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

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

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 ;) 

One of them is Alistair Speirs, a Office Technology Specialst at Microsoft Australia.  If you want to dive deep into everything office (beyond the tutorials from yours truely!) then you should check out his blog…

http://blogs.msdn.com/alspeirs/

Check out some of his posts on Business Desktop Deployment, Enterprise Search, Office Busines Applications, OpenXML, and one he stole from me… Random text in Word

TNP and Alistair go way back… he knows his stuff!

’till next time!
TNP

Bullet points do exactly that!

Bullet points allow you to quickly structure information so your audience can easily interpret exactly what you are going on about!

So how do you use bullets in Word 2007?

1. Select the text you want to apply bullets to (you can do this by clicking and dragging across the text you want)
2. On the “Home” tab of the ribbon, look for the “Paragraph” group
3. In the top left hand corner of the paragraph group, you will find a button that looks like three lines with bullets.  Click on it

   

That’s the easy way to use bullets in your document.  But what if you don’t want to use the standard black dot bullet?  Maybe you want to use something with a little more flair?

How to use custom bullets in Word 2007…

1. Again, select the test you want to apply bullets to, then find the bullets button in the “Paragraph” group on the “Home” tab of the ribbon
2. Instead of clicking on the bullets button, click on the little down arrow beside it.  This will display a library of different bullets you can use.  Feel free to use any of those, or….
3. Click on “Define New Bullet…”.  This will allow you to create any bullet you like, whether it be based on a letter, a number,any character out of any font you have installed on your computer, or even any picture that you have on your computer!!!
4. Select the style of bullet that you want… then click ok.

There you have it… the quick and easy way to include bullets in your Word 2007 document!

’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

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

First step is to visit the 2007 Microsoft Office System Plan and Deploy with Confidence site.  This site includes Webcasts (from level 100 through to 400), Virtual Labs, and Podcasts to help you get you complete your deployment successfully.

Secondly, check out some of the articles on deployment from media outlets such as Computerworld.  These start to give you a real world perspective on the types of issues you might face during your deployment.

Thirdly, if you are ready to go now, check out articles from experts in the community, just like Aaron Parker’s post on Deploying Office 2007 with Group Policy Startup Scripts.

Finally, once your deployment is complete, make sure you let everyone in your organisation know about Thenewpaperclip.com - so they can get up to speed quickly with the new features of Office 2007!  Remember… the key to a successful deployment is not the deployment itself, but the training and adoption that takes place afterwards.

’till next time,
TNP