Level 300 - Advanced

Don’t you hate how you put lots of effort into a Word 2007 document, and then you see one of your colleagues play around with the formatting, or accidentally delete an important section.

Or maybe you want to force users of your document to only edit certain parts – for example if you have built a form that you want people to fill in.

Well in Word 2007 there is a great feature which can literally protect the important parts of your document, and restrict them from being changed, edited or deleted.  Funnily enough, it is called “Protect Document”

So how do you protect a Word 2007 document?

1) Create your document

2) Make sure you can see the “Developer” tab in the Ribbon.  If you can, move to step three!  If not, you need to click on the “Office Orb” in the top left hand corner, then click on “Word Options”, and finally whilst in the “Popular” section, make sure you check “Show Developer tab in the Ribbon”

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

4) Look for the “Protect” group, and click on “Protect Document”

5) Click on “Restrict Formatting and Editing”

6) Look at the right hand side.  You will now see a task pane which will talk you through all the different formatting and editing restrictions you can put in place.  Select your favourite settings, and when you are ready…

7) Click on “Yes, Start Enforcing Protection”

Now if your employer has gone to the lengths of implementing an Information Rights Management system, there are a few other extra restrictions you can put in place, which you will find when you click on the “Protect Document” button in the Ribbon.  They are out of the scope of this article and I am sure I will write about them in the future as more and more organisations implement IRM.

So there you have it – now you can sleep at night knowing that no one is messing with your document!

‘till next time!
TNP

Are you writing a report, an assignment, or just a plain old document and need to hyphenate you paragraphs?

By default, Word 2007 has hyphenation turned off, but it is really easy to turn it on, and there are a number of options to control how the hyphenation works.

To turn on hyphenation in Word 2007 to hyphenate your document, simply:

1) Go to the “Page Layout” tab on the Ribbon

2) Look for the “Page Setup” group

3) Click on “Hyphenation”

4) Select “Automatic”

Now that your document is hyphenated, lets look at the settings you can change to control exactly how the hyphenation works!

5) Click on “Hyphenation” again

6) Click on “Hyphenation Options…”

In the box that appears, there are two key settings you can play with.  The first is the “Hyphenation zone”, and the second is “Limit consecutive hyphens to”.  Change these settings to adjust the hyphenation to meet your needs!

‘till next time!
TNP

So are you comfortable with the basics of Office 2007, and want to go a little deeper?  Maybe you want to build your knowledge around one particular product?  Maybe you just want something interesting to read!

If you are into Office 2007, you might not know it, but The New Paperclip is not your only option (if you thought it was, I am very flattered though!).  There are plenty of quality resources out there that you can leverage to make you far more productive using Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook or the rest of the suite.

Here are a few places you should look…

Number 1: Alltop’s Top Microsoft Office News – [http://microsoft-office.alltop.com/]

This is a great resource if you want to keep your finger on the pulse of everything happening with Microsoft Office.  This one page displays all the news from 30 or so of the web’s leading Microsoft Office sites, which means you can quickly get up to speed on exactly what the ‘blogosphere’ is thinking about when it comes to Office.

You can also read the latest AllTop Microsoft Office news simply by watching out for the AllTop section to the right of this article – it gets updated every hour!

Number 2: Inside Office Online – [http://blogs.msdn.com/inside_office_online/]

This blog is run by the folks who run Microsoft’s own Office help site – Office Online.  Great to get their perspective on what new and exciting things are happening in the world of Microsoft Office.

Number 3: The blogs of all the Office teams at Microsoft

There is nothing better than getting it from the horse’s mouth right!  These blogs are run by the folk who actually build the products in Office, so they are filled with interesting stories, tips, and tricks that will help you become more productive with Office 2007

• The PowerPoint Team Blog
• The Word Team Blog
• The Outlook Team Blog
• The Excel Team Blog
• The Project Team Blog
• The Groove Team Blog
• The Access Team Blog
• The InfoPath Team Blog
• The OneNote Team Blog (well one of the team anyways!)
• The Visio Team Blog

There are literally hundreds of other resources out there that you could find, and the ones I have listed in this article would be a great place to start… well, of course after you have read all the articles on The New Paperclip!

‘till next time!
TNP

Are you looking to get the most out of PowerPoint?  Do you know where to start?

Imagine if you had a resource where you could quickly see what was possible in PowerPoint 2007, and step by step instructions on how to achieve that outcome?

Our friends over at Microsoft have commissioned the development of 157 slides that do just that… show you all the different things you can do in PowerPoint 2007.

These presentations are a great resource if you want to get your hands dirty with PowerPoint.

You can find them by reading this article on the Inside Office Online blog – No more Death by PowerPoint:  Free downloads by a savvy pro sharpen your presentations.

Christian Gude over at the ITExperience.NET blog has put together a great list of five tips you can use to maximise your performance whilst using Microsoft Word 2007:

1) Add frequently used command icons to your Quick Launch Toolbar
2) Adjust the spacing after a line
3) Customise the shortcut keys
4) Increase AutoRecover interval
5) Disable AutoCorrect options

To learn more about how to increase your performance with Word 2007 – check out his post here.

‘till next time!
TNP

WARNING:  THIS TIP POTENTIALLY COULD SAVE YOU HOURS!  Seriously, this has to be one of the biggest time saving features in any Microsoft product in the companies entire history. 

Have you ever wanted to display photos in a presentation with a bit of text?  Maybe it is a presentation of all your photos from the work team building event, your child’s 21st, or you just have dozens, hundreds, or heaven forbid… thousands of photos you want to display in a PowerPoint presentation.

There are two ways you could go about creating your presentation.  The INCREDIBLY LONG WAY, or the quick way!

The incredibly long way

1) Open up PowerPoint 2007

2) Pick your slide design and theme

3) Insert every photo individually

4) Resize them individually

5) Caption them individually

6) Add picture effects to them individually

… that is a lot of work for anything more than 10 photos… in fact it is hard work for less than 10 photos!

The quick and very preferred way!

1) Open up PowerPoint 2007

2) On the Ribbon, click on the “Insert” tab, look for the “Illustrations” group, and then click on “Photo Album”.  You want to select “New Photo Album”

3) In the box that appears, click on the “File/Disk…” button and simply browse for all the photos you want to add to your presentation

4) Select all the options you want.  If you want to put captions below all your photos, make sure you check that box.  Pay special attention to the layout you wan to use as well.  You can have one picture per slide at full screen (very nice, no need to resize!), or you can have multiple images per slide.  If you are going for multiple images, make sure you select a frame shape to go around your images, as it will make your presentation look far more professional.  If you can’t decide on a shape, use the “Simple Frame, White” one – you will not be disappointed

5) Make sure you select a theme for your presentation

6) When you are ready, click “Create”

So… on paper it looks like the same number of steps right?  WRONG.  Instead of doing the same 6 task to each and every one of the photos you want to include, by using a PowerPoint 2007 Photo Album you let PowerPoint do all the hard work for you, across each and EVERY photo you want to include, automatically!

Potential Time Saving!

Seriously, say you have 150 photos from an event you want to put in a presentation to play over dinner – if you do it the long way, it could take you 2 – 3 hours depending how quick you are with the mouse.  Using a PowerPoint 2007 photo album that could take just 30 seconds! 

How good is that!  I thought you would like it!

’till next time!
TNP

So you are about to do a presentation – maybe it is at an event or a tradeshow – and instead of using a projector, your are presenting your slides using a plasma or LCD tv.

When you practice your presentation on your computer or on a projector, your slides look fine.  But as soon as you try your deck on the plasma or LCD, your slides stretch and look horrible!

How do you get your slides to look perfect on the plasma?

Did you know that you can change the size, shape, and orientation of your slides in PowerPoint 2007!

You can set up your presentation for different “On Screen” sizes, such as 4:3 (which is the default), or 16:9 and 16:10 aspect ratios, which are perfect for widescreen plasma panels!

(just as an aside, you can also select different paper sizes as well if you want to build your slides specifically for printing as opposed to being used on screen – but we can talk about that another day!)

To change your slides from standard to widescreen

1. In PowerPoint 2007, click on the “Design” tab on the Ribbon
2. Look for the “Page Setup” group
3. Click on “Page Setup”
4. Look for the “Slides sized for:” drop down box, and select either “On-screen Show (16:9)” or “On-screen Show (16:10)
5. Click “OK”

Now you will have noticed the shape of your slides has changed from being close to a square, to more like a rectangle – and you will find that your graphics and text will no longer distort when you show your presentations on those fancy plasma screens!

Now get out there and impress those customers!

’till next time!
TNP

Is your inbox overflowing like mine?  Want to know how you can you quickly focus on what you need to action?  Well here is a nifty way to do it.

In Outlook 2007, you can organise your emails using views.  What is a view you say?  Basically think of it of a different way to look at all the emails you have.

In Outlook 2007 there are a number of views you can “view” your emails with:

• Messages
• Messages with Auto Preview
• Messages from the Last Seven Days
• Unread Messages in a particular folder
• Messages sent to me
• Messages in a timeline (very cool!)
• and some more complicated views like Outlook Data Files, and Documents

So how do you change the view of your inbox?

Simple. 

1. Click on the folder you want to organise (ie your Inbox).
2. Click on the tools menu
3. Select “Organize”
4. In the window that appears, click “Using Views”
5. Select your favourite view

If you want to get really tricky you can create your own custom view by clicking the “Customize Current View” button in the top right hand corner of that box.  You can customise your view with different fields, group by’s, sorts. filters and other settings.

How cool is that!

‘till next time!
TNP

Say you have a nice long list of names.  But they are just all over the place.  Wouldn’t it be good to be able to sort them into alphabetical order?

Well in Word 2007 it is a piece of cake!  Assuming you have each item in your list on a separate line…

1. Select the text you want to sort alphabetically
2. Make sure you are on the “Home” tab in the Ribbon
3. Look for the “Paragraph” group
4. Click on the sort button (that is the one with an "A on top of a Z”
5. A box will appear – if you want straight alphabetical order on your paragraphs just hit ok.
6. If you want reverse alphabetical order, make sure you select “Descending”

Using the sort button you can also sort numerically, or by date!  Simply change the “Type” of sort you want to do in the “Sort Text” box.

‘till next time!
TNP

I noticed one of my colleagues the other day struggling with her Excel Spreadsheet (yep that’s right, even TNP needs a day job to pay the mortgage!). 

She had a sheet with a few hundred rows in it – all containing information about people who had registered to attend an event.  I noticed that she was trying to count how many people from each state had registered.

I popped over and suggested that she use a Pivot Table.

What is a Pivot Table?

A Pivot Table in Excel 2007 is a pretty powerful, yet simple way to slice and dice the data in your spreadsheet.  It can help you summarise hundreds, thousands, even millions of rows (in Excel 2007 at least) into information that you can take action on!  And because you can quickly change how you view your data, it can be a really useful tool to use in the business world.

So how do you create a simple Pivot Table in Excel 2007? 

Well first, you need some data in your spreadsheet that you want to slice and dice.  Once you have the data – maybe it is a list of customers, a list of products, or a list of transactions including customers AND products… you can then start Pivoting!

1. Make sure there are no blank rows or blank columns where all you data is in your spreadsheet (extra rows and columns after all your data is ok though)
2. Click on the “Insert” tab in the ribbon
3. Look for the “Tables” group. 
4. The very first button in that group should be “Pivot Table”.  Click on that
5. Select “Pivot Table”
6. A little box will appear, and Excel 2007 will take an educated guess at what data you want to include in your pivot table.  Excel is generally pretty good and picking the data, so don’t worry about that part – but make sure you look at the bottom half of that box.  Excel is asking you where you want your pivot table to appear.  I suggest you choose a “New Worksheet” and then click “OK”
7. You will now notice what looks like a “Task Pane” appear in the right hand side of your Excel window.
8. In the top half of that task pane, select the fields that you want to include in your pivot table – basically you need to pick the information you want to slice and dice!
9. In the bottom half of that task pane, play around with where those fields sit in the Pivot Table.  You can filter based on certain fields, you can add fields as row or column labels, or you can get summary values for the contents of cells – you take your pick.  It is best to play around and experiment at this stage to get the exact outcome you want, simply because there are so many ways you might want to slice and dice that data.
10. When you are done, just close that task pan by clicking the “x” at the top of it (make sure you click the one at the top of the Task Pane, and not the one on the top of the window! that will close Excel!)
11. Now play around with your pivot table, and impress your boss!

Whilst it might look a little complicated to begin with, the best advice I can give is to give Pivot Tables a go and simply experiment with some data.  Then you will see the true potential of how much time this great feature of Excel could save you!

’till next time!
TNP