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

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

By default, Word 2007 makes an Auto Recover save every 10 minutes.  But if you are clumsy like me, or don’t trust your computer… you can set Word to autosave your document a lot more than normal.  Here is how:

1. Click on the old file menu (the office orb)
2. Click on "Word Options"
3. Click on the "Save" option in the left hand menu
4. In the first section "Save Documents", look for the second line which reads something like "Save AutoRecover information every XX minutes
5. Set your preferred time.  Mine is now every 1 minute

Just remember when increasing the AutoRecover frequency… that you do see a slight performance hit every time it saves.  Not really noticeable every 10 minutes, but when it happens every 60 seconds it could be annoying!

’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 “Word Options”
3. Look in the “Popular section”, under “Top options for working with Word
4. Untick the “Show Mini Toolbar on selection” checkbox
5. Hit ok

There you go - no more annoying (not) popup mini menu in Word 2007

’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

Instead of “Hi all”, what about “Hi Bill”, “Hi Jane” etc?

You can, with email merge in Word 2007.

Email merge works exactly the same as a standard mail merge… except for one big difference.  Instead of printing individual letters or envelopes or labels… Word 2007 will generate individual emails, send them to your Outlook 2007 outbox, and then when you are next online in Outlook, Outlook will send each your personalised emails to each addressee.

Kicking off a email merge in Word 2007 is easy.

1. Open up Word 2007
2. Type your email in Word 2007
3. Click on the “Mailings” tab in the ribbon
4. In the “Start Mail Merge” grouping, click on the “Start Mail Merge” button.  It will show a list of mail merge options available.  You can choose Letters, E-Mail Messages, Envelopes, Labels or Directory.  In this case as we want to send an email… click on “E-Mail Messages”
   
5. Next you need to select the recipients of your email merge.  These names could come from any number or sources… maybe an Excel 2007 spreadsheet?  maybe your Outlook 2007 Contacts… or you could just type them yourself.  

   To do that, click on the “Select Recipients” box in the “Start Mail Merge” group.  Either find your data source, your outlook contacts, or create a new list.

6. If you want to edit any of the recipients in the list, now is the time to click on “Edit Recipient List” in the “Start Mail Merge” group.
7. The next step is to add the appropriate fields to personalise the greeting, the recipients name, or to add any other piece of data you might have on the contact anywhere throughout your recipient list.  

   You can find the appropriate fields in the “Write & Insert Fields” group (still on the “Mailings” tab).

   More than likely you will want to add at least a greeting line (Dear Bill… or something like that).  To do that click on the “Greeting Line” button in the “Write & Insert Fields” group.  The following dialog box appears
   

8. Once you are happy with your greeting line format, click “OK”.  Word 2007 will now drop the field into your document.
9. Now you can preview your results to ensure that everyone’s name is coming up correctly.  Click the “Preview Results” button in the “Preview Results” group… then use the forward and back arrows beside it to run through your recipient list.
10. If you are happy with the preview, not is the time to finish things off and compete the merge.  In the “Finish” group on the “Mailings tab” you will see a button called “Finish & Merge”.  Click on it, and then click “Send E-mail Messages…” 

    

11. Now Word 2007 automatically generates all the individual emails, and sends them to your Outlook 2007 outbox (or your default email client).
12. Open up Outlook or your email client, and watch all your emails be sent!

So there you have it… your 12 step guide to Email Merge in Word 2007!

’till next time,
TNP

1. Got to Tools, then Options in the menu
2. On the preferences tab, in the E-mail section click on the “E-mail Options…” button
3. Then click on the “Advanced E-mail Options…” button
4. Then click on the “Desktop Alert Settings…” button

From this window you can control how long your Desktop Alerts appear for, and how transparent they are.

By default, your email notification/popup/desktop alert/toast will appear for 7 seconds.  The minimum you can set this to is 3 seconds, the maximum is 30 seconds.

As for transparency, the default is 20%.  It can be solid (0%) or can go to a maximum of 80% transparency.  Any more and you couldn’t see it!

If you don’t want desktop alerts at all… read about how you can turn them off in an earlier article I wrote - How to turn on or off new email notifications in Outlook 2007

’till next time
TNP

How to turn on or off email notifications in Outlook 2007

1. In the menu, click on Tools, then Options.
2. On the preferences tab, in the E-mail section, click on the “E-mail Options…” button
3. Click on the “Advanced E-mail Options…” button
4. Look for the “When new items arrive in my Inbox” area…
5. Tick or untick all the notifications you want to receive.

Note that there are four notifications that Outlook can give you when you receive an email in your Inbox

• Play a sound
• Briefly change the mouse cursor
• Show an envelope icon in the notification area
• Display a New Mail Desktop Alert (default Inbox only)

From the Advanced E-mail Options window, you can control each of these as you wish.  Now you wont get distracted by email when you want to be productive… or you know how to turn the notifications back on if you don’t feel like doing any work!

’till next time
TNP

How do I insert a drop cap in Word 2007?

Firstly, you need some text in your document.  Generally you would only add a drop cap after you have written your document.  Here is an example of some plain text that I have inserted into the document

Secondly, you need to find the Insert Drop Cap button.  Go to the “Insert” tab on the Word 2007 Ribbon, then go across the the “Text” group.  You will find the “Drop Cap” button there.  If you click the button there are three options, plus an options menu.

Obviously if you have Drop Cap set to “None”… you will not have a drop cap.  If you click on “Dropped”, you will get…

Pretty cool huh!  Now your document looks like a professionally published book (well almost!).  The other Drop Cap option is “In Margin”, and basically drops the first letter into the margin, which looks something like this…

Which one looks best?  Dropped or In Margin?  I don’t know, you need to decide on that!

Drop Cap Options

There are a few options you can play with when creating a drop cap in Word 2007.  For starters, you can make the drop cap a different font, make it span more (or less) lines, and set the distance it sits away from the text of your document.

If you click on “Drop Cap Options” in the Drop Cap menu, you get this dialog box to the left.  The options under position are just the same as those that I have mentioned earlier in this post.  Dropped means that the first letter of the paragraph will appear larger than the rest of the text, and displace the text a little.  In margin, the first letter will like larger than the rest of the text, but sit in the margin.

The Options section is where you can have some fun.  Your first choice is what font you want the drop cap to be.  Depending on how many fonts you have installed on your computer, this could be a very hard decision.  Unfortunately we don’t have live preview here (Note to Microsoft - Please, please, please, add live preview to the drop cap options menu!), so you might have to use a little trial and error.

The second option is “Lines to Drop.”  This basically lets you choose how big your drop cap is.  The smallest you would want to go is 2 lines (otherwise it wouldn’t be a drop cap!) and the most would depend totally on the size of your font.  Generally 3 looks good, but I have seen some very cool drop caps work over 10 lines, with a small body font.

Finally the last option is the “Distance from text”.  This is handy if you want to put a little space between your drop cap and your body text.  Again you don’t want too much of a space here, otherwise it will be difficult to read the first word!

Here is an example of my custom drop cap.  I chose “Blackadder ITC” as my font (it is one of those really really old curly fonts!, lines to drop as 3, and distance from text as 0.2cm.  This is what I got…

So there you have it - a quick start guide to how to insert a Drop Cap in Word 2007!  Just be careful not to go overboard, drop caps look good when used well, but if you go crazy, your document will look very, very ugly!

’till next time
TNP

Do you have questions about Word 2007, Excel 2007 or Outlook 2007, but don’t know who to ask?  Are you stumped by something in Access 2007, OneNote 2007, or Visio 2007?  Do you know what to do with SharePoint Designer 2007, Publisher 2007, Groove 2007 or Communicator 2007?

If you have answered yes to any of those - you need to start asking your Office 2007 questions at The New Paperclip forums - http://forums.thenewpaperclip.com.

Not only are their forums for all the desktop programs that are in Office, there are also forums for the server programs that make up the Microsoft Office System - SharePoint Server (MOSS), Performance Point Server, Project Server and Groove Server. 

I will be on hand when I can to answer your questions - and most importantly members of the community will also be there to help out.

I look forward to answering all your questions in the near future - start posting them today! http://forums.thenewpaperclip.com!

’till next time,

TNP