Level 200 - Regular User

Is your business going through a re-organisation?  Maybe there is a new team, or an old team has suddenly disappeared?  If so, it is time to update your organization chart!

So how do you create an organisation chart using Visio 2007?

1) Click on the “File” menu

2) Move your mouse over “New”, then

3) Move your mouse over “Business”, then

4) Click on “Organization Chart Wizard” (click on either Metric or US Imperial depending on where in the world you live

This starts the Visio 2007 Organization Chart Wizard.  There are a few steps to go through before you will have a compete org chart though – lets take a look!

1) If this is the first org chart you have created in Visio – make sure you select “Information that I enter using the wizard” and click “Next”

2) If you have Excel, select “Excel” and then put in the file name for where you want to store the data behind your org chart.  Click on Browse to find the folder you want to save the file in, type in the file name you want

3) Click “Next”

4) Excel will open up a workbook with some dummy data.  Using the format in the workbook, enter the data for your org chart

5) Save the excel workbook when you are done, and then close Excel.

6) On the next page of the Organization Chart Wizard, select how you would like the org chart to be formatted if you have too many people to fit on one page.  The easiest option to start with is simply let the wizard to automatically break it across pages.  Make sure that option is selected, and click “Finish”

There you have it – your brand new org chart!  The best part is that now that it is built of data stored in excel, all you need to do is update your spreadsheet, re-run the Visio 2007 Org Chart Wizard, and you will have a very fresh version of your organization chart.

‘till next time!
TNP

Are you always having to resize your columns in Excel 2007? 

Wouldn’t it be great if you could reset the default column width so whenever you open a spreadsheet you didn’t have to resize those columns once you start filling them with data!

It is very simple to do…

1) In Excel 2007, on the “Home” tab look for the “Cells” group

2) Click on the “Format” button”

3) On the menu that appears Click on “Default Width…” (about the fifth one down)

4) Type in your preferred default column width and click “OK”

So there you have it – no more unnecessary column dragging!

‘till next time!
TNP

Don’t you hate when you print your spreadsheet, and one or two columns end up going over onto a second page?  It happens to me ALL THE TIME!

But there is a way to save you from stressing, and save the environment at the same time

There is a page setup option in Excel 2007 which you can use to fit your spreadsheet onto a single page (or onto a particular number of pages that you set!)

Here is how:

1) Click on the “Page Layout” tab in the Ribbon

2) Look for the “Page Setup” group, and click on the little square with the arrow pointing out of it in the bottom right hand corner

3) In the “Page Setup” box that appears, look in the “Scaling” section, and select “Fit to:”

4) By default, it will be set to one page wide by one page tall.  Select how many pages wide or tall you want your spreadsheet to be printed as.

5) Click “Print Preview” if you want to take a look at what the scaled or up version of your spreadsheet will look like, and if you are happy with it – click “Print”!

6) Click “OK” to close the Page Setup box

‘till next time!
TNP

If you have been around the block a few times with Word 2007, you will be more than familiar with codes.  You know… amongst other things that backwards “P” that you see at the end of the paragraph.

Well did you know you can have the same codes appear in your Publisher 2007 document as well?

It is really easy to turn on and off:

1) Look for the “backwards P” icon in the menu, and click that!

or you can just…

2) Press “CTRL + SHFT + Y”

Now you have even more control over your Publisher 2007 design!

‘till next time!
TNP

Hey, we all love our Gantt charts, but as project managers sometimes you don’t want the Gantt chart to be the first thing you see in the morning (ain’t that the truth!)

There are literally dozens of different views you can have in Project 2007… like:

• Bar Rollup
• Calendar
• Descriptive Network Diagram
• Detail Gantt
• Gant Chart
• Levelling Gantt
• Milestone Date Rollup
• Milestone Rollup
• Multiple Baselines Gantt
• Network Diagram
• Relationship Diagram
• Resource Allocation
• and many many more!

So how can you set one of these views as the default view in Project 2007?

1) Click on the “Tools” menu

2) Select “Options…”

3) On the “View” tab, the very first dropdown is “Default view:”.  Simply select your preferred default view

4) Click “OK”

Now you don’t have your Gantt chart popping up first thing in the morning, the flashbacks to all those bad projects should stop

‘till next time!
TNP

Do you receive those loooooooooooooong emails at work which have about 14 different message replies or forwards included in the body of the email?

Wouldn’t it  be good to start from scratch and have all that content in an attachment?  Well in Outlook 2007 you can do just that – forward an email as an attachment.  What does that mean?  That the recipient of your message can focus on your message, and not all the boring messages that came beforehand

So how do you forward an email as an attachment in Outlook 2007?

1) Select your message

2) Press CTRL + ALT + “F”

3) Type your message and hit send!

Simple as that!  If you want to forward multiple emails as attachments, just select all the messages first before typing CTRL + ALT + “F”

‘till next time!
TNP

If you are a keen user of OneNote 2007, you by now will have 3, 4, 5, 10, 20 or more workbooks.  One way that you can differentiate between those different workbooks is the colour that each one has.

That’s right!  Did you notice that each workbook icon is in fact a different colour? 

Well like most things in Office 2007, it is really easy to change those workbook colours.  Maybe you want to do it so one or two key workbooks stand out… maybe you just want to show some of your personality.  Either way, this is how you go about it!

1) Right click on the OneNote 2007 Workbook

2) Select “Properties…”

3) Select your favourite color from the colour palate.

4) Click “OK”

‘till next time!
TNP

I am sure you are more than familiar with the default layouts that you regularly see in PowerPoint 2007.  The first one you always see is the “Title Slide” layout, and whenever you add a new slide after that, you will see the “Title and Content” layout.

But did you know that there are plenty of other layouts you can use, which might help you lay out the information on your slide a lot cleaner, nicer, better etc etc.

If you are on the “Home” tab of the Ribbon you will see the “Slides” group, and in that group, the “Layout” button.  If you click on that, you will see all the different layout options at your disposal:

• Title Slide
• Title and Content
• Section Header
• Two Content
• Comparison
• Title Only
• Blank
• Content with Caption
• Picture with Caption

There are two simple ways you can use these layouts in your PowerPoint deck.

Create a new slide with a specific layout

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

2) In the “Slides” group, click on “New Slide”

3) Select your preferred layout from the gallery

… alternatively you can change the layout of specific slides in your presentation.

Change the layout of an existing slide

1) Select the slide or slides you want to change the layout of

2) Right click on the selected slide(s), and move your mouse over “Layout”

3) Select your preferred layout from the gallery

‘till next time!
TNP

(not only that… but how to change the colour of the tab as well!)

Hey if you have been using Excel 2007 for more than five minutes, you would have noticed the three tabs down the bottom.  You know the ones “Sheet1”, “Sheet2”, and you guessed it… “Sheet3”.

But what if you don’t like those names, and you want to rename them to something more meaningful?  Like “Expenses”, or “Assets”, or “Team Sick Leave Tracking”?

Well all you need to do is:

1) Right click on the tab that you want to rename

2) Click “Rename”

3) Type in what you want the sheet to be renamed to

4) Hit enter

That was pretty easy… but what if you need to distinguish between the sheets in your workbook even more?  Well did you know that you can change the color of each of the tabs in your workbook?  It is really easy:

1) Right click on the tab that you want to recolour

2) Move your mouse over “Tab Color”

3) Select your favourite colour!

4) Look in awe at your colourful worksheet tabs!

Simple as that!  Now get back to tracking sick leave!

‘till next time!
TNP

If you are anything like me, your handwriting is very very bad!  In fact, if you are really like me you need all the help you can get to ensure that your handwriting is legible!

Well if you are using your pen or stylus in OneNote 2007 to take notes, there is an option to help you at least write straight lines!  They are called Rule Lines, and are really easy to add to pages in your OneNote 2007 Notebooks.  Here is how…

1) Open up your notebook, and go to the page you want to add Rule Lines to

2) Click on “Format” in the menu

3) Click on “Rule Lines”

4) Select your preferred rule line option

There are a number of different line rules you can use to ensure you can get the most out of your OneNote 2007 notebook.  They are:

• Narrow Ruled
• College Ruled
• Standard Ruled
• Wide Ruled
• Small Grid
• Medium Grid
• Large Grid
• Very Large Grid

That’s right – you might have noticed that there is also a grid rule you can use, just like that graphing paper we had to use back in school!  Ahh the memories!

‘till next time!
TNP