Archive for the 'Tips and Tricks' Category

Microsoft Outlook Tips – How to Recall and/or Replace a Message

How many times have you done it? You’ve sent an email to someone and realised that either you forgot to attach an important document or you sent it to the wrong person!

 

Wondering what to do? You can either just recall the original message or recall and replace it. The success or failure of a recall depends on the recipients’ settings in Microsoft Office Outlook.

 

Follow this procedure:

  1. From Mail, in the Navigation Pane, click Sent Items.
  2. Find the message that you want to recall and open it.
  3. On the Message tab, in the Actions group, click Other Actions, and then click Recall This Message.
  4. Click Delete unread copies of this messageMicrosoft Outlook Recall This Message dialog box
  5.  

    Or

     

    Click Delete unread copies and replace with a new message. Click OK, and then type a new message and/or include the attachment. Click Send.

     

    You may want to clear the Tell me if recall succeeds or fails for each recipient box, if you are sending the message to a large number of people.

     

The above does not guarantee that the recall will be successful, however it is worth to try!

 

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Microsoft Project Tips – How to Create a Milestone

Sometimes you may want to mark major event in a project, for example indicate the beginning and end of the project or display the end of a major phase. You can use milestones to do that. To create a milestone follow the steps:

 

  1. In Gantt Chart View, in the Task Name column, type the name of a milestone
  2. In the Duration column type 0 and press ENTER

 

In the Gantt Chart the task will be displayed as a black diamond symbol ¿.

 

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Microsoft Word Tips – How to Copy Formatting Quickly

Let’s say you’ve just applied various formatting options to text, for example you might have selected bold, italic, underline; changed font and size of font; applied a different colour, added borders and shading, and even adjusted different line spacing. Now you would like to quickly reproduce this formatting in several places in your document.

 

You can save time by copying the format you’ve already applied to text using Format Painter. To do so follow these steps:

 

  1. Select the text that has the formatting that you want to duplicate.Microsoft Word Format Painter
  2. On the ribbon from Home tab, in Clipboard, click the Format Painter button. When you move from the Ribbon back to the document, the mouse pointer now appears as I-beam with a paint brush.
  3. Select the text you want to reformat by dragging the mouse to highlight the text.
  4. As soon as you release the mouse button, the text receives the format of the other text. The feature is turned off and the mouse pointer returns to the original default pointer.

 

If you have several pieces of the text throughout the document that you want to reformat, then follow steps 1 to 3, however in step 2, double click the Format Painter button and select text to format those pieces of text. When you’re finished, click the Format Painter button to turn it off.

 

 

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Microsoft Excel Tips – Taking Shortcuts in Excel 2007

Microsoft Excel ShortcutsWhile entering data in Excel worksheet you may find yourself using the keyboard a lot. If you take your hands off the keyboard to use the mouse, it will slow you down. An alternative is to use keyboard shortcuts instead of a mouse. Below are my 10 most favoured key shortcuts in Excel 2007! To use them, simply press two keys shown in the brackets < > simultaneously.

 

<Ctrl> + <A> – Selects an entire worksheet

<Ctrl> + <C> – Copies the selected cells

<Ctrl> + <V> – Pastes the selected cells

<Ctrl> + <X> – Cuts the selected cells

<Ctrl> + <Z> – Undoes the previous command, if possible

<Ctrl> + <Y> (or <F4>) – Repeats the last command or action, if possible.

<Ctrl> + <S> – Saves the current work

<F2> – Enables editing within a cell

<F11> – Creates a chart from the selected data.

<Alt> + <=> Inserts the AutoSum function.

 

If you are working on a very important worksheet, use <Ctrl> + <S> regularly to prevent your data from being lost accidentally.

 

 

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Microsoft Project Tips – How to Display a Project Summary Task

So, you almost finished adding your tasks to your project plan and you are willing to display a project summary task. Here is a tip on how to do that.

  1. From the Menu commands, select Tools and then Options
  2. Click on the View tab and in the Oultine options for ‘Project x’ select Show project summary task check box to show the project summary task

 

The project summary task will appear before the task list in the Task Name column. If you want to change the name of the project summary task, select it and type the desired text.

 

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Microsoft Project Tips – How to Save a Project 2007 File as an Image

You’ve done a great job by creating a project plan in MS Project. You’ve sent the file to your client or colleagues via email and ops – they do not have a Microsoft Office Project installed on their computer and therefore cannot read the attached file. What should you do?

 

It would be so much easier if Microsoft Project 2007 had an option of saving a file in a PDF format as in the case with Word or Excel. But unfortunately it does not. So what are the alternatives on how to save and view the project files in a graphical manner?

 

You can save MS Project 2007 files as images. It will take a snapshot of a project plan in the form of a non-editable picture.

 

  1. Open the Project file you want to take a picture of
  2. From the Standard toolbar, click the Copy Picture button, or from the Report select Copy PictureMicrosoft Project 2007 Copy Picture
  3. In Render Image decide on either For Screen (for the image to be used on screen), For Printer (for the image to be used on printed materials), or For GIF Image File (if you will be using a file on a web page)
  4. In Copy choose either the selected rows or all the rows on screen to be included in the picture
  5. In Timescale indicate the time frame within which you want the project to be copied.
  6. Click on OK
  7. Start the application where you want to insert the picture. Just some applications to use are Paint, Word, Visio, PowerPoint, an email, or even Excel
  8. Insert the picture in the desired location

 

Now enjoy the sharing of the project schedule.

 

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Microsoft Word Tips – How to Get Rid of the Hyperlinks

Have you ever opened a Word 2007 document using Microsoft Word 2007 and had your hyperlinks display

{ HYPERLINK “http://www.inferotraining.com/info.html” } instead of Info?

 

You try to make these hyperlinks display properly with correct links. You check different view options and they all work fine. However, you cannot get rid of this display. What can you do?

 

To solve the hyperlink problem here are a few options:

 

  • use Alt+F9 to toggle between the Hyperlink display and Normal view.

 

  • Alternatively,

Microsoft Word 2007 Advanced Options - Hyperlinks

  1. Click on the Office button
  2. At the bottom of the displayed menu, select Word Options
  3. From the Word Options dialog box, on the right hand side, select Advanced
  4. Scroll down until you see Show document content and turn off the Show field codes instead of their values setting

 

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Microsoft Excel Tips – How to Make Gridlines Invisible in Excel

If you find that gridlines in your Excel worksheets are distracting, make them invisible!

 

To turn off the gridlines in Excel 2007, follow these steps:

  1. From the Ribbon, click the View tab.
  2. In the Show/Hide section, clear the Gridlines check box.

 

Now your gridlines are hidden.

 

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Tips and Tricks: Microsoft Office 2007 – Why Use Microsoft Office Diagnostics?

You probably get very upset when your Microsoft Office application crashes down (closes down unexpectedly) while you are working on something important. It is not necessarily that the problem is within the Microsoft Office code. Computer viruses (read How to Protect Yourself from Viruses from Your Computer Health Part Two), disk failures, or laziness with respect to installing updates (read How to Stay up to Date Automatically from Your Computer Health Part One) are just a few issues causing this condition.

 

Microsoft Office Diagnostic is a tool included in Microsoft Office 2007 pack, allowing you to run a series of diagnostic tests that can help you discover why your computer is crashing. These tests will either solve problems directly or may help you with the ways to solve them.

 

These are the diagnostics that are run:

 Microsoft Office 2007 Diagnostics Options

Setup Diagnostic – Files and registry are checked for errors occurring due to viruses or by hardware that is faulty or incorrectly configured. While running for about 15 minutes, the test may require the original installation source.

 

Disk Diagnostic – Hard disk is examined for errors logged by the Windows system and SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) feature of your hard disk (if provided by disk drive manufacturers) to notice potential hard disk failure.

 

Memory Diagnostic – Random Access Memory (RAM) is verified for integrity.

 

Update Diagnostic – Your computer is tested as to whether it has the latest updates installed to make Microsoft Office more stable. You can install updates from Microsoft Office Online.

 

Compatibility Diagnostic – Different versions of Microsoft Office are checked for conflicts, as two different versions of Office installed on your computer can cause instability.

 

Check for Known Solutions – The crash report is tested and checked against the database of Microsoft’s crash cases for available solutions.

 

To find out how to run diagnostics, read How to Fix Errors Using Microsoft Office Diagnostics.

Microsoft PowerPoint Tips – How to Add a Photo or a Clip Art as a Background to PowerPoint Slides

You can choose from a wide selection of slide design templates to create a background for your PowerPoint presentation. But sometimes you may want something more unique, which matches the content of the presentation more directly. In these cases, create your own background in PowerPoint. Follow these steps to add a photo or a clip art as a background in PowerPoint.

 

  1. From the Ribbon, select the Design tab.
  2. Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 Background TabIn the Background section, click on the Background button in the right corner. This will open the Format Background dialog box.
  3. Select Picture or texture fill and from the Insert from section, click on File or Clip Art to choose the photo or clip art you want to use as a background. Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 Format Background Dialog BoxIf the object is small, PowerPoint will stretch it to cover the whole slide. However, this can deform the graphic object.
  4. If the graphic object is small, you can tile it. This means that the picture or clip art object will be placed repeatedly across the slide in rows. To do that, check the Tile picture as texture box.
  5. If you don’t want to stretch or tile the picture or clip art, you can offset it from the edges of the slide. Simply, edit the text boxes for the percentage of Offset you want from each edge of the slide. As best practice – use the same number to offset for all four sides of the slides to keep the proportion ratio of the picture.
  6. If you use a picture or clip art as a background it is the best practice to keep it faded or transparent. To make it transparent, in Transparency use the transparent slider or type in a transparency percentage.
  7. Click on the Close or Apply to All buttons to apply a background to an individual slide or to all slides in the presentation. If you are not happy with changes you can always click on Reset Background button.