TIPS TRICKS and other helpful stuff

Stuff I have found or been sent that might help solve problems, improve performance, enhance security etc...

Microsoft Excel

MONDAY, MONDAY
You can enter a date into an Excel cell and then drag that cell to enter sequential dates. You can do the same for sequential weeks (or any time period). That is, if you’d like a list of Mondays in a month, you can enter the date for the first Monday in one cell, then the date of the second Monday in an adjacent cell. Then highlight both cells and drag. Excel will create a sequence of Mondays (or whatever day you want-use Friday if it will make you feel better). All the dates in the sequence will be seven days apart.
Here’s an example:

Go to cell A1 and enter:
4/6/98
Now go to cell A2 and enter
4/13/98
Highlight both cells, grab the little handle, and drag down three cells. Excel will now display:
4/6/98
4/13/98
4/20/98
4/27/98
5/4/98

in row A.

SWITCHING THE DISPLAY
We recently published a tip on how to get Excel worksheets to display formulas rather than data. We suggested that you choose Tools, Options, click the View tab, and then select the check box labeled Formulas. Click OK and there are the formulas displayed in place of the associated data.
However, there is a much easier way to accomplish this. All you have to do is press Ctrl-Tilde (~), and Excel will toggle between data display and formula display.

PASSING NOTES
The ability to add comments to Excel worksheets is especially useful when several people review a single worksheet. For example, if you create a worksheet and then need to send it to Sue, you can click your Total cell and choose Insert, Comment. When the Comment dialog box opens, type in your message to Sue and save the worksheet. You’ll notice that a small red triangle will appear in the upper-right corner of the cell that contains the comment.
When Sue opens the worksheet, she will see the comment indicator. She can read the comment by simply moving the mouse cursor over the marked cell. To enter a response to your comment, she can right-click the cell and select Edit Comment.
When Sue passes the file along to Harvey, he’ll see the marker and move the cursor over the cell. Now he can read both comments and add one of his own if he chooses.

DELETE IT NOW
There are times when you choose File, Open in a Microsoft Office document and just happen to notice a file that needs deleting. You don’t have to wait until you finish what you’re doing and then use Windows Explorer to delete the file. All you have to do is select the file in the Open window and then press Delete. This will delete the file and you can go ahead with your work

GETTING IN SHAPE
AutoShapes: If you haven’t experimented with this handy feature in Excel, now is the time to see how it works. Let’s imagine that you’ve just finished a worksheet that contains a chart. You can add labels to the chart to make it easier for people to read. But you could also use some AutoShapes to enhance the appearance of the worksheet.
Look at the Drawing toolbar at the bottom of the Excel window. If you don’t have a Drawing toolbar, choose View, Toolbars, Drawing. In the Drawing toolbar, click AutoShapes. When the list expands, select Callouts and then select the one of your choice. Now use the mouse to draw the shape.
Once the callout is in place, use the mouse to drag its pointer near one of your chart elements. Type in the information about the element the callout points to, and then use the mouse to size the callout box. This is a very effective way to label chart elements for a presentation.

SHOW IT ALL
Is a way to print the formulas that appear in an Excel worksheet. The answer is, yes, there is. To show the formulas, choose Tools, Options. When the Options dialog box opens, click the View tab. Now, under Window Options, select the check box labeled Formulas. Click OK to close the dialog box and record the change.
If you look at your worksheet now, you’ll see that all the formulas appear. If you choose File, Print and click OK, the formulas will appear on the printout.
The selection you just made remains in effect in the current worksheet until you change it. When you open a new worksheet, it will automatically default to displaying the value in a cell rather than the formula.

REPLACE IT IN EXCEL
You can use Excel’s Find and Replace utilities in much the same way you would Word’s. Let’s say that you’d like to find the cell that contains the number $21,987.23. You know it’s in there, but you just don’t know where. Choose Edit, Find and, when the dialog box opens, type in the value and click Find Next.
Now let’s suppose you’d like to find all occurrences of the value 25 and replace them with 35. Choose Edit, Replace. When the dialog box opens, enter the two values and click Find Next. When Excel finds the first occurrence, click Replace (if that’s what you want). If you’re very sure this is what you want, you can click Replace All and Excel will replace every instance of 25 with 35. Here’s where you can have a problem. Let’s say that you have a number of occurrences of 25 and you’re sure you want to replace them all with 35. But, do you have some occurrences of 25,000? If you do and you’re not careful, 25,000 will get replaced with 35,000.
To prevent this, select Find Entire Cells Only before you do any kind of search and replace. This tells Excel to find and replace only those occurrences of 25 (not 25,000).

AN ALT-TERNATIVE TO TEXT SELECTION
Numerous subscribers have asked about a way to select an entire column of specific text. Try this: Click the area where you want to begin your selection. Now hold down the Alt key and use the mouse to select the text you want to work with. This method allows you to select any specific text regardless of where it appears in the document.

FIGHT THE POWER
Excel offers two ways to calculate the power of a number. Let’s look at both. Click in cell A1 to select it. Enter:
"^3
and press Enter. Excel will perform the calculation and report that 22 to the third power is 10648.
Now go to cell A2 and type
=POWER(22,3)
then press Enter. Once again, Excel will report that 22 raised to the third power is 10648.
Take your pick-either one works.

MAKE A GROUP OF DATES,BR> There is an easy way to fill a series of Excel cells with a sequence of dates. All you have to do is type a date into a cell. Now grab the cell by its little handle (you’ll see the handle if you look closely at the lower right corner of the cell when the cell is selected) and drag it through the cells you want to fill.
For example, go to cell A1 and type:

02/02/98

Use the mouse to grab the cell handle. Now drag the mouse through cell A6. Cells A1 through A6 will now display the data shown here:

02/02/98
02/03/98
02/04/98
02/05/98
02/06/98
02/07/98
You can use the same technique to fill a series of horizontal cells with the sequential dates. Just enter the first date and then grab the cell and drag horizontally.

TEXT BOXES AND OTHER SHAPES
To place a text box in Excel, you need the Drawing toolbar. So first, choose View, Toolbars, Drawing. Now click on the Text Box button in the Drawing toolbar (its icon resembles a printed page). Use the mouse to draw the text box in your worksheet. Once you’ve drawn the text box, you probably want to choose the font and font size for the text. Click on the text box and choose Format, Text Box. When the Format Text Box dialog box opens, choose your font, font size, and even color and click on OK. Want the text centered in the box? Click on the Center button in the Formatting toolbar. Now, type your text. When you save the worksheet, the text box and all its parameters are saved with it. When you open the worksheet again, the text box will appear just as you left it. You’re not limited to placing text in a text box; you can also add text to a shape you create using AutoShapes. To do this, click on the AutoShapes button in the Drawing toolbar and then choose a shape from the expanded list. Use the mouse to draw the shape.

MAKE IT PROPER
Here’s an Excel function that you may not have seen. It’s called Proper, and its job is to turn text into words with initial capital letters. Why would you need Proper? If you purchase mailing lists, you know that many of them come in all caps. This is OK, except that you might like to convert them to a more standard (and more attractive) form before using them on a mailing label, or in a letter. This is where Proper comes in. Of course, its most efficient use is in a macro, but you can check it out without writing a macro. Press the Caps Lock key and type something into cell A1. Perhaps THIS WILL DO FOR AN EXAMPLE. Now move to cell A2 and type =Proper(A1) and you’ll get This Will Do For An Example. Proper doesn’t deal only with all caps - any text you present to Proper (uppercase, lowercase, mixed) will come out with the initial character of each word capitalized.

A SPECIAL DATE
You can do more with Excel’s date formatting than you might think. Suppose you’d like a particular cell to show only the month and the day. Click on the cell (to select it) then choose Format, Cells and select Custom. Under Type enter "mmmm dd" and then click on OK. Let’s say the date is 10/31/97. Type that in and the cell will display October 31.
Suppose now that you’d like to show the day of the week, the month, and the day (numerical). Choose Format, Cells and select Custom again. This time, type "dddd, mmmm dd" to produce a display of Friday, October 31. Click on OK to close the dialog box and record the changes. If you want to add the year, go back to the Format Cells dialog box and type "dddd, mmmm dd, yyy" Now click on OK.

FILL IT UP
Excel’s Fill option can save you lots of typing and headaches. Let’s say you need to make a list of a series of dates. And what you really need is a list of workdays Monday through Friday. Select the first cell and enter the start date. Let’s say you enter Monday November 3, 1997 (11/03/97). Now use the mouse to select the first cell and the other cells you want to fill with the dates. If you’re going to enter dates for the entire month of November, you need to select about 22 cells. If you select more than you need, you can delete the extras later. With all the cells selected, choose Edit, Fill, Series. Now select Date and Weekday and click on OK. The column will fill with the series of dates that represent weekdays in November.

Microsoft Word

Stop adjusting your preferences every day. If Word doesn't start up with the viewing options that you prefer, force it to do so with macros that run automatically when you open or create a document. Click on Tools | Macros | Record new macro... and then name your macro AutoOpen; make sure the Store In field shows Normal.dot. Ignore the options to assign the macro to a keystroke combination or menu, because AutoOpen is designed to run automatically when you open a file. With the macro recorder on, set all the viewing options that you like, including those on the Tools | Options | View tab and General tab. Stop the recording. Now, using Tools | Macro | Visual Basic Editor, copy the entire AutoOpen macro, paste it at the top of the macro code window on the right, and rename the copied version AutoNew, so it will run when you create a new document. Get under the hood. Savvy users modify Word's Normal.dot template in order to customize new documents. Many changes can be made permanent by using the Default or Add to Template button found in most formatting dialogs, but you sometimes want to edit Normal.dot directly. To find it, look in C:\Documents and Settings\yourusername\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates. You might want to add it to your Work menu (see below) for easy access later. Avoid macro madness. If you've created macros that you store in documents or templates, you don't want Word to prompt you, asking whether to enable macros every time you open one of those documents. To stop the prompts, create a digital signature that lets you tell Word to trust your own macros. Use the Start menu's Run...box and enter C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office11 (Office10 if you've got Office XP; modify this if you've installed Office in a different drive or folder). Scroll down to Selfcert or Selfcert.exe (depending on how Explorer displays file extensions on your system) and double-click it. Follow the prompts and type your own name when prompted for a name of the certificate. Then, in Word, open a document in which you use macros. Choose Tools | Macros | Visual Basic Editor, and in the Project pane at the upper left, highlight the name of the document; choose Tools | Digital Signature, click Choose..., and select the certificate you just created. Now close and reopen the document; if a Security Warning dialog appears, choose Always Trust Macros From This Source, and click Enable Macros. Repeat this procedure for any other document or template that has macros embedded in it. Note that your self-created certificate will be "trusted" only on your own machine; the Always Trust Macros From This Source option will be grayed out if you send a file that includes the certificate to any other system. Find your way back. If you hit the wrong key and no longer see the text you were trying to edit, use Shift-F5 to backtrack to your most recent edit location, and repeat the keystroke to move back three or four more. (The exact number seems to be unpredictable.) Note that Word will return you to another document if your last edit took place there. Use Word's time machine. Want to get back an earlier version of a sentence that you've edited beyond recognition? Press the Undo key, Ctrl-Z, repeatedly until you see the old version that you want of any text that you've changed. Select it and copy it to the Clipboard, then hold down the Ctrl key and press Y until your document returns to its current version (Ctrl-Y is the Redo key). Now paste the recovered text into your document wherever you want it. List frequently used documents on the Work menu. Don't you hate it when you can't find your recent document on Word's File menu? The menu lists up to nine recently used files (the default is four, but you can change this with Tools | Options, on the General tab), but there's no guarantee that a file you use often will be on that list. Add a semipermanent Work menu in the top line by using Tools | Customize; on the Commands tab, scroll down the Categories list to Built-In Menus, and in the Commands list, scroll down to Work and drag it to the top-line menu. Press OK. When you want to add the current document to the Work menu, click on the menu, then on Add to Work Menu. To remove a document from the list, press Ctrl-Alt and the Minus key, and click on the item you want to remove. Paste text without original formatting. When you paste text from a Web page into a Word document, you probably don't want to keep the original's fonts and formatting, especially if it's laden with ads or other elements. You can try to remember to use Edit | Paste Special... and then select Unformatted Text each time you paste from the Web, or you can assign a special keystroke for unformatted pasting. You can also record this sequence as a macro, but it won't work in all situations. Instead, add this macro to Word, using Tools | Macro | Visual Basic Editor: Sub PasteUnformatted() Selection.PasteSpecial _ dataType:=wdPasteText End Sub Then, using Tools | Customize | Keyboard..., scroll down the Categories list to Macros, select PasteUnformatted from the Commands list, move the cursor to the Press New Shortcut Key box, press Shift-Alt-V, then click Assign and Close. You can now use Shift-Alt-V to paste unformatted text into Word. Get rid of line breaks in pasted text. If text that you paste into Word from an e-mail or Web page has line breaks (or hard returns) that you want to get rid of, select the imported text, use Edit | Replace..., clear any options, type ^l (that's a caret and a lower-case L) in the Find what: field, type a space in the Replace with: field, and choose Replace All. When Word asks if you want to continue replacing in the rest of the document, say No. You can also get rid of multiple spaces by telling Word to find two spaces and replace them with one, and so on. You can record these steps as a macro (starting after you select the text). After recording, edit the macro so that Word won't ask you if you want to continue replacing in the rest of the document. Find the line .Wrap = wdFind-Ask and change the last word to wdFindStop. This macro replaces Manual Line Breaks (which Word inserts when you press Shift--Enter); if your imported text uses ordinary paragraph breaks, use ^p instead of ^l in the macro. Erase those persistent lines. Word's AutoFormat feature replaces a line of hyphens, underlines, or tildes with a horizontal line automatically. This can be useful, until you discover that you can't delete a line that you may have added by mistake. It won't go away, because it's actually a border that Word draws below a paragraph. Recent versions and updates of Word display a Smart Tag that lets you undo the border line, but if you don't have this feature enabled, or if you forget to do it when the icon is visible, move the cursor imme-diately before the line, select Format | Borders and Shading, and select None. To prevent this problem from recurring, choose Tools | AutoCorrect Options, go to the AutoFormat As You Type tab, look under Apply as you type, and clear the check mark next to Border Lines. Keep shapes and lines under control. Word's drawing feature lets you create shapes and lines that don't end up where you want them. Depending on the problem, you may need to try more than one menu to find the solution. For example, to get a picture out from behind text, turn on the Drawing toolbar (use View | Toolbars), click on the Select Objects arrow (the first icon in the toolbar), and click on the drawing to make the rectangular drawing canvas visible; if control points and other features that shape the drawing itself are also visible, click outside them until only the control points disappear. You can now drag the canvas where you want it, or you can right-click inside the canvas, choose Format Drawing Canvas..., go to the Layout tab, and select an option that changes the relation between the object and the text. Select noncontiguous text. You can select multiple nonadjacent words, paragraphs, or any other blocks of text so that you can apply the same formatting to all. Just press the Ctrl key and keep it held down while selecting different parts of the document. You can also use the Styles and Formatting task pane to select all instances of text that already have the same format. Shortcuts Handy Key Combinations for Word: Shift-F3: Toggle current word or selection among lowercase, initial capitals, and uppercase. F4: Repeat your last action, including searching, typing, formatting, and so on. Shift-F4: Repeat the most recent Find command. Shift-F5: Jump to the last change you made in a document; repeat for three or four previous changes. Ctrl-F6: Toggle among Word windows. Alt-F6: Toggle between document and dialogs, such as the Find dialog. F7: Run the spell-checker. Shift-F7: Run the thesaurus. F8: Turn on selection mode; use Find or any other feature to extend the selection, or press F8 repeatedly to increase the size of the selection (word, sentence, paragraph, document.) Alt-click: Open the research pane with information about the current word or selection. For more, enter keyboard shortcuts in the Help field. SELECTIVE SELECTION
How do you select a block of text in a Word document? That is, select a block of text without regard to sentences, paragraphs, or page breaks. The answer is, you hold down the Alt key while using the mouse to select a portion of the document.

TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADERS
Do you sometimes need to use leaders? You know, those little dots leading up to some text, like this:
......Text Leaders.
Choose Format, Tabs. When the dialog box opens, enter the tab position you want to use (in inches). Now look under Leader. Select the radio button associated with the type of leader you want and then click Set. Now click OK to record your selection and close the dialog box. Now when you use the Tab key, the tab location you entered will display the leader.

SIDEBARS AND PULL QUOTES
When you produce a newsletter using Word, you might want to make it look more professional by making use of sidebars and pull quotes. A sidebar is a great way to expand on a particular topic in your main article. A pull quote is a good way to draw attention to an important point in your article and grab the reader’s interest. The sidebar can appear anywhere in the article, but a pull quote is usually on the page where the quote appears and usually on the first page of an article.
To produce either a sidebar or a pull quote, choose Insert, Text Box. Word will switch to Page Layout view. Now draw the box using the mouse. Don’t worry about size and position right now; you can change both later.
Now enter the desired text into the text box. Click the text box to select it and then choose Format, Text Box. When the Format Text Box dialog box opens, click the Wrapping tab. Select the type of wrapping you’d like to use and click OK. Now you can use the mouse to drag the box into position and to set the final size.

SPECIAL EFFECTS
Let’s say you want to place a picture in your document. You’d like to create the effect of a portion of a pull quote over part of the picture. The only problem is that by default the text box will hide the picture.
Go ahead and create a text box and move it over a portion of your picture. Now choose Format, Text Box and click the Colors and Lines tab. Select the check box labeled Semitransparent and then click OK. Now the picture will show through the text box, but that portion of the picture under the text box will appear lighter than the uncovered portion.

MAKING LABELS THE AVERY WAY
Printing labels on a laser printer can be a real pain. Fortunately, Office 97 includes a wizard that makes it easy to line up printing on Avery labels-the largest and most popular brand. So if you need to make labels, the way to do it is to use templates that match standard Avery blank labels. Here’s how:
Put the Microsoft Office 97 installation disk into the CD-ROM drive. Open the disk using Windows Explorer, locate the Valupak folder and double-click it. Now look at the subfolders. You’ll see one named Averywiz. Click it and in Explorer’s right pane you’ll see the files in the Averywiz folder. Double-click Setup to set up the Avery Wizard. After the setup is complete, you can test your new addition. Choose Tools, Avery Wizard. When the wizard opens, follow the directions and choose the label you want to print. Note that you can use the wizard to make all the labels on the page the same, or you can make them all different.

MAKING A BLANK
When you choose to use bullets or numbering in a Word document, the new number or bullet appears when you press Enter. If you’d like to insert a blank line between one bulleted line and another, you can press Shift-Enter. To get to the next bulleted line, press Enter. This produces the effect shown here.

Line one "Enter"
Line two "Shift-enter"
"Enter"
Line three
Line four
Line five

AN ODD COLUMN
Creating columns in Word is a snap. You just choose Format, Columns. When the Columns dialog box opens, you can select from one, two, or three columns. You’ll notice that you can also choose a small column at the left or a small column at the right.
If you like, you can set the column size yourself. All you have to do is deselect Equal Column Width and then set the size of each of your columns. After you finish setting up the columns, click OK to close the dialog box and save your changes.

DO IT ALL AT ONCE
If you often need to open more than one Word document when you start a work session, here’s an easy way to do it. Choose File, Open. When the Open dialog box appears, click a file that you want to open. But don’t click Open yet. Instead, hold down Ctrl and click another file you’d like to open. Then keep the Ctrl key down while you click yet another file-you can hold down the Ctrl key and click as many files as you want to open. Now click Open, and all the files will load.

JUST IN CASE
If you want to select and then delete some text, Word will let you do the job easily. All you have to do is press the Delete key after you select the text you no longer need.
If you’d like to play it safe, select the text and then hold down the Shift key while you press Delete. This sends the text to the Windows Clipboard. If you change your mind about the text, all you have to do is press Ctrl + V to paste the text back to its original position.
Yes, we know you can press Ctrl + Z to get your text back. We’re offering this as an additional method. There’s usually more than one way to do almost anything in all the Microsoft Office programs.

MARK IT NOW
When you work with long documents in Word, you’ll find that’s it’s nice to have some bookmarks to navigate around in the document. Bookmarks are easy to add, easy to use, and leave no unsightly marks of any kind in your text. And you can put them anywhere at all.
Just for the purpose of experimentation, click anywhere in your current Word document and then choose Insert, Bookmark. When the dialog box opens, type in a word to use as your bookmark. Now click Add. To check your new bookmark, press F5. When the dialog box opens, type in the new bookmark name and then click Go To. Word will deliver you to the bookmarked spot without any further ado.

WHY BOTHER WITH EXCEL?
If you’re working with a Word document and you have a need for a small spreadsheet, you can create the sheet in Excel and then insert it into the Word document. But, if the spreadsheet requirements are rather minimal, why not just use Word?
To create a spreadsheet in a Word document, choose Table, Insert Table. When the Insert Table dialog box opens, choose the number of columns and rows you need for your spreadsheet (you can adjust this later). Now click OK to insert the table.
View the table just as you would an Excel worksheet, the first cell in the upper left corner is A1. Moving down vertically, you’ll find cells A2, A3, A4, etc. The next column is B1, B2, B3, etc.
Let’s look at an example now. Let’s say you inserted a table with five columns and four rows.

Enter into cell A1 the word Month.
Now move down to A2 and enter Jan.
Next, go to A3 and enter Feb.
In A4, type Total.
Go to cell B1 and enter a name.
In cell B2, enter the sales figure for January. Enter all figures using a dollar sign ($).
Move to B3 and enter sales for February.
In cell B4, press Ctrl-F9. Between the brackets, type: =sum(b2:b3) and then press F9.
The sum will appear in cell B4 complete with the dollar sign.
If you change any of the numbers, you need to press F9 again to tell Word to perform the calculation.

How’s that for easy?

DON’T DELETE THAT TEXT
When Word starts, it defaults to inserting text rather than typing over existing text. This leads many users to always delete a word or group of words when they really just need to replace them. What we usually do is click where we want to start the new entry, type it in, and then delete the old entry.
However, if you like, you can click where you want to start replacing text and then press the Insert key so that your new text will simply replace the old text. Don’t forget to press Insert again when you’ve entered the new text.

PLAYING THE BLUES
Do you ever get tired of looking at black text on a white background? If so, Word will give you some relief. All you have to do is choose Tools, Options and click the General tab. Now select the "Blue background, white text" check box and click OK.
Now you can spend your time looking at white text on a blue screen.
Sorry, no other colors are offered.

A SCATTERING OF LOGOS
If you have special logos that you use frequently in your Word documents, you can use AutoText to make inserting them quick and easy.
To store a logo in AutoText, open a Word document and choose Insert, Picture, From File. Choose the file you want to use as a logo. Once the picture is in the Word document, size it. Now right-click the logo and choose Format Picture. Click the Wrapping tab and then click Tight and Both Sides. Click OK.
Next, choose Insert, AutoText, New. Type in MyLogo and click OK. Now your new logo (and its formatting) is stored in AutoText. To insert the logo, place the cursor where you want to insert the logo. Choose Insert, AutoText, Normal, MyLogo, and the logo will appear in the text. Use the mouse to drag it into the correct position.

ANCHORS AWEIGH
When you insert an object into a paragraph, you may want to make sure that the object stays with its paragraph. To do this, position the object where you want it. Now right-click the object and choose Format Picture. Click the Wrapping tab and set the wrap conditions that you think will look best. Next, click the Position tab and select the Lock Anchor check box and the Move With Text check box. Click OK.

TEXT WRAPPING
Text wrapping in Word 97 is much better than in any of the previous versions. For example, you can now wrap text around non-rectangular objects. To check this out, choose Insert, Picture, Clip Art and choose a picture (try to find a triangular one). Size the picture and move it into place. Now right-click the picture and choose Format Picture. When the Format Picture dialog box opens, click the Wrapping tab and then click the image labeled Tight. Next, drop down to the next row and click the image labeled Both Sides. Click OK. The text should wrap around your new object now.

DROP-DOWN FORMS
If you need to generate a form for people to fill in, you might want to consider using drop-down lists. This makes it easy for you to read the results because it forces certain responses of your choosing-eliminating the possibility of answers that have nothing to do with the questions.
As an example, let’s consider an age entry. You could ask for age and let people fill in the blank. But if the age group is more important to you than a specific age, you can use a drop-down list. First, choose View, Toolbars, Forms to place the Forms toolbar in your Word window. Now click where you want the list to appear and then go to the toolbar and click on the Drop-Down Form Field button (the icon resembles a drop-down list). After you insert the form, click on the Form Field Options button (it’s the next button to the right of the Drop-Down Form Field button). When the dialog box opens, enter the first age group and click on Add. Repeat until all the age groups are entered. When you’re finished, click on OK. To get your form to work, click on the Protect Form button (it looks like a padlock). To edit your form, click on the Protect Form button again.

AUTOFORMAT BORDERS
A quick way to create borders is to let AutoFormat do it for you. If you’d like to have a border line above and below a group of text, type three minus signs and press Enter. A line will appear. Click in the area below the line and add your text. After you finish adding text, type three minus signs and press Enter again. This will draw the bottom line for you. If you need to add more text inside the borders, click on the desired location and add your text. Each time you press Enter, the bottom line will drop down. To get out of the box defined by the upper and lower border line, press the Down key in the number pad of your keyboard. To create a double border, use three equal signs in place of the minus signs.

LET’S TABLE THAT
In the last tip, we discussed using AutoFormat to produce headings in Word (type in a line and press Enter twice rapidly). This time, let’s consider how you can add a table using AutoFormat. If you’d like to use AutoFormat to generate a table, try this: Type a plus sign (+). Next, type 30 or so minus signs (-) followed by another plus sign. Now press Enter. There’s your table. To create a table with more than one column, use plus signs to show where the columns go. For example, if you type

+--------------------+--------------------+--------------------+

and press Enter, you’ll get a three-column table. There will be a column divider at each plus sign. To create a new row, press Tab.

Microsoft Access

Microsoft Power Point

EXPAND ON THAT FOR ME
PowerPoint 97 has a new command that you might find useful-especially when you’re trying to cram a lot of info into a slide show. The command is called Expand Slide. When you have a slide that looks a bit too crowded with text, you can see how Expand Slide works. So, open a blank slide, one that has text boxes in place, and add text. Then add some more text, and when you’re finished, add some text. Now, to make the test a bit simpler, choose View, Slide Sorter. Next, choose Tools, Expand Slide. PowerPoint will now split the text across a group of new slides. You can go with the PowerPoint version. You can also move parts of the expanded slide into a new slide and customize things a little.

TABLE IT
Although PowerPoint doesn’t offer a way to create tables, there’s nothing keeping you from importing a table from Word or Excel.
Look in the PowerPoint toolbar and you’ll find a button with the Word W in its icon. Usually right next to the Word button, you’ll see a button with the Excel X in its icon. These buttons are Insert Microsoft Word Table, and Insert Microsoft Excel Worksheet.
Click the Insert Microsoft Word Table button. A menu of 20 squares (a five-by-four table) will open. Select from this menu to tell PowerPoint what kind of table you want to insert. Once the table is in place, you can deal with it just as you would in Word.
To see how Excel works in PowerPoint, click the Insert Microsoft Excel Worksheet and then choose from the menu just as described for the Word table.

SCHEMING
When you create a PowerPoint slide, you might like to take a look at PowerPoint’s default color schemes. To do this, choose Format, Slide Color Scheme. When the dialog box opens, you’ll see that there are seven predefined schemes. These schemes determine the colors that will be applied to charts, etc. You can choose from one of the seven and then click Apply to use it on the current slide, or Apply to All to use it throughout the slide show.
If none of the standard schemes appeals to you, click Custom and design your own. The dialog box provides you with a good way to see how your changes look before you apply them. All you have to do is click each element and then choose a color. When you’re finished, click Add as Standard Scheme if you want to keep your new design. In any case, you can click Apply or Apply to All to accept the scheme.

SLIDE SHOWS ON THE WEB
If you’d like to see what you can do with PowerPoint in the way of Web publishing, check this out. Run PowerPoint and choose File, New. Now click on the Web Pages tab and then double-click on Sample Banner1.pot. Now choose Slide Show, View Show to see how the show looks in PowerPoint. At this point, you can save your new file. Choose File, Save As, give the file a name, and click on Save. To make an HTML file, choose File, Save as HTML. When the wizard opens, click on Finish. After the files are saved, you can use your browser to view the files. Load Index.html.

ANOTHER APPROACH TO ANIMATION
You can create animation using PowerPoint’s cropping feature. First, open a new slide and insert a picture. Choose Insert, Picture, Clip Art and insert the one of your choice. Now size and position the picture. Click on the picture to select it and then press Ctrl-C to copy it. Press Ctrl-M to create a new slide and press Ctrl-V to paste the picture into the new slide. Now select the picture and choose the Cropping tool from the Picture toolbar. Grab the picture by the top and drag down until you’ve cropped as much as you want. Once again, make sure the picture is selected (click on it if it isn’t) and press Ctrl-C to copy the cropped picture. Next, press Ctrl-M again to create a new slide and then press Ctrl-V to paste the copied picture. Keep repeating this procedure until you’ve created all the incremental views of the cropped image. When you view the slide show, the full image will appear on the first slide and then slowly disappear from the top down as the show runs. Of course, you can also crop from the bottom up or from one of the sides. Or you could start with a cropped image and make it appear more fully in each slide. All you have to do is reverse the sequence-or use Slide Sorter to rearrange the slides you created.

USING TABLES IN POWERPOINT
You use tables in Word. Why not use of some of those attractive, and very clear, Word tables in your PowerPoint slides?
Let’s say you’re working on a presentation and you already have a table in a Word document that describes a particular operation. There’s no point in spending a bunch of time redoing the whole thing for your PowerPoint presentation.
Get the table just the way you want it. Use AutoFormat to choose the most attractive format. You might want to change the format because what looks good on paper might not look as good as a slide. Now select the table and then press Ctrl-C to copy it. Now open your PowerPoint slide and press Ctrl-V to paste the table into the slide. Once you’ve pasted the table into the PowerPoint slide, you can use the mouse to size and place the table.

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