Archive for February, 2010

Do you find it hard to prioritise emails when all you are looking at is a long list of who the email is from, and what the email subject is?

Well using the “Auto Preview” feature in Outlook 2007, you can now view the first couple of lines of an email – giving you all the information you need to triage and prioritise the long list of emails in your inbox.

To turn on (or off) Auto Preview in Outlook 2007:

1) Click on “View”

2) Click on “AutoPreview”

Simple as that!

‘till next time!
TNP

Have you ever wanted to quickly know what cells are impacted on when you change a value of a cell in Excel 2007.

By using the “Trace Dependents” feature, you can very quickly understand exactly the influence a cell has in your spreadsheet.  The best part of this feature is, that you will see big arrows that enable you to visually see the relationship, so you don’t have to decipher formulas and cell names to make sense of it all.

To turn on Trace Dependents:

1) Select the cell you want to see the dependents of

2) Make sure you are on the “Formulas” tab of the ribbon

3) Look for the “Formula Auditing” group (about 3/4 of the way along the ribbon)

4) Click on “Trace Dependents”

Now you will see arrows pointing you in the right direction!

‘till next time!
TNP

Are you bored of bullets that just look like… well… bullets?  Did you know you can change the look of the bullets in your bulleted lists in Word 2007?

To do so…

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

2) Look for the “Paragraph” group

3) Click on the little arrow beside the “Bullet” button

4) Select a bullet design from the “Bullet Library”, or click on “Define New Bullet”

If you are defining a new bullet, you will see that you can select any symbol or picture that you want!  You could literally use a mug shot of yourself as a bullet if you really wanted to!

That could be too much fun!

‘till next time!
TNP

Are you sick of clicking your mouse, hitting a key, or pressing next on your wireless presenter?

Well in PowerPoint 2007, you can set up your presentation so that each slide automatically advances after so many seconds.

To make a slide automatically advance after a certain amount of time:

1) Make sure you are looking at the slide you want to apply the timing to

2) Click on the “Animations” tab of the ribbon

3) Look for the “Advance Slide” section at the far right hand side of the ribbon

4) Check the “Automatically After:” box, and then input the number of minutes and seconds you would like the slide to be visible before advancing to the next.

If you are unhappy with automatically advancing slides, don’t worry – you can still use the mouse click to move to the next one.  And if you really hate it, you can simply uncheck the “Automatically After:” check box to stop the timed slide advance from occurring.

‘till next time!
TNP

Word 2007 has some fairly powerful translation features that can help you quickly understand what a word is in a different language.

By using the “Translation ScreenTip” you can see the translation of most words simply by moving the mouse over them!

Translation ScreenTip works for the following languages:

• Arabic (Saudi Arabia)
• English (United States)
• French (France)
• Spanish (Spain, International Sort)

To turn on Translation ScreenTip:

1) Make sure you are on the “Review” tab of the ribbon

2) Look for the “Proofing” group

3) Click on “Translation ScreenTip”

4) Select the language you want to see the translation for, or click on “Turn Off Translation ScreenTip” to turn the translation off.

‘till next time!
TNP

Have you ever noticed whenever you reply to an email the font colour isn’t black, but a dark blue?

Well like most things in Outlook 2007, if you want you are able to change the default reply font color.

To do so:

1) Click on “Tools”

2) Click on “Options”

3) Click on the “Mail Format” tab

4) Click on “Stationery and Fonts” – about half way down the “Options” dialog box

5) About half way down the “Signatures and Stationery” dialog box that appears, you will find  a section called “Replying or forwarding messages”.  Click on the “Font” button directly below that, and then select the font colour you would like to use. 

6) Click “OK” three times to close all the boxes.

You can also change your default reply font and size using this technique

‘till next time!
TNP

Have you ever wanted to quickly know what cells directly impact on the calculated value of a cell in Excel 2007.

By using the “Trace Precedents” feature, you can very quickly understand exactly which cells influence the output of a cell.  The best part of this feature is, that you will see big arrows that enable you to visually see the relationship, so you don’t have to decipher formulas and cell names to make sense of it all.

To turn on Trace Precedents:

1) Select the cell you want to see the precedents of

2) Make sure you are on the “Formulas” tab of the ribbon

3) Look for the “Formula Auditing” group (about 3/4 of the way along the ribbon)

4) Click on “Trace Precedents”

Now you will see arrows pointing you in the right direction!

‘till next time!
TNP

Is there a section of text in your document (or your whole document!) that isn’t “English (United States)” or another language.  Well to make sure that your spelling and grammar checks in Word 2007 work well, you need to make sure that text is marked as the right language.

So how do you mark a section of text as a different language?

1) Select the text

2) Make sure you are on the “Review” tab of the ribbon

3) Look for the “Proofing” group”

4) Click “Set Language”

5) Select your preferred language

Now you can be confident that spell check is doing the right thing!

‘till next time!
TNP

Have you ever noticed that your PowerPoint Presentations are running a little sluggish?  Maybe they jump through every transition, or just take a long time to load up?

There is one way to help accelerate your PowerPoint deck – and that is to lower the resolution that it displays at.

To alter the resolution that your PowerPoint presentation uses:

1) Make sure you are on the “Slide Show” tab of the ribbon

2) Look for the “Monitors” group

3) Select your preferred resolution from the “Resolution” drop down box

To put it simply, the lower the resolution, the higher the performance of your presentation will be, but at a cost of lower fidelity.  On the flip side if you want to turn up the visual quality of the presentation, and don’t mind a little performance hit, crank up the resolution to as high as your computer (or more importantly your projector) can handle.

‘till next time!
TNP

Do you want to produce a document that uses a different paper size than Letter or A4?  What about Legal, A5, A3, Tabloid, Japanese Postcard or the dozens of other paper sizes available?

Well Word 2007 is very accommodating when it comes to paper size – and it is very easy to change.

1) Make sure you are on the “Page Layout” tab of the ribbon

2) Look for the “Page Setup” group

3) Click on “Size”

4) Select your preferred paper size

You can also create a custom paper size if you want – just select “More Paper Sizes…” and then “Custom”