Microsoft Office

DO NOT use social networks while on the job. I know you guys and gals get tempted, but just don’t do it.

If you want to know the facts, most employers only keep employees for 3 years before giving them the “slip”. If you are experienced,well paid,etc. YOU may find yourself unemployed in a short time. Your best method of defense is a damn good offense - looking for another opportunity WHILE you are employed!

In regard to networking, use your current contacts wisely. Let these people know you are seeking a new opportunity if anything should happen at your current job. Give out resumes WHILE you are still working. Don’t wait to create or update your resume. Trust me, your head won’t be clear enough to create the winning copy. If you feel uneasy about your current job (or feel you may be in danger soon), get on with NETWORKING today!

Imagine, you’re at work and you manage to browse a few “personal sites” during the day. You don’t want anyone to know about it, so you simply delete your browser’s history and cache files. This seems safe enough,right? Wrong!

Most mid to large sized offices of today employ some sort of tracking software within the office network. You might not know about it, but it is there. If you value your job, your privacy, and your future - do NOT surf the net at the office! Anything that must be done can be done later OR from your WAP enabled cell phone or blackberry device. Most people just cannot resist the urge while at work - but we are in a new era. Managers DO WANT TO KNOW how you spend your time at your desk.

Don’t say you weren’t warned…

Using any of Microsoft’s email programs can be convenient - and risky! Whether you choose Outlook, Outlook Express, or any POP-based mail delivery program, you can be assured of viruses that offer plenty of problems down the road.

If you are going to use a POP-based mail program on your computer, it is absolutely necessary to have antivirus programs installed AND UPDATED at ALL times! Do not neglect or overlook this fact!

If you want to work a little safer, I would opt to choose a web-based mail application. There are dozens of good ones available for free. Some people use the new Microsoft Live accounts.  Lots of people use Google’s Gmail and Yahoo mail. Yahoo Mail BETA works alot like Microsoft Outlook. You can drag and drop, create folders, etc.

For the people who use webmail, there is a slight delay in getting mail quickly and there are server down times on occasions.  Whatever you choose, you can always change things…

Gmail has huge storage capacity. Yahoo Mail now offers UNLIMITED storage. I like Gmail better than Yahoo mail due to the advertisements on Yahoo being intrusive at times… Cheers!

I downloaded and tested Apple’s Safari beta 3 for Windows a few days ago. It was claimed to be faster than Internet Explorer and Firefox, more secure, etc.

What a disappointment! I used Safari on OS X and it was “OK”. For my first attempt on Windows using Safari, it loaded pages terribly slow - which was a bad sign from the start. I shut it down and reloaded it. It was the same, slow, boring browser it has always been.

I don’t like Internet Explorer 7. I tend to stick to version 6. Version 7 seems slow to me.

Firefox is my choice for everyday use on nearly any platform. I’ve tried Opera - and really like it - but the fonts render visuals I’m just not used to.

Apple’s Steve Jobs is hoping for a future where only two browsers are being used to surf the web - Safari and Internet Explorer. He actually thinks that Safari will take over the Firefox and Opera market share. What in the heck is he thinking??? Steve, put the bag and pipe away before you deliver your next keynote address.

Choose Firefox. Stick with it. Open source software is a great choice on any project and Firefox is winning the browser wars, so far. Cheers!

Some people need to work on Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, or PowerPoint files from home and do not own their own copies of Microsoft Office. Well, thank goodness that OpenOffice is saving the day! OpenOffice is a free, alternative office suite that mimics each of the great Microsoft Office applications.

With a free download and install of the product (which works on all operating systems), you can not only open MS Office files, but you can save them as MS Office files,too! You can even save Word documents as Adobe Acrobat Reader (.pdf) portable document files.

I have used OpenOffice and I can tell you that it runs as great in Microsoft Windows as it does on Ubuntu Linux. I have used Linux at my jobs and no one can tell that my documents were created and distributed from a Linux operating system. Talk about freedom! Freedom to work on any operating system you wish - while being able to use Microsoft Office style applications is NICE! Download OpenOffice and give it a try today. Cheers!

I took a good look at an online video tutorial on “How to build a simple HTML page with Expression Web”. I must say that I think Microsoft has simply taken the FrontPage product and changed a few things - along with the name of it.

I am not a huge fan of WYSIWYG web design tools, at least, not the ones who claim to do professional grade designing. Expression Web is a big hunk of confusion. If you want to create a web page, or full website, stick to something like FrontPage, Dreamweaver, or anything out there - BUT NOT Expression Web! This product is bulky, confusing, and full of empty promise for the beginners and intermediates out there.

Most ‘non-paid’ web designers have little to NO need for XML, XHTML, or database integration. If YOU are the type of designer who wants a hi-powered set of toys, then MAYBE Expression Web is for you…for $299.00, it’s not something I would drop a dime on. If you want a free web design tool that actually IS PROVEN to meet current web standards, try searching for some program such as AMAYA - provided at http://w3schools.com ,which is a great place to learn real web design techniques and standards. See ya later with more articles! Cheers!

The latest and greatest thing online is known as Office 2.0.  I use a free service from Google called Google Docs & Spreadsheets to save my important files to the web. Simply put, Google Docs & Spreadsheets allows you to create Word docs and Excel spreadsheets free - as long as you have a Google ID to login and save your files.

The real nifty thing about “GD&S” is that if you have an MS Office file on your computer that you’d like to store online, you simply upload it to “GD&S” - and wallah! Your files are safe and backed up.

Another cool thing you can do is this; create your own PDF files for free WITHOUT Adobe Acrobat software! Just select a file in your list, and choose SAVE AS PDF! The Word file is downloaded to your PC as a PDF instantly! This IS COOL! You can create your own e-book by just writing in Word, uploading the file to GD&S, and downloading the PDF format of the file.

Excel spreadsheets are just as cool. Another feature of GD&S is to download files as OpenOffice 2.o files. For those that don’t know about OpenOffice, stay tuned. I’ll be back tomorrow with some more FREEBIE advice!

In our last meeting together, we ended the discussion with the easy way to create tables in Microsoft Word. Today, we’ll look at how to spruce up your Word docs by adding tables with color. First, go to TABLE-DRAW TABLE and create a new table within your document. THEN just take a look at the pop-up toolbar that is labeled “Tables and Borders”. Choose a cell within your table and click on the paint bucket in the top right area of the toolbar for Tables and Borders. From there, you can choose any color you want - and WALLAH!, the table cell has a beautiful background color. I always choose these colors BEFORE adding text inside the cells. If you have text in a cell - and the new background color makes the text hard to read - just highlight the text and change the text color by using the standard text color tool at the TOP of the WORD PROGRAM - upper right. If this seems a bit tricky, you can play with it until you get it down pat. You can also review the help file within Word for useful tutorials on using tables. I hope this helped! If you have any questions, just email me and I will do my best to help you! Cheers!

Hi there! This is my first post and I just want to give you a brief introduction to start. I have been a full-time Webmaster, System Administrator, and GEEK at LARGE for nearly a decade. I recently decided to start my own consulting business and I hope that my postings on this site help you. If you have any need for further assistance, please send me an email message. I would be happy to hear from you!

Microsoft Office is one of the most popular applications I have ever seen. Nearly every Windows user I have ever seen required the Microsoft Word and Excel programs. Did you know that Excel is rumored to be the most complex software program ever created? From the looks of Excel, you wouldn’t think so… But who cares,right? We just want to know how to use the stuff!

I am going to start this discussion with some tips for using Microsoft Word and hope you find these useful. For the absolute essentials, let’s start with the basic keyboard shortcuts you can access while creating a document. To make text bold, use CTRL+B either BEFORE you type the chosen text, or highlight the text you wish to make bold and use CTRL+B. For italics, use CTRL+I in the same manner. OK, now that we covered that simple tip, let’s move on!

For starters, most people use Word as a document writer/editor. That’s about all I’ve ever seen the ‘average joe’ do with the program. I hope to help you get the most out of Word by learning to really maximize it’s hidden potential. Let’s say you want to make a personal webpage for some project,or hobby… simply create the documents in Microsoft Word and choose FILE-SAVE AS and save the document with a simple name (ie:index) and SAVE AS TYPE: Web Page. It’s THAT EASY to become a web designer!

I am going to REALLY get into some web designer tips in future articles - but for now, I’m sticking to the Word stuff,OK? You can always email me for web design tips or help.

Tables are the area of need for most Word users. Until the get the hang of them, they can really pile some hair on their desks! Let me try to offer some help with tables.

Tables are simply used to organize content. That’s about it. Let’s say you want to create a Word document and insert a list of items below a paragraph - but you have about 20 items to list and you DON’T want to run the list down the length of the page. Here’s a simple thing to do:

Use “TABLE-DRAW TABLE” from the upper toolbar and you’ll see your mouse cursor morph into a pencil tip. Take the pencil (cursor) and draw a rectangular box on the document in the area where you want your list to appear (make these boxes narrow in height or else you will have a giant table height). THEN divide the box into two or three sections by using the same pencil cursor. It’s just like drawing with a pencil onto paper. If you ever make a mistake in Word - USE “CTRL+Z” to UNDO what you last did in the previous step. Once you draw the vertical dividers for your table, draw one or two horizontal dividers. NOW you should have an empty - yet good looking - table. Now you simply type your first item of your list in the upper left cell (box), and hit TAB to go to the next cell (box). If you run out of boxes (cells), don’t worry! Word will automatically create more cells for you when you hit TAB upon completion of your last available cell (box). If you go overboard and create too many cells (boxes) for your table, just highlight the ROW you no longer need with your mouse cursor and choose TABLE-DELETE-ROWS. Easy,huh?

With tables, you can really add some nice touches and looks to your Word documents. I will be explaining more about using colors in tables in my next article. Until then, email me with any questions you might have about ANYTHING MICROSOFT OFFICE related. Cheers!

This site is currently in need of a writer. If you have any interest in writing on the topic this site covers, feel free to submit an application at 451 Press. Thank you.

451 Press, Microsoft Office, Writers Needed