Daily Tips and Tricks Special Delivery - Microsoft

Change Your Default Chart Type To quickly create a chart on its own sheet in a Microsoft Office Excel workbook, select the chart data, and then press the F11 key. This action generates a chart using your default chart type, which is originally set to be a clustered column chart. To change your default chart type, on the Insert tab, in the lower-right corner of the Charts section, click the dialog box launch icon to open the Insert Chart dialog box. Select your preferred chart type, and then click Set as Default Chart. You can then click Cancel to close the dialog box without generating a chart. Though nothing appears to have changed, the next time you generate a chart by using the F11 key, you’ll automatically get your new default chart type. Note: Keep in mind that after you’ve created a chart, you can still change the chart type. To change chart type for just the active chart, on the Chart Tools Design tab, in the Type section, click Change Chart Type.

Find Tooltips for Keyboard Shortcuts If you press and hold the ALT key, tooltips appear above the commands at the top of the page. You can then press the appropriate letter for a simple keyboard shortcut. 2003 to 2007 Group Schedule Checking schedule availability for your team in Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 means opening a fake meeting request, entering everyone's names, and then navigating the blue bars for an open slot of time. In Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, you can create group schedules to view availability for multiple people and resources, like conference rooms. 1. Click the Actions menu, and then click View Group Schedules. 2. Click New, and then type a name for the new schedule. 3. Enter the names of the people and resources whose schedules you want to view. 4. Click Save and Close. 5. To schedule a meeting or send an e-mail message to the group or an individual, open the group schedule, and then click the Make Meeting list.

Preview Formatting Before You Apply It Need the perfect document design, or the right formatting to ensure that your text, table, or graphic coordinates with the rest of your document? Forget time-consuming trial and error. In the 2007 Microsoft Office system programs Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, you can preview many types of document formatting before you apply them. Point to an entry in an applicable gallery, such as the Themes gallery to see font, color, and graphic effect formatting changes all at once throughout the document, or the SmartArt Styles gallery to preview a variety of formats for your SmartArt diagram. Live Preview is available for Document Themes in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, as well as Quick Style Sets in Word, Table Styles in all three programs, and many graphic formatting galleries (such as Picture Styles or Shape Styles). Note that Live Preview is not currently available for Chart Styles. Share Your Calendar via E-Mail If you want to share your calendar with colleagues, here’s how: 1. Open your calendar, and then click Send a Calendar via E-mail. 2. Select the period that you want to share (such as today, tomorrow, or the next 7 days). 3. You now have an e-mail message ready to send with your selective calendar details attached. Enter the e-mail addresses of those you want to receive it, and then send the message.

Apply Multiple Conditional Formats to the Same Cell(s) To apply more than one conditional formatting rule to the same cells, select the cells, and then apply each new rule that you need. However, to prioritize the rules for the exact result you want, use the Conditional Formatting Rules Manager. To do this, on the Home tab, in the Styles section, click Conditional Formatting, and then click Manage Rules. In the Conditional Formatting Rules Manager dialog box, you can use the Move Up and Move Down arrows to reorder rules, which determines what formatting appears in front. You can also select the Stop If True option to stop executing further rules in cells for which the selected condition is true.

Maximize Your Screen Area by Hiding the Navigation Pane You can minimize the Navigation Pane by pressing the « button on the title bar in the Navigation Pane. Whenever you need to access another mail folder from the folder list, click the Navigation Pane area. The folder list will appear temporarily, and then disappear after you've chosen your folder or selected another Microsoft Office Outlook feature.

Customize the Appearance of Conditional Formats Such as Data Bars, Color Scales, and Icon Sets When you need conditional formatting in your Microsoft Office Excel 2007 worksheet, try one of the new data visualization options, including color scales, icon sets, and data bars. You can apply these formats with just a click from galleries of preset options, or customize your own conditional formatting rules. To access the new conditional formats, on the Home tab, in the Styles section, click Conditional Formatting, and then point to Data Bars, Color Scales, or Icon Sets. Or to create a custom rule for one of these formats, at the bottom of the Conditional Formatting menu, click New Rule. In the New Formatting Rule dialog box, select the rule type Format all cells based on their values to use the new data visualization tools. In the lower half of the box, you can then choose among data bars, color scales, and icon sets; specify conditions for each formatting type; and customize colors for data bars or color scales. Note: In Excel 2007, it’s also possible to edit existing conditional formatting rules. To access existing rules for editing, at the bottom of the Conditional Formatting menu, click Manage Rules.

Find Out How Much Storage Space Your Mail Is Occupying on the Server 1. On the upper menu bar, click Tools. 2. Click Mailbox Cleanup. A dialog box appears. 3. Click View Mailbox Size. In the dialog box, you can now view the details of locally used storage. 4. On the Server Data tab you can see how much space is left on the server. The amount of space shown will be cumulative if folders contain subfolders.

Reduce File Sizes by Changing Image Formats The Compress Pictures button in Microsoft Office PowerPoint can often reduce your .ppt files by up to 50 percent. But that can still leave you with large files, especially if your images have been created from .png files. You can save even more space by changing them to .gif or .jpg formats. (Note: The .png format is more flexible than the other file formats. Flattening to .jpg or .gif reduces flexibility.) Here’s how to reduce file sizes: 1. Save your PowerPoint file as Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), which creates an .htm file and a folder of the same name. This folder will contain all the images from the presentation. 2. Open the folder, and sort it by size to reveal which files are the largest. 3. Locate the largest images in your presentation. They may have been scaled, so they might look smaller than the saved image. 4. In PowerPoint, make sure that the image isn't grouped. 5. Select the image. 6. On the Picture Tools menu, in the Adjust section, click Compress Pictures. 7. Right-click the image, and then click Save as Picture. 8. From the Save as type menu, select .jpg or .gif (if you need to use transparency effects), and then save the image. 9. Delete the original image from your presentation, and reload the saved image at its original place. 10. Regroup the images if necessary. Another way to compress the images is to use an image editing tool like Microsoft Digital Image Suite. This tool gives you more image compression options and can save you yet more space.