Daily Tips and Tricks Special Delivery - Microsoft

See Tasks in the Calendar In Microsoft Office Outlook, you can link tasks to calendar days to increase your productivity and provide a record of when tasks were completed. If you complete them on the designated day, they're linked to that day to show a record of your work completed. If not, tasks roll over to the next day and continue to accumulate until completed. You can see a list of current tasks displayed below a specific day on the calendar. You can add your tasks to the list on any day you choose.

Step Through Formulas When you're writing complex formulas, a slight difference in brackets, for example, can entirely change the result of the calculation of a formula. Microsoft Office Excel adheres to the standard order of precedence for calculations, with percentages, exponents, multiplication, and division performed in that order before finally calculating addition and subtraction. For example, 7+5*3 = 22, because the 5*3 is calculated first. (7+5)*3 = 36, because the parentheses force the addition to be completed first. If you're unsure how Excel is evaluating a formula: 1. Click the cell, click the Formulas ribbon, and then click Evaluate Formula in the Formula Auditing section. 2. Click the Evaluate button to watch as each part of the formula is successively calculated, ensuring that each step of the calculation is valid. 2003 to 2007 Tri-Pane Review In Microsoft Office Word 2003, you can use the Compare Side-by-Side command to display two documents next to each other so that you can compare them. However, this is only a view and doesn't indicate actual changes to the document. The Compare and Merge command shows document changes but automatically merges the two together, regardless of whether or not you're ready. In Microsoft Office Word 2007, a side-by-side view is still available if you want it, but the Compare feature now offers a tri-pane review: the original document in one pane, the revised document in another pane, and a combined version of the document with changes marked in a third pane. The tri-pane view shows document changes even if the other person forgot to turn on the Track Changes feature. If you want to keep the combined document, you can simply save it as a separate file. To use tri-pane review: 1. Click the Review tab, and then click Compare in the Compare section. 2. Click Compare, and then select the original and revised documents that you want to view.

Derive a Strategic Value Score for Projects You can use the intuitive Prioritization Wizard in Portfolio Optimizer to derive a strategic value score for projects. Here’s how: 1. In the Builder Scorecard, select an organization, and then in the main navigation bar, click Optimizer. 2. Click the Analyze link to open the Open Dialog page in the Prioritization Wizard. 3. Select a completed pair-wise comparison matrix and impact matrix, and then start the Prioritization Wizard. 4. Click the button to automatically derive the business driver priorities. 5. Click the button to open the project to business driver impact matrix. 6. Click the button to automatically derive a strategic value score for each project. Avoid Constant Interruptions for Quiet Work Time How many interruptions do you get every day? It's nearly impossible to complete anything when you allow constant interruptions from the phone, people stopping by your office, and instant messaging. In Microsoft Office Outlook, you can book yourself a recurring appointment for an hour a day to process e-mail, and mark the time as Busy. During this time, don't answer the phone or permit interruptions, and work only on dealing with your Inbox. At first, keeping these appointments will take discipline. But over time, it will become a habit. And after you get to zero e-mail in your Inbox, you'll see the value of this one hour a day and stick to it.

Save PowerPoint Picture to Picture Files To save a picture from a Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 presentation in any popular picture format: Right-click the image, click Save as, and then click Picture.

Paste into Non-sequential Cells in Excel You can use the CTRL key for multiple selections. Sometimes, you want to copy a formula or piece of data into a series of non-sequential cells in Microsoft Office Excel. You can do this quickly without having to paste into each cell individually. 1. Copy the data from the source cell. 2. Hold down the CTRL key as you click to select each destination cell. 3. After all the cells are highlighted, paste the data by pressing CTRL+V. You have to paste only once. Similarly, you can type data into a series of cells simultaneously. 1. While holding down the CTRL key, click all the cells that you want to type the same text (or value) into. 2. Type the entry, and then press CTRL+ENTER. The text will be added to all the selected cells.

Rearrange the Outlook Window for Smaller Screens You can create plenty of room on the screen in Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, even with all of the new views in Outlook. Here's how: 1. Click the chevrons at the top of the folder pane and the To-Do Bar. This will give you a clear view with summary bars for the folders on the left and for the To-Do Bar on the right. 2. Click Navigation Pane on the summary bar at left to get a pop-out view of the full navigation pane. 3. Click To-Do Bar on the summary bar at right for a similar pop-out. The resulting view has plenty of room for e-mail messages and the preview pane, even on a small laptop screen.

Rearrange Paragraphs in Word Swapping paragraphs in Microsoft Office Word can be complicated. As well as having to cut and paste, you often have to reformat line breaks afterward to make the paragraph line up properly. Instead, you can use the SHIFT+ALT keyboard shortcut. Click the paragraph that you want to move, hold down SHIFT+ALT, and move the paragraph up or down by using the arrow keys. Each press of an arrow key causes your selected paragraph to jump over one adjacent paragraph.

Creating a Watermark in Excel To add a watermark at the top of your Microsoft Office Excel worksheet: 1. In your Excel file, click Insert, and then in the Text section, click Header & Footer. 2. With your pointer in the center section of the header, click Picture in the Header & Footer Elements section of the Design tab, browse your hard disk drive to find the picture you want, and then click OK. 3. You may need to press ENTER several times to center the watermark on the page.

Categorizing Calendar Appointments By using the Automatic Formatting feature in your Microsoft Office Outlook calendar, you can highlight different types of appointments by using different colors. 1. Right-click an appointment, and then click Automatic Formatting. 2. Use the Rules Wizard to display that meeting or person's name in the color of your choice. If you repeat this procedure for other types of appointments, you can build different categories within your Outlook calendar for easy recognition—for example, weekly team meetings, customer visits, and personal appointments.

Moving the Quick Access Toolbar from Its Default Position You can position the Quick Access Toolbar in one of two places: the default position in the upper-left corner beside the Office button, or below the Ribbon. To move it from the default position, click the Customize Quick Access Toolbar arrow, and then click Show Below the Ribbon. Organize Colored Cells More Efficiently When using the filter option for large Microsoft Office Excel worksheets in the 2007 Microsoft Office system, you can filter the document by color. Click the down-pointing filter arrow on your filtered column, and then click Filter by Color. The colors display as a list, from which you can select the color that you want to display.

2003 to 2007 Page Layout Tab It’s not always easy to make page-level changes to your Microsoft Office Word 2003 document. Every time you want to adjust the margin or change the page layout, you have to browse to Page Setup on the File menu and make your changes in a dialog box that has multiple tabs. In Microsoft Office Word 2007, you can make many of these changes from the Page Layout tab on the Ribbon. For example, if you want a slimmer margin, click the Margins button, and then click Narrow. If you're printing on legal paper, click the Size button, and then click Legal. With many of the options, like Margins, you see a live preview of your change before you apply it. If you need greater customization, click the diagonal arrow in the lower right of the Page Setup section to open the familiar dialog box. Finding E-Mail Messages Quickly You can search for a specific e-mail message in Microsoft Office Outlook without expanding the Search box. Here’s what to do: In the Outlook Search box, type your target. For example, to find a particular e-mail message from John Smith, type from:John Smith. This search request quickly lists e-mail messages from that person, but not messages that contain his name. This tip also works for other criteria, such as folders. For example, searching for folder:expenses quickly lists only those folders that contain "expenses" as the subject.

Working with Large Formulas With previous releases of Microsoft Office Excel, working within the formula bar at the top of the worksheet can be cumbersome, because although the formula bar expands when necessary, it often overlaps the sheet itself. To get around this in the 2007 Microsoft Office system, pause on the bottom of the formula bar, and then drag it to adjust it to any size you need. This adjustment gives you a larger working area and makes it easier to navigate a document sheet that has large formulas. Line Breaks Without Bullets When you're creating a bulleted or numbered list in Microsoft Office Word or Microsoft Office PowerPoint, you might want an item to appear in the list without a bullet or without incrementing the number. You can start a new line without a bullet by pressing SHIFT+ENTER. The next time you press the ENTER key, the new line will continue the bulleted or numbered list.

Creating a Meeting Request by Using Fewer Clicks You can quickly create a meeting request with one or more attendees by using the New Meeting Request With feature in Microsoft Office Outlook 2007. Here’s how: While viewing one or more colleagues' calendars, right-click the desired time, click New Meeting Request With, and then select the recipients.

Get More Information from the Microsoft Office Word Ruler You can get helpful layout information from the ruler in Microsoft Office Word. 1. On one of the rulers (horizontal or vertical), click a tab or margin marker and hold down the left mouse button. 2. Now click the right mouse button. Hold both buttons down. The normal ruler measurements disappear, and instead you can see distance measurements that help you lay out your document. Showing Formulas in Microsoft Office Excel Instead of Their Results Sometimes in an Excel worksheet you want to display formulas instead of their results. Here’s how: 1. Click the Office button, and then click Excel Options at the bottom of the menu. 2. Click Advanced, click Display options for this worksheet, click Show formulas in cells instead of their calculated results, and then click OK.