1. Open up your spreadsheet
2. Click on the “Page Layout” tab on the ribbon menu
3. In the “Page Setup” group, click on the “Background” button
4. Select your image

Simple as that!  Now you have a nice background to complement your hard Excel work!

’till next time!
TNP

What does wrapping text mean?  Basically it is where you take one long line of text, and make it "wrap" around onto a number of lines instead.  That way you have a nice readable block of text, instead of the line that goes on forever.

How to you wrap cell text in Excel 2007?  Simple!

1. Select the cell with all the text
2. In the ribbon menu, on the "Home" tab, look for the "Alignment" group
3. Click on the "Wrap Text" button.

’till next time!
TNP

Well Jon Peltier quickly got onto the comments box and let us know about an alternative to Merge and Center in Excel 2007 called "Center Across Selection".  It’s just like merge and centre, but without all the hassles that merging cells cause.

Center Across Selection is a little harder to find than Merge and Center, but in true The New Paperclip tradition… I am going to show you how!

1. Select your text and the cells you want to centre your text over.
2. On the ribbon, make sure you are on the "Home" tab, and then look for the "Alignment" group.
3. Click on the little square with the arrow in the bottom right hand corner of the "Alignment" group.
4. In the "Format Cells" box that appears, look for the "Horizontal" drop down box
5. Select "Center Across Selection"
6. Click "ok"
7. Look in amazement at your perfectly centered text

How easy is that!  Thanks again Jon for the heads up!

’till next time!

TNP

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, 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, 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, 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

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, why not just bookmark your favourite Office 2007 help, tips, tricks and tutorial site!

’till next time!

TNP

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

One of them is Alistair Speirs, a Office Technology Specialst at Microsoft Australia.  If you want to dive deep into everything office (beyond the tutorials from yours truely!) then you should check out his blog…

http://blogs.msdn.com/alspeirs/

Check out some of his posts on Business Desktop Deployment, Enterprise Search, Office Busines Applications, OpenXML, and one he stole from me… Random text in Word

TNP and Alistair go way back… he knows his stuff!

’till next time!
TNP

How to change text orientation in Excel 2007

1. Type the text into a cell
2. Select the cell
3. On the home tab of the ribbon, look for the alignment group.  There you will find a button with an ‘a’ and a ‘b’ and an arrow all on an angle.  That’s the Orientation menu.  Click on the little drop down arrow beside it.
4. Select one of the quick options to angle your text

If you want to be more specific about the angle of your text, you can select “Format Cell Alignment” and set down to the degree how “slanty” you want your text.

The results are pretty impressive - well your boss will think so and that is all that matters right?

’till next time!
TNP

First step is to visit the 2007 Microsoft Office System Plan and Deploy with Confidence site.  This site includes Webcasts (from level 100 through to 400), Virtual Labs, and Podcasts to help you get you complete your deployment successfully.

Secondly, check out some of the articles on deployment from media outlets such as Computerworld.  These start to give you a real world perspective on the types of issues you might face during your deployment.

Thirdly, if you are ready to go now, check out articles from experts in the community, just like Aaron Parker’s post on Deploying Office 2007 with Group Policy Startup Scripts.

Finally, once your deployment is complete, make sure you let everyone in your organisation know about Thenewpaperclip.com - so they can get up to speed quickly with the new features of Office 2007!  Remember… the key to a successful deployment is not the deployment itself, but the training and adoption that takes place afterwards.

’till next time,
TNP

How to change the Number Formatting of a cell in Excel 2007

Firstly, you need to find the Number group.  You can find it on the “Home” tab of the ribbon.

In the number group you have a number of different options you can use to quickly format the numbers in your selected cells.

The first option is the big drop down box that says “General.”  This drop down box lets you select the type of number formatting you want for the cell, which could be: Number, Currency, Accounting, Short Date, Long Date, Time, Percentage, Fraction, Scientific, Text, or many more.  The drop down list looks like this when you click on it…

Below that drop down box you have a number of other options.  The first is to format the cell as a specific currency.  Using this button you can not only format the cell as an Accounting Cell, but also select the specific currency you want.

The next few options allow you to format the cell for percentages, and set the cell to follow comma style (ie. 2,432,455.00).  The final two buttons allow you to move the decimal point in the cell to the left (increase the number of decimals after the point), or move the decimal point to the right (decrease the number of decimals after the point).

If you want to do some tricky number formatting, you can do so by clicking on the little “Square and Arrow” in the bottom right hand corner of the Number group… or right click on your selected cells, and click “Format Cells”

’till next time,
TNP