Daily Tips and Tricks Special Delivery - Microsoft

2003 to 2007 Page Layout View How many times have you walked to the printer and discovered that your Microsoft Office Excel 2003 worksheet didn't print as you expected? You can use the Page Break Preview view in Excel 2003 to scale your data to particular pages, but a more realistic preview of the printed page would be helpful. Page Layout view in Microsoft Office Excel 2007 presents an exact representation of the printer output of your worksheet. Page Layout view also makes it easy for you to add headers and footers to your worksheet by simply typing the text where you want it to appear. To use Page Layout view, click the View tab, and then click Page Layout in the Workbook Views section.

Using PowerPoint Themes With Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007, you can easily change the look of your entire presentation with just one click. By applying a theme, you can be confident that your entire presentation has a professional look. 1. Go to the Design tab. 2. Pause on different themes in the Themes gallery to see a preview of how the presentation looks with the theme applied. 3. Click the theme that you want to apply to your presentation. Generate Random Text in Word 2007 On a blank line in a Microsoft Office Word document, type =rand followed by (PC,SC)—where PC stands for paragraph count and SC stands for sentence count—and then press ENTER. For example, =rand(2,3) will create two paragraphs of three sentences each. Word inserts some random text based on your specification. You can use this new text for testing form controls such as text boxes or paragraph alignments.

Working with Prebuilt Templates The new Getting Started window includes a variety of prebuilt database solutions. You can use these solutions right out of the box, or you can enhance and refine them to accommodate the kind of information you want to track or the way in which you want to track it. To open a template: 1. Start Microsoft Office Access 2007. 2. Browse the categories to find the template you want, and then click it. 3. Browse for a folder, and then click Download. To Create a New Table Microsoft Office Access 2007 has made creating tables easy by providing a handful of common schemas. 1. On the Ribbon, on the Create tab, in the Tables section, click Table. 2. Type the first value in the cell, just as you would in a Microsoft Office Excel spreadsheet, and then press ENTER. 3. Double-click the column heading to rename the field. Based on the value typed, Access automatically defines the data type, although it does so differently from a spreadsheet. In Access, each field—a column in your datasheet—is defined by a data type.

To Add a Function to a Formula Using Formula AutoComplete 1. Type =. 2. Begin typing the function name. 3. On the list that appears, click the desired function name. 4. Press the TAB key. Using Voting Buttons You can easily collect information from your coworkers. The redesigned Microsoft Office Fluent user interface makes it easier than ever to use voting buttons to collect information through e-mail. Here’s how: 1. Create a new message in Outlook, or reply to an existing message. 2. On the Options tab, in the Tracking section, click Use Voting Buttons. 3. Click the option you prefer. For additional message options, click Custom.

Edit Lengthy Documents More Efficiently To save time scrolling back and forth when you're editing a long document, you can use the keyboard shortcut SHIFT+F5. This shortcut switches back to the area of the document on which you were working previously. For example, if you were working on the tactics part of your plan and moved to edit something in the budget, by pressing SHIFT+F5, you immediately return to the tactics section.

RSS Feeds Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds are an easy way to subscribe to interesting information like world news, sport scores, or blogs. With Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, it’s easy to start adding and reading RSS subscriptions. 1. Click the mail folder called RSS Feeds. 2. Choose a feed that interests you from the RSS Feeds content directory. 3. Outlook prompts you to add this feed to your list. Click OK. 4. Outlook creates a specific RSS subscription folder for this feed below the main RSS Feeds folder. Note: When using Office Outlook 2007 with Windows Internet Explorer 7, you can keep a synchronized list of subscriptions between the two programs.

Multiple Level Undo, Change Highlighting, and Task Drivers In Microsoft Office Project Professional 2007, project managers can visualize the impact of changes and trace back their steps. To turn the Change Highlighting feature on or off, click the View menu, and then click Hide Change Highlighting or Show Change Highlighting. While the feature is enabled, all levels of tasks affected as a result of a change are highlighted with a color as a visual indicator. Using this feature together with the Multiple Level Undo feature, project managers can do "what-if analysis" by trying a set of changes and then reversing unwanted changes. If further analysis of a task's schedule is needed, the project manager can use Task Drivers on the Project menu to determine the factors (such as task dependency, calendar constraints, schedule date, or vacation time) that are driving a task's start date.

Create SmartArt Diagrams Microsoft SmartArt graphics make it easy for you to create high-impact, professional diagrams. Instead of spending hours designing your own diagrams, you can use Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 to focus on the visual message that you want to communicate. 1. On the Insert tab, click the SmartArt button. 2. In the list of diagram categories, select the type of diagram that you want to add to your presentation. 3. Under Type your text here, type a list of the information that you want reflected in your diagram. 4. Click the Design tab, and then select colors and styles from the available galleries to make your diagram look great. Insert and Format Charts In Microsoft Office Excel 2007, you will find many new professional-looking charts to help you visualize your data and communicate it more effectively. To insert a chart: 1. On the worksheet, arrange the data that you want to use in a chart. 2. Select the cells that contain the data that you want to use for the chart. 3. On the Insert tab, in the Charts group, click the chart type, and then click a chart subtype that you want to use. To see all available chart types, click a chart type, and then click All Chart Types. Excel will select the default formatting layout, but you can quickly modify it: 1. On the contextual Design tab, select a chart layout from the gallery to display the legend, axis, and title the way you want. 2. Select a chart style to modify color and effects.

Fill In the Blanks in Spreadsheets the Easy Way 1. Select all the rows in your Microsoft Office Excel spreadsheet data set. 2. On the Home tab, in the Editing section, click Find & Select, click Go To, click Special, click Blanks, and then click OK. 3. Click the equal sign (=) on the toolbar, select the cell above, and then hold down the CTRL key while you press ENTER. Blanks in the spreadsheet will be filled automatically. 4. Copy all the data, click Paste Special, and then click Values. This will overwrite the formulas and enable you to sort the data by filling in each empty cell with the same information as the one above. This tip will work on any size of data set.

To Change the Color of a Sheet Tab 1. Right-click the sheet tab. 2. Click Tab Color. 3. Click the color from the palette that appears. Collecting Data via E-Mail Microsoft Office Access 2007 simplifies the process of collecting information from others. It builds the data collection form automatically by using Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007 or HTML in the body of an e-mail message. Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 processes the incoming forms and helps you save the data in your Office Access 2007 data store—effectively updating the database without retyping. To collect new information via e-mail: 1. Open or select the table containing the fields that you want to collect. 2. On the External Data tab, click Create E-mail. 3. Follow the wizard to create an e-mail form. a. Select HTML or InfoPath form (if you select the latter, the recipients must have Office InfoPath 2007 and Office Outlook 2007 deployed). b. Select Automatically process replies and add data to Table if you don’t have to approve each entry before it is saved in the database. Returned forms will go to a newly created folder named Access Data Collections in your Inbox in Office Outlook 2007. Each time you receive a filled form, it will be flagged as a task for you to review. To export collected data to Access: 1. If you have not selected automatic processing, right-click the returned e-mail message, and then click Export to Access. Or you can open the message and click the same command from the Ribbon. 2. Green or red icons will flag whether the export was successful or not. After sending a data collection e-mail message, you can use the Manage Replies command on the External Data tab of the Ribbon to change some of the message options and resend the message.

Schedule Meetings for a Whole Team of People If you frequently schedule meetings with the same team members, finding a free slot in everyone’s calendar can be challenging. It can also be irritating to keep adding all of your team members to the To line of your meeting request. Defining and using a group schedule makes this task easier. Here’s what to do: 1. Define a group schedule. a. In your Microsoft Office Outlook Calendar view, click Actions, and then click View Group Schedules. b. Click the New button, assign a name to the new group schedule, and then click OK. c. Add your teammates in the Group Members column (just as you would in a meeting request). d. Click Save and Close. 2. Use your group schedule to create a meeting request. a. From your Outlook Calendar view, click Actions, and then click View Group Schedules from the menu bar. b. Click the group schedule that you defined from the list, and then click Open. Now you can see the free/busy information from all your teammates without having to select them individually in a meeting request. c. Find a free slot and select it. d. Click Make Meeting, and then click New Meeting with All. A new meeting request opens, prefilled with all your teammates on the To line.

Convert a Bulleted List to a SmartArt Diagram Right-click anywhere in the bulleted list, point to Convert to SmartArt, and then click the diagram layout that you want to use. If you don’t see your preferred diagram layout, click More SmartArt Graphics to choose a layout from the Choose a SmartArt Graphic dialog box. After your list converts to a diagram, the SmartArt Tools Design and Format tabs appear when the diagram is active. Use those tabs to apply formatting or even change the diagram layout. To Find Text Formatted Using a Specific Format 1. Click the Home tab on the Ribbon. 2. In the Editing section, click Find & Select. 3. Click Find. 4. In the Find and Replace dialog box, click Options. 5. Click Format. 6. In the Find Format dialog box, specify the format for which you want to search. 7. Click OK. Note: You can also define the format you want to find by clicking Choose Format From Cell in the Find Format dialog box, and then clicking a cell with the desired format.

Print Page Backgrounds with Your Document By default, page backgrounds created with the Page Color option in the Page Background section on the Page Layout tab in Microsoft Office Word 2007 do not print. However, you can print them with the document if needed. To include the page background when printing, click the Office button and then click Word Options. On the Display tab of the Word Options dialog box, select the printing option Print background colors and images, and then click OK. (Note that this setting is not document-specific and will apply to all documents that you print from Word 2007 while the setting is active.)