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

Now you just have 15 minutes to salvage something out of nothing and impress the boss/wife/colleague/all of the above.

Don’t want to get caught out again?  Apart from memorising your entire calendar every morning and keeping an eagle eye on you watch (unlikely)… why don’t we just increase the default reminder time.

Its quite simple actually!  In Outlook 2007, all you need to do is:

1. Click on "Actions"
2. Click on "Options"
3. Look on the "Preferences" tab, in the "Calendar" section (second from the top)
4. Select your preferred reminder time from the drop down box.
5. Click ok

If you think you are a hotshot… set the reminder to 0 minutes.  If you are a lost cause, maybe 2 weeks is more appropriate

’till next time!

TNP

Are you like me and need more than 15 minutes to prepare for those meetings you ALWAYS forget about?

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

It looks great on the screen, but when you print it… you can’t see it!

Did you know by default Microsoft Word 2007 that background colors and images are not printed?

It is easy to print them out though.  Here is how:

1. Open the file menu (the circle in the top left hand corner of the screen
2. Click on "Word Options"
3. Click on "Display" in the left hand menu
4. Look in the "Printing options" section"
5. Tick the "Print background colors and images" check box
6. Click ok

How easy!  Just a word of warning though… printing a bright yellow background on every page will not only cost you an arm and a leg in ink and toner, but will also require you and your colleagues to invest in sunglasses.

’till next time!

TNP

1) Type your text into your document.  Generally it is easier to work with all your text, rather than formatting it as you go

2) Look on the home tab in the ribbon, in the paragraph group.  You will find a button that looks like a bucket of paint.  That is the “Shading” button.  If you click on the dropdown menu you will see a palette of colours that you can use to shade your paragraph.

3) Select your favourite colour - notice that you get a live preview, so just roll your mouse over all the colours that you are thinking about, and click on the one that suits best!

It is as simple as that!

’till next time!
TNP ;) 

The good news is that there is a way to automatically spell check your email when you send it in Outlook 2007.

1. Go to the menu and click “Tools”, and then “Options”
2. Click on the “Spelling” tab
3. Check the box beside “Always check spelling before sending”

Too easy… now you will not look like an idiot for all those spelling mistakes in that email you sent to your boss!

’till next time
TNP

Lets have a look at how easy it is to play around with line spacing in Word 2007.

To change Line Spacing in Word 2007:

1. On the home tab of the ribbon, look for the paragraph group.  Then click on the Line Spacing button, as shown in the image below.

   

2. Select your desired line spacing.  By default in Word 2007 the line spacing is set to 1.15.  From this menu you can select to have your line spacing set to 1, 1.15, 1.5, 2, 2.5 or 3.  If you want a more granular line spacing (say 1.63, 1.05 or maybe 12pt or 23pt or anything like that), you can click on the Line Spacing Options item in the Line Spacing Menu.

   

Below is an example of what each of the various line spacing options look like.

So there you have it… how to control line spacing in Word 2007!

’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