Combining and Cutting Shapes in PowerPoint

Often in Pow­er­Point I like to cre­ate my own graph­ics by draw­ing and group­ing shapes together.  Pow­er­Point 2010 now offers a cool tool to actu­ally com­bine two or more shapes together or even cut one shape out of another.  This fea­ture is called Com­bine Shapes.  The only prob­lem is that it is not offered on the Rib­bon.  You have to add this fea­ture to your Quick Access Tool­bar or cus­tomize a Rib­bon in order to use it.

Posted in Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft Office 2010 Blog | Comments Off

Where is that Ruler?

When work­ing in Word or Pow­er­Point 2010, have you noticed some­thing is miss­ing?  Office 2010, by default, turns off the ruler.  And there is noth­ing worse than spend­ing time try­ing to find it!  No wor­ries, you can turn it on under the View tab’s Show group.  You can also turn on grid­lines in both Word and Pow­er­Point if you need to align text or objects in a par­tic­u­lar man­ner.   What an easy fix!

Posted in Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft Office 2010 Blog | Comments Off

What is a PDF anyway?

Office 2010 makes it very easy to send a file cre­ated in Word, Pow­er­Point or Excel as a PDF.  But what exactly is a PDF?  It stands for Portable Doc­u­ment For­mat.  Basi­cally cre­at­ing a PDF from a file means you are cap­tur­ing the data and for­mat­ting found within the file and turn­ing it into an image.  Users who receive a PDF do not have to have Microsoft Office to open the file.  This also means that users can’t change the file.  The great­est advan­tage to PDFs is that it will print exactly the way it looks on screen.  Even if you decided to use some cre­ative fonts and graphics!

So how do you cre­ate a PDF in Office 2010?  Sim­ply select the File tab’s Save and Send fea­ture.  Then choose either Cre­ate a PDF to save it for later or choose Send as PDF to auto­mat­i­cally cre­ate a PDF and attach the PDF to an e-mail message. 

A per­fect way to send a file electronically!

Posted in Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft Office 2010 Blog | Comments Off

One Stop Shopping for your Office 2010 Printing Needs

Look­ing for your old friend Print Pre­view in Office 2010?  He no longer exists on his own.  Office 2010 now includes a Print Pre­view win­dow in the Print com­mand.  The Print com­mand is now found under the File tab.  The advan­tage is that all Printer Options as well as Page Setup Options are dis­played in one place.  The only dis­ad­van­tage is that you will need to use the Zoom con­trol on the bot­tom right hand cor­ner and reduce the zoom to 40% to view more than one page at a time.

Sim­ply click on the large PRINT com­mand but­ton to send it to the printer.  If you don’t want to print sim­ply press ESC or click on any tab to go back to your file.

You can also add a Print short­cut to your Quick Access Tool­bar.  Sim­ply click the Quick Access Tool­bar drop down list and select Print Pre­view and Print.

 

 

In today’s world it’s much more effi­cient to use “One Stop Shop­ping” to get things done and Office 2010 pro­vides you with a quick way to Pre­view and Print in one win­dow – Wow!

Posted in Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft Office 2010 Blog | Comments Off

Does your Office 2010 file have ISSUES?

Right now our BJC net­work is sup­port­ing three ver­sions of Microsoft Office.  That can cre­ate some prob­lems when you share a file with some­one on an older ver­sion of soft­ware than you.  The good news is that we are work­ing towards all BJC employ­ees using only one ver­sion Office 2010.  But that project, called CUP, will take over a year to com­plete.  In the mean­time you might need to check your file for “issues” before you send or share it with some­one else.  What do I mean by issues?  If you used a fea­ture that only Office 2010 sup­ports then when you share it with other users they will not be able to make changes to that part of the file.  An exam­ple would be using Sparklines, Slicers, Smar­tArt, etc.  There is a solu­tion for this prob­lem.  You can check your file for issues related to how com­pat­i­ble your file is with older ver­sions of Word, Excel or PowerPoint. 

Sim­ply click on the File tab and choose the Info sub­tab.  Then click on Check for Issues and choose Check Com­pat­i­bil­ity.  A win­dow will appear sum­ma­riz­ing any incompatibilities. 

What a great way to find out any ver­sion prob­lems before shar­ing your file with other users!

Posted in Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft Office 2010 Blog | Comments Off

The Recipe for Creating Quick Calendars and other Tables…

Every­one uses cal­en­dars.  Some­times we want to post a cal­en­dar at work to show a par­tic­u­lar sched­ule or upcom­ing birth­days and other events.  Cre­at­ing a cal­en­dar from scratch can be very time con­sum­ing.  But guess what?  Office 2010 gives you a quick way to insert a cal­en­dar struc­ture you can cus­tomize.  It’s called Quick Tables and it’s located under the Insert tab’s Tables command.

Sim­ply click on the Table drop down list, and select a Cal­en­dar table style.  Then change it to fit your needs.

 

But wait…there’s more….

If you like to store spe­cific infor­ma­tion in a table and the table needs to be for­mat­ted the same each time then use this fea­ture to cre­ate a saved table style in the Quick Tables Gallery.

Sim­ply select the fin­ished table and then click on the Table Drop down list and select Save Selec­tion to Quick Tables Gallery.  Type a name for the Table style and click OK.  You will find this table style in the Table Gallery or you can insert the style quickly by typ­ing the name of the table style and press­ing F3.

 

 

The Table Gallery is your “recipe” for table success!

Have you ever cre­ated a cal­en­dar in Word?

View Results

Loading ... Loading …

Posted in Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft Office 2010 Blog | Comments Off

Key Differences

So, you’re mov­ing over to Excel 2010?  Ner­vous?  Excited? Anx­ious?  The move from 2003 or 2007 to 2010 isn’t a big tran­si­tion but there are sev­eral key dif­fer­ences to note.

  1. 2003:  Had a drop-down menu.  2007/2010: Uses a tabbed environment.
  2. 2007:  You were stuck with the MS but­ton.  2010: File tab returns to save the day!

 

File Tab has great options:

  • More recent fold­ers avail­able under Recent Documents
  • Push­pins allow you to keep cer­tain things on your list.
  • Save and Send wasn’t avail­able ear­lier.  Now Excel will open an email mes­sage and you can type in your recip­i­ent name in Group­wise and click send.

How impor­tant is the Quick Access Tool­bar to your work?

View Results

Loading ... Loading …

Posted in Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft Office 2010 Blog | Comments Off

Microsoft Pushpins make file access quicker!

Push­pins are a handy office item –even in Microsoft’s world.  In Office 2010, you can use” vir­tual push­pins” to quickly access not only files but also fold­ers you use all the time! The Back­stage view (File tab) now offers an expanded Recent Doc­u­ment list.  The left side dis­plays the name of the recent file and the right side dis­plays the folder it came from.   To view the list, sim­ply click on the File tab and then the Recent but­ton.  This list will auto­mat­i­cally adjust and move files and fold­ers down the list as more are accessed.

So how do you make the file or folder stay on the list?  Just pin it! (Click once on the push­pin located to the right).  When the push­pin turns blue, the file or folder dis­plays per­ma­nently at the top of the Recent Doc­u­ment list.   What an easy way to access the files and folder you use on a daily basis!

Posted in Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft Office 2010 Blog | Comments Off

Jump from File to File Quickly in Office 2010!

Most of us open more than just one file within a par­tic­u­lar soft­ware.  That’s what multi-tasking is all about.   You might be ref­er­enc­ing infor­ma­tion in sev­eral doc­u­ments in order to cre­ate a new one. In fact, Office 2010 actu­ally has no limit to the amount of files you can open at once, a multi-tasker’s dream!  Only your computer’s mem­ory is what lim­its the num­ber of files opened at a time.

Here’s the prob­lem.   Files nor­mally dis­play one on top of each other.  How do you switch quickly between the files within a soft­ware like Word 2010?  The com­mand you are look­ing for is called Switch Win­dows, located under the View tab. When clicked, it drops down a list of doc­u­ments cur­rently open for you to bring for­ward.   But isn’t it a has­sle to have to use your mouse to click on View + Switch Win­dows + the file you want to view?

Here’s the solu­tion.  Use the key­board short­cut in Office 2010 ALT + W + W.  It auto­mat­i­cally dis­plays the drop down list of open files.  Sim­ply type the num­ber of the file you want to view and that file dis­plays on top.  The per­fect way to jump around your open files!

Posted in Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft Office 2010 Blog | Comments Off

Excel Data Entry can be Fun!

Enter­ing data into a spread­sheet in Excel can be bor­ing and enter­ing across a lot of rows can be a has­sle.  Did you know Excel has a quick solu­tion to make data entry eas­ier?  It’s called a Form.  Unfor­tu­nately this tool is not avail­able on any of the Rib­bons.  You have to add it to your Quick Access toolbar. 

How to Add the Form com­mand to your Quick Access toolbar:

Under the Quick Access Toolbar’s drop down list, choose More Com­mands.  Under the “Choose Com­mands from” list choose All Com­mands.  Scroll down until you see Forms.  Select the Forms com­mand and click on Add.  Close the Options box.

How to Use the Form command:

Select a cell within your data­base.  Click on the Form com­mand.  Wow!…an instant form pops up that dis­plays all the fields that are included in your data­base.  Use the TAB key to move down through the fields.  Impor­tant: Make sure your data­base in con­tin­u­ous with NO blank columns or rows.  Now you can enter your infor­ma­tion quickly and easily…how fun!

Posted in Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft Office 2010 Blog | Comments Off