keep up to date with all the tips, tricks and tutorials from TheNewPaperclip.com!
   
   The New Paperclip on Facebook

So to celebrate all these good things, I am giving away a great resource – almost 1300 pages of everything you would ever want to know about Microsoft Office 2007.

So what do you need to do to be in the draw to win?

Before 15 December 2009 – simply do the following:

• Become a Fan of The New Paperclip on Facebook, and
• Post on the wall of the fan page the one thing you would love to know how to do, or problem you would love to solve in Office 2007.

I will pick a winner at random from all the wall posts, and let you all know here, and on the Facebook Fan page who the winner is.

That is all there is to it – just become a fan of The New Paperclip today, and let me know what Office 2007 problems you would like me to help you with – and you could win!  GOOD LUCK!

‘till next time!
TNP

PS… whilst we are at it, if you are on twitter and not following @thenewpaperclip… why not?

Hey if you have upgraded to Office 2010, you might have noticed an unreal new feature which allows you to very quickly paste a screenshot into your Word 2010 documents, Excel 2010 workbooks, or PowerPoint 2010 decks!

Here is how!

1. Open up your Word 2010 document
2. Click on the “Insert tab” in the Word 2010 ribbon
3. Look for the “Illustrations” group
4. Click on “Screenshot”

Once you click on “Screenshot, you have two options.  The first is to simply paste in the screenshots that Word 2010 has already taken for you!  For example, if you have four different applications open, Word has figured out that you might want a screenshot of one of those applications – and simply lets you pick which one you want to use (very smart!).  All you have to do is click on the screenshot you want to use!

The second is to take a screen clipping – which allows you very fine control over which part of your screen you want to take a screen shot of.  Simply click on “Screen Clipping” and then drag your mouse to select your screenshot.

Either way, getting screenshots into Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2010 just became a whole lot easier!

‘till next time!
TNP

If you are like me, or anyone else that I work with, in fact if you are anyone in business today – chances are you use Outlook EVERY DAY!

And if you are like 99% of the population, you will double click on that Outlook icon every morning to open it.  Talk about wasting time! 

Did you know that we can automate things so Outlook will automatically start whenever you log into your computer. 

All you need to do is find the “Startup” folder in your Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7 start menu.  Once you have found it, simply drag the Outlook icon into that folder.

Actually this works with any program, not just Outlook.  So if you want to automatically start Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Internet Explorer… in fact any application on your computer – just drag the icon into the Startup folder.

So there you have it – one less thing for you to do in the morning!

‘till next time!
TNP

Are you building a spreadsheet and would like to know how many black cells you have in a given range?

There is a great function in Excel that you can use to do exactly that – count the number of BLANK cells in a range.

Simply type…

=COUNTBLANK(range)

(replace range with the range of cells you want to limit your count to). 

Note that there is one particular thing that might slip you up with this function.  When using =COUNTBLANK(), Excel is only searching for blank, empty cells.  If you have a space in a cell for example – it might look empty to you, but Excel can see that there is a space – which means it will not think it is blank, and not count it.

‘till next time!
TNP

So you have upgraded to Word 2010!  If you have made the leap from Office 2003 or earlier, you might have a few challenges finding some of the features you use regularly.  One of those great features is Undo!  (I think Undo is the feature I use the most!)

To undo in Word 2010, you can either do it using your mouse, or using some shortcut keys.

To undo using your mouse in Word 2010:

• Look towards the top left hand corner of your Word 2010 window.  Just above the office button you will see a number of small icons along the top of the screen (by the way – that is called the “Quick Access Toolbar”).  Click on the one that looks like an arrow that points backwards – that is the undo button. 
• If you want to undo more than one mistake action – click on the little down arrow beside that button, and it will give you a list of actions you can undo!

To undo using shortcut keys in Word 2010:

• Simply hold down the “CTRL” key, and press “z” (CTRL+Z)
• To undo more than once, just keep pressing CTRL+Z

So there you have it – the easy way to get rid of your mistakes in Word 2010!

‘till next time!
TNP

(PS. try this article if you are looking to undo in Word 2007)