Level 300 - Advanced

Do you want to add a classy touch to the publication that you are working on in Publisher 2007? 

A drop cap is a great way to do that.  For those that don’t know what a Drop Cap is… it is one of those big letters you see at the start of a paragraph.

In Publisher 2007 it is easy to add a drop cap.

1) Click on the paragraph of text you want to add the drop cap to

2) Click on the “Format” menu

3) Click on “Drop Cap”

4) Select the drop cap style you want to use.  If you want to make something really special, click on “Custom Drop Cap” and select the letter position, size, font and colour

5) Click “OK”

Too easy!

‘till next time!
TNP

Do you use OneNote 2007 so much that you start to run out of space on the pages of your OneNote notebooks?

Well there is a neat little feature in OneNote 2007 which enables you to create more whitespace by pushing the content on your page out of the way.

To find it:

1) Click on “Insert”

2) At the bottom of the menu, click on “Extra Writing Space”

3) Click on your page where you want the whitespace to start, then drag to where you want it to end.

Simple as that!

‘till next time!
TNP

If you regularly collaborate with others creating Word documents, or Excel spreadsheets – I am sure that you are very familiar with the commenting feature.

Basically it allows you to add comments throughout the document or spreadsheet for others to see when they are reviewing the work.

Well you will be happy to know that you can also add comments to the slides in your PowerPoint 2007 presentations.

Here is how:

1) Go to the “Review” tab in PowerPoint 2007

2) Look for the “Comments” group

3) Click on “New Comment”

4) Write your comment

5) Click on the comment and drag it to where you want it to appear on your slide

… but how do I change the name associated with the comment?

Good question!  PowerPoint takes that information from the information that has been entered in the PowerPoint options menu.

1) Click on the “Office Orb” – that is the old file menu in the top left hand corner of the screen

2) Click on “PowerPoint Options”

3) Look for “Personalize your copy of Microsoft Office”.  You will find the User Name and Initials there.  Simply change them to the right details and your comments will now be attributed to the right person.

‘till next time!
TNP

Are you lazy like me and hate typing dates?  Well did you know you can add one of those cool calendar style date pickers to your Word 2007 document?

It is pretty easy:

1) Make sure you can see the “Developer” tab in the Ribbon.  If you can’t, click on the Office menu (you know… the old file menu) in the top left hand corner of Word 2007, then click on “Word Options”.  Then simply check the third checkbox “Show Developer tab in the Ribbon”

2) Click on the “Developer” tab in the Ribbon

3) Look for the “Controls Group”

4) Click on the icon that looks like a tiny calendar (should be the second icon on the second row)

5) Click on the control that now has been added to your document, and select your favourite date!

‘till next time!
TNP

Page up and page down are great tools to quickly move through your Word 2007 document.  But they are not that precise.  Wouldn’t it be good if you could browse by things that matter in your document – like all the headings, or the tables, or the graphics?

Well you can!

In fact you can browse by all of the following:

• Fields
• Endnotes
• Footnotes
• Edits
• Headings
• Comments
• Sections
• Graphics
• Tables
• and of course, the default – Pages

… simply by using CTRL + PgUP (Page Up), and CTRL + PgDn (Page Down) – or the up and down arrows in the bottom right hand corner of your Word 2007 window

So how do you set which thing you want to browse by?  There are two ways:

1) Click on the “dot” in the bottom right hand corner of your Word 2007 window (the dot in between the two up and down arrows) – and then select what you want to browse by

or…

2) Use the shortcut “ALT + CTRL + HOME” and then select your preference

So for example, say you select “Browse by Heading”, every time you press CTRL + PgDn, the cursor will move to the next heading.  Likewise if you selected “Browse by Table”, every time you press CTRL + PgUp, the cursor will move to the previous table.

This can be a very powerful tool to use, especially if you are editing or reviewing your document!

‘till next time!
TNP

Are the normal line spacing (or “Leading”) options in Word 2007 just not enough?  Not very many people know it, but you can have some very fine grained control over the space between your lines.

In fact, you can say how many “Pts” space there is – for example, 12pts, or you can get really precise and give a spacing in cm, mm, or inches.

Here is how to do it!

1) Select the text you want to change the leading/line spacing of

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

3) Look for the “Paragraph” group, and click on the little square with an arrow pointing out of it in the bottom right hand corner of that group

4) Look down the box that appears until you get to the “Spacing” options.  In the right hand column you will see a “Line Spacing:” drop down box.  Select “Exactly”

5) Beside that dropdown box, there is a dropdown box called “At:”.  Type in your desired line spacing or leading in pts, cm, mm, or "

6) Click “OK”

Now you have precise control over exactly how far apart your lines appear in Word 2007!  How good is that!

‘till next time!
TNP

Did you ever notice that when you show your PowerPoint 2007 deck that it always shows it as a full screen?

Have you ever wondered if it was possible to show a PowerPoint presentation in a window that you can resize to meet the needs of your presentation?  For example, you might want to demonstrate a product, and have your presentation on the screen at the same time!

Well there is a well hidden command in PowerPoint 2007 which means you can show your deck in a window!  Here is how to do it:

1) Beside the quick access toolbar (in the top left hand corner of the screen – it is the one what has the save, and undo buttons) you will see a little arrow that points down.  Click on that

2) From the menu that appears, click “More Commands…”

3) In the “Choose commands from:” dropdown box, select “All Commands”

4) You will see literally hundreds of commands listed.  Luckily they are all in alphabetical order!  Scroll down until you find one that says “Slide Show in a Window”.  Click on that.

5) Click on the “Add > >” button to add that command to your quick access toolbar

6) Click “OK”

You will notice that there is a brand new button in your quick access toolbar in PowerPoint 2007.  It looks like a presentation screen, with a window in front of it.

Simply click on that button, and your presentation is now delivered through a window instead of full screen!

How easy is that!

‘till next time!
TNP

Has this ever happened to you?  You start working on your masterpiece in Word 2007, and then you send the document out to a number of people for their feedback.

They all add their two cents (some add twenty!) and then email the document back to you.

But now you are stuck in a dilemma… how do you quickly merge all those changes together into one document, without having to read each line and try to understand what they changed.

Well there is a great feature in Word 2007 called “Combine”.  You can use it to simply combine to documents, and see all the differences between the two documents.  You can track what has been inserted, what has been deleted, what has been moved, any formatting changes, and see any comments they made.

But that isn’t the best part.  It also creates a new combined document without losing the original and revised document.

So how do you do it?

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

2) Look for the “Compare” group

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

4) Click “Combine”

5) Select your “Original Document” and your “Revised Document”

6) Click OK

7) Check out your brand new combined Word 2007 document!

How easy is that!

‘till next time!
TNP

For all those Visio lovers out there, then you should already know about the Microsoft Visio Toolbox.  If not, you seriously can’t call yourself a Visio lover!

The Visio Toolbox is a collection of articles, case studies, and most importantly add-ins for Visio 2007.

So if you are looking for justification for your boss to upgrade to Visio 2007, articles on interesting topics such as “Silverlight and Visio”, or add-ins such as the Rack Server Virtualization Add-In, the Disk Space Monitoring Add-in, or the Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Visio Add-in… then you need to check out the Microsoft Visio Toolbox!

‘till next time!
TNP

Are you a traditionalist who hates Graphical Interfaces.  Do you love WordPerfect classic mode, or run Vim at home, but have to use Word 2007 in the office?

Or do you just want to focus on writing, and none of that formatting stuff that an editor can deal with for you?

Well you might be surprised to know that you can very quickly set up Word 2007 to get rid of the Ribbon, get rid of the status bar, and change the colours to a classic monochrome green with a black background!

Bet you didn’t know that!

Well our friends over at the Microsoft Office Word Team Blog have described exactly how to set up Word 2007 in a quasi-classic mode!  You can read more about it in their post called Word Throwback “Just Write” Edition… which was coincidentally inspired by one of my favourite authors and bloggers, Tim Ferriss.

How cool is that!  Takes me back to 1989!

‘till next time!
TNP