Microsoft Office

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!