Office Tips and Tricks
- 1. June 5, 2007 Cool Tech Tips: Outlook, Office and Other Apps
- 2. Outlook Color-code your e-mails Tools -> Organize Select “Using Colors” on the left Click “Apply Color”
- 3. Outlook Don’t want to color-code? Use flags! Tools -> Rules and Alerts New Rule Select “Flag messages from someone with a colored flag”
- 4. Outlook Recover deleted e-mails (even hard-deleted ones!) Run this update Close and reopen Outlook Tools -> Recover Deleted Items… You will see a list of all emails you have deleted in the last seven days. Click the Recover icon to restore a message.
- 5. Outlook Color-code your calendar Use “Label” to select a category for each calendar item. Once categorized, the items will be colored for easy identification.
- 6. E-mail Etiquette “Reply to All” Stop and think before you “Reply to All.” Does everyone need to see your response? Sometimes yes, sometimes no…you need to make a judgment call. If you are responding with a personal note, triple-check that you are NOT using “Reply to All.”
- 7. E-mail Etiquette “ Out of Office” Autoreplies It’s becoming normal practice to configure an autoreply when you will be away from your e-mail for a lengthy period of time. Outlook 2003 is smart enough to autoreply only once to each sender. Tools -> Out of Office Assistant…
- 8. E-mail Etiquette Use the subject line to summarize your message If you want someone to respond quickly, make it easy for them! Examples: Newsletter vs Newsletter going @2pm, ok? Meeting vs 2pm meeting cancelled, will resched
- 9. Excel Quickly sum a column Highlight the cells you want to sum Sum appears in bottom status bar Right click to change the calculation
- 10. Excel Change default number of worksheets By default, new spreadsheets have three worksheets. To change this: Tools -> Options General tab Change “Sheets in new workbook” value
- 11. Excel Close all spreadsheets at once Hold down the SHIFT key Click on the File menu “Close” is now “Close All”
- 12. PowerPoint Shrink your presentation If your presentation has a lot of pictures or screenshots, make sure you compress the photos before you distribute the file. View -> Toolbars -> Picture
- 13. PowerPoint Use Grayscale view If your presentation will be printed, make sure it looks good in black and white. View -> Color/Grayscale -> Grayscale
- 14. PowerPoint Use “Package for CD” If you need to send your presentation to someone, use File -> “Package for CD” to ensure that links and fonts will travel with the file. Click the “Options…” button to embed the fonts or set a password. You can either burn the packaged presentation to a CD or save it to a folder which you can zip and e-mail to the recipient.
- 15. PowerPoint Useful keyboard shortcuts F5 = starts the slide show from the beginning During a slide show: F1 = lists popular keyboard shortcuts ESC = ends a slide show B = black screen W = white screen To quickly switch between two open presentations: ESC (at the end of the first slide show) Ctrl + F6 (to switch presentations) F5 (to start the second presentation)
- 16. Word Use “Paste Special” When pasting into a Word document, use Edit->Paste Special and select “Unformatted Text” to retain the words but not the formatting. If you forget and select Paste, Word gives you a second chance with the clipboard icon. If you click it, you can choose to “Keep Text Only”
- 17. Word Use “Track Changes” views If multiple people are editing a document with “Track Changes” turned on, it can get really difficult to follow. Change the view to “Final” to see the document as it would appear with all changes applied. Make sure to “Accept All Changes” before sending the document out…you don’t want anyone to see the incremental revisions!
- 18. Word Use the new “Versions” feature If a file is going through many revisions, you can now save file versions during the editing process. Once you have multiple saved versions, you can compare them side-by-side and/or revert back to an older version. File -> Versions
- 19. Web browsers Browser Wars: which browser is better? Keyboard shortcuts CTRL+ENTER = www.site.com SHIFT+ENTER = www.site.net (FF only) SHIFT+CTRL+ENTER = www.site.org (FF only) Mouse shortcuts
- 20. Internet Explorer Open a new window every time you click a link Tools -> Internet Options Advanced tab Browsing section Uncheck “Reuse windows for launching shortcuts”
- 21. Internet Explorer Built-in Zoom feature
- 22. Internet Explorer Reset IE to be the default browser Tools -> Internet Options Programs tab Browsing section Click the “Make Default” button
- 23. Firefox Open source Many useful add-ons are available Adblock Plus Forecastfox FoxyTunes MouseGestures PageZoom
- 24. Without Adblock With Adblock Firefox
- 26. Firefox Live Demo MouseGestures PageZoom
- 27. Windows Use the “Show Desktop” icon If you have a bunch of windows open and need to quickly minimize everything, use the “Show Desktop” icon.
- 28. Windows Free up screen space – hide the Taskbar (aka Start bar) You can make the taskbar disappear until you mouse to the bottom of the screen Right click on the taskbar Select Properties Check “Auto-hide the taskbar”
- 29. Windows Use Shortcut Icons You can easily create desktop shortcuts from your Start menu Hold down your mouse’s right button AND drag the program from your Start menu onto your desktop Select “Copy here” Change the icon Right click on the shortcut Select Properties Click the “Change Icon” button
- 30. Windows Create Keyboard Shortcuts for Start Menu items Find a program on your Start Menu Right click on it and select Properties In the “Shortcut key” box, hit a letter Click OK Now you can hit CTRL-ALT-thatletter to open the application
- 31. Windows Selecting Sounds Start -> Control Panel -> Sounds and Audio Devices Sounds tab You can make your own sound scheme by changing the sounds associated with actions and then saving the scheme.
- 32. Thinkpad Controlling your laptop’s temperature Double click on the battery icon Select a power scheme with less green bars next to performance Maximum Battery Life Timers off Rule of thumb: Higher performance = hotter laptop. Your laptop will get very hot if you are doing something that is heavily processor-intensive like working with large images or playing a game with lots of graphics.
- 33. Thinkpad Battery won’t fully charge If your battery won’t recharge to 100%, reset the counter Wait to do this until you don’t need to use your computer for a couple of hours Double click on the battery icon Battery Information tab Click the “Battery Maintenance…” button Click the “Perform Reset…” button Follow the directions
- 34. Thinkpad (T-series only) Turn off TrackPoint or TouchPad Start -> Control Panel -> Mouse UltraNav tab Uncheck “Enable TrackPoint” or “Enable TouchPad” (but not both!)
- 35. Last but definitely not least When in doubt, REBOOT
- 37. Movie Time!