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20
Tips for Leveraging Microsoft Office
Special Report
Has someone told you recently that you
need to buy a new software program to do the latest and greatest thing? They are probably right, but probably also very wrong.
How can this be? You see, most people have very powerful software on their
desktop already in the form of the Microsoft Office suite of applications, but
many of them believe that they need more to do anything except the basic
functions. This simply is not true.
In this special report, I’ll show you
twenty neat and useful features of MS Office that can help you be more
productive and avoid paying lots of money for all the newest software.
This report is exclusively available to subscribers of the Communicating
Using Technology newsletter (if you are reading this because someone passed on
the link, click here to sign up for your own free subscription).
I have broken up this report into
sections, one dealing with tips specific to each of the main MS Office
applications – Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
I have also included some tips on using Outlook to manage your contacts
and e-mail. Let’s start with
three tips that apply to each application in MS Office
Tip
1 – Remove Delayed Menus
One of the most annoying features that
Microsoft introduced in the release of Office 2000 is the delayed menus feature.
This was supposed to be a time saver for people where the program will
only display the most recently used commands when you drop down a menu.
If you wait three seconds or click on the double chevron at the bottom of
the list, it will display the rest of the commands available under that menu
item. I find this to be a great
time waster because if you don’t see the command you are looking for, you are
likely to move to look under a different menu list instead of waiting around.
There is a way to turn off this “feature”.
Under the Tools menu, click on the Customize command.
You will see three tabs, click on the Options tab.
Here you will see an option that controls whether menus are delayed or
not (the wording of the option is different in the different version of Office,
but you’ll recognize it when you see it).
Set it so that the menus always show the full list of commands, not
delayed action or recently used commands.
Tip
2 – Recently Used File Lists
Most people will work on a file for a
time, then go off to something else, and later want to come back to that file to
make revisions or updates. There is
an easier way of finding that file than the usual File – Open and search for
the file. It is an option called
the Recently Used File List. What
it does is keep track of the last number of files you have opened in this
application and put that list at the bottom of the File menu command list. To access a file you worked on recently, simply click on the
File menu and select the file from the list displayed. To turn on this feature, click on the Tools menu and select
the Options command. Click on the
General tab and you can select the checkbox that turns on Recently Used File
List. You can also set how many
files are displayed in the list – my suggestion is set it to 9, the maximum
allowed.
Tip
3 – Set Default File Locations
When MS Office is first installed, it
takes the default that all files will be stored in the My Documents directory.
Good file management dictates that you will want different directories
for different purposes, one for each project, one for each client or supplier,
etc. And you may want to organize
them not all under the My Documents directory.
But the application always starts by wanting to look for files or save
files in this My Documents directory. How
do you change it so that the program looks somewhere else?
Simply click on the Tools menu and click on the Options command. Click on the File Locations tab in Word, the General tab in
Excel or the Save tab in PowerPoint. Here
you can set the default file location directory to whatever makes sense for your
setup.
OK, so there are three tips that already
have you working more effectively with the MS Office applications. And these are the kind of tips you will be receiving every
two weeks in your Communicating Using Technology newsletter.
Well, let’s move on to the common MS Office applications.
MS Word Tips
Tip
4 – Customize Your Toolbar
At the top of the screen, there are
toolbars that contain buttons that are really shortcuts to what you can use the
various menu commands for. Of
course, there is not enough room for a toolbar button for every possible menu
command, so they only put what they consider to be the most popular buttons on
the toolbars. But you have the
ability to control what buttons appear there.
To customize your toolbar buttons, click on the Tools menu item and click
on Customize. Click on the Commands
tab. You will see two lists.
The list on the left is a list of the toolbar button categories,
basically corresponding to the menu items across the top of the screen.
The list on the right is a list of the toolbar button commands that can
be placed on the toolbar. You will
notice as you click on each category that the list of commands changes and that
there are many more possible toolbar commands than you see in the default
toolbars. To add a toolbar button
to your toolbar, find the command in a list on the right side of the dialog box
and drag it to the position you want it to be on the toolbar (when you see a
vertical I-beam indicator in the toolbar as you are dragging the command you
know when you release the mouse button it will drop the toolbar button in that
spot). A few of the more common
toolbar buttons to add are to close a file, to modify the page setup and to
Paste Special (more on Paste Special in a later tip).
Tip
5 – Repeat Formatting
Have you ever had to reformat a number
of items in a document and wished there was a quick way to apply a set of format
option without having to select each block of text and go through all the menus?
There is. Once you have set
the text format options of the first block of text, select the next block and
press Ctrl+Y (hold the Control key (usually Ctrl on the keyboard) down and press
the Y key). This will repeat the
formatting for the newly selected block of text.
Tip
6 – Paste Special vs. Paste
Sometimes when you are copying text from
one place to another or one document to another, you only want to copy the text,
not the formatting such as font, size, shading, etc.
The Paste command by default copies all of the attributes of the text,
including the formatting. There is
another command on the Edit menu called Paste Special.
This command allows you to specify how you want the paste to happen.
The Unformatted Text option places the text into the destination as if
you had typed it, with no formatting at all.
The benefit is that the current formatting in the document is then used.
Tip
7 – Right Clicking
Almost all of the time we only use the
left mouse button on the mouse. It
is used to select text, menu items and commands.
There is a lot of power that goes mostly unused in the right mouse
button. By clicking on the right
mouse button, you can open up shortcuts to many commands or options depending on
what was selected when you clicked the right mouse button. For example, if you select a block of text and click the
right mouse button, you can get quick access to changing the font, bullet
options, paragraph options, creating a hyperlink or a list of synonyms for a
word. If you select a graphic or
table, you can easily access the picture or table properties to change size,
borders or format. I encourage you
to right click in a variety of places and situations and see what shortcuts you
can discover.
Tip
8 – Shortcut Keys
In Tip 5 I shared one of the shortcut
keys that makes work quicker by eliminating the need to go through the menu
items each time you want to do something. To
find more shortcut key combinations, look at the right side of the list of
commands under any menu item. If
there is a shortcut key to perform that command, it will list the key
combination there. Some of the ones
that are used the most include Ctrl+C to copy, Ctrl+V to Paste, Ctrl+X to Cut,
Ctrl+S to Save and Ctrl+P to Print. Check
out the menu lists to find out what other shortcut key combinations would be
useful to you.
Tip
9 – Password Protection
If you would like to add some security to a document, you can protect it with a password. While this method is not foolproof, it will deter most people from being able to view or edit your document. I have seen this used to protect documents that are being e-mailed to others, where there is a separate e-mail containing the password (never include the password in the e-mail that contains the document). To add a password to a document, click on the Tools menu and click on the Options command. Click on the Save tab. You can then set a password for opening the document or you can set a password just for modifying the document (this would allow anyone to read it but they can’t change it without the password). Set the password and click OK. When you save the document, it will be protected. Remember the password or you will lose access to the document because you will be required to enter the password as well whenever you access or change the document.
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Special Note:
If you publish documents from MS Word as Adobe PDF documents, you need the
“Make
Your E-Documents Stand Out From the Crowd” Special Report.
This PDF report not only tells you the secrets of making stand out
documents, but it demonstrates the techniques because they were used to create
the report.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MS Excel Tips
Tip
10 – Resizing Columns
When the numbers in a column is wider
than the width of the column, Excel fills the column with number signs (the #
character) to let you know that there is a number in the cell, but it is too
long to fit. You can automatically
resize the column to fit the widest number in the column by double-clicking on
the right side column boundary line in the column header (where is says A or B
or C, etc.). This is much quicker
than manually grabbing the column boundary line and dragging it over, only to
find out the column still isn’t wide enough or it is now far too wide. This works with text columns as well when the text is cut off
due to the width of the column.
Tip
11 – Multiple Worksheets
Most people use Excel and don’t
realize that each file can contain more than one worksheet.
If you look in the lower left part of the screen, just below where the
rows end, you will see upside down tabs that say Sheet 1, Sheet 2 and so on.
If you click on the tab, it takes you to that worksheet.
This is a great feature for keeping related data together in one file.
You can even reference a cell on one sheet in a formula on another sheet.
If you want to change the name of the sheet so you know what it contains,
just right click on the tab and select Rename.
By right-clicking on the tab you can also add more worksheets if you need
them.
Tip
12 – Auto Filter
This is one of the most powerful but
least used features of Excel. In
many cases, it is best to do statistical work with data in Excel because it is
easy to create and use formulas. The
problem becomes when you want to select only a portion of the data for reporting
or analysis. What you would like to
do is select certain rows based on criteria about one or more of the columns.
This is what the autofilter feature allows you to do.
To turn Auto Filter on, click on the Data menu and click on the Filter
command, then click on Autofilter. This
will give you a drop-down menu in the first row of each column (it is best to
use the first row as column descriptions when using autofilter).
When you click on the arrow, it drops down a list where you can select
one of the values in the column or you can select Custom, where you can specify
a more complex test against the values in the column. Excel then shows you only those rows where the value in that
column matches the test you have specified.
You can specify a filter in more than one column if you like.
To remove the filter in that column, drop down the list and select All.
You can tell if a column has a filter active because it turns the drop
down arrow from black to blue color. This
feature allows you to do more than just simple analysis. If you want to extract just certain rows, you can copy them
to a new worksheet and do the analysis there.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Special Note:
If you use MS Excel to analyze data, you need “The 20% You REALLY Need To Know About Data Analysis Using Excel”
e-book.
This e-book will show you how to save time and money creating reports that focus like
a laser on what you need to know.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MS PowerPoint Tips
Tip
13 – Shortcut Keys During a Slide Show
There are some shortcut keys during a
slide show that can help you present more effectively.
You can access a full list of them by pressing the F1 key while in Slide
Show mode, but here are some of the most useful.
=> B - pressing the B key during a presentation turns the screen black,
pressing it again returns you to where you were before. This can be very useful
when you want to put the audience's focus on you for a moment instead of your
visuals.
=> Ctrl-L or Ctrl-H - pressing this key combination turns the pointer off
during the presentation. Which key
combination works depends on which version of PowerPoint you have.
Ctrl-L works for PowerPoint 97 and earlier, Ctrl-H works for PowerPoint
2000 and later. This will stop the
pointer appearing if the mouse moves during your presentation.
=> A - pressing the A key during a presentation makes the pointer appear or
disappear. If the pointer does appear on the screen during your presentation,
the natural inclination is to press the Escape key - but this stops the
presentation! Pressing the A key
toggles the pointer on and off, so it can be used to turn the pointer off if it
comes on.
Tip
14 – Slide Navigator
During a slide show in PowerPoint 2000
or later, if you want to jump to another slide in the show, you can use the
Slide Navigator. In slide show
mode, right click the mouse button to display a menu of selections. Select Go
and select Slide Navigator. This
will bring a list of all of the slides in the presentation and allow you to
select the one that you want to move to. Click
on the slide you want to go to and click the Go To button.
This is particularly useful when moving to a slide you have added for the
Q&A session or when restarting a slide show during a training session.
Tip
15 – Controlling Line Breaks
When you are entering text into a text
box in PowerPoint, the text moves to the next line based on the right margin of
the text box. Sometimes we want to
move to the next line before the text reaches the
right margin. Pressing the Enter
key does not always work- if you are using bullets, it moves to a new bullet; if
you have different spacing between paragraphs than
between lines, it will look different. The
way to move to the next line is to hold down the Shift key and then press the
Enter key. This simply moves to the
next line within the same bullet or text box and continues the text as if the
line had wrapped at the right margin.
Tip
16 – Moving Objects a Small Amount
In order to make drawing objects like
lines and boxes line up in Word or PowerPoint, I usually set the Snap to Grid
option on so that everything aligns. The
only problem is that sometimes I want to move an object just a small distance,
not a full grid movement. To move
an object a distance less than a grid step, select the object (making sure that
the four arrows symbol is shown) and use a Ctrl-arrow key combination - hold
down the Control key (Ctrl on most keyboards) and use the arrow keys to move the
object a small distance. This works
for lines, boxes, pictures and text boxes.
Tip
17 – Custom Shows
If you need to deliver the same
information at different levels of detail for different audiences, you can
create one presentation and then create different versions of what is shown from
that presentation. These are called
custom shows and they can be quite useful.
To set up a custom show, click on the Slide Show menu and click on the
Custom Shows command. In the Custom
Show dialog box you can create a new show or edit an existing one.
The creation or editing dialog box has all of the slides listed on the
left and you select which ones you want for this show and move them to the show
list on the right side. To run a
custom show, you select the show from the list and click the Show button.
I use this in training workshops to allow me to have a two or three day
version of the same topic.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Special Note:
If you struggle with PowerPoint, you need to get “The
20% You REALLY Need To Know About PowerPoint 2000” or "
The 20% You REALLY Need To Know About PowerPoint 2002" e-books. Each book contains my 13 step process for
using PowerPoint and is 41 to 45 pages long, so you will be up and using the software in no time.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MS Outlook
Tip
18 – Organize by Folders
By default, Outlook will put all of your
e-mail into the Inbox folder and all of your contacts in the Contacts folder.
This makes finding a particular e-mail or contact very hard.
A better way is to organize your e-mail and contacts with folders. To create a new folder, click on the File menu and click on
the New command and click on Folder. You
can then give the folder a name, tell it what type of folder this will be (mail,
contacts, etc.) and where this folder should be located.
Then, to move an e-mail or contact to the folder, simply highlight the
e-mail or contact and click the right mouse button.
Select the option Move to Folder and select the folder you want this item
moved to.
Tip
19 – Finding an E-mail
If you receive a lot of e-mail, one of
the frustrations you probably have experienced is trying to find a particular
e-mail when you have a large number of e-mails in a folder.
Fortunately, Outlook has an advanced find feature that can find e- mails
that contain certain keywords in the subject or text. Click on the Tools menu and click on the Advanced Find
command. The Advanced find dialog
box will allow you to specify what fields you want to search, which folders and
what keywords you want to locate. The
tool then finds all e- mails meeting your criteria in a list that you can then
click on to expand any e-mail. You
can use criteria on fields such as date sent, who sent it, the subject or the
text of the e-mail. This allows you
to find a required e-mail quickly and simply.
Tip
20 – Using E-mail Signature Files
One option on Outlook that is not used
as well as it could in many cases is the ability to add a signature to the end
of each e-mail that you send. You
can set up your e-mail signature by clicking on the Tools menu and clicking on
Options. Click on the Mail Format
tab and click on the Signature Picker button.
Here is where you can set up and manage your signature(s). Here are some ideas of items you may want to consider for
your e-mail signature:
- Your name and contact information
- Your e-mail and web addresses
- Any upcoming conferences you will be
attending
- Any sales or special offers
- Your company mission statement or tag
line
- Any awards recently received
Your e-mail signature can be a powerful tool for increasing sales, visibility
and reputation.
And there you have it, twenty tips that
will help you use the MS Office that you already have more efficiently and
effectively.
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