Microsoft Office

While searching around for tips that I havent discovered yet, I came across an interesting article from Texxors, showing you how to rotate your Excel headers.

Using the same data set as above, let’s say that you want to make your table look a little fancier. Or maybe your column headers are waaaaaay wider than the rest of the data in that column. For either issue, you can rotate your text so that’s it on an angle, or even completely vertical! Here’s how:

1. Select the cells with the text you want to rotate.
2. Go to Format > Cells (keyboard shortcut: Ctrl 1).
3. Move to the Alignment tab.
4. See the Orientation area on the right? Grab the little red diamond and move it so that the text is oriented the way you want your text to be oriented.
5. Click OK. Voila!

Pretty nifty, never knew you could do this.

headers, rotate, excel, microsoft, office, tips

Another link from MSTalkOnline.com. Seems I might be linking a lot to this site, since some of the tips coincide with mine. It’s using PDF preview handlers to yup, you guessed it, preview your PDF files.

Read more here

pdf, preview, office, office 2007

So, you’ve been working on a document on Word, emailed a copy to yourself to work on it elsewhere, and when you got back to the original, you forgot to turn the “track changes” on. Now what?

You can either cut and paste the two versions together manually, or use one of three options provided to you by Microsoft Word. Today we’ll focus on just one of those.

This method allows you to compare the versions, merge them into another document, and then allow you to approve or reject them.

Results will vary, but this can be a good starting point. Check in tomorrow for the second version, using WinMerge.

word, microsoft, winmerge, compare, track changes

Have a look at Microsoft Talk to learn about Live Search Maps Add-In for Microsoft® Office Outlook® adds maps, driving directions, traffic information, and travel time to the scheduling capabilities of Outlook.

Pretty nice. I’ll have to give it a shot and see how it goes.

If you stick around the site long enough, you’ll find out that I’m a big fan of automation. It’s nice to be able to wake up in the morning, having my email already open and ready for me, Firefox loaded with all of my “morning stuff” opened and ready for me to read, and my streaming radio show, Lex and Terry, already playing.

So how do I do it? To create the script, open up Notepad (this will be your batch file when you’re all done).

Here’s my morning script:

• start firefox “http://www.netvibes.com?” “http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/” “http://lifehacker.com/” “http://www.foxnews.com/”
• start outlook

What “start” does, is simulate pressing the ‘Start’ button, then selecting ‘Run’ and typing in the command you want.

So, I’m starting Firefox with my morning reads open in tabs, then starting Outlook to have my email ready to go.

That’s it! Save the file with a .bat extension (when you save in notepad, enclose the filename in quotes or it wont work), save it to where your scripts are stored, and add it in the Scheduled Tasks.

productivity, automate, scripts, batch,

Everyone has been in the same situation. It’s 2am, you’re finishing up an {insert procastinated project}, and what happens? The computer crashes! Your saved file might work, but what if its corrupted, and you can’t get any recoverable data back? What if it wipes out your collection of family vacations? Sure, you “backup”, copying files to your thumbdrive, CD-R, or whatnot. But you need something more reliable so you can SET IT AND FORGET IT! -thx Ronco

Introducing: RoboCopy (Robust Copy)

RoboCopy is part of the Windows 2003 Resource Tools that can be installed on a Windows machine, and provides more functionality when it comes to copying files. Want to copy only newer files? Robocopy can do it. Want to remove files that are backed up that you deleted from the source? Check. Want to keep autoamte and keep track of what is going on? Ding ding ding ding ding!!!

So, what to do?

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Saw this from one of my favorite sites, Lifehacker. Basically it’s a Word macro that you run, and lets you insert (in any order you want) multiple Word documents into one file.

Download the boiler.zip from the author’s site and check it out.

merge, office, multiple, cut and paste, macro, macros

Do you use Outlook? Have you noticed sometimes that when you start a new message, it takes FOREVER to load? Does your system start to drag for no reason? Chances are, you still have Microsoft Word open, but dont know it.

Another tip to speed up Outlook (as well as your PC) is to turn off Word as your email editor. By default, whenever you start a new message, Microsoft Word is used in your new message window as the editor. But do you really need it? Unless you’re sending out HTML newsletters, then the answer is no. So here’s a quick way to turn it off.

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Have a document that you need to zoom in and out of a lot to navigate? Until now, I would stop what I was doing, click on the ‘Zoom Scale’ window, change or type in what I needed, and go from there. BUT NO MORE! Just hold ‘Ctrl’, and then use your mouse wheel to zoom in and out.

quick, tip, zoom, mouse

By default, when you first install the Microsoft Office Suite, only the common and most recently used items are visible. If you’re like me, you want to see all the options available to you. But where is this option located? It’s all controlled by one piece of the pie, Microsoft Word.
To enable all the options, follow these simple instructions:

• Fire up Microsoft Word
• Click ‘Tools’
• Click ‘Options’
• Check the ‘Always show full menus’
• You’re done!

I dont know why they put the global option in this application, maybe because it’s the most used, but from now on, all of your Office suite programs will show full menus.

office, microsoft, menu, customize, productivity, microsoft office