Excel 2007

If you have been using Microsoft Office 2007 or 2010 for a while, you might have come across what most people call the “Annoying Yellow Bar”

If you don’t know what I am talking about – open up a word document that someone has send you via email – or a spread sheet that you might find on a website.  Chances are when you open that Word, Excel or PowerPoint file, you will see the “Annoying Yellow Bar” – and you will not be able to edit, print, or save your document.

Well it may be annoying, but it is actually really important.  The yellow bar shows you that Word, Excel or PowerPoint is running in what we call “Protected Mode”.  Any time you open a file that isn’t on your computer, or from somewhere that you can’t trust (like the internet), the document will be opened in protected mode, to (as the name suggests) protect your computer from harm.

It opens up the document so you can take a look at it, and then if you are sure it is what you are looking for, and you trust that it will not do any harm, you can then click on the “Enable Editing” button, which sits on the yellow protected view bar.

Now there are ways to stop Protected View from happening, but trust me, it is worth putting up with because if you accidently open a document that causes damage to your computer, it is a LOT more annoying!

‘till next time!
TNP

If you are like me and follow Rugby Union (Go the ALL BLACKS!!!), you will love something that the team at the Excel Blog posted the other day.

It is a spread sheet that you can use to track your team’s progress during the world cup.

Read more about the Rugby World Cup score tracker and get your hands on the free Excel spread sheet on the Excel Blog

Soon I will be publishing a series of articles on The New Paperclip which dive a bit deeper into extending the functionality of Microsoft Office.  Probably a scary thought for most of you, but I have found that if we want to extract that extra 10-50% more out of Office there comes a time where you need to start coding.

In particular I am going to focus on building high value add-ins for Microsoft Office.

Now when it comes to writing an add-in, there are a couple of ways to go about it.

1) Roll your own

If you are confident C#  or VB coder there is nothing stopping you from cracking open Visual Studio, downloading Visual Studio Tools for Office and giving it your best shot.  I must admit I tried this at first, and had some success. 

But that success was time consuming, and when I wanted to build an add-in that was backwards compatible with Outlook 2007 (which has that horrible combination of ribbon and command bar), Office 2003/XP and beyond it became VERY time consuming.

So I decided to use an alternative.

2) Use Add-in-Express

Before I share my experience with Add-in-Express… here is what the brochure says!

“Add-in Express for Office and .NET is the only all-in-one platform that includes all the features you may expect for your Microsoft Office extensions such as Office COM add-ins, smart tags, Excel XLLs, RTD servers and Automation add-ins (UDFs). It fully supports Microsoft Visual Studio 2010, 2008 and 2005 and makes it very comfortable for developing application-level extensions for all available Office versions from 2000 to 2010.”

What that means for people new to Office Development is that Add-in-Express makes it easy to quickly extend the functionality of Microsoft Office, irrespective of what version you are running.  And after spending about a month using the tool to build some add-ins myself, I have to agree.  For someone who is exploring Office Development for the first time, taking the painful parts of COM out of the picture meant that I could focus on the features and functionality I wanted to build, and not spend hours pulling my hair out!

For example, being able to access all the key events in Office without having to write event handlers accelerated development time.  Sure, it may only seem like a small thing, but as any developer knows, anything that saves you time, and takes the pain of troubleshooting away is a good thing!

Anyways – if you are interested in developing your own Office Add-in, make sure you subscribe and check back in the next few weeks for more content about my development experiences – and some examples that will get your Office Development journey started.

‘till next time!
TNP

Do you want to be able to always see the headings of your columns whilst you scroll through your Excel 2007 spreadsheet?

To do that, you need to “Freeze” the top row of your sheet.

To Freeze the top row in Excel 2007:

1) Click on the “View” tab of the ribbon

2) Look for the “Window” group

3) Click on “Freeze Panes”

4) Click on “Freeze Top Row”

To unfreeze the top row, just repeat the process above, but instead of clicking “Freeze Top Row” in step 4), just click on “Unfreeze Panes”

‘till next time!
TNP

Do you have a column full of numbers in Excel 2007 that you would like to sort from lowest to highest, or smallest to biggest?

To sort from low to high in Excel 2007:

1) Select the cells you want to sort

2) Click on the “Data” tab of the Ribbon

3) Look for the “Sort & Filter” group

4) Click on the “Sort A to Z” button – it is the one that has an A on top of a Z with an arrow pointing down.

‘till next time!
TNP

Do you have a column full of numbers in Excel 2007 that you would like to sort from highest to lowest, or biggest to smallest?

To sort from high to low in Excel 2007:

1) Select the cells you want to sort

2) Click on the “Data” tab of the Ribbon

3) Look for the “Sort & Filter” group

4) Click on the “Sort Z to A” button – it is the one that has a Z on top of an A with an arrow pointing down.

‘till next time!
TNP

Do you want to do some hard core data manipulation in your PowerPoint presentation?

Well instead of adding a simple table layout to your slide, you can actually add an Excel spreadsheet.  You have all the features of Excel – like formulas, but in a nice looking PowerPoint table.

To insert an Excel table in PowerPoint 2007:

1) Make sure you are on the slide you want to include the table in

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

3) Click on the little arrow below the “Table” button

4) Click on “Excel Spreadsheet”

5) Enter your data, manipulate it, and format the table as you desire

‘till next time!
TNP

Do you regularly resize the width of your columns and cells in Excel 2007?  Maybe you make them bigger?  Maybe you make them smaller.  Either way, there is a quick method to change the width of all the columns (and therefore cells) in your spreadsheet.

To change the default width in Excel 2007:

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

2) Look for the “Cells” group

3) Click on “Format”

4) Click on “Default Width…”

5) in the “Standard Width” box that appears, type in the desired width of your columns

6) Click “OK”

‘till next time!
TNP

You might already know about a great feature in Excel 2007 called “Merge and Center”.  Basically it allows you to create a cell that spans across multiple columns – great for headings for example.

But sometimes you want to merge the cells – but not centre the text.  That is where “Merge Across” comes in handy.  “Merge Across” does exactly the same as “Merge and Center”, except it keeps the text left justified! 

How good is that!  No more having to change the paragraph alignment!!!

To merge across a number of cells in Excel 2007:

1) Select the cells you want to merge

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

3) Look for the “Alignment” group

4) Click on the small arrow beside “Merge & Center”

5) Click on “Merge Across”

To unmerge, all you need to do is select the cell, and click on the “Merge & Center” button.

‘till next time!
TNP

I have had a lot of feedback from readers of TheNewPaperclip.com, and those that subscribe to the Office 2007 tips newsletter.  People are screaming out for short, concise courses that will help them do overcome annoying challenges, and do amazing things with Office 2007. 

These people – maybe you – have had thoughts like “How do I get Outlook to do this?…”, “How can I get my document to look as great as Jenny’s?…”.  “How come everyone says how good Brad’s PowerPoint slides are?”

There are plenty of different ways to answer those questions – maybe you have tried some of them, like courses or books.  But they are not for everyone:

• Maybe you live in a remote area and can’t get to an instructor lead class because the closest one is 1, 2, 3, or even 6 hours away by car.
• Maybe you think that reading a bland text book that is 600 pages long is not fun (I AGREE!)
• Maybe you just want to interact with someone who will be able to give you the answers you need?

If you answered yes to just one of the above – then it sounds like the Office 2007 workshops I will be delivering during the next few months will be exactly what you need.

Are you like many of your fellow TheNewPaperclip.com readers and want to improve your capability and confidence with Office 2007?

If so – these four 2 hour workshops are designed just for you. 

• Overcome Email Overload with Outlook 2007
  Get to know the key features of Outlook 2007 to help you mange your mail – plus time saving techniques that will enable you to conquer your inbox
• Crunch Numbers Faster with Excel 2007
  Confidently apply formulas, create charts, and communicate complex data with meaning using Excel 2007
• Create Better Looking Documents with Word 2007
  Build documents for your workplace, club or school that you can be proud of using Word 2007
• Deliver Better Presentations with PowerPoint 2007
  Forget boring bullet points – learn the techniques professional speakers (and their designers) use to build compelling slide decks using PowerPoint 2007

The workshops will be delivered online, will be interactive, and attendance will be strictly limited to ensure everyone in the workshop gets the results they are after.

For more information as it becomes available over the next few weeks – including dates, times, and workshop prices – and to be one of the first to find out when bookings for each of the workshops have opened – register your details here:

By the way… if you pre register you will have access to a multiple workshop discount as well!

So if you are ready to get the most out of Office 2007 – make sure you register for more information, and then book into one of the workshops… coming soon.

‘til next time!
TNP