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DISTORTING FOR APPEARANCE Version 4.x, 95 Ordinarily when we discuss resizing inserted pictures (such as Clip Art) we tell you how to do it without distorting the picture. There are times, though, when you might want to distort a picture to enhance its appearance. For example, suppose you're making up a document (Word or PowerPoint) for a weight-loss program. Perhaps you'd like to show a before-and-after cartoon. To do something like this, you could import one of the Clip Art images of a cartoon person. There are several available. You may want to do this in PowerPoint rather than in Word, because PowerPoint offers more options for working with Clip Art. If you need the pictures in Word, you can import them later.Insert one of the pictures. If there are extraneous objects in the picture you want to use (such as a briefcase) select the object and choose Draw, Ungroup. Now click away from the drawing and then click the extraneous object. Move it away from the main drawing and press Delete. Now that you have a clean drawing, press Ctrl-A to select everything and then choose Draw, Group to put the object back together again. Now select the picture and choose Edit, Copy. Next, choose Edit, Paste. Position the two copies as you want. Now click the picture on the left and use the mouse to stretch it horizontally. Now that you have a genuinely overweight person, you can either leave the original version alone, or use the mouse to make that person even thinner. Since you may want to import the pictures into a Word document, press Ctrl-A to select both and then choose Draw, Group. From now on they'll stay together. You can click the picture and choose Edit, Copy to copy it to the Clipboard. Then you can move to Word and choose Edit, Paste to paste the picture into your Word document. COOLER CALLOUTS Version 4.x, 95 Some subscribers have asked about using callouts in text. Is there a way to make the primary text wrap around callout text? Yes, there is--well, sort of. What you can do is insert a frame (Insert, Frame) then draw a callout inside the frame. Before you insert the callout, place the frame where you want it to appear when finished (at least as close as possible). Now, if you don't see the Drawing toolbar, choose View, Toolbars and select Drawing. Once the toolbar is visible, click the callout button (it looks like one of the speech bubbles you see in a comic strip) and draw the callout inside the frame. Now you can right-click the frame and choose Format Frame. In the Frame dialog box, choose to have text wrap around the frame. When you're finished here, click OK. Now you can enter your callout text. If you need to change the placement of your callout, move the frame and then move the callout back inside it. 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. OFFICE SPILLS THE BEANS Want to know all about your system? Open one of the Office 97 applications and choose Help, About *program name*. When the About ... dialog box opens, click System Info. Now you can select any of the items listed in the left pane of the System Info window to find out more than you're likely to ever want to know about that topic. PICTURES, PICTURES, EVERYWHERE You can put pictures into your headers and into the body of a document, so why not put them on the envelopes as well? The way to do this isn't as obvious as inserting pictures into headers and documents is, but that doesn't mean you can't do it. Suppose you'd like to print a company logo on all your envelopes. Here's how. Create a new Word document and enter your return address. Now click where you want the picture to appear and choose Insert, Picture, From File. Locate the picture you want to use and select it. Once the picture is in place in the Word document, resize it if necessary and then click it once to select it. Choose Insert, AutoText, New. Type in EnvelopeExtra1 and click OK. Now the envelope will include the new picture. A WORKSHEET IN EXCEL, A TABLE IN WORD There are several ways to get Excel worksheet data into a Word document. In all cases, you begin by selecting the cells you want to put into the Word document. So select the cells and then press Ctrl-C to copy your selection to the Clipboard. Now let's look at our first method. Switch to your Word document and choose Edit, Paste (or press Ctrl-V). This will paste the worksheet selection into Word as a table. Note that this method does not provide a link to the Excel document. Changes made in Excel will not appear in Word. To insert the worksheet selection as a linked file, copy the selection (Ctrl-C) and then switch to Word. Now choose Edit, Paste Special. When the Paste Special dialog box opens, select Formatted Text (RTF) and Paste as Link. Now click OK, and the worksheet selection will appear as a linked table in your Word document. You can also insert a linked table by copying the worksheet data (Ctrl-C) and then choosing Edit, Paste Special. This time select Microsoft Excel Worksheet Object and Paste as Link, and the data will appear as just numbers--no table. In both cases, the data is linked to the Excel worksheet, so any changes you make in Excel will also appear in the Word document. If you use Edit, Paste Special and choose Formatted Text (RTF) and Paste as Link, the data will appear in table form. You can select the table and then choose Table, AutoFormat to format the table to suit you. This is also the case when you simply copy the worksheet data and then switch to Word and press Ctrl-V. You can format the table as you wish. If you paste the data using Edit, Paste Special and choose Microsoft Excel Worksheet Object and Paste as Link, the data will not appear in table form. Therefore you can't apply table formatting. ONE AT A TIME You can change the background of all the slides in a slide show. Alternatively, you can change the background of just one slide (or as many as you like). Let's say you have a slide show that consists of 12 slides, and you'd like to change the background of two of them. Choose View, Slide Sorter. Now click the first slide you want to change. Hold down the Shift key and click the second slide. Choose Format, Custom Background. When the dialog box appears, click the arrow at the right side of the list box. When the list expands, select the background you want to use for the two slides. Now click Apply. Be careful with this feature. You can very easily change the background so drastically that the slide will give the audience a bit of a shock when it appears. If you decide to use different backgrounds during a slide show, make sure you make several practice presentations and ask for opinions on the background change. If you get even one negative comment, reconsider the background change. CREATING A SPECIAL DICTIONARY If you write a large number of documents that call for numerous technical terms, you'll find it handy to create a special dictionary for that purpose. To create a dictionary, open a new Word document and type the words you want to enter in a single column. Your entries should appear in a list like the one in this sample: RMS Voltage Ohm Ohm's Ampere Current RAM ROM EEPROM Disk Disc After you've added all the words you need at the moment (you can add more later), choose File, Save As and type in Special.dic. Now click the arrow at the right of the Save as Type list box to expand it. Select Text Only (*.txt) and then locate the folder c:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Proof and click Save. The location can vary, depending on the Windows version and the Office version you use, and on your own installation. You may find that you need to save to the folder named c:\windows\msapps\proof. When Word asks about saving a text file, tell it to go ahead. When you close the document (or close Word) you'll be asked about saving a nonstandard file again. Once again, tell Word to go ahead and save the text file. Now, back in Word, choose Tools, Options and click the Spelling tab. Click Custom Dictionaries. If your new dictionary appears in the list, select it and click OK. If it doesn't appear in the list, click Add. Your new dictionary should appear in this dialog box. Select it and click OK. Now locate it in the list and select it. Click OK to add the dictionary and close the dialog box. DOING IT THE GOVERNMENT WAY In a recent tip, we said that using all caps on a mailing label is a poor stylistic choice. This was our opinion, and one subscriber has pointed out that the U.S. Postal Service actually prefers addresses in all caps. They would also rather see you use a sans-serif font with no punctuation (you will need a dash in the Zip + 4 code). And, if you just bought a box of bright green envelopes that you expect to use with white ink, please refrain, the Postal Service much prefers black print on a white background. So, there you are--even if we don't like all caps, the Postal Service does. Since it's their ballpark, and we all want our mail to get delivered, we recommend playing the game their way. I CHANGED MY MIND--WHADDAYA GONNA DO, SUE ME? Should you wear the red dress, or the blue pantsuit? Should you stop at the donut shop on the way to work, or start a diet today? Should you remind that cop who pulled you over that you pay his salary, or spare him this and other kernels of wisdom you picked up in your high-school civics class? Yes, life is full of tough decisions, over which we tend to flip like a cheese omelet until the very last minute. Luckily for you, Word 97's designers understand this--and have provided a way to back out of any menu or button command at the last possible instant. To cancel--or not perform--a menu or button command even after you've pointed at it with the mouse, simply slide the pointer off the menu command or button. To cancel a menu or button command, even after you've pointed at it AND pressed the button: 1. KEEP HOLDING DOWN THE MOUSE BUTTON (if you release the mouse button, that constitutes a click, and the command is activated). 2. Slide the pointer off the menu command or button.97
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MAP IT If you commonly create Word 97 documents that contain a large number of headings, you can make use of Word's document mapping feature. Let's say your documents get rather long at times, so finding what you want can often be time-consuming. Just choose View, Document Map. With Document Map active, all your headings will appear in a separate pane at the left side of your document window. To get to one of the topics all you have to do is click on the heading and Word will take you there. If your documents have subheadings, a small plus sign will appear at the left of the headings that contain a subheading. Click on the plus sign to expand the list and display the subheadings. For Document Map to work, you must use Word's default headings and subheadings. If you make your own heading styles, Word won't know what to call a heading. CLICK-TOC Congratulations: You've used Word 97's outstanding Table of Contents feature to create a table of contents for your document. Now you can be sure that even your easiest-to-disorient readers will never get permanently lost in that tangle of nouns and verbs you generously refer to as your prose. But enough about THEM. What about YOU? What do you get out of having a table of contents? Quite a bit as it turns out, because your TOC also serves as a cute little hyperlinked map of your document, enabling you to jump to any page with a click of your mouse. Try it yourself: - In your TOC, find the page you'd like to go to. - Click the page number. Presto--you zip to the page in question. HOW TO FOOL DOCUMENT MAP In the last tip we discussed how to use Word 97's Document Map (choose View, Document Map). Since Document Map won't work unless you use standard headings and subheadings, you may think you can't use it for those special documents that use a nonstandard template. If you're forced to use a special template and would like to use Document Map, go ahead and use the standard headings. Then when you finish working with the document, use Find and Replace to replace all those headings with your special heading styles. For example, suppose you need to use a heading style named MyHead1 and you substitute Heading 1 so you can use Document Map. After you finish, press Ctrl-H to open the Find and Replace dialog box. Click on the Find What text entry box to select it. Click on More and then click on Format and choose Style. Now locate MyHead1 and click on it. Now click on the Replace With text entry box and click on Format, Style again. This time, locate and click on Heading 1. Now click on Replace All and Word will substitute your special heading for all the occurrences of Heading 1. NUMBER YOUR LISTS Version 95 If you want to let Word handle numbered lists for you, here's how to stay in control of what type of lists you get. If you would like to use Roman numerals, enter I followed by a period, a space, and the text. When you press Enter, the next Roman numeral will appear. It should look like this: I. This is the first line II. This is the second line III. And this is the third line If you want standard numbers, enter 1 followed by a period, a space, and your text. Now you'll get this: 1. This is first 2. This is second 3. This is third Want to use letters? Type A followed by a period, a space, and your text. Like this: A. This is first B. This is second C. This is third You can also automatically create bulleted lists. Let's say you'd like to use a round bullet. Type * followed by a space or tab, then your text. When you press Enter, the bullet for the next item in the list will appear. Finally, if you'd like to use a fancy greater-than sign (>) as a bullet, type > followed by a space or tab, and then your text. THERE'S NO SUBSTITUTE FOR THE ORIGINAL Today we'd like to cover a document formatting misdemeanor we've all committed at one time or another: the gaudy subhead. Like all subheads, it starts out innocently enough: We add some bold text, maybe a little italic. But then, in an effort to help even the most hapless simp distinguish the subhead from the general run of text, we let things get out of hand: We add garish color, bizarre capitalization, underlining (which, since the extinction of the typewriter, really has no place in a document) and, thanks to Word 97's new features, even animated text effects. Before long, our once elegant subhead is a glaring, flashing, overdecorated verbal flare, resembling those neon signs that pulsate over Las Vegas strip clubs. Luckily, you can rescue your subhead by returning it to its original formatting, with one quick keystroke: - Select the gaudy subhead. - Press Ctrl-spacebar DRAW! Some Office 97 users wonder why you'd want to use Draw Table rather than just using Insert Table. They point out that it's easier and quicker to insert a table since Word does most of the work for you. They are correct--except when you need rows with different numbers of cells. Let's say you need a table with four cells in the top row and six in the bottom row. Choose Table, Draw Table. Now use the drawing tool to draw the outline of your table. Then use the tool to draw a horizontal line in the table. Now draw three vertical lines in the top row and draw five vertical lines in the bottom row. IMAGES EVERYWHERE Version 4.x, 95 You know you can insert images into a Word document. You can also insert images into the header and footer. But how about the mailing label? Why not put an image in the mailing label too? You can do this, but the method isn't quite as obvious as inserting pictures into documents and headers. Here's what to do. Locate a BMP file that you'd like to use in your labels. Now choose Tools, Envelopes and Labels. When the dialog box opens, click Labels. Now click in the Address box. Press Ctrl-F9 to create a field. Enter into the field "IncludePicture C:\\windows\\MyOwn.bmp" where the picture is in the Windows folder and is named MyOwn.bmp. Make sure you use the double slashes (c:\\) as shown for every subdirectory when you enter the file name). Now, while the cursor is still in the field, press F9. The picture will load and appear in the label. If the picture is too large, use the mouse to size it. This works best with small, simple figures. For example, inserting a small company logo should work well. Try to size the picture before you insert it into the label. If the picture doesn't look good at a reduced size, then it certainly won't look good in the label. If you use a black-and-white printer, you need to make sure the picture you intend to insert into the label will print well on your printer. 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. INS-TANT PASTE Now that Word 97 has quite sensibly disabled the Ins key (instead of using it to toggle to the completely useless Overtype mode), it's free for you to use for something else. Word lets you program the Ins key to paste (or "insert") the contents of the clipboard--in other words, use the Ins key as a shortcut for the Paste command. Here's how to do it: - Choose Tools, then Options. - Click the Edit tab. - Select "Use the Ins key for Paste." - Click OK. We've rigged our Ins keys to spray insecticide. (Just kidding.) 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. IF YOU DON'T USE IT, MAYBE YOU SHOULD LOSE IT Having trouble with drag and drop? You're not alone--because a sophisticated feature like drag and drop isn't for everyone. If you're not in the habit of using drag and drop, it can be more of a hassle than anything else because it can enable you to accidentally move text you didn't intend to move. The good news? Drag and drop is OPTIONAL. You can disable it, ensuring forever that selected text won't move unless you specifically cut, delete, or replace it. Here's how to disable drag-and-drop capabilities: 1. Choose Tools + Options. 2. Click the Edit tab. 3. Deselect Drag-and-Drop Text Editing. 4. Click OK. SIZED OR CROPPED? When you insert a picture, such as a Clip Art object, into Word, you often have to size it to make it fit your document properly. You can size a picture without distorting it by simply watching the display at the bottom left of the Word window. This display reports the current size as a percentage of the original width and height. As long as the two numbers match, the scaling is distortion-free. To crop a picture in Word, hold down the Shift key while you use the mouse to drag one of the picture handles. WORKING WITH SECTIONS When you need to change the formatting of one portion of a page (or document), the best approach is to insert a section. To do this, position the cursor where you want the new formatting to start and choose Insert, Break. When the Break dialog box opens, select the Continuous radio button and click OK. Now you can set the formatting and add your new text. When you want to go back to the original formatting, choose Insert, Break again and select Continuous. Click OK. Note: If you decide to delete a section mark, the format of the section before the break will change to match that of the second section. Make sure this format change is what you want before you delete a section break. AREN'T YOU DASHING? What separates the word processor from a typewriter? Typographical experts (also known as "font weenies") insist that it's the word processor's ability to use typographically correct dashes instead of minus signs--specifically, an em dash instead of two minus signs and an en dash instead of one minus sign. "This is great for them," you reply, "but if I aspire to font weenie-dom, how can I insert these characters into my documents?" Easily, as follows: - * To type an em dash( — ), press Ctrl + Alt + the minus sign on the number keypad. - * To type an en dash ( – ), press Ctrl + the minus sign on the number keypad. GROUPING IN WORD Grouping of objects isn't limited to PowerPoint. In fact, it's a good idea to group objects in Word, too. Grouping them keeps them together and easier to deal with. Let's say you've inserted several Clip Art objects into a Word document. You've placed these objects just where you want them in relation to the page and to each other. You don't want to lose this relationship, so click the first object and then press and hold down the Shift key while you select the remaining objects. If the Drawing toolbar isn't available, choose View, Toolbars, Drawing. Now click the Draw button in the Drawing toolbar and choose Group. Your objects will become one. Note that you cannot Ungroup Clip Art in Word. If you need to make a custom picture by ungrouping and removing some portions, use PowerPoint and then copy the result and paste it into your Word document. IF THIS REMINDS YOU OF HIGH SCHOOL, WE APOLOGIZE IN ADVANCE Ask your average grown-up to list the five things he or she hated most about high school, and invariably you'll get the same list: - * Wedgies - * Zits - * Cafeteria food - * Vomiting on prom night - * Writing papers with footnotes Well, here's great news, about 20 years after you needed it: Word 97 makes footnotes a snap! And it doesn't just make footnotes easy to create (as we documented in an earlier tip); it also makes them easy to reference, too. To read the reference associated with any footnote or endnote in a Word 97 document, just double-click the footnote or endnote number. You're instantly zipped to the relevant footnote or endnote text. And if you're jealous of today's high school students because they have Word and you don't, take heart: Improved weaving techniques and more durable cotton cloth make the wedgie an even more painful experience than it was in your day. Technology is a double-edged sword, no? 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. MAKING WORD SPILL THE BEANS If you write Word macros, at times you'd probably like to get some information about the system. You can get all the system info by simply inserting the command MicrosoftSystemInfo into your code. This opens the Microsoft System Information dialog box. If you'd like to get specific information for your macro to use, you can use code such as the example shown here: Sub MAIN Dim info$(30) GetSystemInfo info$() FileNewDefault FormatTabs .Position = "1 in", .Set Insert "CPU" + Chr$(9) + info$(1) InsertPara Insert "Windows" + Chr$(9) + info$(3) InsertPara Insert "Disk Space" + Chr$(9) + info$(5) + " bytes" End Sub This code uses GetSystemInfo to gather information about the computer. It reports the type of CPU used, the current version of Windows, and the remaining disk space. There are some differences in the way this macro reports information in Word 6 and Word 7. In Word 6, the results are CPU i486 Windows 3.95 Disk Space 302448640 bytes In Word 7, the same macro reports CPU Pentium Windows 4.0 Disk Space 305725440 bytes IS THIS PAGE BLANK? If you write Word macros, you may sometimes need to know when a particular page is completely blank. For example, if you need to search a page for some particular text, there's no point in searching a blank page. Try this code: StartOfDocument If AtEndOfDocument() = -1 Then Stop() The code moves the insertion point to the start of the document and then checks to see if the insertion point is at the end of the document. If the start and end are the same, then the page is blank. When you get to the Stop, a dialog box will appear informing you that the macro was interrupted. If you don't want this message, use If AtEndOfDocument() = -1 Then Stop(-1) This will cause the macro to stop without a message. EAT YOUR WORDS Sometimes you type something so stupid, so awkward, so utterly wrong, that deleting it by conventional methods is simply not satisfying enough. Select the text and press Delete? Too quick--not painful enough. Backspace over the offending text? Too conventional. Undo? May not get it all. Carve the text out of your monitor screen with a diamond-tipped glass cutter? Too expensive (plus, the tube will implode and you'll be blinded by flying shards of glass). No, the next time you want to eliminate some embarrassing text, try this: 1. Position the insertion point marker at the beginning of the embarrassing text. 2. Press Ctrl + Delete repeatedly. Call us crazy, but you'll swear Word is EATING your miscreant prose, one word at a time. Enjoy! THEY AREN'T JUST FOR HEADERS AND FOOTERS ANYMORE Since the days when sorry, pattern-bald monks transcribed books by hand, page numbers have always appeared in one of two places: either in the document's header or the document's footer--nowhere else. For hundreds of years, there's been no change in the position of page numbers. In fact, if you were asked to pick the one phenomenon among all earthly phenomena that has not changed and will never change, you may be tempted to say that it would be the position of page numbers in a printed document (or the inexplicable appeal of headcheese). But you would be wrong. In the first case, Word lets you put a page number anywhere you can put the insertion-point marker: 1. Position the insertion-point marker anywhere you want a page number to appear (even in a Microsoft Draw 97 text box). 2. Press Alt + Shift + P. In the second case, Jell-O vegetable molds replaced headcheese in the who-would-have-thought-people-would-eat-this? category. Hundreds of years of tradition down the drain. Makes you all tingly, doesn't it? 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. I HAVE NO STYLE We have an e-mail from a subscriber, C. G., who says that his Word program suddenly stopped doing a complete spell check. When he does a spell check, he gets a dialog box that says "The spelling and grammar check is complete." This happened after his IS department sent him a new style sheet to use. Actually, Word 97 includes the solution right in the dialog box. But it can be confusing. What happened was that the new style sheet was set for No Proofing. To correct the situation, choose Format, Style. When the dialog box opens, click Normal (or your main style name). Now click Modify and then click Format. Click Language now and you'll probably see that the style is set to No Proofing. Select English (if that's what you need) and click OK. Click OK again and then click Apply. This should take care of the problem. If not, you need to check some of the other styles that you commonly use in your documents and set them all to the correct language. APPLY STYLES WITH STYLE--PART 1 OF 3 You say you like Word's paragraph styles because they let you format entire paragraphs with two clicks of your mouse. The problem is that the first click is SLOW--you click the little arrow next to the style list, wait for what seems to be most of the day, select your new style, see the change in your paragraph, save your file, and go to bed. Unless you decide you'd prefer a different style, in which case you're pulling an all-nighter. Okay, we're exaggerating. But you can apply some styles much faster with the following keystroke shortcuts (be sure to select the paragraph[s] you want to change first, either by highlighting all the text or placing your insertion point within it): - * To apply the Normal style, press Ctrl + Shift + N. - * To apply the Heading 1 style, press Ctrl + Alt + 1. - * To apply the Heading 2 style, press Ctrl + Alt + 2. - * To apply the Heading 3 style, press Ctrl + Alt + 3. - * To apply the List Bullet style, press Ctrl + Shift + L. APPLY STYLES WITH STYLE--PART 2 OF 3 Last time, we passed on some shortcuts for applying styles via the keyboard. Today, we show you how to scroll through the style list via the keyboard so that you can quickly apply all styles, even those without shortcuts: 1. Press Ctrl + Shift + S. This selects the current style in the toolbar's style box. 2. Press the up arrow or down arrow key until the style you want to apply is selected. 3. Press Enter to apply the selected style. Believe it or not, you can expect one more style application tip next time (we're nothing if not exhaustive--and we don't mean people quickly tire of us, either). ANOTHER SELECTIVE SERVICE You can select text with the mouse, you can hold down Shift and use the arrow keys, you can double-click, triple-click, and you can click in the margin. Do you need another way to select text? Probably not, but here it is anyway. Click at the beginning of text you'd like to select. Now look at the bottom of the Word window. See the button marked EXT? Double-click EXT and it will become active (you'll see this when it happens). Now you can use the arrow keys to select text. You don't have to hold down anything while you do this. When you're finished, press Esc. APPLY STYLES WITH STYLE--PART 3 OF 3 If you thought "The Godfather" was the best trilogy ever produced, hold your judgment until you read this, the long-awaited third part in our critically acclaimed three-part "Apply Styles with Style" trilogy. You thrilled to our style-selection keyboard shortcuts in Part 1. You were on the edge of your seat for the keyboard style-selection tip in Part 2. But nothing compares to the excitement you'll experience in this, the granddaddy (godfather?) of all style-application tips. To repeatedly apply a style you just applied: 1. Select the next paragraph to which you want to apply the style. 2. Press Ctrl + Y. Okay, so it's a sleazy adaptation of the well-known Edit + Repeat shortcut. It just goes to show that, except for "Rocky III," the second sequel is never what it's cracked up to be. DON'T INVADE MY SPACE! Word wrap is an amazing thing--one of the most basic benefits of word processing. Type a word that's too long to fit on the current line, and Word automatically moves it to the next line. You can't beat it with a stick. Unless, of course, Word's word wrap separates words you'd rather keep together--such as someone's first and last name, or the word "Chapter" and the chapter number. No problem; if you want to keep two words together no matter what, link them together with a nonbreaking space: 1. Type the first word. 2. Press Ctrl + Shift + space to insert the nonbreaking space. 3. Type the second word. >From now on, these words always appear on the same line. If Word can't fit the second word on the current line with the first, it moves BOTH words to the next line. Pretty cool when words mate for life, don't you think? ADD CONTINENTAL FLAIR TO YOUR WRITING You're the cosmopolitan type. You smoke imported cigars. You eat at restaurants with French waiters and menus that require a translator. You have (and know how to use) a BIDET. And now, you've even joined a pen pal club, just so you can tell your friends and coworkers that you correspond regularly with people from all over the world. The problem? These pen pals have the gall to insist that their names and addresses be spelled correctly, including those special characters--accents, circumflexes, and so on--that make foreign text, well, look foreign. Luckily, Word 97 lets you appease your international clique, and impress your friends at the same time: - To type a character with an acute accent, press Ctrl + ' followed by the character. - To type a character with a grave accent, press Ctrl + ` (the apostrophe under the tilde) followed by the character. - To type a character with a tilde, press Ctrl + Shift + ~ followed by the character. - To type a character with a circumflex, press Ctrl + Shift + ^ followed by the character. - To type a character with a diaeresis, press Ctrl + Shift + : followed by the character. If you go through this trouble to appear cosmopolitan, consider dual citizenship. 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? IN-LINE CALCULATIONS We pointed out in the last tip that you can set up a table in a Word document to handle calculations. Here's another useful way to deal with short calculations in Word. Suppose you're writing an informal quote or invoice, and you want to show the total cost of a purchase. You don't have to grab your calculator or open Excel. All you have to do is tell Word to do the calculation for you. Let's say you sold someone 120 Dingles @ $12.32 each. What's the total? Type a line like this: Thank you for your purchase of 120 Dingles. Please remit $ Immediately after the $, press Ctrl-F9 and enter =120*12.32 Now press F9 and the total will appear in the line as shown here: Thank you for your purchase of 120 Dingles. Please remit $1478.4 Add the trailing zero and you're ready to go. A PAGE OF ITS OWN Some paragraphs--chapter titles, introductions, the first paragraph in the story of your life--deserve more attention than others. You don't want paragraphs like these appearing in the middle of some page, surrounded by other lesser paragraphs. Every important paragraph should begin at the beginning of a bright new page, where it can demand--and receive--the reader's full and undivided attention. Nothing less will do. To ensure that a paragraph ALWAYS begins at the top of a brand-new page, no matter how you edit the paragraph or the text around it, follow these steps: 1. Right-click anywhere within the paragraph you want to appear at the top of a page. 2. From the shortcut menu, choose Paragraph to open the Paragraph dialog box. 3. Click the Lines and Page Breaks tab. 4. Under Pagination, select Page Break Before. 5. Click OK. NEWS FLASH FOR EGOMANIACAL WRITERS: Not every paragraph you write is great. Don't waste paper--and your readers' time--by formatting all your paragraphs this way. A TIP FOR THE STATUS-UNCONSCIOUS Others may be locked in a death race with the Joneses, but not you. In fact, you're vigorously antistatus. When you know Jones will bring single-malt scotch to the party, you're sure to arrive late with your bottle of blackberry brandy. And if Jones buys a new car, you race out and buy the rustiest jalopy you can find, just to prove a point. No, status is NOT one of your concerns. And the minute you heard about the status bar at the bottom of your Word 97 display, you knew it had to go, regardless of the useful information and features it provides (current page and cursor location, mouse shortcuts, and so on). To remove the status bar from the Word display: 1. Choose Tools + Options to open the Options dialog box. 2. Click the View tab. 3. Under Window, deselect Status Bar. 4. Click OK. AH, TOGETHERNESS Some things just naturally belong together: fish and water, wine and cheese, Burns and Allen. And yes, certain paragraphs belong together, too. For example, a subhead (which, though it may look like just a line to you, is actually a paragraph) belongs with the first paragraph beneath it; nobody wants to see a subhead just hanging there, lonely and distraught, without any subsequent text to give its life meaning...yadda yadda yadda. How can you keep two beautiful paragraphs together? By following these steps: 1. Right-click the first paragraph and choose Paragraph from the shortcut menu. 2. In the Paragraph dialog box, click the Lines and Breaks tab. 3. Under Pagination, select Keep with Next. 4. Click OK. You've just joined these two paragraphs together, till death (or a change in formatting) do them part. These things always make us weepy. BARTENDER, POUR ME A FAST DRAFT Why is it that your average beer connoisseur prefers draft beer to bottled? Not because it's fresher: Unless the keg has been recently filled and kept at a consistent temperature, draft beer can get pretty gamy. Plus, draft beer isn't pasteurized--which can explain some of its more unpleasant day-after effects. No, true beer drinkers order draft beer for one reason: They can get it into their mouths faster on average than bottled beer. Because the bartender doesn't have to remove the cap from a draft beer, the beer drinker wins back valuable seconds of beer-drinking time. Toward what strained analogy is this driving? Word 97's Draft printing mode is beneficial for the exact same reason--it's faster than regular printing (there is no "bottled" printing; that would make our analogy too perfect). That's because Draft mode prints your document using just one font and minimal formatting. Here's how itworks: 1. Choose File + Print to open the Print dialog box. 2. Click the Options button. The Options dialog box appears. 3. Under Printing Options, select Draft Output. 4. Click OK and then click Print. The result is a document that's not suitable for final presentation but is perfect for proofreading. (Be sure to deselect the Draft Printout options before you print your final copy of the document.) ESCAPE FROM...FULL SCREEN VIEW? Okay, it's not as catchy a feature-film title as Escape from the Planet of the Apes or Escape from Alcatraz, but this tip could be a lot more important to you. Say that you've switched to Word 97's Full Screen view--which lets you enjoy your favorite word processor without the intrusion of menus, toolbars, scrollbars, and more. Everything is just ducky-until you remove the Close Full Screen button window by accident! How will you ever get back to one of Word's other views? Easy: Press Esc. Yes, just one press of this indispensable button returns you to your familiar standard Word view. The result may not be as much spine-tingling excitement as escaping from America's highest-security prison--or from a planet ruled by Roddy McDowell--but it will have to do. HOW TO BE A HIT (?) AT PARTIES Here's a situation we've all been in before: You're at a dinner party full of urbane, knowledgeable people. The table is abuzz with brisk political, social, and cultural conversation. The man on your left is describing pictures at a museum exhibit he recently attended, making offhand references to periods in art history; the woman on your right is explaining the long-term implications of current federal budget policy, complete with her own round-number compound interest calculations. And you, you're saying nothing--because what could YOU, a mere Word 97 fanatic, possibly have to say that would interest THIS crowd? Our recommendation: Baffle 'em with Word 97 trivia! To wit: 1. Bang on your glass with a butter knife until you have everyone's attention. (If anyone starts kissing, say, "No, that's not what I had in mind.") 2. Say something like, "Gee, I hate to break up this Nobel-quality exchange of ideas, but I'll give $25 to the person who can guess the largest font size allowed in Word 97." 3. Stand silently as the other guests first come to grips with the total inappropriateness of the question and then launch into pathetic guessing. Give no clues. 4. After a few minutes, say something like, "Look, you're not even warm--although 100 inches was close. The answer is 1638 points--or 136.5 inches." 5. Sit down and either a) bask in the glow of everyone's total admiration, or b) be prepared to be either ignored or stared at for the rest of the evening. I'LL HAVE ONE FROM THAT TRAY, AND A FEW MORE FROM THE OTHER... No, this isn't a recording of your Aunt Bertha as she eats her way through a catered reception. This, in fact, could be you as you try to get your printer to print the first page of a document on your letterhead--placed in one tray--and the rest of your document on regular paper, stored in another tray. Well, muttering to your printer won't work, but the following Word 97 procedure will: 1. Load one of your printer's paper trays with your letterhead and the other with regular paper. (NOTE: As you've probably determined by now, if your printer doesn't have two paper trays, you can't use this procedure). 2. Choose File + Page Setup. 3. In the Page Setup dialog box, click the Paper Source tab. 4. Under First Page, select the tray containing your letterhead. 5. Under Other Pages, select the tray containing your regular paper. 6. Click OK. When you print this document, Word automatically takes the first page of your document from the letterhead tray and the remaining pages from the regular tray. With the time you save, why not meet Aunt Bertha in town for an all-you-can-eat buffet lunch? IF I WANT TO REPLACE SOMETHING, I'LL LET YOU KNOW Last time, we noted that by default Word 97 replaces selected text with whatever you type next, which is handy when you want to replace existing text. Instead of selecting and deleting the new text before you replace it, you can simply select it and type over it, thus saving a keystroke. But this feature also makes deleting existing text by accident easier. For example, if you select some text and then accidentally hit any other key, poof! Your text is gone, replaced by the accidental keystroke. Now, you can always click the Undo button to retrieve your text. But if you find yourself accidentally deleting text more often than you use the type-and-replace feature, you may want to cancel the feature altogether, as follows: 1. Choose Tools + Options to open the Options dialog box. 2. Click the Edit tab. 3. Under Editing Options, deselect Typing Replaces Selection. 4. Click OK. JUST BECAUSE YOUR TOOLBAR'S CONFUSED, YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE You're working along in Word, enjoying yourself (hey, this is as much fun as you usually have in a day), without a care in the world. Then you select some text and, as is your habit, turn to the trusty Formatting toolbar for a quick update on the fonts, text sizes, attributes, alignment, and other formatting currently applied to that text. But what's this? The Style, Font, and Font Size boxes are empty! And the Bold button is not turned on, even though you can plainly see bold text in the selection. What's going on? Calm down, and remember the following rule: When the contents of the Formatting toolbar seem to disappear--or not to work--it means that you've applied different formats to different parts of the selected text. If the selected text includes text in two or more fonts, the Font box displays nothing (rather than choosing just one of the fonts and risking misleading you). If the selected text includes text that is both bold and not bold, the Bold button remains unpressed (so you won't think plain text is bold). Nothing is wrong with your display. JUST YOUR TYPE SIZE In the true Darwinian state that is the American workplace, you're always looking for ways to demonstrate your superiority over your fellow workers. Well, in the interest of petty office politics, we'd like to offer you one way to strut your evolutionary stuff: Become a type-size snob. Here's how: 1. Approach the desk of a person against whom you'd like to "naturally select." 2. Look briefly at the Word document that person is working on and say loudly, so that others (including the dominant pack leader, or "boss") can hear, "You've used 10-point type in a place where 13-point type would yield a greater competitive advantage." 3. Seize the inferior coworker's mouse, select the offending text, and click the Font Size list on the Formatting toolbar. 4. Listen as the soon-to-be-a-bottom-dweller says something like, "See? No 13-point listing on the Font Size list!" 5. Type 13--or any other point size you'd like to use--and press Enter. Word changes the selected text to the type size you entered. And you've just climbed up another rung of the evolutionary ladder. LEAVE THE COLLATING TO WORD Do you sometimes find yourself feeling nostalgic for the low-tech workplace of the 1970s and early 1980s? One way to kill that nostalgia is to collate multiple copies of your next long document by hand. Nothing brings back the horrors of the old days like turning one large pile of papers into several smaller ones, all the while muttering to yourself "Here's page 5 for you, and for you, and for you, and for you..." Instead, why not just accept modern technology for what it is--BETTER--and let Word 97 automatically collate copies of your documents as it prints them, as follows: 1. Choose File + Print to open the Print dialog box. 2. Under Copies, select Collate (note that it may already be selected by default). 3. In the Number of Copies box, indicate the number of collated copies you want to print. 4. Click Print. Your printouts emerge collated--leaving you time for other nostalgic pursuits, like watching reruns of Car 54, Where Are You? MORE FORGIVENESS FOR THE FICKLE Last time, we told you how to get out of ANY menu or button selection at the very last minute. But suppose that you're even less decisive than we imagined--and you don't change your mind until after you've selected a command or pressed a button and then selected some options from a dialog box! How do you get yourself out of THIS fine mess? Quite easily, it turns out. To exit virtually ANY dialog box without executing any of the options you've selected, do any of the following: - Press Esc. - Click Cancel. - Click the dialog box's Close button (the X in the top-left corner of the dialog box). Whichever method you choose, Word 97 closes the dialog box without doing any of the things you specified. If only you could make such clean breaks in your personal life. ONE LAST TIME... Call this part three of our "Can't Make Up Your Mind?" series. Suppose that you selected some text--for formatting, deleting, replacing, moving, copying, whatever. You're about to do whatever it is you want to do when suddenly, for no reason, you decide you don't want to do it. How can you unselect this text? It's easy--but in this case, what you DON'T do is as important as what you DO do: - DON'T type. By default, Word replaces selected text with whatever you type (next time, we show you how to cancel that default, if you wish). - DO click anywhere else on the page. Doing so immediately unselects any selected text. PROVING ONCE AGAIN THAT THERE ARE NEVER (OR ALWAYS?) TOO MANY WAYS TO DO A GOOD THING We at Dummies Daily hope that you're as interested in selecting an entire Word 97 document as we are. Because every time we turn around, we uncover yet another quick way to get this all-important job done! And so, without any further ado, here's one more way to select an entire Word document: Triple-click in the left margin (for these purposes also known as the selection bar). In closing, we think it's now appropriate to note that if you ever, EVER forget how to select an entire Word document, you can't blame us. WHEN IS AN UNDERLINE NOT AN UNDERLINE When it's something more, of course. No, you haven't been accidentally e-mailed the Dummies Zen Koan of the Day; we're just trying to alert you to some of the little-known underlining possibilities offered in Word 97. For example, did you know that you could double-underline text? You did? Okay--did you know you could underline it with a thicker line? Dashes and/or dots? A wavy line? You can. Here's how: 1. Select the text you want to underline. 2. Right-click the selection and choose Font. 3. In the Underline drop-down list of the Font dialog box, choose the type of underlining you want (you can see the results in the preview box before you finalize your selection). 4. Click OK. So, which is more underlined--thick-underlined text, double-underlined text, or wavy-underlined text? Maybe this koan business isn't a bad idea.97
GUESS WHO? Hello there! It's me again--your mother, brought to you by those nice people at Dummies Daily. How many times did I have to tell you not to sit too close to the TV screen? You don't remember? The answer is THOUSANDS. And did you learn? I don't think so--because every day you sit inches from your computer monitor, WHICH IS NOTHING MORE THAN A FANCY-SCHMANCY TV SCREEN! Now, the nice Dummies people told me that you're probably sitting so close to the monitor because you need to read the small type; but if you make the type bigger, you'll do too much scrolling--whatever that is. Well, take a tip from your cyberchallenged mom: Try Word 97's Online Layout View. Click the Online Layout View button (second from the left, to the left of the horizontal scrollbar) OR choose View + Online Layout. Word enlarges your text so that you can read it from a distance, AND it wraps the text to fit your screen rather than your page margins. Sure, your document won't look exactly as it will in print, but at least you won't go blind. And not being blind should make it easier to dial my phone number once in a while. WHAT'S THE FORMAT? You open a Word 97 document, and for a moment you're completely taken aback by its beauty. One paragraph in particular catches and holds your eye. The formatting is sensational, even beautiful. There's only one problem: You can't for the life of you figure out how it got that way. Well, here's one way to find out: 1. Choose Help + What's This? 2. Click in the paragraph. A box appears, describing the formatting applied to both the specific character you clicked and the paragraph that contains it. Even better, you can keep clicking other paragraphs and characters to find out more about them; just press Esc when you have enough information.95
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EXCEL NUMBER FORMAT SWITCH In Microsoft Excel, entering a time with more than 60 minutes into a cell may change the cell to the General number format and give you a decimal. If you type 5:62, for example, the cell will pop up with 0.251389. Try entering THAT into your date book! The following versions are affected: Excel 97 for Windows; Excel for Windows 95, versions 7.0 and 7.0a; and Excel for Windows, versions 5.0, 5.0a, and 5.0c. Microsoft's work-around: Change the cell to the Time number format by highlighting the cell, going to Format, Cells, Number, and clicking Time in the Category list. Then click the time format you want in the Type list and choose OK. ATTENTION JAQUELINE SUSANNE: ONCE IS PLENTY, THANKS Say that you have an Excel 97 worksheet in which you've filled columns A and B from top to bottom--that is, from row 1 to row 65536--with numbers. As if creating this worksheet wasn't difficult (and may we add, monotonous) enough, you now want to add a formula into each row of column C that adds the number in the first row to the number in the second row. Now, you COULD type the formula +A1+B1 into cell C1 and then copy that formula to every remaining cell in the column. But there is a slightly faster way to insert the same formula in many cells: 1. Select the range into which you want to enter the same formula (in our example, all of column C). 2. Type the formula. 3. Press Ctrl + Enter (instead of Enter, as you normally would). Excel enters the formula into each selected cell. This trick saves just as much time when used over small areas as it would in our ridiculously exaggerated example. PROTECT YOUR SPREADSHEETS AGAINST EVERYONE ELSE Last time we explained how you can protect an Excel 97 workbook against accidental changes YOU might make to it (by opening it as a read-only file--right-click on the file name in the Open dialog box and select Open Read-Only). But YOU are the least of your problems (we assume, although we don't have access to your complete psychological profile). If you share a workbook that you'd rather not have changed with someone else, how can you encourage that person to open it as a read-only file? No problem: You can set the file to display a "read-only recommendation" whenever someone opens it. Here's how: 1. Choose File + Save. 2. In the Save As dialog box, click on Options. 3. Select Read-Only Recommended. 4. Click on OK and then Save. The next time someone attempts to open this workbook, Excel displays a box saying that the workbook "should be opened as read-only unless you need to save changes to it." Even better, it enables the person to open the file as read only simply by clicking on Yes. In other words, it's idiot-proof--a phrase which by no means reflects our assessment of your coworkers. CHARTS BAR NONE You have the inventive mind of Thomas Edison but the timing of a bent metronome. The night after you tried freezing juice in your ice cube trays, some other guy invented the Popsicle. Mere days after you perfected your tail-operated fly swatter for dogs, some mega-corporation came up with the flea collar. And the day you filed the patent for your pet rocks with fur? That's right--that's the day the Chia Head hit the market. But this time, you're really onto something: A BETTER BAR CHART. Unlike the bars that bore people stiff every day, you're creating bars they won't be able to resist, bars with texture so lifelike that business people all over the world will want to reach out and grab them. Sorry, looks like you're a dollar short again because Excel lets you add texture to chart bars and to pie slices and to other chart objects, too: 1. Right-click on a chart object, and choose Format Data Series. 2. Click on the Patterns tab. 3. Click on the Fill Effects button. 4. Click on the Texture tab. 5. Select a texture and click on OK; then click on OK again. Excel fills the chart object with the texture you selected. And you're back to the drawing board. SKIP A STEP There's an old saying that goes something like this: Never run when you can walk, never walk when you can sit, never sit when you can lie down, and never just lie down when you can slip into a benign, temporary coma. If this kind of thinking sounds good to you, then pay attention because today we're going to show you how to open an Excel 97 workbook without first starting Excel! 1. Click on the Start button. 2. Choose Open Office Document. 3. Double-click on the Excel document you want to open. The system automatically loads Excel for you and then opens the file in question, saving you valuable nano-calories along the way. We're going to show you how to create a NEW Excel document without first starting Excel. 1. Click on the Start button. 2. Choose New Office Document. 3. In the dialog box that appears, click through the tabs until you find a template for the type of Excel document you want to create. 4. Double-click on the template icon. Excel opens automatically and then creates a new file, using the template you chose. CHOOSY CHARTERS CHOOSE CHART DATA Excel's automated Charting Wizard has a mind of its own--and that's usually a good thing. Place your cursor anywhere within a range of data that you want to chart, click on the Chart button, and the Chart Wizard automatically selects the entire range and guides you through creating the chart. But what if you don't want to chart ALL the data in a range? No problem: Just let the chart Wizard know: 1. Select ONLY the data you want to chart. Be sure to include the appropriate column and row titles. Hold down the Ctrl key to select unconnected ranges of data. 2. Click on the Chart button. The Wizard still guides you but includes only the data you selected in your chart. ACCESS, EXCEL LINKING LIMITS Links go only so far between Access and Excel. If you create a link table in Microsoft Access 97 that links to a worksheet in an Excel 97 for Windows workbook, be careful. If you change a value or values in the link table using Access, open the workbook in Excel, AND if one or more formulas in the workbook refer to the changed values, you may get recalculation errors. Microsoft's work-around: Open the workbook in Excel and press Ctrl-Alt-F9. This will recalculate all the workbook's values. However, if you again make changes through Access, you'll need to go through the same ritual. CLOSE EVERYTHING! Once you start opening Excel workbooks . . . well, you can't help yourself. It starts innocently enough, say, with your daily inventory status workbook. Before long, you've got your individual supplier workbooks open, your order entry workbooks, your invoicing workbooks--and that's just the beginning, before you break out your lottery number tracking, college basketball pool, and bookmaker phone number workbooks. In other words, before midday, your desktop is littered with workbooks. And the thought of closing them all, one by one, makes your mouse finger twitch with anticipated pain. Isn't there an easier way? Of course there is! (Do you think we would have launched into this spiel if there wasn't?) To close all your open Excel workbooks at one time, do the following: 1. Hold down the Shift key. 2. Choose File + Close All (the Close command changes to Close All when you hold down the Shift key). Excel closes all your files at once (stopping only to prompt you to save changes, if you haven't already), which, we suppose, only encourages you to make an even bigger mess next time. SPECIAL DATES Version 4.x, 95 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 the cell (to select it) then choose Format, Cells and select Custom. Double-click the entry that's in Type and press Delete to get rid of it. Now, under Type enter mmmm dd and then click OK. Let's say the date is 1/25/98. The cell will display January 25. 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 Sunday, January 25. Click 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 OK. This time, the cell will display Sunday, January 25, 1998. DELIGHTFUL, DELOVELY, DELIMITER Version 4.x, 95 There are times when you might need to use an Excel file in some program that doesn't use Excel files. If this happens to you, check to see what kind of files the program will handle. Many programs will read delimited ASCII files. This means that each Excel column must be separated by some character. It can be a Space, a Tab, or a comma. Let's give this a try. Open a new worksheet and enter text and numbers into three or four columns. Perhaps something like this: Column 1 Column 2 Column 3 1 4 6 2 5 7 3 8 9 This will do fine as an example. Choose File, Save As. Type in a name for your file and then click the arrow at the right side of the Save as Type list box. Scroll down to CSV (Comma Delimited)(*.csv) and click Save. You'll get a warning telling you that you're not saving the file as a standard Excel file. Tell it Yes, you want to do it. Now you can quit Excel if you like. When you do, you'll get another warning about saving a nonstandard file. Tell it that you do want to save it. You can open NotePad now and then open the new file, YourName.csv. The file will appear in the form shown here: Column 1,Column 2,column 3 1,4,6 2,5,7 3,8,9 At this point, you can try reading the new file into that choosy program. If your program requires tab- or space-delimited files, just select the appropriate option when you choose File, Save As. JUST TAKING UP SPACE? While all that food from the holidays still may have you struggling to minimize how much space YOU fill in the physical world, in today's tip we show you a way to maximize how much space you fill in the virtual world. More specifically, the topic today is how you can get the ultimate possible horizontal space for viewing your message list and preview pane in Outlook Express. The answer is actually quite obvious, although you may not think to do it: Hide the Outlook Bar, Folder List, and Folder Bar from view. (Don't worry, we also show you how you can get along without them at the end of the tip.) To hide these bars, do the following: 1. Choose View + Layout. 2. In the Basic section, click in each of the Outlook Bar, Folder List, and Folder Bar check boxes until each is empty. 3. Click on OK. So now that you have all this great space, how do you get to those folders? Press Ctrl + Y and, in the Go To Folder dialog box, double-click on whatever folder you want to open. There you go. You're taking up all the horizontal space you possibly can. Speaking of which, you may want to think about getting in a few extra post-holiday sit-ups this week. WHEN IS CONTIGUOUS CONTIGUOUS? Excel will let you select rows and columns of cells whether they be contiguous or noncontiguous. Let's look at how this works. To check out Excel's selection options, first open a new sheet. Now start at cell A1 and type 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 moving downward (that is, enter numbers in cells A1, A2, A3, A4, and A5. Repeat those entries in cells D1 through D5 and cells E15 through E19. Now use the mouse to select cells A1 through A5. Hold down Ctrl and use the mouse to select cells D1 through D5. Choose Edit, Copy. Go to cell F1 and press Ctrl-V. Excel will paste the values in the selected cells into cells F1 through F5 and G1 through G5. So there's one use for the technique--you can eliminate unnecessary spaces between entries. Now use the mouse to select cells A1 through A5 again. Hold down Ctrl and select cells E15 through E19. If you now choose Edit, Copy, you'll get an error message telling you that you can't use the command on multiple selections. Obviously, this message isn't entirely accurate--we just used it on multiple selections. The message really means that you can't use Copy on multiple non-contiguous selections. If you select columns that have spaces (cells) between them, Excel considers them contiguous if they are adjacent. For example, cells A1 through A5 and F1 through F5 are adjacent. However, cells A1 through A5 and F2 through F6 are not adjacent. Also, cells A1 through A5 and A15 through A19 are adjacent. You can select them and then choose Edit, Copy. Then you can move to a new location (perhaps H1) and press Ctrl-V (or choose Edit, Paste). This will paste all the numbers into cells H1 through H10. WHAT THE ########### DOES ########### MEAN? Sure, entering formulas can be a lot of work: making sure your cell references are correct, entering your functions accurately, checking and double-checking everything. But it's all worth it when you see the result--the number you've been waiting for--appear like magic the split second you press Enter. Except when it doesn't. Because sometimes, no matter how perfect you're sure your formula is, it yields nothing but a string of "pound" signs, or ############. Take heart: There's probably nothing wrong with your formula. Those pound signs mean that the number your formula has calculated is too large to fit in the current column. And you can resolve the problem with one double-click of your mouse. Just double-click the right edge of the heading of the column containing your formula. Excel instantly expands the column to accommodate your number--and display the hard-earned fruits of your formulaic labors. HOW DO YOU COUNT THE DAYS? Version 4.x, 95 If you'd like to know how many days left until St. Patrick's day, run Excel and type ="03/17/98" - "01/15/98" ' or today's date into a cell. Excel will return the number of days (61) between the two dates. How many days until Christmas? Enter ="12/25/98" - "01/15/98" and you'll get 344 days. Time to think about shopping. The trick here is to remember to use the quotes. If you don't use quotes, you'll get some very strange results. IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE AUTOSAVE, NOT AUTO SABOTAGE If you're concerned about losing Excel data during a system crash, a sudden power outage, or a sudden attack from those invisible little people you just know are living in your office, you're probably using AutoSave--the Excel add-in that automatically saves the file you're working on every so many minutes. (If you're not using AutoSave, this tip won't make much sense--sorry.) But like all conveniences, AutoSave does have a drawback: If you open a workbook to run a few what-if scenarios that you don't necessarily want to save, AutoSave--with all the best of intentions--may save them anyway. So does this mean you bag AutoSave? Of course not--that would be panicking. Instead, set it to warn you before every save, by doing the following: 1. Choose Tools + AutoSave. (If you don't have an AutoSave on your Tools menu, it's because you haven't installed AutoSave.) 2. Select Prompt Before Saving. 3. Click OK. From now on, before AutoSaving, Excel displays a dialog box asking your permission. Isn't that polite? YOU CAN NEVER HAVE TOO MANY OPTIONS Ask any millionaire what money does for him or her, and the answer is usually, "Options. Money gives me options." This is ridiculous, of course; it's the kind of thing millionaires' handlers have taught them to say, so that they don't seem like greedy jerks. We all know that 1) money gives them more stuff than you or I have, and 2) WE have options (not stock options, but options nonetheless), even if we don't have a million bucks. Example? Well, we have options when it comes to selecting an entire Excel worksheet. As we've noted in earlier tips, you can select the entire sheet by either clicking the top left corner of the worksheet frame (where the column and row headings intersect) or pressing Ctrl + A. But--would you believe--there's still another way to do the job? Press Ctrl + Shift + spacebar. See? Who needs money? A QUICK CONVERSION The world has tried for years to settle on one system of measurement. But if you live in the United States, you'll find that you have to deal with more than one system. If your work requires you to publish figures in more than one system, you need Excel's Convert feature. WHY BUY THE WHOLE PAPER JUST TO READ THE FUNNIES? It's your masterpiece, the workbook that will make you famous: 256 pages of data and formulas, all summarized brilliantly on a single page. There's only one problem: Every time somebody wants a copy of the summary page, you waste half a ream of paper printing in the process. Out of a deep concern for the environment (and the certainty that you'll lose your mind if you have to blow another 15 minutes printing this workbook), you ask yourself: "Is there a better way?" Sure. You can print ANY single page of ANY Excel workbook, as follows: 1. Choose File + Print. 2. When the Print dialog box appears, look in the Print Range section; in the From box, type the number of the page you want to print. 3. In the To box, type the number of the page you want to print. 4. Click Print. Excel prints that page only. And you've just multiplied some lucky tree's life expectancy by 256. TAKE OVER AN ENTIRE REGION WITH ONE KEYSTROKE Here's the deal: You have a huge, huge, huge region of data in an Excel workbook--many columns wide by many, many rows tall--and you need to select it. Now you could do it with the mouse, but we all know what a royal pain in the keister that is--especially when the screen starts scrolling like crazy when you try to select beyond the current window contents. Try it this way instead: 1. Select ANY cell in the data region. 2. Press Ctrl + Shift + *. Excel selects the entire data region and, as an added convenience, doesn't move you anywhere! Now that's a lot easier. PLEASE GET ON WITH YOUR SUMMATION Last time, we explained how to quickly select an entire data region: Simply select one cell in the region and then press Ctrl + Shift + *. Well, in celebration of that age-old adage, "no tip is an island" (OK, we just made it up), today we show you how to combine instant data-region selection with another shortcut for--ta-dah--instant region summing: 1. Select any cell in the data region. 2. Press Ctrl + Shift + * to select the entire region. 3. Click the AutoSum button. In general, this technique instantly sums the columns of your data region. However, if you've labeled a row or a column (or both) with the word "Total" or "Totals," it sums that row, or that column, or both. A LITTLE REMINDER YOU CAN ADD TO EVERY MULTIPAGE EXCEL PRINTOUT You've got a workbook with several long columns of data. You print it out. The first page makes perfect sense--there are the column titles, there is the data below them. Who could ask for more? Turn to the second page, though, and it's like you've peeled back the wraps on an entirely new universe. You THINK those are your columns--they look familiar--but you have no way of knowing for certain, because the column titles are GONE! And if you think you're disoriented, just imagine how other people reading the printout might feel. Next time, make reading your printout easier for everyone by including column titles on every page: 1. Choose File + Page Setup. 2. Click the Sheet tab. 3. Click the button next to the "Rows to Repeat at Top" box and select the row on your worksheet containing your column titles (if your sheet has a title OVER your column titles, you may want to select that row, too.) 4. Press Enter. 5. Click Print. The rows you selected appear at the top of every printed page. WHAT'S GOING ON UNDER THERE? Some of us, we're satisfied with superficial knowledge. We don't quite understand WHY the earth revolves around the sun, we just know that it does, and we're darned happy about it. But you--you can't leave well enough alone. You want the story behind the story. It's not enough to see the sausage--you want to see how it was made. Same goes for your Excel workbooks. While the rest of the world is screaming "Show me the numbers," you want to see the formulas. Now, you could select every cell you think contains a formula, one at a time, and view the formula in the formula bar at the top of the Excel display (and this is just the tedious fate many of us superficial folk think you deserve). But the makers of Excel have more respect for your curiosity than we do and have given you a quick way to see all the formulas in your sheet: Press Ctrl + ` (the "lowercase" character on the ~ key). Excel displays all the formulas on your sheet, for your perusal. To switch back to superficial view, just press Ctrl + ` again. MAKE A QUICK MOVE In Excel, you can copy a group of cells by selecting them and then pressing Ctrl-C. This copies the cells to the Windows Clipboard. Now you can move to another cell range and press Ctrl-V to paste the cells to the new location. If you prefer to move the group of cells, simply select them and press Ctrl-V at a new location. In either case, you'll find that you can eliminate the Ctrl-V part of the paste operation by clicking into the first cell of your target range and pressing Enter. This shortcut doesn't actually save any keystrokes, since you press Ctrl and V at the same time to make the paste. But simply pressing Enter has a certain elegance about iT. TOWARD MORE COLORFUL BAR CHARTS When you create a chart in Excel (or any other Office program) you may find the default chart colors a bit drab. Let's say you have three bars in a bar chart. By default, the bars will appear as light blue, plum (kinda purple), and pale yellow. Yuck! Double-click the chart to select it. Now double-click one of the bars to open the Format Data Series dialog box. Click the Patterns tab. Now select a new color from the color menu. Click OK, and there's your new color selection. Repeat for the remaining colors. Note that single-series bar charts display all the bars in the same color, so you can't set them to separate new colors. You can change their color using the described method, though. ADDING NEW COLOR TO PIE CHARTS In the last tip, we showed you how to modify the colors of the bars in a bar chart. You can do the same for your pie charts, but the method is slightly different. Insert your pie chart. You'll get those same weak colors that you get by default in the bar chart. First, double-click the chart. Next, click one of the slices to select it. Now right-click the selected slice and choose Format Data Point. When the dialog box opens, click the Patterns tab and choose your new color. Click OK to close the dialog box and apply the color selection. Repeat as necessary. ONE BAD APPLE NEEDN'T SPOIL THE BUSHEL Because you're such a cagey Excel user, you've just finished formatting several sheets at once by grouping them first (as we explained how to do in a tip last month). Trouble is, there's one sheet that you want to remove from the group--seems it's a "black sheet" (sorry). How can you do this while keeping the rest of the group together? Buy removing the sheet from the clique with a single click (sorry again): 1. Hold down the Ctrl key. 2. Click on the sheet tab of the sheet you want to remove. The sheet is no longer in the group. Of course, now the others may need a fourth for bridge. FREEZE THOSE NUMBERS FOREVER You don't like to brag (yeah, right), but this latest workbook you worked up generated some good numbers--some really good numbers. So wonderful are these numbers, in fact, that you want to preserve them; specifically, you want to protect them, forever, from any goon who decides to change your worksheet so that the formulas return different results. How can you prevent such a travesty? By converting your formulas to values. Here's how: 1. Select the cells containing your formulas. 2. Choose Edit + Copy. 3. Choose Edit + Paste Special. 4. When the Paste Special dialog box appears, under Paste, select Values. 5. Click OK. Now, your good numbers are actually numbers, not formulas--so they won't change if someone changes other numbers on the sheet. Another disaster averted. MAKE A GROUP OF DATES As subscriber J. K. points out, 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. ACT NATURAL Say you've got an Excel data region with plain-English column and row titles--such as "Q1" or "Name" or "North"--and you want to create a formula that makes a calculation based on one or more of those rows or columns. Now, if you've got a thing for pointing to--or even better, typing--cell addresses in your formulas, well, far be it from us to spoil your fun. But if you think you might like to try something a little more intuitive, try using the row and column names in your formulas. Just include the name of the column as the argument in your formula. For example, to calculate the average of the values in your "North" column, try this: 1. Select the cell in which you want to enter your formula. 2. Type =AVERAGE(North). 3. Press Enter. Excel is so smart, it knows which cells you mean when you type "North" (truth is, it would have to be pretty brain-dead NOT to know), and it makes the calculation based on those numbers. You may never type a cell reference again. A MICROSOFT PATCH Microsoft recently posted a patch for users of Excel 97 with Service Release 1 (SR-1). The patch corrects an error that occurs during Excel's Auto-calculation. If you've already installed SR-1, you can download and install the Excel 97 Auto Recalculation patch. If you haven't installed SR-1, you need to do so before attempting to install the Excel 97 Auto Recalculation patch. To download the patch, go to http://www.microsoft.com/Excel/Recalc.htm and follow the instructions. If you'd like to see the error, here are some instructions from Microsoft describing how to produce the condition. (The following material is copyrighted by Microsoft.) "In a row, there must be a run of 18 or more consecutive formulas where each formula refers to the cell to the left of itself. This run of formulas must occur in a row number that is divisible by 16 with a remainder of 1. (For example, row 33.) There must be a formula that references at least one cell in a row above the run of formulas. To create an example of this issue, follow this procedure: Go to row 33 Select D33:U33, and type: =C33+1 Press Ctrl-Enter In cell A36, type: =D33 In cell A37, type: =D17 Change the value in cell C33 Note that under these circumstances, the value in cell A36 does not recalculate. You can press Ctrl-Alt-F9 and the cell recalculates as expected." SEEKING YOUR GOAL Let's say you have a worksheet designed to handle your widget sales. Here you are at the start of your fiscal year and you know you must realize at least $2,000,000 in widget sales during the coming year to meet your goals. How many widgets do you need to sell to take in $2,000,000? This isn't so hard to calculate. You can divide $2,000,000 by the Widget price of $255.54 to get 7826.56335603 (round to 7827). You can make the calculation very quickly in Excel if you use the Goal Seek function. And this way, you don't have to add anything to your worksheet or run a calculator program. Let's look at an example. Widget Price $255.54 (cell A1) Number of Widgets sold (cell A2) Total Sales (cell A3). The formula is =(A1*A2). At this point, cell A2 is empty. Because it's the first of the fiscal year, you haven't sold any widgets yet. Now click cell A3 (Total) to select it and then choose Tools, Goal Seek. When the dialog box opens, you'll see three entry boxes: Set Cell, To Value, and By Changing Cell. Set Cell will be set to A3, since you selected that cell before opening the dialog box. Into the entry box labeled To Value, type 2000000 (your goal). In the entry box labeled By Changing Cell, type A2 This is the value you want to determine. Click OK and cell A2 will display 7826.563. Round this number to 7827. You'll need to sell 7827 widgets to take in $2,000,000. After you read and record the number displayed in cell A2, click Cancel and your worksheet reverts to its original entries (blank in this case). SHOW IT ALL Subscriber J.R. asks if there's 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. BEFORE YOU PUNCH MR. ZIP IN THE TEETH, READ THIS ZIP codes: Can't live without 'em, can't enter 'em into your Excel worksheet--especially the ones that begin with a zero. Type an innocent ZIP code like 02176 into any cell, and Excel lops off the leading zero faster than the post office increases the price of stamps, and you end up with 2176 in the cell. Why? Because Excel thinks you're entering a NUMBER, not a ZIP code; and if in fact you were entering a number, you wouldn't need the 0, so Excel gets rid of it for you. The fact is, ZIP codes aren't numbers--or, more specifically for Excel's purposes, they don't need to be, because you don't have to do any math with them. About the only thing you ever have to do with them is sort them. So next time you enter a ZIP code--whether it begins with a zero or not--try this: Type an apostrophe (') first and then the ZIP code--as in '02176 Excel enters the ZIP code as text, which means it doesn't lop off any leading zeros. And you can still sort the ZIP codes--if you enter them ALL as text--because Excel can sort "text" numbers. Sorry, we have no tips for rigging your postage meter. FIND THAT FILE! Once you tried Excel 97, you just couldn't help yourself. You must have hundreds, even thousands of workbook files. In fact, you have so many workbook files, you cannot for the life of you remember what's in many of them. And then, it happens: You need that file with your 1997 Flange Sale Projections (a career in flanges--good for you!). And after poring through your list of files in the Open dialog box, you can't find one file that seems more likely than any other to contain these projections. What do you do? Let Excel find the file based on the file's contents, as follows: 1. Choose File + Open. 2. Below the file list, in the Text or Property box, type text you know the file contains--for example, "Flange Sales Projections." 3. Click Find Now. In a second or to, Excel fills the file list with file(s) that contain the specified text. 4. If Excel finds just one file, double-click it to open it. If Excel finds several files, hold down the Ctrl key, select ALL the files, and click Open. Excel opens all the files, and you can scan them to find the one you want. GET RIGHT BACK WHERE YOU STARTED FROM People who lived through the seventies will probably remember the title of this tip as the co-opted lyric to an incessantly played disco hit. (Sorry--this stuff is roaming around in our brains, and if it wants to get out, we let it out.) Now, to the tip! Suppose you're working in one corner of your Excel sheet--heck, let's say in cell Q50--and you decide to see how things are going in another corner, like, heck again, let's say cell IV65536. Once you get all the way to that far away cell, you decide that everything looks okay, you don't want to change a thing, and you'd rather just go back where you came from. Guess that means lots of scrolling, right? Wrong. As long as you didn't click anything in the area you visited, you can return to your previous location with one keystroke: Press Ctrl + Backspace. Excel zooms you back to the last cell you selected. And be thankful it doesn't zoom you back to the seventies. GET THAT THING OFF OF MY CHART!--PART 1 OF 2 When creating a chart, you sometimes add all kinds of features--grid lines, a legend, data markers--only to realize, after you see the completed chart, that you don't want them all. Maybe the grid lines just clutter things up, maybe the legend takes up too much space, or maybe the data markers are a little too clear a reminder of just how bad last year was. Whatever the reason, you want to get rid of some things. Does that mean you have to reformat or regenerate the chart? Heaven forbid! Take it from the lazy-boned experts at Dummies Daily: If you have a mouse and a Delete key, you can eliminate ANY offensive element from your chart in seconds: 1. Select the chart element you want to remove (that is, click it). 2. Press Delete. Not a trace of the offensive element remains. GET THAT THING OFF MY CHART!--PART 2 OF 2 Last time, we told you how to remove some of the more decorative elements--grid lines, legends, data markers--from a chart, using nothing but your trusty mouse and the Delete key. How could we possibly top an indispensable tip like that? Well, suppose that after you create a chart, you decide that you'd like to get rid of an ENTIRE DATA SERIES, such as the miserable sales figures for the European division last year or the dead-dog performance data for your bottom-of-the-line gizmo? For such major chart surgery as this, you almost surely would have to regenerate the chart, being sure not to include the offensive data. Right? Wrong. The mouse and Delete key ride again: 1. Click any one of the chart objects--bars, lines, dots, pie slices, and so on--that represent the data series you want to delete. Note that Excel selects all other objects in the data series. 2. Press Delete. Excel not only deletes the data series, but it also redraws the chart so that it looks like nothing is missing. It even updates the legend if you have one. As Mel Allen used to say, "How about that?" I CAN'T BELIEVE I SELECTED THE WHOLE THING There it is again--ANOTHER takeoff on a popular seventies media phenomenon, this time an antacid commercial. What's with us, anyway? Maybe we still have a little trapped seventies gas. How many times have you been working in an Excel cell and realized that you suddenly want to select the entire row or column in which you're working? You know the mousy way to get the job done: You can click on the row or column heading button. But why should you go reaching for the mouse if your hands are on the keyboard? - To select the entire current row, press Shift + spacebar. - To select the entire current column, press Ctrl + spacebar. KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF MY CHART You don't know how you got involved in finance--you're more the artistic type. So when you circulate your Excel worksheet for others to look at, you don't care if they touch your numbers. "But if you touch the charts or pictures," you warn as you hand the disk to an understandably shrinking coworker, "I'll kill you." If you're really that attached to your worksheet art, here's a tip: Instead of threatening coworkers (and making a name for yourself as the "office whack-job"), why not lock up your charts and pictures using Excel's worksheet protection features? Here's how: 1. Choose Tools + Protection + Protect Sheet. 2. In the Protect Sheet dialog box, turn off Contents and Scenarios, leaving Objects selected. 3. (Optional) If you think your cohorts know how to undo worksheet protection, type a password in the Password box. Otherwise, skip to Step 4. 4. Click OK. From now on, nobody will be able to even select your charts or pictures, let alone alter them; your numbers they can have their way with. And you can pop your head veins over more important things. KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF MY NUMBERS AND FORMULAS, TOO Last time, we explained how you can keep other users from altering charts and pictures in your Excel workbook. This was a fine tip for the artistically minded, but the number-crunchers among you were probably pulling out your hair, screaming "Why, oh why didn't they tell us how to protect the numbers and formulas in our worksheets, too? Who cares if the pictures are protected--an altered picture won't plunge us into bankruptcy, but altered numbers could. Oh, don't these people understand?" Apparently you went on for quite a while. Anyway, yes, you can protect your numbers and formulas too--by protecting worksheet contents. Here's how: 1. Choose Tools + Protection + Protect Sheet. 2. Make sure Contents is selected. 3. In the Password box, type a password (you need a password because when someone tries to edit protected cells, Excel display a message explaining how to turn off protection). REMEMBER OR JOT DOWN THE PASSWORD; if you forget it, you're never getting into this sheet again. 4. Click OK; in the box that appears, retype the password, and click OK. From now on, whenever someone tries to edit the sheet, that person sees an error message telling him or her to unprotect it, which he or she can't do without the password. Case--and worksheet--closed. KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF MY FORMULAS, BUT MY NUMBERS ARE UP FOR GRABS Welcome to the third in our three-part series on worksheet protection (if you sat through the first two, you deserve this). Let's say that you WANT other users to change the NUMBERS in a worksheet, but NOT the formulas, so that they can see how your model works with their numbers. No problem. All you have to do is "unlock" the number cells before you protect the worksheet, as follows: 1. Select the cells you WANT people to be able to edit. (DO NOT SELECT CELLS CONTAINING FORMULAS!) 2. Right-click the selection and choose Format Cells from the shortcut menu. 3. Click the Protection tab. 4. Turn off the option called Locked. (Cells are locked by default; that's why you don't have to lock the formula cells.) 5. Click OK. 6. Choose Tools + Protection + Protect Sheet. 7. Make sure Contents is selected. 8. In the Password box, type a password (you need a password because when someone tries to edit protected cells, Excel displays a message explaining how to turn off protection). REMEMBER OR JOT DOWN THE PASSWORD; if you forget it, you're never getting into this sheet again. 9. Click OK; in the box that appears, retype the password, and click OK. >From now on, anyone can change your numbers, but only those who know the password can edit your formulas. So keep that password to yourself. LIKE THAT CHART FORMAT? USE IT AGAIN! Nobody, but nobody, formats a chart like you do. Around the office, when a chart needs formatting, everyone knows you're the one to call. Sometimes a line forms outside your office door and down the hall, so great is the demand for that special something you bring to the graphical representation of data. Of course, you, being the modest sort, try to take all the accolades in stride. "Oh, it's nothing," you lie, while an overwhelmed admirer faints at your feet after viewing your latest masterpiece. "If you'd just take a few moments to learn Excel's chart formatting features, you could do it too." But every so often, even you are impressed with one of your creations--so impressed, in fact, that you want to apply the same formatting to other charts you've already created. This could take time, you realize, and you can't help but wondering: Is there a shortcut? Of course there is. Would we have given you all this hypothetical praise if there weren't? 1. Select the chart whose magnificent formatting you want to apply to other charts. 2. Choose Edit + Copy (alternatively, click the Copy button or press Ctrl + C). 3. Select the chart to which you want to apply this magnificent formatting. 4. Choose Edit + Paste Special. In the dialog box that appears, select Formats and click OK. LOOKING FOR MR. TOOLBAR Months ago, perhaps, we told you that if you need a Toolbar that Excel isn't currently displaying, you can simply right-click in a blank area of the menu bar, and choose a Toolbar from the list that appears. Well, that information was slightly incomplete because "the list that appears" is incomplete--that is to say, Excel does not display ALL of the available Toolbars on the pop-up list. So if you didn't find the Toolbar you needed on the pop-up list, there's still hope. Here's how to choose from the complete list of Toolbars Excel has to offer: 1. Choose Tools + Customize. 2. Click the Toolbars tab. 3. From the list, select the Toolbar(s) you want to display and then click Close. Still can't find the Toolbar you need? Maybe it doesn't exist. For example, Excel doesn't include an "Order Chinese Food" toolbar. Some things you still have to do the old-fashioned way. MAY WE NAG YOU FOR A MOMENT? If you've heard it once, you've heard it a thousand times: YOU SHOULD GET IN THE HABIT OF SAVING YOUR WORKSHEETS. So why don't you save regularly? Maybe it's because you need more specific instructions. Press Ctrl + S at the following times: - Before you answer the phone - Before you leave your desk - After you enter a particularly complex formula that actually works - Before you print - After you generate or format a chart - Before you insert an object from another program, such as a presentation slide or drawing - Before AND after importing data from another program (you save before just in case the import causes a problem) - After formatting data just the way you like it - Before clicking the "Search the Web" button - After specifying a print area - Before uninvited visitors to your office start bothering you with their problems - Whenever you realize you haven't pressed Ctrl + S recently There. Is that specific enough for you? RANDOM NUMBER, MEET MR. FREEZE Last time, we showed you how to use Excel's RAND function to generate different random numbers. Even though that was just yesterday, today you're probably ready to kill us because your random numbers have been changing all night. (Don't say we didn't warn you, because we did.) As promised, today we show you how to freeze your random numbers so that, once you generate them, they don't change every time your worksheet recalculates: 1. Select the cell(s) containing the random number(s) you want to freeze. 2. Choose Edit + Copy (or click the Copy button on the Toolbar). 3. Choose Edit + Paste Special. 4. In the dialog box that appears, under Paste select Values. 5. Click OK. Excel converts the cells from RAND formulas to the values those formulas returned. If you don't believe us, click any cell and see for yourself: The RAND formula is no longer there. And you're sad to see it go, we're sure. SHOWING UP THE BOSS--A HYPOTHETICAL STORY Your boss, who wouldn't know a computer if it fell ten stories and crashed right next to him, narrowly missing killing him (you know this because you've tested it), is nonetheless remarkably free with his Excel advice. In fact, just this minute, after sneaking up behind you to watch you format your order entry worksheet, he tosses this little pearl your way: "Whatever you do, don't format those order dates so that the months are spelled out." "Why not?" you ask. "Because you have to sort the entries by date, and if the months are spelled out, excel sorts them alphabetically, by month, instead." By now you've just had about all you can take of this chowderhead, so you respond: "I bet you your job that you're wrong." Such a bold bet causes your boss to hesitate slightly, but in a split second his massive ego triumphs over both instinct and reason and he replies, "You're on." Who will be the boss tomorrow? You will, because no matter how you format dates--or any other values, for that matter--Excel sorts them based on the underlying value and not the appearance after formatting. Make sure you get his key to the executive washroom. WHERE'D YOU COME UP WITH THAT NUMBER? Admit it: Most of the numbers you put in your hypothetical Excel business models are fairly random--you just make them up, whatever comes into your head first. Trouble is, sometimes coming up with fake numbers is as much work as coming up with real ones. If you're not going to be able to take any real credit for your hypothetical numbers, why work hard to generate them? Well, you don't have to: You can use Excel's RAND function to generate random numbers for you. Here's how: 1. Select a cell into which you want to enter a random number. 2. Type =RAND()*10 if you want to enter a random number between 0 and 10 =RAND()*100 if you want to enter a random number between 0 and 100, and so on. 3. Right click the cell and choose Format Cells from the shortcut menu. 4. Click the Number tab. In the Category box, choose the appropriate category; then select the desired number of decimal places. 5. Click OK. Repeat this procedure for every cell into which you want to enter a random number. (Actually, you can enter all the RAND functions first and then format the cells together in one step.) Note that numbers generated by RAND change every time your worksheet recalculates. Next time we'll show you how to prevent this by freezing your random numbers. YOU'RE WORKING TOO HARD, DUDE Last week, we received an absolutely charming letter from one of our most faithful readers, M.T. Attic of Whoopieville, Wisconsin., M.T. wrote: "Folks, I have to tell you, my right pinky finger is killing me. You see, I'm not the world's greatest typist--not by a long shot. So every time I make a mistake entering data into an Excel cell, I have to select the entry, press the Delete key (that's where the ol' pinky comes in), and retype the data. The way I type, I sometimes have to do this three or four times for every cell in the dad-blasted worksheet! I'm thinking of wearing a thimble on my pinky, but am afraid the guys here at the arsenic plant will make fun of me. Is there a better way? Thanking you in advance, M.T. Of course there is a better way. To replace the contents of any Excel cell: 1. Select the cell. 2. Type the new contents. Actually, we think the thimble would be a nice touch, M.T.--but make it a rubber one, to avoid that annoying clanking sound.97
LEAVE THE SQUINTING TO JEWELERS In a small town in southern Italy, young men aged 16 to 29 sit bent over their workbenches, carving cameos out of abalone shells. Why do we know their age? Because after a decade and a half of this kind of close work, these poor guys' eyes, necks, and backs hurt too much for them to continue; they have to find new careers ringing bells in old French churches. Does the plight of the cameo maker remind you of how you feel after a day squinting over your Excel worksheet? Why not try zooming in on it? Doing so, in either of the following two ways, makes it a little easier to read: - To make your sheet twice as large as normal: On the Standard toolbar, click the arrow next to the Zoom box and choose 200% from the drop-down list. - To zoom in so that your view enlarges to fit a specific selection, do the following: 1. Select the range of your sheet that you want to work on. (NOTE: The range should be SMALLER than what you can see in a single screen; otherwise this trick won't work.) 2. On the Standard toolbar, click the arrow next to the Zoom box and choose Selection from the drop-down list. Excel Zooms in on your selection as much as possible, while still fitting the entire selection in the Excel window. WELL, OKAY, IF YOU WANT TO SQUINT ... Last time we showed you how to use the Selection Zoom option to make a smaller-than-entire-window selection as large as possible, while still fitting the entire selection in the window. But suppose that you want to do the opposite--that is, you want to REDUCE a larger-than-single-window selection to a size that just fits within a single window? Well, you can use the Selection Zoom option to do that, too: 1. Select the cells you want to fit into a single window. 2. On the Standard toolbar, click the arrow next to the Zoom box and choose Selection from the drop-down list. Excel reduces the selection to fit in the window. Although the information in the resulting worksheet may be too small to read, having it all in one window can be useful for other purposes, such as formatting, charting, and so on.95
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GET IN LINE Version 4.x, 95 When you have a group of objects on a PowerPoint slide, you may want to align all of them so that they fall into the general categories of left, center, or right. Let's say you have three pictures on a slide. You'd like to have them all appear to be standing on the same floor. Click one of the figures and then press and hold the Shift key while you click the other two to select them. Choose Draw, Align. Next select Bottoms. Now all the figures will be aligned across the bottom.97
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ACCESS, EXCEL LINKING LIMITS Links go only so far between Access and Excel. If you create a link table in Microsoft Access 97 that links to a worksheet in an Excel 97 for Windows workbook, be careful. If you change a value or values in the link table using Access, open the workbook in Excel, AND if one or more formulas in the workbook refer to the changed values, you may get recalculation errors. Microsoft's work-around: Open the workbook in Excel and press Ctrl-Alt-F9. This will recalculate all the workbook's values. However, if you again make changes through Access, you'll need to go through the same ritual.97
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