To help students in our QuickBooks training and other business training classes, we’ve invited industry experts to provide additional QuickBooks tutorials. Today, we welcome Dominique Molina, President of the American Institute of Certified Tax Coaches. Dominique has developed the following blog.

Who does your clientele consist of? Do you have lawyers, contractors, interior designers, or other clients that might have multiple projects going on at once? A great opportunity to keep track of these multifaceted projects exists in QuickBooks’ Job costing features.

By using the features that QuickBooks provides, you can keep track of information that can be very useful that you would not otherwise have. In this post, we’re going to walk through how to setup job costing in QuickBooks.

Step 1- Initial Preferences Configuration of QuickBooks

The first step is to be certain that QuickBooks is properly configured. To accomplish this you must first select Edit and then Preferences. Click on Jobs & Estimates and then choose the Company Preferences tab.

Under the Company Preferences tab you must make the appropriate changes before initiating job creation. You may also want to check Time & Expenses on the left hand menu to ascertain that time tracking is active, if you intend on tracking the on the job.

Step 2- Constructing Job Types

You must design Job Types before you assign jobs to clients. To do this, choose Lists > then Customer & Vendor Profile Lists > Job Type List. A small window (Job Type List) will appear with command buttons at the bottom left hand side.

Press the Job Type tab and select New; another window will pop up (New Job Type). From there, fill in information about the job type. For example, if you are a Certified Public Accountant you might have “Year End Tax Return” as a job type.

You can repeat this for multiple job types and create subtypes under each category by selecting New again and entering the name of the subtype. For example, a “home remodel” job might have “painting” or “flooring” as a sub-type.

Step 3- Setting Up Jobs for Customers

Customer Jobs will subsist as their own distinct entity to which you will assign these jobs to your clients. This is achieved by starting at the Customer Center.

Choose to assign a job to a client by right clicking on the client and selecting Add Job. The New Job window appears which ought to include your client’s profile. Select the Job Info tab and enter the Job Name in the appropriate field. Sticking with the Tax theme you could enter Tax Preparation, and skip Opening Balance box.

Next you would select the status of the job under Job Status drop-down menu choices of None, Pending, Awarded, In Progress, Closed, or Not Awarded. Then fill in other necessary fields such as Start Date, Projected End, or End Date, Job Description and select the appropriate Job Type which as set up previously. Once all the information has been added, select OK to save the job.

You will now be able to use this information for transactions and reports. You also need to be aware that to ensure the correct job has been chosen when generating an estimate or invoice for a specific job or filtering a report. This will keep your recordkeeping precise.

Step 4- Producing Invoices Throughout the Job

You may have clients that have ongoing projects that are for a prolonged period of time. This is not a situation in which you would want to wait until the end of a job to bill your client. Using QuickBooks you have the ability to create estimates and dispatch progress invoices which you can use as you see fit.

Creating a progress invoice during a job can be done by following these steps. First create the estimate and then select Create Invoice while viewing the invoice. You will have a window that offers three billing options which include: create invoice for entire estimate, create invoice for a percentage of the entire estimate in which you will enter the percentage of estimate in the box provided, or create invoice for selected items or for different percentages of each item. Once you make a choice on the option you would like, then select OK. The invoice will emerge based upon your selection.

Step 5- Advanced Reporting for Your Jobs

By doing these job definitions upfront you will be rewarded with great reporting capabilities that are offered in QuickBooks. The reports will let you decipher how the projects are performing in several areas: Estimate Accuracy, Time and Mileage, Sunk Costs, Job Status and Productivity.

We’ll cover how to use standard as well as custom job costing reports in a future post.

Dominique Molina is President of the American Institute of Certified Tax Coaches, an organization of tax professionals who are trained to help their clients rescue thousands of dollars in wasted tax. In addition to her blogging and speaking engagements, Dominique provides CPA continuing education as a registered educator with the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy (NASBA).

Mail Merge is most often used to print or email form letters to multiple recipients. Using Mail Merge, you can easily customize form letters for individual recipients. Mail Merge is also used to create envelopes or labels in bulk.

There are two ways to create a Mail Merge:

1. Use the Mail Merge Wizard.
2. Use the commands on the Mailings tab.

The two ways are not mutually exclusive. You can start with the Mail Merge Wizard and then use commands to make additional changes. We will start by demonstrating in detail how to use the Mail Merge Wizard to create a Mail Merge, and then walk through using the commands on the Mailings tab.

Using the Mail Merge Wizard

To use the Mail Merge Wizard:

1. In a blank Microsoft Word document, click on the Mailings tab and in the Start Mail Merge group, click Start Mail Merge.
2. Click Step by Step Mail Merge Wizard.
   
3. In step 1 of the Mail Merge Wizard, select your document type. In this demo we will select Letters. Click Next: Starting document.
4. In step 2, select the starting document. In this demo we will use the current (blank) document. Select Use the current document and then click Next: Select Recipients.
   • Note that selecting Start from existing document (which we are not doing in this demo) changes the view and gives you the option to choose your document. After you choose it, the Mail Merge Wizard reverts to Use the current document.



5. In step 3, select recipients. In this demo we will create a new list, so select Type a new list and then click Create.
   1. Create a list by adding data in the New Address List dialog box and clicking OK.
   2. Save the list.
   3. Note that now that we have created a list, the Mail Merge Wizard reverts to Use an existing list and we have the option to edit the recipient list.
   4. Selecting Edit recipient list opens up the Mail Merge Recipients dialog box, where we can edit the list and select or unselect records. Click OK to accept the list as is.
   5. Click Next: Write your letter.
6. In step 4, we write the letter and add custom fields.
   1. Click Address block to add the recipient’s addresses at the top of the document.
   2. In the Insert Address Block dialog box, check or uncheck boxes and select options on the left until the address appears the way you want it to.
      • Note that you can use Match Fields to correct any problems. Clicking Match Fields opens up the Match Fields dialog box, in which you can associate the fields from your list with the fields required by the wizard.
   3. Press Enter on your keyboard and click Greeting line… to enter a greeting.
   4. In the Insert Greeting Line dialog box, choose the greeting line format by clicking the dropdown arrows and selecting the options of your choice, and then click OK.
   5. Note that the address block and greeting line are surrounded by chevrons (« »). Write a short letter and click Next: Preview your letters.
7. In step 5, preview your letter and click Next: Complete the merge.
8. In step 6, click Print to print your letters or Edit individual letters to further personalize some or all of the letters.

Using the Mail Merge commands

When you click on the Mailings tab, you will notice that most of the commands are greyed out.

This is because you cannot use them until after you have created or selected a set of recipients. After doing so, the commands become available.

To learn more about some of these features, check out our Microsoft Word 2010 training.

In PowerPoint, when you’re working with SmartArt or Charts, you have the ability to animate different parts of the graphic. For example, you can bring in a chart’s series one at a time. Tables are another story. A table comes in all at once. But there are things you can do if you want to “fill” your table a bit at a time. There are a few ways of accomplishing this, some being a lot of work. I’m going to look at a pretty simple method.

What we’re going to do is duplicate a completed table, stack it, remove parts of the data, and then animate each table. When you do this type of stacking, it’s best to use a simple animation like “Appear.” The Selection and Visibility Pane is going to be very handy here, so open it. To do this, on the Home tab, in the Editing group, click the Select drop down and chose Selection Pane.

How to Animate a Table

1. Create your table and format it the way you want (you really don’t want to have to go back and reformat it after you’ve started animating it). You may want to make a copy of this slide in case you need to start again. In the Selection pane, you’ll see the table listed as Content Placeholder #. You can always rename this. I named mine “Table1″.
   
2. Use Ctrl+D to duplicate the table however many times you need for your animation steps. In my example, I want to bring in each quarter’s numbers separately, so I need a total of 5 tables. (If you make too many, just delete the extras.) As you duplicate the table, you’ll see each shape keeps the same name. Again, you can rename these. Objects in the Selection Pane are stacked; the one on the top of the list is in front of the others.
3. Drag a marquee around all the tables to select them. (Click above and to the left of the tables and drag until all the tables are in the rectangle, then release the mouse button.) You can also Ctrl+Click in the Selection Pane to choose the tables.
4. Stack the tables. On the Drawing Tools Format tab, in the Arrange group, click Align. Select Align Left and Align Top (you have to drop the Align menu twice). At this point, your Selection Pane might look something like this:
   
5. Hide the shapes you don’t need right now (Table2-Table5) by clicking on the Eye icon for each shape.
6. Delete the content you don’t want to display in the first animation (in my case, all the numbers).
7. Do this for each of the tables (the top one should have all your data).
8. Animate each table. While you could do something fairly dynamic with the first (bottom) table, you’ll probably want to stick with something less distracting for the other layers (Appear would be a good choice).
9. When you’re done, make sure you Show All in your Selection Pane (hidden shapes will not display in your slide show).

You can experiment with different table formats (maybe even no background or boarder) and animations. It may take a little time to build, but a table animation can be very effective.

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WordArt in various Microsoft products has been around for a while. In case you’re wondering, it let you apply various (non-standard) formatting to text that was not available otherwise. It was nice, but limited, and a bit cumbersome. Starting with PowerPoint 2007, you could apply effects to any text on your slide. Let’s take a look.

If you want to, you can add WordArt using the WordArt command on the Insert tab in the Text group.

1. On the Insert tab, in the Text group, click WordArt. The WordArt Styles gallery opens.
   
2. Click on the style you want to insert, and a text box appears with the text “Your text here”, with the WordArt style you selected applied to it.
   
3. Edit the text to whatever you want it to be.

At this point, you’ll see a Drawing Tools Format context tab. Here you’ll find the WordArt Styles group.

This contains the preset styles gallery, and drop downs for controlling the Text Fill, Text Outline, and (most fun) Text Effects.

As you can see, there are a lot of possibilities to explore. It really doesn’t take much effort to convert my title in to something a bit fancier.

While we specifically inserted WordArt above, we really didn’t need to do this. In PowerPoint, if you click in any kind of text place holder, you’ll see that Format tab. So you can apply WordArt formatting to titles, subtitles, bullet lists, and text in shapes.

There is one thing to keep in mind while you’re working on your presentation. WordArt, like other “special effects”, has more impact when used sparingly. If every bit of text on every slide has WordArt styles applied, then nothing stands out (and I’ll bet it’ll be really hard to read).

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Creating charts in Excel 2010 is pretty straightforward. Select your data, choose your chart type, and presto, you have a basic chart. While the three tabs you see after you create that chart might seem a bit overwhelming, they give you a whole lot of flexibility for getting your chart the way you want. Let’s take a look at adding a background graphic to the chart.

Here’s a basic Column chart:

Add a title and a chart style (in this case, Style 26) and you’ve added some visual interest (for some reason, only known to Microsoft, this is one of the few times that Live Preview doesn’t seem to work)

Not bad, but suppose you’d like to include a graphic as the chart’s background. You can use clipart, a photo, or, even better, your company’s logo. Since I don’t have your company’s logo, I’ll just use clipart.

1. Select your chart (the Chart Tools context ribbons only show when the chart is selected).
2. On the Chart Tools: Format tab, in the Current Selection group, make sure Chart Area is selected (or select it from the drop down).
   
3. In the Current Selection group, click Format Selection.
4. In the Format Chart Area dialog box, select Picture or texture fill from the radio buttons.
   
5. Your options are File, Clipboard, or Clip Art. Navigate to the image you want and click OK or Insert. In this case, I selected Clip Art and searched on printing.
6. Click Insert (or OK for Clip Art)
7. If your image shows up in the background, but not behind the chart:
   
   1. In the Current Selection group, select Plot Area.
      
   1. In the Shape Fill group, select No Fill. You selection will appear in the background.

   

8. At this point, your image may very overwhelm your chart. For clarity sake, you’ll want increase the transparency of the background image.
   1. In the Current Selection group, select Chart Area.
   2. Select Format Selection.
   3. At the bottom of the Format Chart Area dialog box, change the Transparency. The closer you get to 100, the more faded out the image will be (the image below is set to 80% transparency). Click Close.

   

The key to adding any background image to your chart is making sure that image is not obscuring the actual chart data. A background image (such as your logo), can add a lot, but you shouldn’t lose sight of what you’re actually presenting.

Since Microsoft Office supports Charting functions in pretty much all of its applications, you can use the same technique in Word, PowerPoint and even Outlook if you like.

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We’ve recently developed new resources to help clients achieve their Microsoft certification goals. We now offer a directory of Microsoft certification training, organized according to specific certification paths and the associated courses. More specifically, we have the Microsoft Office Specialist certification training.

The certification directory contains a wide variety of Microsoft certification paths including SharePoint, SQL, Dynamics, .Net, and more. Within each path, we’ve listed the available Microsoft Official Courses, which will help the applicant prepare for the certification exam. To help visitors learn more about the final exams, we also listed the exam links for each specific certification, to help visitors learn more about the final exams.

Here’s a cool video from Microsoft showing the value of becoming certified:

To view the new Microsoft Certification Training Directory, click here. To view all of our Microsoft Office training classes, click here.

You may not be aware of it, but PowerPoint offers a couple of nifty little tools to help you position objects on your slides. Gridlines and Guides allow you to precisely place all of you various objects (titles, text boxes, graphics, etc.). Just a note, when you’re using these tools, it’s useful to have the Ruler turned on (on the View tab, in the Show group, check Ruler).

Gridlines

By default, gridlines are spaced 0.083 inches apart (if you do the math, that’s 1/12 of an inch). Fortunately, when you display the gridlines, you see the minor division at one inch intervals; otherwise your slide would look way too busy (even though the gridlines don’t display when you’re showing a slide show).

Also, by default, Snap objects to grid is turned on. This means when you move objects around on your slide, they “snap” to the nearest minor division. This can be very useful when you’re positioning objects.

To Display Gridlines

There are a couple of ways to display the gridlines:

• On the Home tab, in the Drawing group, click Arrange, and in the Align submenu, click View Gridlines
  
• On the View tab, in the Show group, check the Gridlines box.
• Press Shift+F9.

To Change Gridline Settings

You change the gridline settings in the Grid and Guides dialog box.

To display the Grid and Guides dialog box:

• On the Home tab, in the Drawing group, click Arrange, and in the Align submenu, click Grid Settings.
  
• On the View tab, in the Show group, click the dialog box launcher.
  
• Right click on a blank area of the slide and select Grid and Guides.

From here, you can change the spacing and turn off the Snap objects to grid, among other things.

Nudging Objects

With “snapping” turned on, you can use the arrow keys to snap to the nearest division. You can override the snap setting by holding down the Ctrl key while you use the arrow keys. This will move your object one pixel at a time.

Guides

While the gridlines are fixed positions (depending on your settings), guides are movable lines on your slides. This is extremely useful when you want objects on different slides to be in the same relative position.

By default, when you display guides, you get one vertical and one horizontal guide at the center of your slide (0, 0). You can drag the guides to where you want them (you’ll see the offset from the center as you drag the guide).

To Display the Guides

• On the View tab, in the Show group, check the Guides box (new in PowerPoint 2010, thank you Microsoft).
• Open the Grid and Guides dialog box and check Display drawing guides on screen.
• Press Alt+F9.

You can create multiple guides by holding down the Ctrl key while you drag a guide (make sure you let go of the mouse button before you release the Ctrl key). You can get rid of multiple guides by dragging them off the slides (you can’t drag the original guides past the edges of the slide).

All in all, these really cool features can be very helpful when you’re creating your masterpiece.

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I recently had a question about the window control buttons (Minimize, Restore, Close) that seem to be missing in Word 2010 documents. In truth, I never really paid much attention to their absence. I thought it was too easy to accidently hit the Close application button by mistake, so I never got into the habit of working with them. While it’s not really obvious what setting to change, you can display the buttons if you like using them.

1. On the File tab, click Options.
2. Click the Advanced button and scroll down to the Display group.
3. Uncheck Show all windows in the Taskbar.
   
4. Click OK. The window control buttons will display in the document.

Now, if you want, you can use the Arrange All command on the View tab to stack your open documents in the Word window. You don’t have a choice about how they’re arranged.

There are some tradeoffs. By default each Word document displays in its own Word window, with its own ribbon. What this means in Windows 7 is that when you mouse over the Word button in your Taskbar, you see (pretty big) thumbnails of the open Word documents, along with their titles. Then you can select the document you want.

When you uncheck the default, all documents are in a single window, so you can’t select a different document from the Taskbar. Also, if you’re accustomed to using Alt+Tab to switch to different documents, that won’t work either (as I said, all of your documents are now in a single window).

As for me, I prefer having the individual windows open. I just add a couple of commands to the Quick Access Toolbar. I add the Close command from the File tab, and the Switch Windows command from the View tab.

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If you regularly use a browser (like now, for instance) you’re probably very familiar with the concept of setting bookmarks in your browser. It’s a quick way of getting where you want to go. When you’re working with Word documents, you can also set bookmarks within your document. This is especially useful when you’re working with long documents and want to be able to quickly return to a specific location in your document.

Besides being a navigation tool, you can create hyperlinks and cross-references to bookmarks. If you normally create a Table of Contents, you can use bookmarks to also add a table of contents that covers only the bookmarked part of your document.

Adding a Bookmark

You can add bookmarks anywhere in a document. You can either bookmark the current cursor location, or bookmark anything you have selected (text, graphics, etc.). By default, bookmarks are invisible, even if you are showing formatting characters. If you want to see your bookmarks you need to change a setting in the Advanced Word options.

Bookmark names should be descriptive. They must start with a letter and can contain up to 40 characters. They cannot contain spaces, but you can use the underscore to separate words. For example, you could use “NewBookmark” or “New_Bookmark” but not “New Bookmark”.

1. Select what you want to bookmark, or click where you want the bookmark to be inserted.
2. On the Insert tab, in the Links group, click Bookmark. The Bookmark dialog box appears.
   
3. Name your bookmark. If you already have bookmarks defined, an existing bookmark name will appear in the name box. Type a new name before you click Add, otherwise the existing bookmark will be moved to the new location.
4. Click Add.

Displaying the Bookmarks in Your Document

It’s a good idea to display the bookmarks in your document, especially if you’re using them as targets for hyperlinks or cross-references. You don’t want to accidently delete a bookmark that’s used as a reference mark.

How a bookmark displays depends on whether or not you have something selected when the bookmark is inserted. If no text is selected, it will display as an I-beam. If something is selected, you’ll see brackets around the selection.

1. To see your bookmarks, click the File tab and select Options.
2. In the Advanced section of your Word Options dialog, check Show bookmarks.
   
3. Click OK.

Navigating with Bookmarks

You can use the Bookmark dialog box to go to your bookmarks. You can also use the Go To tab on the Find and Replace dialog box.

1. On the Home tab, in the Editing group, click the Find drop down and select Go To.
   
2. In the Find and Replace dialog box, select Bookmark in the Go to what: section
   
3. Select the bookmark you want from the drop down and click Go To.

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Learn about the Office 2010 ribbon in this recorded webinar. The webinar covers adding and removing ribbons, groups, and commands from Office 2010 applications.

Customize the Office 2010 Ribbon

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0374Svri84&h=505&w=640]

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Watch this recorded webinar to learn some of the new ways to create a professional looking presentation for your business.

Creating and Sharing Business Presentations in PowerPoint 2010

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcLkuYRN-vs&h=505&w=640]

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Watch this recorded webinar to learn about some of the new tools and templates in Microsoft Word 2010.

Creating and Sharing Business Documents with Word 2010

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jxb7tSb7_TM&h=505&w=640]

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PowerPoint 2010 includes exciting new features! View this recorded webinar to learn about the changes to the ribbon, the new backstage view, new graphics tools, A/V support, and more!

What’s New in PowerPoint 2010

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsaNX9EwRxE&h=505&w=640]

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Learn about Excel 2010! This recorded webinar covers changes to the ribbon, the new backstage view, sparklines and slicers.

What’s New in Excel 2010

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJtXeP9UXMo&h=505&w=640]

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If you read my recent post about lines in PowerPoint, Shapes in PowerPoint 2010: The Line, you know there’s a lot you can do with the basic line. One thing I didn’t mention was that you can use most of the lines as connectors between other shapes. While this is most commonly used for creating flow charts, there’s nothing saying you can’t use it with any drawing.

When you connect a line to a shape, you’re anchoring the end of the line to a point on the shape. The really cool thing about this is that if you move the shape, the end of the line stays connected to that point (this is not the same as grouping shapes). You have three types of connector lines available: Straight, Elbow and Curved (with and without arrows).

Create Connector Lines

You can draw objects in a different order, and create connections “after the fact”. However, the easiest way to see how this works is to start with a couple of shapes and then make the connection:

1. Draw a couple of filled shapes (your choice) on a new blank slide (the Blank layout is easiest to work with).
2. Select one of the connector lines (I used the first Elbow Connector), and move the mouse pointer over one of the shapes. Connector points will appear in red on the shape.
   
3. Click on one of the connector points, and drag the connector line to the second shape. Red connector points will appear on the second shape. Select a connector point on the second shape.
   
4. Click on the connector line. If the line is connected, the end of the line will appear as a red disc. If an end is not connected, it appears as a white disc.
   
5. If you have connections, move the shapes around and see how the lines stay anchored to the shapes.
6. If you decide you want a different type of connector line, right click on the connector line, and in the Connector Types fly out, select the type you want.
   

You can edit connector lines the same way you’d edit any line:

• Add or remove arrow ends
• Change thickness
• Add shape effects

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If you read my previous post, Building Blocks in Microsoft Word 2010, you might have noticed that I like Building Blocks. Actually, I’m a big fan of anything that saves time, and Building Blocks do just that.

When you first start creating Building Blocks, your inclination may be to just rename the block (maybe), and leave the rest alone. After you’ve used Building Blocks for a while, you may regret this approach:

• All your Building Blocks are in the General category (even less descriptive than the Document1 title for new documents).
• All your Building Blocks are in the Quick Parts gallery (which can get very extensive).

Organize Your Building Blocks

Unlike editing the actual Building Blocks, editing building block properties is pretty straightforward. Keep some things in mind:

• Be consistent in how you name things:
  • How you name things will just help you locate them later.
  • You can use the same name if the block is stored in a different Category or Gallery.
• Use logical categories:
  • Category names should reflect the block usage. Think about Outlook signatures. If you have different “See ya” text blocks you want to include, put them in the same category.
• Use appropriate galleries:
  • The (usually) nice thing about galleries is that when you assign a block to a gallery, that block takes on the gallery’s attributes (put it in the Header gallery, it’s inserted in the header, etc.).

You can think of categories and names as levels of sorting. You can edit the building block properties in 2 ways:

1. Right click on the building block whose properties you want to edit.
2. Select Edit Properties.
   
   The Modify Building Block dialog box appears
   

Or

1. On the Insert tab, in the Text group, select Quick Parts.
2. Select Building Blocks Organizer.
   
3. In the Building Blocks Organizer, click the building block whose properties you want to edit (you can sort the list by Name, Gallery, Category or Template by clicking on the appropriate column header).
   
4. Click Edit Properties. The Modify Building Block dialog box appears.

Once you have the dialog box open, make your changes and click OK. You’ll be asked if you want to redefine the building block, click OK.

If you know the gallery where the building block is stored, the first method is usually easier. In the future, we’ll talk about using the custom galleries that are available.

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If you’ve ever inserted one of the prefab Word elements into your document (Header, Footer, Cover Page, etc.), you’ve been using something called a Building Block. A nice thing about Building Blocks is that they maintain a common theme, i.e. there’s a Cubicles Cover Page, Header, Textbox, and so on. What you may not be aware of is that you can create your own Building Blocks. Let’s take a look at the basics of using a Building Block.

Create the Building Block

Odds are you’ve already created a Building Block; you just haven’t saved it as such. Think about the things you commonly insert into a document. Maybe it’s a disclaimer, or your contact information (consider an Outlook signature). You probably cut and paste between documents. A Building Block will eliminate the middle-man (and trying to find the original document).

Anything you can select in Word can be saved as a Building Block. And that’s just how you do it. Building Blocks will maintain any formatting you’ve applied; bold, centering, or any option.

1. Locate (or create) what you want to use as a Building Block. This includes applying any formatting.
2. Select what you want to include.
3. On the Insert tab, in the Text group, select Quick Parts.
4. In the drop down, select Save Selection to Quick Part Gallery
   
   
5. The Create New Building Block dialog box appears
   
6. Name the Building Block. Word will try to pick up whatever text is selected and suggest that.
7. Select the gallery where you want the Building Block to display (if you’ve created a footer, you can have it display in the Footer gallery). For the most part, you’ll probably just leave it in the Quick Parts gallery.
8. Give it a category. By default, any new Building Blocks are categorized as General, which can get very old very quickly. You can create a new category:
   1. Click the Category drop down
   2. Select Create New Category
      
   3. Give your new category a more meaningful name and click OK.
9. Click OK.

Use the Building Block

1. In your document, click where you want to insert the Building Block.
2. On the Insert tab, in the Text group, click Quick Parts.
3. Select the Building Block you want to use.

Edit the Building Block

This gets a little tricky, but not too much. In general, if you want to edit a Building Block, you edit the Building Block in the document, and resave it under the original name.

1. Insert the Building Block (if it’s not already there).
2. Edit and/or Format it as necessary.
3. Select what you want to include.
4. On the Insert tab, in the Text group, select Quick Parts.
5. In the drop down, select Save Selection to Quick Part Gallery
6. Give your revised Building Block the same name and same category as the existing entry and click OK.
7. You’ll get the following
   
8. Click OK.

Work with the Building Block

Building Blocks can be a really efficient way of dealing with standard text (or graphics, for that matter). You could quickly create a boilerplate document out of standard content. In the future, we’ll take a look at how you can make all this even more efficient.

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Unless you’re the most accurate typist ever, you’ve probably noticed that Word automatically fixes some of your “creative” spellings. For example, type “teh” and Word’s AutoCorrect function will change it to “the”. I, for one, find it very helpful. What you may not be aware of is that you can also add typing shortcuts for phrases you regularly use.

For some reason, I find myself typing “Microsoft Word 2010″ a lot. Actually, I type “mw1″ and Word automatically expands this for me. All I’ve done is added my typing shortcut to the AutoCorrect list. Think about words or phrases you are constantly typing (official company or organization names can go on for quite a while).

Add an AutoCorrect Entry

1. Select the File tab and click Options.
2. Click the Proofing button in the left pane, and click AutoCorrect Options…
   
3. In the AutoCorrect dialog box, in the Replace: box, type your shortcut (use something you wouldn’t normally type. For example “it” is a bad shortcut for “Information Technology”, or anything, for that matter).
4. In the With: box type the text you want to see.
   
5. Click Add, then OK.
6. Click OK again to get out of the Word Options dialog box.

Try It Out

In your document, type your shortcut (the Replace: entry) and add a space (or something else to indicate the end of the word). Your shortcut should be replaced with the expanded text. You need to add a space or somehow indicate that you’ve ended a word before AutoCorrect will kick in (this is why your cat can type a whole bunch of nonsense on your keyboard without getting a spelling error if the spacebar hasn’t been stepped on).

There’s also a Formatted text option in the dialog box. You can format the text you want to use in the With: box. The easiest way to do this is to format the text you want in the document, select it (you don’t have to copy it), and then open the AutoCorrect dialog box. The text will appear in the With: box. You only need to add your shortcut.

A really cool feature of this is that your plain text shortcuts will work in other Office applications. Create a shortcut in Word, then open Outlook or PowerPoint and the shortcut will work there too (If it doesn’t seem to be working in another application, it’s probably because the app was open. Restart the app and it should work). Shortcuts for formatted text only seem to work in the creating app.

This is one feature I show my students that usually gets a “I’m gonna use that from now on!” response.

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By applying advanced enhancement techniques to your Microsoft Word 2010 documents, you can give them a professional look and improve their readability. Word lets you add page borders, paragraph borders, and shading. You can also insert non-alphanumeric characters and watermarks. Depending on the type of multi-page documents you create, you might choose to apply specific Word features differently on the first page.

Creating and Modifying Borders and Shading

Page borders can enhance the visual appeal of a document by adding definition and color to pages. To create a new page border or to modify an existing one, use the Page Border tab, found within the Borders and Shading dialog box, illustrated below.

Paragraph borders and shading help emphasize specific text within a document. You can create or modify paragraph borders and shading by using the Borders and Shading tabs in the Borders and Shading dialog box or the Tables and Borders toolbar.

To create or modify a page border:

1.      From the Page Layout tab, in the Page Background box, select Page Borders.

2.      In the Borders and Shading dialog box, select the Page Border tab.

3.      On the Page Border tab, select the desired border settings.

4.      If necessary, from the Apply to drop-down menu, choose a portion of the document to which to apply the border settings.

5.      Choose OK.

To create or modify borders and shading:

1.      Place the insertion point in the desired paragraph or select the desired paragraphs.

2.      From the Page Layout tab, in the Page Background box, select Page Borders.

3.      If desired, in the Borders and Shading dialog box, select the Borders tab and then, on the Borders tab, select the desired border settings.

4.      If desired, select the Shading tab and then, on the Shading tab, select the desired shading settings.

5.         Choose OK.

And, you’re all set!

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If you frequently send PowerPoint presentations along the pike for comments and revisions, you’ll really appreciate this. PowerPoint 2010 gives you the ability to compare different versions of presentations, and accept or reject changes. It’s pretty easy.

1. Open the original presentation you want to use for comparison.
   
2. In the Review tab, click Compare.
   
   A dialog box will open that says “Choose File to Merge with Current Presentation”.
   
3. Navigate to the new version, and click Merge. A Reviewing Pane will open showing the differences between the two presentations. Slide changes show text changes, additions and deletions to individual slides. Presentation changes show additions and deletions to the overall slide set
   
   
4. In the Reviewing Pane, click the change listed to display what changed occurred on the slide.
   
   
5. Use the Previous and Next buttons to move among changes, and Accept and Reject buttons to work with the changes.
   
6. After you accept/reject changes, save your file.
   
7. Use End Review to stop the comparison.
   

One thing that seems to stump the process is if animations have been added to objects. You’ll get the following:

I guess you’d actually have to go in and look at the “offending” slide.

Overall, it’s a really helpful way to look at the basic differences between PowerPoint presentations. Since I usually start with an existing presentation to create a new one, I find this particular PowerPoint 2010 enhancement very useful.

Want to learn more? Check out some of our upcoming PowerPoint classes.

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When you work with the program long enough, you forget that a lot of people don’t know everything you know about what’s going on with certain things. So I wanted to look at some of the basics, or at least to me, the basics of drawing shapes in Microsoft PowerPoint (this is also true in any of the Microsoft Office applications you want to draw in).

The simplest shape is the line. Up, down, left, right, or whatever angle you want. Not a big deal. Or is it? Every line you draw can have a different color, thickness, style, and effect (don’t even ask about freeform lines).

So you draw a line: you click the mouse, drag and let go the mouse button. If you hold down the Shift key while you drag your line, it will be constrained to a 45° angle. You end up with a basic line of the default width and color.

Below, I drew a line, duplicated it four times, and applied some changes:

1. The original line, a solid line with three-quarter point thickness.
2. A dashed 3 point line with gradient fill and shadow (Notice the gradient goes the length of the line. This is because I have the gradient going left to right).
3. An 8 point line with glow applied, and different arrows on either end (yes, circles and diamonds are considered to be arrowheads).
4. A 10 point compound line with rounded ends (Compound lines will have two or more parallel lines that make up the actual line. How this shows up depend on the thickness of the original line.).
5. A 20 point line with bevel applied.

You can apply a lot of settings using the Shape Outline drop-down and the Shape Effects drop-down on the Format tab. You can also have a lot more control if you open up the dialogue box for formatting the shape. You can right-click on the line and select Format Shape.

Here you can set line widths (up to 1,584 points), select different compound types and end caps, and adjust arrow settings. The Line Color options allow you to set a gradient, and adjust the line’s transparency.

So, there are a lot of options for the humble line, and plenty of things worth exploring. And remember, a lot of these settings can be applied to the outlines of the other shapes you draw.

Want to learn more? Check out some of our upcoming PowerPoint classes.

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I have to admit, I am very impressed with Microsoft PowerPoint 2010! There are a lot of very cool features that will help you both personally and professionally to deliver great presentations! I’m going to give you a brief glimpse into one new feature: delivering a PowerPoint 2010 presentation on the Internet.

Here’s a tad more background information:

Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 has the ability to broadcast your presentation over the Internet for remote viewing or distribution over a network. This allows you to show presentations even if there is no projector available. You will need a Windows Live ID to use this facility.

Ready? Open up one of your PowerPoint 2010 presentations and follow along…

How to start a Presentation Broadcast

1. Once you are ready to deliver the presentation, click the Broadcast Slideshow feature under the Slideshow tab. The Start Broadcast Dialog will appear.
2. Click Start Broadcast or Change Broadcast Service to use another service.
3. Once PowerPoint has connected to a Broadcast Service a box will display a link that can copied or mailed to other users to enable them to view the presentation.
4. You will now see your PowerPoint 2010 Presentation Broadcast Link.
5. Click Start Presentation, the Broadcast Tab will be displayed.
6. Remote users can now log-on to the presentation broadcast using the supplied link.
7. Once the presentation has finished click End Broadcast. All remote viewers will be disconnected.

Hopefully, your presentation worked out well! Stay tuned for more secrets soon!

To learn more tips and tricks now, check out some of our Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 training classes!

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If you’ve ever worked with a lot of objects on a PowerPoint slide, you know that selecting individual objects can sometimes be quite a challenge. Starting with PowerPoint 2007, Microsoft introduced a tool that can make your life a lot easier. It’s called the Selection and Visibility pane.

By “objects”, I mean anything that appears on your slide: titles, SmartArt, charts, shapes; you get the idea (graphics on a slide master are a different story). With the Selection and Visibility pane open, you can:

• Show or hide any object on your slide
  
• Reorder the objects
  
• Rename the objects
  

Get Started

Open the Selection and Visibility pane:

1. On the Home tab, in the Editing group, click the Select drop down.
   
   
2. Choose Selection Pane.
   

The pane will open with a list of the current objects on your slide. The objects will be listed in order of “what’s on top”. For example, this is what the pane for a blank “Title and Content” slide will look like.

As you add objects, they will be labeled, in order, for the type they are.

While renaming objects may not seem like a big deal, when you’re working with a slide with names like “Rectangle 7, Flowchart: Punched Tape 8″, etc., it becomes a lot more helpful.

Rename an object:

1. In the slide, click the object to select it. The object name will be highlighted, or in the Select pane, keep clicking objects until the object you want to rename is selected
   
2. Select the object name and type a new name
   
3. Press Enter (you already knew this part)
   

Get Working

Change an object:

1. Select the object
   
2. Apply your changes (use the appropriate Tools ribbon)
   

Reorder objects:

1. Select the object
   
2. Use the Re-order buttons at the bottom of the pane to move objects up or down (you can’t drag and drop)
   
   

Play Hide and Seek

If you want to move objects on your slide, but still maintain their order, you can hide objects that may be covering your target object. Click the “eye-con” (sorry).

I bet you’ve already learned how to show objects.

If you also work in Microsoft Word 2010, you may be happy to know that the Selection pane is also available there.

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PowerPoint 2010 is a great program for developing presentations, but staring at that first big blank title slide might not be very conducive to being creative (kind of like looking at that blank Word document when you’re trying to start writing a blog post).

Fortunately, PowerPoint has a speedy way of getting you past the “Big Blank”. You can use themes to quickly change the layout of your PowerPoint presentation.

PowerPoint 2010 comes with 40 built-in themes (yes, even the default “Big Blank” is a theme, although Microsoft calls it “Office Theme”). You can see the various themes by clicking the Design tab, choose the Themes group, and then click the More button to open the Theme Gallery.

As you mouse over the various themes, you’ll see a live preview of it in your slides, and you’ll also see a theme name such as Austin, Grid, and Pushpin. You can apply a built-in theme to all your slides by clicking on the theme you want.

If you want to apply a theme to select slides:

1. Select the slides (the Slide Sorter view is great for this). If you want non-contiguous slides, hold down the Ctrl key while you select the slides.
2. On the Design tab, in the Themes group, click the More button.
3. Right click on the theme you want.
4. Select Apply to Selected Slides
   

Themes are a combination of Colors, Fonts, and Effects, as well as Background Styles, and often, background shapes. If you drop down the menus for Colors, Fonts, or Effects, you’ll see that they have the same names as the theme. So, if you like a particular theme, but not necessarily the associated color set, you can change it. You can also create new Theme Colors or Fonts. But you can’t create new Effects (Effects control the Shape Styles you’ll see when you’re editing shapes).

Ok, you’ve spent time getting things the way you like them. Or, maybe you already have a presentation you want to use as a theme. You can save your settings as a Custom Theme.

1. On the Design tab, in the Themes group, click the More button.
2. Select Save Current Theme.
   
3. Give it a more meaningful name than Theme1 and click Save.

Your theme will now appear in the Theme Gallery in the Custom section.

Here’s the really cool thing. Don’t want to see the “Big Blank” anymore? Right click on any theme (including any custom ones you’ve created) and select Set as Default Theme. Now, create a new blank presentation (Ctrl+N will do it). You get a new presentation all set to go with your theme applied.

To learn more, check out some of our PowerPoint 2010 training classes!

When declaring variables in VBA, you also assign a data type. But there is a trick to it: you want to choose a data type that uses the least amount of memory. In the VB Editor, which is found in the VBA help menu, I found a great chart of the data types, including what they are used for and how much memory they use.

Data Type Summary

The following table shows the supported data types, including storage sizes and ranges.

Naming Variables in VBA

Wait, that’s not it. When you declare variables, please name them properly! It will help in the long run, I promise. So, how do you name them properly? Well, first, you should put a three-letter prefix at the beginning of the variable that describes the data type. I know, you are probably asking yourself “why?” Well, let me explain. Let’s say you have an input box that pops up when the end user opens a WORD document. The input box asks the end user for her birthday. What we want the program to do is take the birthday and add 5 days to it, then display the result. So, Susie Q enters August 10, 1965. That sure does look like a date. Does VBA think it’s a date? Probably not. When Susie Q entered her birthday, you saved the result in the variable strBirthday. So, it’s a string. You now have to convert the string to a date and save it in a new variable, such as dtmBirthday. Now it’s a date! Now you can use the DateAdd function to add 5 days to it. So, by putting the three-letter prefix in front of the variable, it lets us know what type of data is in it.

Suggested VBA Variable Prefixes

Here is a list of suggestions for the three-letter prefixes:

• byt for a BYTE
• bln for a BOOLEAN
• int for an INTEGER
• lng for a LONG
• sng for a SINGLE
• dbl for a DOUBLE
• cur for a CURRENCY
• dec for a DECIMAL
• dtm for a DATE/TIME
• obj for an OBJECT
• str for a STRING
• vrt for a VARIANT
• typ for a TYPE

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During a recent Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 training session, I was demonstrating a feature. It was how to add an action to text in order to link to a different slide in the presentation, and then adding a button to return to the original slide. One of my participants noted that his slides already had a lot of content, so he didn’t want to add another graphic. Was there a way to click anywhere on the slide to return to the original slide? Turns out, there is and it’s not that difficult! Let’s take a look.

You can link an action to any object on your slide, including text. You can also insert Action Buttons to do specific things in a presentation. Action Buttons are commonly used in PowerPoint to create links within the presentation.

Suppose, like my student, you already have a lot of objects on your slide, and you don’t want add more clutter. Our solution was to create a transparent Action Button that covered the entire slide. This way, when he was making his presentation, he could click anywhere on the slide to trigger the action.

1. On the Home tab, in the Drawing group, click the More button.
   
2. In the Action Buttons section, at the bottom of the Shapes drop down, select the Action Button: Custom.
   
   
3. Draw a button that covers your slide. The Action Settings dialog box opens.
4. Click the Hyperlink to: button, and then the drop down to select your action.
   
   If you select the Slide… option, a list of slides in your current presentation will display (include hidden slides) and you can link to any of the slides in the list.
5. Once you’ve selected your action, click OK.
6. Right click the button and select Format Shape.
7. Make sure Solid fill is selected, and change the Transparency: to 100% (If you select No fill, your button won’t be clickable).
8. Click Close to close the Format Shape dialog box.
9. On the Home tab, in the Drawing group, select the Shape Outline drop down and select No Outline.

At this point, you’ll have a transparent button that covers the whole slide. If you need to edit any of the objects that are under this button, open up the Selection and Visibility pane.

1. On the Home tab, in the Editing group, click the Select drop down, and select Selection Pane.
   
2. The Selection and Visibility pane opens. You can use this pane to select any object on you slide and make changes to it (I’ll post more about this very handy PowerPoint tool in the future).

You can test out the button by running your presentation (F5) and navigating to the “big button” slide. Click anywhere on the slide, and whatever action you’ve assigned will be activated. Pretty cool!

For more, check out our upcoming Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 training classes!

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A vertical Lookup or most commonly known as a VLOOKUP is one of the most popular Lookup functions. It will search vertically across row headings and return the information from that row that is being searched. Your lookup value MUST be in the leftmost column but it doesn’t necessarily have to be in Column A; it just must be the leftmost column of your table array. To find the column that has your search result, you simply start counting the columns in the table array from left to right!

The dialog box that you see when you click the FX button on the formula bar will allow you to choose the category of Logical. The VLOOKUP is the last function in that category.

When you click OK, you will now see the different arguments for this function. Only the arguments that are in bold are required arguments. There may be additional optional arguments.

Now, it is simply a matter of filling in the dialog box. As an example, let’s take a look at this workbook.

I want to look up the Customer ID and that information is in cell B4.

Table array is where to look it up. That information is on the Sheet tab named Customers.

Now, simply count the columns from left to right and tell it which column to return.  In this example, I want to return the Percent Discount and if you count from the left, that information is in the eighth column.

Once you take the VLOOKUP one piece at a time, it really makes this understandable! Now you check to make sure that it is pulling the correct information. Next, you can simply copy the formula down the rows using relative cell addressing in the formula. This can be a very quick way to help you get the information that you want! Good luck!

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Are you getting tired on always grabbing the mouse when you are working in Excel? Especially, when the mouse just isn’t behaving – you know, sometimes you are just having a “bad mouse” day!

Well, even though Microsoft Excel 2010 seems very mouse driven, you can still use the keyboard to perform some of the actions that you need. I am sure that you are familiar with the old standards of Ctrl + N to get a new workbook, Ctrl + S to save a workbook, and Ctrl + O to open a workbook, just to name a few.

If you have been using Excel for versions prior to Excel 2007, you could even use the keyboard to pull down menus from the menu bar. But once Office 2007 and Office 2010 came out, there are no more menu bars. Does that mean that the keyboard shortcut keys no longer work? No! The common control keyboard shortcuts still work, but can anything to work with the ribbons? Excel 2010 has not forgotten about those of us who like using the keyboard shortcut keys. They are different, but so much better than they used to be!

When you open Excel 2010, your ribbon resembles this illustration.

How does this work? Once Excel is opened, you simply press down the Alt key and your ribbon now changes to this:

By pressing the letter under the ribbon choice, you will move to that ribbon. As an example, I will go to the insert ribbon by simply pressing the letter N. It is not case sensitive. Now I am looking at the Insert ribbon, and I now see what are called Key Tips.

I can bring up the Shapes drop down by typing the letter SH. The ribbon now looks like this:

Now at this point, you will need to use the mouse to select and draw the shape that you would like to include. It’s fun just to try out the different Key Tips. Go ahead – you just might like them!

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To continue with the Edit Relationships Dialog box, the next area for discussion is the Cascade Updates section.

You must enforce the Referential Integrity rules first then you can put a checkmark in Cascade Update Related Fields. Sounds very geeky, doesn’t it? This is just a way to save you time and effort in keeping your data accurate.

Let’s take a look at the information in these two tables. This is the information in tblDepartments.

And the related table of tblEmployees information.

Once we have Enforced Referential Integrity and have put a checkmark in the

• Cascade
• Update
• Related
• Field

We have now made making changes easier! How do we do this? Once you make a change in the Primary Table (tblDepartments) and save that record, the changes will be made automatically in the Related Table (tblEmployees).

What I am now going to illustrate is a change the DeptCode for the department of Fulfillment. I am going to make the field of DeptCode change from 300 to 350. I open the tblDepartments (the Primary table) and make the change on that record and then save the table.

And Voila! Without even opening the Related Table (tblEmployees), the changes are also made in that table.

See for yourself by just opening the related table!

I normally do not Cascade Delete for related records as I usually maintain a History table to keep all of the records I have deleted as a way of maintaining a history for my database information. But that will be for another time! Enjoy!

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If you want to learn more, check out some of our Microsoft Access 2010 training classes!

In one of my earlier blog posts about creating Relationships between tables, you saw the Edit Relationship Dialog Box. I want to take a moment to discuss this Edit Relationship Dialog Box in a little more detail. It did look like this.

So now, what on earth is Referential Integrity and why do you want to know about it? In plain English it simply means data accuracy. Not much help there, is it? So let’s take a look at the actual table information. The Primary table is the tblDepartments table. The information in the table looks like this.

The Related table is the tblEmployees and the information in that table looks like this.

This is why the relationship between the two tables is listed as a one – to – many relationship.

But what does this have to do with Referential Integrity? What it means is if the department code is not listed in the primary table (the tblDepartments) then it can not be listed in the Related Table (tblEmployees). If you add a record that does not meet the Referential
Integrity rule, you should get a message box that looks like this.

Isn’t this a very easy way to make sure that your information in your database stays accurate?

But remember you only get to see the Edit Relationship Dialog Box if you join the tables in the Relationship Window. It does not show the Edit Relationship Dialog Box on screen if you try to join tables together in the query design window.

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I really like using tables in Microsoft Word. You can use tables to create some pretty nifty layouts that would otherwise be difficult in Word. In a recent training session, I was asked about a table behavior that I don’t particularly like. By default, if your table breaks across pages, Word allows the table row to also break. So if you’re creating something like a glossary, it’s quite possible for a row’s content to be split across two pages. Let’s look at how to prevent that in Word 2007 and 2010.

To change the behavior for a particular table:

1. Select the entire table (you can make changes row by row, but it’s easier to do it for the entire table).
2. Open the Table Properties dialog box by clicking the Layout tab and selecting Properties in the Table group, or right click in the table and select Table Properties….
3. Click the Row tab, and uncheck Allow row to break across pages.
   
4. Click OK.

You can also modify the default table style (and any particular styles you frequently use, or have created).

To modify the default Table Grid:

1. Insert a table into a Word document (you need it to get to the Table Tools Design tab) or click in an existing table.
2. In the Table Tools Design tab, right click the Table Grid style (it’s usually the first style in the Table Styles group) and select Modify Table Style
   
   
3. Make sure Apply formatting to: is set to Whole table. Click Format and select Table Properties…
   
4. Follow Steps 3 and 4 above.
5. Select New documents based on this template and click OK.

Now any table you insert won’t automatically break rows across pages. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any way to set this as a preference, so if you use one of the other table styles, you’ll have to make adjustments to those styles.

If you want to learn more, check out some of our Microsoft Word 2010 training classes.

The most recent versions of PowerPoint (2007 and 2010) have this really cool feature where you can click in any bullet list and convert that dull old list into a SmartArt graphic. This Convert to SmartArt function is not available in Word, but it’s not too hard to achieve. Let’s take a look.

First you need a list. I’m using the outline from my Customize the Office 2010 Ribbon webinar:

1. Customize the Ribbon
2. Working with Tabs
3. Working with Groups
4. Sharing Your Customizations

The process is pretty simple:

1. Select your list and either Cut it or Copy it. (I suggest copying for now. If you decide to keep the SmartArt graphic, you can delete the list later. If you change your mind, you can just delete the SmartArt graphic)
2. Click where you want you insert the SmartArt. (If you leave your list selected, the graphic will replace it)
3. On the Insert tab, in the Illustrations group, click SmartArt.
4. Select the SmartArt you want to use (you can always change to a different design later).
5. If the Text Pane is not open, on the Design tab of the SmartArt Tools, in the Create Graphics group, click the Text Pane button.
6. In the Text Pane, select all the text placeholders and Paste your list.
   

Now you have your SmartArt graphic, with all its cool formatting options.

Got a multilevel list? It works the same way. Below is my outline expanded to include the subtopics:

1. Customize the Ribbon
   1. What Do You Want To Do?
   2. Limitations
   3. Getting There
2. Working with Tabs
   1. Showing/Hiding Built-in Tabs
   2. Adding/Removing Custom Tabs
   3. Rearranging Tabs
3. Working with Groups
   1. Adding/Removing Custom Groups
   2. Adding/Removing Commands
   3. Removing/Restoring Built-in Groups
   4. Rearranging Groups
4. Sharing Your Customizations
   1. Exporting Customizations
   2. Importing Customizations

And below is the multilevel list as SmartArt.

You can use these techniques in both Word 2007 and 2010. Word 2010 gives you some additional SmartArt layouts. Either way, you can create some pretty compelling graphics from you lists in Word!

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Want to learn more? Check out some of our Microsoft Word 2010 classes.

Microsoft Access is a relational database system. That simply means that in the one file you can have multiple tables, forms, queries, and reports. It is pretty much  like when you were back in junior high school and you kept all of your notes in a three-ringed binder with different sections for each of your individual classes. Access has a navigation pane on the left side that acts as a separator of each type of object.

.

You can have many different tables in the same file; but if you need to get information from more than one table at the same time, you need to create a join between two tables. A join is simply a way to travel between the two tables. Think of the join line as a road used to travel between the two tables. While driving, you need to find a common intersection to be able to go onto the other road. Well, in joining tables, you need to have a common field to create the join. A common field is nothing more than the same field in the two separate tables. Let’s take a look at this. We have two tables that we are going to use as an example. We want to be able to get a list of all of the departments and the employees that are in those departments. To get to the relationship window, you go to the Database Tools ribbon and click on Relationships.

You may need to select the tables that you want to join. That brings up the dialog box that allows you to select the two tables that you need to join. Now simply select your tables.

.

Once you have selected your tables, close the Show Table dialog box. You may need to resize the table information so that you can see the fields in each table. For this example, we are using the Department table and the Employees table.

Now comes the easiest part! Simply drag the field of DeptCode from the tblDepartments where it is the primary key field over the field of DeptCode in the tblEmployees where it is the foreign key field. Now what comes up is this dialog box.

Put a checkmark in Enforce Referential Integrity and I always like to Cascade Update Related Fields and now simply click the Create command button. You have now just created the join between these two tables and anytime you use these two tables in any query, the join line will be there.

All that is left to do is to close out of the Relationship window by clicking the close button and now you can create your queries pulling any information from either table.

These tables will stay joined until you decide to delete this relationship. Creating join lines in Microsoft Access really is this simple!

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Learn more about this and other features in our Introduction to Microsoft Access 2010 class!

Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 has an awesome new way of displaying your pictures for any type of sales presentation. Everyone is aware of how images add to the presentation; as text alone won’t keep the audience’s attention anymore. We live in a very visual world. A picture is definitely worth a thousand words. But now, we have become complacent about the images that are in the presentations. They just seem to be the all the same. The image may change but it is still usually in the shape of a rectangle, the most common shape for jpegs. Is there something new we can do to improve our presentations and make them pop? Absolutely! In PowerPoint 2010, we can take an ordinary picture such as the one shown below and really make unique and interesting graphics. Let me show you how!

You have your normal jpeg PowerPoint image inserted on a slide.

This is a pretty image but nothing unusual about it. Now using one of the new features of PowerPoint 2010, the image can be transformed to appear in different shapes as shown below.

Or

How is this possible in PowerPoint 2010? Let me explain the steps.

1. Insert your PowerPoint image on the slide you want
2. Once the image is selected, then using the Picture Format Tools contextual ribbon, go the size section and choose the drop-down arrow for crop

1. From the drop-down menu choices, select Crop to Shape

Look at all of the shape choices you have from which you may choose!

1. Now, simply select the PowerPoint shape you wish to use and in an instant, you will have a unique image to add to your presentation. Even the shapes of arrows really change your images.

An ordinary image in PowerPoint can be changed from this

To this

You are now only limited by your imagination and creativity with PowerPoint 2010!!!

The good news: Microsoft has added some nifty shape tools to Microsoft PowerPoint 2010. The not so good news: unless you know where to look, they’re not so obvious (they don’t appear in the Ribbons anywhere). If you use shapes a lot in PowerPoint, you’re probably going to want to add these tools to a ribbon or the Quick Access Toolbar.

The Tools in PowerPoint 2010

• Shape Union – Joins shapes into a single shape
• Shape Combine – Combines the shapes, removing overlaps
• Shape Intersect – Creates a shape from the overlap of shapes
• Shape Subtract – Removes one shape from another (depending on how you select them)

To see what the differences are in PowerPoint 2010, I’ll overlap a couple of shapes and apply the different tools. First the shapes:

Then the tools:

*Which shape is subtracted depends on the order in which you select the shapes. In the first example, I selected the shapes at the same time (by dragging a marquee around both shapes). In this case, the top shape is subtracted from the lower shape. In the second example, I selected the rectangle first, then the circle (click the rectangle, then shift-click the circle).

Accessing the Tools in PowerPoint 2010

To use these tools in PowerPoint 2010, you need to either add them to the Quick Access Toolbar, or add a custom group to a ribbon. I did both.

To add to the Quick Access Toolbar:

1. Right click in the Ribbon area and select Customize Quick Access Toolbar…
2. In the Choose commands from: drop down, select Commands Not in the Ribbon (or All Commands – a much longer list)
3. Scroll down and select Combine Shapes
4. Click Add
5. Click OK

This will add a drop down menu to your toolbar.

You could also add a custom group to a ribbon of your choice. I added a custom group called Shape Tools to my Home ribbon, and added the individual tools (they’re also in the Commands Not in the Ribbon group).

If you want to add a group to the ribbon, you can check out my post, Customize the Ribbon in Microsoft Office 2010.

Have some fun playing around with the different effects you can achieve. This one started with 4 overlapping circles. I used the Shape Combine tool to mash them together. After that, I added some formatting to my new shape:

Enjoy the new tool options! Stay tuned for a free webinar to learn even more tips!

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A very cool addition to Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 is the ability to create sections in your presentations. This is a great way to divvy up presentations into manageable chunks. Let’s take a peek.

What Can You Do With Sections?

Sections are especially useful when you have a large presentation. You can group related slides, and collapse the sections. Reordering in your presentation gets easier. Decide the Sales Section should go before the New Products section? Drag the section to its new location. You can:

• Put slides into logical subgroups
• Give sections meaningful names
• Collapse sections
• Reorder sections by dragging
• Apply the same transition to all slides in a section
• Hide all the slides in a section
• Delete a section and all the slides in it

Creating a Section

You can create sections in either the Normal or Slide Sorter view. We’ll use the Normal view.

1. In the Slides pane, click on the slide where you want to start your section.
   OR
   Click above the slide where you want the section to start (you’ll see a flashing bar).
2. On the Home tab, in the Slides group, click the Section drop down and select Add Section.
   

   OR
   Right click in the Slides pane and select Add Section in the pop-up context menu.
   

Any slides after the section break will be included in that section. You can always add more section breaks to further organize the slides. Since all the sections you add by default are called “Untitled Section,” it’s a good idea to give it a more meaningful name.

1. Click on the section break and in the Section drop down, select Rename Section.
   OR
   Right click on the section break and select Rename Section.
2. Give the section a more meaningful name and click Rename.
   

When a section is collapsed, the number in parentheses is the number of slides in that section. Expand or collapse a section by clicking the button next to the section name.

(Expand or collapse all sections by right clicking on any section break and choosing the option you want.)

Want to move a section? Click and drag the section break to a new location. (You cannot drag a section into the middle of another section.)

There are several other things you can do using section. Play around with them. I’m betting you’ll find them pretty useful. Best of luck!

Check out more tips in our upcoming Microsoft PowerPoint training.

I’ve had a couple of comments regarding my recent post, Printing and Print Preview in Microsoft Word 2010. I thought I’d take the opportunity to talk about the finer (possibly more obscure) points of printing ranges in Microsoft Word 2010.

If you’re talking about printing parts of a document with no section breaks, it’s pretty straightforward. To print the range of pages 1 through 3 of your document, in the Pages: section of the settings area, type 1-3. In Microsoft Word 2010, it will look like this:

In earlier Microsoft Word versions, you’d enter the page range in the Print dialog box:

To print individual, non-consecutive pages, you’d separate the page numbers with commas; e.g. 1, 3, 5 would print the first, third and fifth pages of a document.

Printing Sections

The challenge comes when your document has section breaks in it. For example, when you complete a mail merge and opt to save it in a new document instead of printing the whole thing out, Word inserts a Next Page Section Break after each of the merges. So, your one page letter to 30 recipients becomes a document with 30, one page sections. To print out the first 3 pages of your merge document, you need to specify the page and section; e.g. p1s1-p1s3 (you could also just indicate the sections you want as s1-s3).

What Section am I In?

You can find out where you are in a document by clicking in that part of the document and looking at the Status Bar at the bottom of the window. Microsoft Word 2010 and 2007 do not, by default, display the section and section page. To show this information:

1. Right click on the Status Bar.
2. Select the first two options (Formatted Page Number and Section).
   

To determine your print range:

1. Click where you want to start the printing and note the page and section number in the status bar.
2. Scroll to the last page you want to include and click on that page. Note that page and section number.
3. Select the Print option on the File tab (or press Ctrl-P).
4. Enter your range using the format p#s#-p#s#.
5. Click Print.

If you want to read the official Microsoft version of this see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/826218

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Sparklines are a neat addition to Microsoft Excel 2010. Sparklines are miniature charts that are actually embedded in the background of worksheet cells. They’re really useful for getting a quick idea of trends in data. For example, here is some data from a worksheet (with some columns removed to make the screenshot fit better):

And these are the sparklines based on that data.

You have your choice of 3 types of sparklines in Excel:

• Line
• Column
• Win/Loss
  

And, you can easily switch between the types of sparklines in Excel to see which one best suits your data.

To insert a sparkline in Excel:

1. Click in the cell where you want to insert the sparkline.
2. On the Insert tab, in the Sparklines group, click the type of sparkline you want to insert. The Create Sparklines dialog box appears.
   
3. Use the mouse to select the data range you want to include (or enter it in the Data Range box).
4. Click OK.

Once you have a sparkline in a cell, you’ll see the Sparkline Tools – Design context tab. Here you can format the sparkline, decide whether or not to show points and markers, change colors, etc.

Since a sparkline is part of a cell’s background, there are a couple of things to be aware of:

• You can’t just hit Delete to get rid of a sparkline in Excel. You need to use the Clear option in the Design context menu.
  
• You can put text (or a calculation) in a cell with a sparkline in it. For example, I used the AVERAGE function (and a little formatting) to put the average of the range in the same cell as the sparkline.
  
  

Pretty Cool!

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In our databases we often want to be able to include relevant material with our records. For example, if you are in a health related field, you might want to include the latest information about a particular drug or the latest study about a particular medical ailment. Up to now, what you had to do was to either retype a short summary of the article or you could create a hyperlink data type to store the URL of the article on the web. In an employee database, you might want to also store the resumes with the applications. Now in Access 2010 and in Access 2007, you can use the new data type field of attachment to do this. This is where you can attach any type of file or multiple files to a particular record: a word document, an Excel worksheet, a chart, or an image to name a few. In the Employee table of your database, you may want to include the resumes of perspective employees. You can do this by simply adding the field of resume as an attachment data type in design view of your table.

Once you switch to datasheet view, the view will look similar to this.

To use the attachment field, simply double click on the paper clip and this dialog box will open.

Click the Add button and choose the file that you want to attach. Then click the okay button.

Now in the datasheet view, your record will look similar to this.

The number represents the number of attachments to this record. To be able to open that attachment, just double-click on the number and this dialog box will appear. Choose the file that you want and double-click on the file name or single click on the name of the file and then click the open button.

When you open the attachment, Access will also open the associated program for that attachment. You can add several documents as attachments for one record. Notice that you can also choose to save this attachment as a separate file, simply read the document, or edits the attached document.

Everything can now be kept within your database for a logical way of keeping track of your information. No more trying to remember where your supporting documentation is stored.

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While conducting an Advanced PowerPoint 2007 training session, I was asked if it was possible to animate individual SmartArt elements. My initial response was that since SmartArt is a single object, you could only apply animation to the entire object. It turns out I was wrong. Here’s how you can animate parts of a SmartArt diagram in PowerPoint 2010 or PowerPoint 2007.

1. Create your SmartArt in PowerPoint.
2. In the SmartArt Tools Design tab, in the Reset group, click the Convert drop down and select Convert to Shapes. (In PowerPoint 2007, you would select the Ungroup command in the Arrange group of the SmartArt Tools Format tab).
   
   This will convert the SmartArt to a group of shapes.
3. In the Drawing Tools Format tab, in the Arrange group, click the Group drop down and select Ungroup.
   
4. Select each element individually and apply your animation effect.

One thing you should keep in mind is that once you convert your SmartArt diagram to shapes, you lose all those neat SmartArt tools for editing the diagram. So make sure your SmartArt is in its final form before you start this. You may want to make a copy of the SmartArt slide so you have the original in case you want to edit the SmartArt (you can always just hide that slide in your PowerPoint presentation).

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Recently, I’ve been working on developing a “What’s New…” webinar for Microsoft Word 2010. Since the webinar just had its unofficial launch, I thought I’d write about my experience with the development process.

Finding Out What’s New

Well yeah. There are several ways of doing this:

• Check out the official changes documentation.
  Microsoft TechNet (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc179199.aspx) has a thorough (if a bit dry) summary of the changes to Word 2010.
• Read other people’s reviews.
  There are lots of on-line sources, and different writers emphasize different aspects of the new version.
• Play with the software.

Actually, playing with the software was my first stop. In the case of Microsoft Office 2010, the beta release was generally available. I wanted to see what struck me first about the new release. I tried to look at it from the perspective of what the average user would notice. After that, I started reading what others had written.

Narrowing It Down

Early on, we decided that we wanted the webinar to be brief; a 15-20 minute presentation, followed by a Q and A session. We didn’t intend this to be an exhaustive overview, but more of a highlight reel. Then it became a matter of picking what I thought were some of the more interesting topics, while looking for some cool things to talk about. I divided the topics into what I considered to be major changes (the Backstage view, customizing Ribbons), and nice refinements (navigating by find results, inline text effects).

Putting It Together

Once I had an outline, it was a matter of getting the presentation down. This involved doing some pretty rough presentations with a couple of unlucky souls, followed by a company-wide practice session.

There are a few things to note:

• Because it’s a brief presentation, I was really focused on hitting my key points. This made for a somewhat stilted delivery. I expect to improve with practice.
• I focused on the differences between Word 2007 and Word 2010, instead of taking into account that some participants might be considering migrating from Word 2003. Clearly, a major change for these people would be the Ribbon interface. So I need to spend some more time talking about the Ribbon in general.
• Since I’ll be preparing webinars for Excel and PowerPoint, I’ll be reusing some of the content (the Backstage view, the Ribbon interface), adjusting for those applications.
• I expect to be making some further refinements based on the questions I get from participants.

The Resulting Word 2010 Webinar

In any case, I think the result is a good, short introduction to some of the most important changes in Word 2010.  If you’re interested, you can register for the Word 2010 New Features webinar here.

How many times have you had to create an expression on a form to place the name field? For good table design in previous versions of Access, you had one text field for last name and another text field for first name. But when you wanted to have the complete name in one field, you had to build a form and then create an unbound text box to place the concatenated field. Well, now in Access 2010 there is a new data type called calculated. And it does allow you to concatenate two fields that are in the same table into a new separate field that can be seen in the datasheet view. The only concession that it has is that the new field must be created based on two or more fields within the same table. Let me show you how easy it is to do that.

We start off with a very basic table of Company information. See illustration below.

Switch to design view of the datasheet and add the new field of EmpName and choose the data type to be calculated.

Once you choose calculated as a data type, the expression builder comes up.

The Expression Elements already lists the table you are using. The Expression Categories will list the fields that you have in that table.

What to type:

1. Double click the field of FirstName
2. Type in the ampersand (&) which is the concatenating operator.
3. Type double quotation marks as they indicate literal characters, press the spacebar and type ending double quotation marks.
4. Type the ampersand again to join to that the field of LastName
5. Click the OK button

Now the design view looks like this:

Notice that instead of the format property, you now have the expression you created.

When you switch to datasheet view, your table now has your new field.

It really is that easy in Access 2010.

Ok, you’ve done some pretty nifty customizations in your Office 2010 applications. Coworkers really like your custom tabs and groups, and ask that you do the same for them. You could go from computer to computer to make the changes. Or you could just export your setting so that other people can import them into their applications. Let’s take a look.

Since I have a custom group called Send (see below) on the Home tab of Word 2010, I’ll use that as an example. The procedure is the same for all the Office 2010 applications.

Open the Customize the Ribbon Dialog

1. Click the File tab
2. Click Options
   
3. Click Customize the Ribbon
   

Or

1. Right click anywhere in the Ribbon
2. Select Customize the Ribbon… from the drop down
   

Export Customizations

1. Click the Import/Export button
2. Select Export all customizations from the drop down
   
3. Change the file name and/or location if you want and click Save
   
   By default, the file is named Word Customizations.exportedUI ( and an Excel export file is called Excel Customizations.exportedUI, and PowerPoint is called PowerPoint Customizations.exportedUI. You get the idea). If you do decide to rename the file, it’s a real good idea to maintain the application name in your file name, since they’re all saved as the same file type.

Import Customizations

One thing you should be aware of is that when you import customizations, you lose any previous customizations you’ve done to the Ribbon and the Quick Access Toolbar. If you’d like to be able to revert to your customizations, export them first.

1. Click the Import/Export button
2. Select Import customization file from the drop down
3. Locate your *.exportedUI file (this is the only type of file you can open from the dialog) and click Open

The Customization File

If you’re wondering what that *.exportedUI file looks like, a screen shot is below. I opened it in TextPad (a pretty nifty text editor) and added a line return after each tag (just for readability).

The top box (red) shows the changes to my Quick Access ToolBar. The bottom box (blue) shows my custom Send group added to the Home tab.

If a company wanted to establish a standard interface for the Office 2010 applications, a customization file for each application could be distributed company-wide.

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One of the big changes in the Microsoft Office 2010 applications is your ability to customize the ribbons. You can add a custom group to any tab, add a custom tab, or remove a group from a tab. Let’s take a look at adding a custom group to the Home tab in Microsoft Word 2010.

While you can reorder and remove existing groups in a ribbon, you can’t add commands to an existing group. So to customize a ribbon, you need to add a custom group. We’ll add a custom group called Send to the Home tab, and add 3 commands to that group:

• Blog
• E-mail
• Send to Microsoft PowerPoint

Customize the Ribbon

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With so much collaboration in today’s business world, we often assign two or more people to the same project. In previous versions of Access, you had to enter separate records for each person to that project. Not anymore! Access has now included a multivalue field in the database. Is it hard to set up? Not at all. For example, in your database you already have a table listing the employees. You will want to create a separate table for your projects. In this projects table, you will have the fields of Project Id, Project Name, Description, Due Date, and Employees.

Open your table Design View and select the Employees field. For the data type, click on the drop down arrow and choose Lookup Wizard.

1. It is now a simple matter of following the steps of the wizard. This is the opening screen. You can choose to either look up the information that you want in another table in the same database or you can choose to type in your own list. Click the Next button.
   
2. In the second Screen, you simply choose the table you wish to use. Then click the Next button.
   
3. The third screen allows you to choose the fields that you want to see in the drop-down.
   
4. The fourth screen allows you to sort your list by whatever field you choose. You can sort by either Ascending or Descending order.
   
5. In this screen you can see how your drop-down list will look to your users. If needed, you can also resize the column width by dragging the right edge of the column border.
   
6. This is the final screen and be sure to put the checkmark in Allow Multiple Values.
   

You’re done. Now when you switch back to datasheet view of your table and you tab into the Employees field, you will see the drop-down arrow to click. Your list of choices will be displayed.

Simply click on the names of the employees that are working on this project and then click okay.

Finish adding your information to your record and when you have moved to another record, the datasheet will look like this.

Now both names of your participating employees are included in this one record.

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How many times have you sat in meetings looking at a series of boring bulleted slides like the one below? After a while they all start to look the same. Isn’t there a way to make your bulleted slides more interesting, so that they help hold people’s interest for a little longer? Absolutely! In PowerPoint 2007 and PowerPoint 2010 there is a feature called SmartArt. It helps jazz up your PowerPoint presentation and can actually convey more information than you can get from a simple bulleted list.

For example, take this slide:

Not only is it pretty dull, it also doesn’t show the relationship between the bullets:
Service + Commitment + Guarantee = Client Satisfaction.

With PowerPoint’s SmartArt, we can quickly and easily jazz this slide up and give it more meaning.

1. You have a couple options for adding SmartArt:
   • From the slide itself, click on the Insert SmartArt Graphic icon:
   • From the Insert ribbon, click the SmartArt icon.
     
2. The Choose a SmartArt Graphic dialog will appear. Select the category from the left and then the graphic you want to use. In our case, we’ll select the Converging Radial graphic from the Relationship category:
   
3. The SmartArt will appear. You can then click the box with the two triangles on the left to get an easy text-entry form:
   
4. Enter your text and it will show up in the SmartArt graphic:
   
5. Then you can make it more colorful using the SmartArt Tools options on the ribbon:
   

With some relatively simple work, you can turn the original boring list into something like this:

Better? I think so!

Go ahead. Open up PowerPoint 2010 (or 2007 if you haven’t yet upgraded) and start playing with SmartArt. You’ll have fun.

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I recently received a question regarding my article about Microsoft Office 2010 Backstage View. “Is there anyway I can also remove the list in Recent Places.” Let’s take a look at that.

The Recent Places panel appears in Word 2010, Excel 2010, and PowerPoint 2010. There are a few things you can do to customize the Recent Places panel. You can:

• Pin locations (always keep these locations in the list)
• Unpin locations
• Selectively remove locations
• Clear all unpinned locations

To Get Started

1. Click the File tab
2. Click the Recent option:
   

To Pin a Location to the List

Click the Pin button next to location name

Or right-click the location and select Pin to list

To Unpin a Location from the List

Click the Pin button next to location name

Or right-click the location and select Unpin from list

To Selectively Remove a Location

1. Right-click the location you want to remove
2. Select Remove from list
   
   (This option is available even if the location is pinned to the list)

To Clear All Unpinned Locations

1. Right-click any location on the Recent Places list
2. Select Clear unpinned Places
   
   (If you want to remove all the locations in the list, make sure none of the locations are pinned.)
3. Click Yes
   
   This will clear all the unpinned locations from your Recent Places list.
   

You can use the same techniques to customize the Recent Documents, Recent Workbooks, and Recent Presentations lists in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

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Microsoft Project is an application that specializes in keeping track of:

1. The tasks — the to-do list
2. The resource list–people and materials
3. The duration — time for tasks

Projects can be as large or small as the user needs. Follow these steps to get started on a familiar but simple project.

1. The easiest way to begin is to create the Task List. This is your to-do list – all the things you would have to do to accomplish the project. For example, if the project were to paint the room – the tasks would be buy the paint, move furniture, cover items with drop clothes, assemble supplies, begin painting. You can go into as much detail as you need. These are entered individually on the Task List.

   

2. It is a good idea to decide how long in hours or days each task will take. This is entered as the Duration of the task, on the Task List.
3. The next step is to decide when you will begin the project. That is the Project Start Date. That date gets entered under the Project Menu->Project Information.
4. The Resource List is simply a list of those people and/or materials you will need to complete the Project. That is a table under the View Menu->Resource Sheet. If you need to keep track of the money spent, that would get entered on the Resource Sheet either by cost/hour or one-time cost.
5. The number of resources (people working) will determine how you will sequence the tasks. If only one is painting, the tasks have to be sequenced so that one task starts and finishes before the next one starts. If you have multiple people, the sequencing could have two tasks going at the same time.
6. This sequencing is known as Linking and there is a little chain button on the toolbar that will sequence the selected tasks.
7. Once the project begins, you can keep track of the progress of the Project by using the Tracking
   Toolbar to mark things partially or all done. (Right-click on any toolbar and select it.)
8. Remember to enter the supplies on both the Resource Sheet and the Task as they contribute to the Cost of the project
9. Complete the tracking until all task are done. Then stop.
10. You can then check out the time and costs for your Project by using Reports from the Report Menu.
    

Try Microsoft Project and be patient with yourself. Have fun painting!

If you’re just getting started with Microsoft Project, you may be interested in our Introduction to Microsoft Project 2010 class.

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If you’ve had a chance to look at the Microsoft Word 2010 Home ribbon, you may have noticed a new button in the Font group. The Text Effects button allows you to apply some pretty cool effects to any text in your Word 2010 document. Let’s take a look.

You can apply a number of effects to any text in the document.

1. Select the text you want to format.
2. Click the Text Effects drop down.
   
3. Select one of the presets, or apply individual effects (I’m partial to the Reflection effect).

The really cool thing about this is that you can continue to edit the text as you normally would.

One thing I should note about this. If you open the document in Word 2007, the text effects are permanently removed. You can avoid this by creating custom styles for any text effects you’ve applied. If you open the document in 2007, you won’t see the effects, but if you reopen it in 2010, they’ll be there. See Reuse styles across Microsoft Word 2007 documents. Yes, it’s written for Word 2007, but the procedure hasn’t changed in Word 2010.

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Ok, you’re a keyboard virtuoso. Maybe you find stopping to click on a ribbon and then clicking an option slows you down. In Office 2010, you can use your keyboard to select any ribbon tab, and then any command in that ribbon. Let’s take a look at this in Word 2010.

KeyTips

When you press and release the Alt key, KeyTips will show you which key you should press to activate that ribbon. Once you activate a ribbon, the KeyTips will apply to all the commands in the ribbon. Let’s use the keyboard to change the Zoom to Page Width.

1. Press and release the Alt key
   
2. Press w to display the View tab and its KeyTips
   
3. Press i to change the zoom to Page Width

A few things to note:

• Any commands you’ve added to the Quick Access Toolbar will also have KeyTips associated with them.
• If you select an option that has a drop down associated with it, that drop down will display.
• If you select an option that opens a task pane, you can change the focus back to your document by pressing Alt twice.
• If you change your mind about using the KeyTips, press and release Alt again.

This probably isn’t going to replace using the standard keyboard shortcuts. But, once you get used to them, KeyTips can be very handy. Now you don’t have to try to remember some of the more exotic keyboard shortcut combinations.

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Sometimes in a query, you want to do a calculation. I find that the easiest way is to use the Expression Builder within Access. When you first open it, it may look confusing but it really isn’t. It is like the Christmas that you received the big box present. Once you opened the box, inside you found a smaller box, and once you opened that box, you found another smaller box. Well, the Expression Builder is organized that same way. In the bottom half of the dialog box that comes up, you see three list areas.

In the left-most list area, you will see the list of the categories of objects. If you expand a category, you will see the names of specific objects. In the example above, you see the highlighted name of the specific query that I am using—qryWeeklyPay. In the middle box, you see the names of the fields in that query. In top half of this dialog box, this is the area where the expression will be placed. In between these two areas, you find the symbols that you can use.

Let’s say we want to calculate each person’s weekly gross pay. In the middle box, click once on the field of hours and then click the paste button. Now click once on the asterisk button in the middle as that is the multiplier symbol and now click once on the PayRate field in the middle list box and click the paste button. The screen should look like this:

Now click the okay button. You are now in your query once again.

Run your query. You have now calculated everyone’s weekly Gross pay.

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We posted our video on =rand() to Microsoft Word’s Facebook wall and Alana (a Microsoft Word fan) commented that she like =lorem() too.  It is used just like =rand(): simply type =lorem(3,4) on a new line and press Enter and presto: three paragraphs of pseudo-Latin with four sentences each.  Here’s a 10-second video showing the magic:

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Would you like to customize your Microsoft Access 2007 Database with a Title and a Custom Icon? Follow these easy steps below:

1. Find the image you want to use and save it to the same drive on which your database is located. The image must have a .ico or .bmp file extension.
2. Click the Microsoft Office button in the upper-left corner.
3. Click the Access Options button in the lower-right corner.
4. Click Current Database.
5. Type in the Application Title you wish to use
6. Type in the location of the icon in the Application Icon field, or click Browse to navigate to the image file.
7. Check the Use as Form and Report Icon checkbox if you want to display the Title and Icon on all forms and reports.
8. Click OK.

You can see by the screen shot below that the new title is “Green Grass Company” and the custom icon is the little green plant.

I found the plant icon at www.iconarchive.com.

***Please note that this will not change the name of the database itself.

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Sometimes it’s handy to be able to quickly drop some text into a Microsoft Word document. Maybe you’re working on a layout, or want to see how different formatting affects text. Microsoft Word 2010 has a feature that lets you automatically insert sample text (very little typing required). Lets take a look.

1. Place your insert cursor on a blank line in Microsoft Word 2010.
2. Type the following:

            =rand(3,4)

3. Press Enter

Presto – almost instant text!

What Happened?

When you type =rand(p,s), Word 2010 inserts p paragraphs with s sentences in each paragraph. For example; typing =rand(5,4) will give you 5 paragraphs with 4 sentences in each paragraph.

• The default for both p and s is 3, so if you type =rand(), you get 3 paragraphs with 3 sentences in each.
• After 9 sentences the text starts to repeat.

If you’d rather have some fake Latin text, use lorem instead of rand. Type =lorem(2,6) and press Enter, you get 2 paragraphs of pseudo-Latin with 6 sentences in each paragraph.

What Do You Need To Remember?

• The magic formula needs to be entered on its own line.
• It should be the only text in the line.
• You have to begin with an equals sign (=).
• If you use 0 (zero) as either number, you’ll only get empty paragraphs

This also works for inserting text into a text box.

See it in action

Click the play button below to see rand() in action:

Why is This Useful?

In delivering Word 2010 training, I use this a lot just to have some starting text. A significant portion of Word training involves manipulating text, and this is a very quick way of getting that text into a document. I can then focus on the task at hand:

• selecting text
• changing paragraph alignment
• setting indents
• whatever

It’s also a pretty neat trick. And, by the way, it works in Word 2007 as well.

I first saw this as a “Tip of the Week” in the New York Times Personal Tech page: Faking Text in Word. You can get more detailed information at Microsoft Support www.support.microsoft.com/kb/212251.

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One of the things I really like in Microsoft Office 2010 is the redesigned Print tab in the Backstage view. In Word 2010, the new view combines the Print dialog, the most common Page Setup elements, and Print Preview. Let’s take a look at some of the options Word 2010 provides:

Printing and Print Preview in Microsoft Word 2010

To go to Word 2010′s Print view:

1. Click the File tab
2. Click the Print tab

or

1. Press Ctrl-P

Word 2010 Print Options

Fr

om here, you can do pretty much anything you want related to printing your Word document or managing the document properties. When I start up Word 2010, my Print tab defaults are as follows:

Print Preview

The Print Preview area gives you page navigation buttons (you can also use the scroll bar to m

ove through pages), the zoom slider, and a Zoom to Page button to the right of the slider. This resizes the page to the preview area if you’ve been zooming around. If you really miss the Word 2007 version of Print Preview, you can add it to your Quick Access Toolbar.

1. Click the Customize Quick Access Toolbar button
2. Select More Commands…
3. In the Choose commands from: drop down, select File Tab
4. Scroll down and select Print Preview Edit Mode
   
5. Click Add
6. Click OK

Printing in Word 2010 is covered in our new Introduction to Microsoft Word 2010 class. You can also hear about our latest Office blogs, classes, and webinars by signing up for our newsletter.

For many Office 2007 users (including myself), it took awhile to get accustomed to the idea that the Office button is actually more than a decoration; it replaces the File menu of earlier versions. Office 2010, however, brings back the File tab, which now takes you to “the Backstage view.” Let’s take a look at it in Word 2010.

According to Microsoft, The Backstage view “… is everything that you do to a file that you don’t do in the file.” In essence, the Backstage view hides your current document, and gives you access to file-related activities. The Backstage view for Word 2010 is below:

Some of the tabs in the Backstage view function as they did in previous versions: Save, Save As, Open and Close should be pretty familiar.

Other tabs are new or redesigned.

A nice little added feature is that if you decide to not do anything in the Backstage view, clicking the File tab again will take you back to your document view in whatever tab you were originally in.

While moving from Office 2003 to Office 2007 was a little confusing, I find the new features Microsoft has added Office 2010 to be very intuitive.

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Have you ever wanted to attach a Macro to a button on the toolbar in Microsoft Word? Maybe you have and have seen the images that are provided for  you. Microsoft provides you with about 20 icons. I personnaly like the little pig icon:. But, how do we get rid of that little piggy and insert our own custom icon? Just follow these steps:

1. Open Microsoft Word 2007 and create your macro.
2. Find or create your icon.  You can get some great icons for free at FAMFAMFAM.
3. Insert the image icon into the Word document. This is only temporary. You can delete the image from the page when you are done.
4. Right-click on the image and select Copy.
5. Go to Tools > Customize, you are now in the Customize dialog box.
6. Click the Toolbars tab.
7. Click New.
8. Edit the toolbar name to whatever you want from the Make Toolbar Available list, and choose the document on which you are currently working.
9. Click OK.
10. Activate the Commands tab.
11. From the Categories list, select Macros.
12. In the Save In list, make sure the current document is selected.
13. From the Commands list, choose the macro you want to attach to the button and drag it on top of the new little menu that has suddenly appearred on your screen
14. Right-click on the new button and choose Customize.
15. Right-click on the button again and choose Paste Button Image.
16. Close out of the Customize dialog box and delete the image from the document.
17. Save it, click  your cool custom icon, and watch your macro work!

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In today’s busy world, much of our communication is done through email. In my last article, I talked about creating a signature in Outlook 2007 for your emails. But not all your email may be representing what you are currently working on. You may be active not only in work, but also may be on several committees, and you likely also send personal emails. You may want your emails to be individualized and not just the run-of-the-mill closing and signature. That is not hard to do in Outlook 2007: just create a signature for each of your committees or activities. When you have finished your email, simply click on the drop down arrow under signature button on the ribbon and you will see all of your different signatures.

You simply choose the one that is appropriate for this communication. Now your email will reflect the personal touch that you wish to achieve.

To add a default signature for your emails

Once your signatures have been created, you may find that you are using one signature more often than others. Why not make emails even easier by creating a default signature for the majority of the emails you send. It is absolutely easy to do. Click on Tools on the menu bar and then choose Options from the drop-down menu. Once the dialog box has opened, click on the Mail Format tab. In the Signatures section of the page, click on the Signatures command button.

Nowthe following dialog box will appear. You simply choose from your previously created signatures which one you wish to be your default.

Your default will automatically be added when you are composing a new email. To change to another signature, simply click on the signature button on the ribbon and change to the one that you wish to use for this message.

Happy emailing!

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You are writing an email and once again you have to type in your name, title, and email address. There has to be an easier way to do this then typing each time. Well, there is! It is just a few quick steps and you can use it over and over again. To begin, create a new email and look at the Message Ribbon. On the right side of the ribbon, you will see the Signature button in the Include section of the ribbon.

Now choose Signature. Once this dialog box opens, you want to click the New button and then give it a name. Then simply begin typing your signature in the large text box at the bottom of this dialog box.

Your new Outlook 2007 is now created. To use the signature for your emails, simply click the signature button again and select it by the name you just gave it.

Now it is there! My next article will explain how to create multiple signatures for your various needs.

Creating signatures is covered in our Advanced Outlook 2007 course.

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I recently created a short video on how to publish from Word 2007 to WordPress. I’ve since upgraded to Word 2010. The Office 2010 upgrade was relatively smooth and thankfully Word 2010 kept all my blog accounts and other settings in place.

Publishing from Word 2010 to WordPress is pretty much the same as it was with Word 2007 with one important difference:

The Publish option doesn’t show up by default in Word 2010 as it did in Word 2007.

The video below shows how to add the Publish option to the Quick Access Toolbar.

Happy blogging!

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When I first installed Office 2010 on Windows 7, I got an error and it rolled back the whole installation.

Install Office 2010 Successfully

To install Office 2010 successfully, I had to do the following two things:

1. Close all my background programs by clicking on the up arrow at the right of the task bar and right-clicking on the programs one by one and choose Exit.
   
2. Run the installer as Administrator. To do this, I opened the DVD, right-clicked on the Setup.exe file and chose Run as Administrator…

That did the trick!

Good luck installing Office 2010! Now I’m looking forward to trying it out.

Hate grabbing the mouse all the time? Are you more of a keyboard shortcut person? Did you know that in Outlook 2007 your Navigation Pane has keyboard shortcuts to move from one section to the other? As the illustration below shows, it is a quick switch to move from your Inbox to your Calendar. Simply press Ctrl + 2.

The other Navigation Pane keyboard shortcuts are shown below.

There you go. Now you will be flying around Outlook, jumping from your tasks to your mail to your calendar all directly from the keyboard. Have fun!

Codex, the built-in editor to WordPress isn’t a bad editor as far as WYSIWYG HTML editors go, but for people not used to the quirks of such editors, it can be difficult to use. So, I was pleased to find out that you can publish to WordPress using Word 2007. Depending on the design elements in your article, it may need some cleanup in Codex, but does a decent job getting you started. In the video below, I show how to use Word 2007 to publish a blog post to WordPress.

In my last article, I explained how to create grouped worksheets. Let’s take this one step further and now turn these grouped worksheets into a template to use over and over again. Before you type in any specific information, simply go up to the Office button, and choose Save As. When the dialog box comes up, be sure to change the type of file to be a Excel Template:

Now here is the most important step: Close immediately after you have saved it as a template so that nothing you type now will become part of that Excel template.

To use the Excel template:

1. Click theOffice button.
2. Choose New.
3. Select My templates…
   
4. Double-click on your new template:
   

Voila! You are now all set for the months ahead!

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So you’ve created a nice outline in Microsoft Word (see my post: Outlining in Microsoft Word 2007). Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to create a PowerPoint presentation from your masterpiece? Well, if you’re using Word 2007 and PowerPoint 2007, it’s easy to do! Let’s look at two ways of doing it:

Sending a Word Outline to PowerPoint

To send a Microsoft Word outline to PowerPoint, you’ll need to add the Send to Microsoft Office PowerPoint button to your Quick Access Toolbar.

Add the Send to Microsoft Office PowerPoint Button

1. Click the Customize Quick Access Toolbar button and select More Commands…



2. In the Choose commands from: drop down, select Commands Not in the Ribbon.
   
3. Scroll down and double-click the Send to Microsoft Office PowerPoint command.
   
4. Click OK to close the Word Options window.

Send the Outline to PowerPoint

1. Use Heading styles to create the outline.
   or
   Open the outlined document.
2. Click the Send to Microsoft Office PowerPoint button.

PowerPoint will open with a new presentation based on your headings. Level 1 headings become individual slides, Level 2 headings become bullets in the slide, Level 3 headings become sub-bullets, etc. If you want to include some body text in the slides, apply a Heading style to that text.

Import a Word Outline into a PowerPoint Presentation

To import an outline into PowerPoint, you need to make sure your Word document is not open.

1. Start PowerPoint.
2. On the Home Tab, click the New Slide drop down and select Slides from Outline…
   
3. Navigate to the outline you want to use and click Insert.

The slide below was created using the outline for this article.

Using Word with other programs is covered in Webucator’s Advanced Microsoft Word 2007 Class.

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What is a variable?

Think of it this way, a variable is like a little box in your computer’s memory. The little box, the variable, will have a name. You store things in variables, like Dates, Strings, or Objects. At some point, you will retrieve the contents of the variable and do something with it. For example, you might display the Date that is being stored. You retrieve the contents of the variable by calling it by its name. You can name your variables pretty much whatever you want, but there are some rules and conventions to variable naming in VBA.

VBA Variable Rules

These are musts. All variables must follow these rules:

1. The name must begin with a letter.
2. The name must contain only letters, numbers, and underscores (no other symbols).
3. The name cannot be more than 255 characters long.
4. The name cannot be a reserved word like Print or Save.

VBA Variable Conventions

These are conventions. All variables should follow these conventions.

1. Always use a three-letter prefix that describes the type of data the variable will hold.
2. Capitalize the first letter of every actual word (but not the prefix) in the variable. This is called lower camel case. For example:
   • strFirstName
   • dtmBirthDate
   • rptMonthlyReport

So, how do you know if a word is reserved? Well, by putting the three-letter prefix in front of the variable, you ensure that it will not be a reserved word. For example, Print is a reserved word, but strPrint is not.

Do you have to declare your variables? No. Should you declare your variables? YES! Read more about declaring variables and using Option Explicit in VBA.

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Maybe you’re the kind of person who always outlines everything before you start writing. Or maybe you’re like me, and just start writing and sees the outline develop as you go. The Microsoft Word 2007 Outline view has some real advantages, especially when you’re creating long documents. Let’s take a look at it.

Use Heading Styles to create an Outline

Creating an outline in Word 2007 is as simple as applying heading styles to the titles and subtitles in your Word document.

Outline a New Document

1. Switch to the Outline view.
   • On the View tab, click the Outline view.
   • On the Status Bar, click the Outline view.
   • Either way, you’ll see the Outlining tab.
2. Start entering your headings.
3. Apply levels to your headings using the Promote/Demote tools in the Outline Tools group.
   

Outline an Existing Document

1. Select your heading.
2. In the Style group on the Home ribbon, click on the Heading Level you want.
   Neat thing Word does: once you use a Heading level, Word automatically creates the next level heading style (up to 9 levels).
3. Switch to the Outline view and use the Show Level drop down on the Outlining tab to show or hide different levels and body text.
   

Why Bother?

You can use the outline view to move headings, and all of its subheadings and body text to a new position in the document.

1. Click the Plus circle next to the heading to select everything under that heading.
   
2. Use the Up/Down arrows in the Outline Tools section to move the whole chunk up or down in the document.
   
   or
   Drag the Heading to its new position.

Extra Special Bonus Feature 1

Applying Heading styles automatically creates a Document Map, a great navigation tool for long documents!

Extra Special Bonus Feature 2

You can export an outline to PowerPoint, were Level 1 headings become individual slides, Level 2 headings become bullets in the slide, Level 3 headings become sub-bullets, etc. (body text isn’t exported, but we can’t have everything).

Managing long documents is covered in Webucator’s Advanced Microsoft Word 2007 Class.

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Do you create multiple worksheets that use the same labels?  Do you copy and paste the same labels over and over again?  Want a quick way to set up as many worksheets as you need in one step?  Let me show you a quick and easy way to do just that.  We will just say that you are in charge of budgets for many departments within your company.  You need to keep track of the same information for each department.  So at the beginning of each month, you create a separate worksheet for the each of the departments and type the same category labels over and over.  Wouldn’t it be nice to do it only once?  Not a problem.  Once you open the file simply click on the first sheet tab, hold down the shift key and click on the last sheet tab.  All of the sheet tabs will turn white.

Now whatever you type in the first sheet will appear in the same spot for all of the sheets.  Labels or formulas – it really doesn’t matter.  They will appear in all of the sheets.

Text and Formulas

Now to get out of the grouped mode, simply click on one sheet tab and the rest will turn blue and be ready for inputting your information on each worksheet.

All that is left is to just add the individual information.  http://bit.ly/9XMU1T

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]]> http://office.blogs.webucator.com/2010/04/19/working-with-excel-worksheet-groups/feed/ 1 http://office.blogs.webucator.com/2010/04/19/working-with-excel-worksheet-groups/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MicrosoftOfficeTrainingBlog/~3/M9cyEh5Mwk0/ http://office.blogs.webucator.com/2010/04/15/excel-custom-date-formats/#comments Thu, 15 Apr 2010 19:47:57 +0000 Dave Dunn http://office.blogs.webucator.com/?p=77

Formatting dates in Microsoft Excel is easy, right?  All you have to do is:

1. Right-click in the cell you are formatting
2. Select Format Cells
3. Select Date under Category
4. Choose your format.

But what do you do if you want your own custom date format to show up in the options?  The Excel Date Format MM/DD/YYYY won’t show up unless it is selected in the Windows Control Panel. Fortunately, this is an easy fix (instructions apply to Windows 7, but ought to be similar for Vista and XP):

1. Open the Windows Control Panel
2. Select Clock, Language, and Region
3. Under Region and Language, select Change the date, time, or number format
4. Set the Short Date to MM/DD/YYYY.

Now go back to Excel, and there, right along with the other date formatting options, is your very own custom date format!

Other types of formatting are covered in our Excel 2007 and 2003 classes.

You’ve turned on Track Changes in Word 2007, but all the markup makes your Word document a bit hard to, well, track. You need to go through the document and either accept or reject the changes. You can also change how you’re viewing your document. Let’s take a look at how to do this.

Change How You View Tracking

1. On the Review tab, in the Tracking section, drop down the Display for Review menu
   
2. Select your view
   • Final shows the document with all the proposed changes included.
   • Original shows the document before any changes were made.
   • The markup shows what changes have been proposed.
3. If you want to, open up the Reviewing Pane
   
   This pane shows revisions in a separate window.

Accept or Reject Changes

Move your cursor to the beginning of the document (it’s usually a good idea to start at the beginning, but Word will wrap around if you start somewhere else).

1. On the Review tab, in the Changes section, click the Next button to move to the next change.
2. Click the Accept or Reject button to accept the change or reject the change and move to the next change.
3. Keep going until you’ve responded to all the changes.

You can accept all the changes by clicking the Accept drop down and selecting Accept All Changes in Document (guess how you’d reject all the changes).

Why Bother?

Until you actually respond to all the proposed changes, they remain in the file as mark-up. If you send this off as a final version, whoever gets it can still see your edits. Most of the time, this is not cool.

Tracking changes and collaborating on documents is covered in Webucator’s Advanced Microsoft Word 2007 Class.

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You have probably opened the VB Editor in Access, Word, or PowerPoint, and seen Option Explicit at the top of the code window. But what does it mean?

Option Explicit means that you must declare all variables before using it anywhere in your code. Some variables are declared directly underneath Option Explicit, while others are declared within a procedure. Regardless, you should declare them! And using Option Explicit will make sure that you do. By using it, it will help trap undeclared or misspelled variables. That way, you can immediately correct the error before you proceed to the next line of code.

Here are the steps to ensure explicit declaration in Microsoft Office 2007:

1. In the VB Editor, choose Tools -> Options, and make sure you are on the Editor tab.
2. Under Code Settings, check Require Variable Declaration.
3. Click OK.

Easy enough, right? The only downside is that this new setting will only trap undeclared variables in new projects, not old ones.

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Ever wonder what was going on once you start revising those Microsoft Word documents? Track Changes is a great way of highlighting whatever you’re doing with your document: adding, deleting, moving text, changing formatting.  Here’s how to get started:

Update the User Information

1. In the Review Tab, click the Track Changes drop down and select “Change User Name…”. This is just to ensure your information (name and initials) is in there.
   
2. Update the information, if necessary.
3. Click OK.

Change the Tracking Options

If you don’t particularly like seeing deletions as red strikethroughs and insertions as green underlines, change them.

1. In the Review Tab, click the Track Changes drop down and select “Change Tracking Options…”.  You’ll get a dialog box where you can make a ton of changes if you want.
   
2. Make changes to how you want your tracking displayed.
3. Click OK.

Add the Track Changes button to your Status Bar

1. Right Click the Status Bar to open the Customize Status Bar menu.
2. Select Track Changes.
   
3. Turn Track Changes on and off by clicking the button (a bit easier than remembering which ribbon it’s in).

Why Track Changes?

• You probably won’t remember where you’ve made your changes, especially subtle differences.
• If more than one person is doing an edit (and he/she has enabled Track Changes) you can see who made what change, when, by hovering the mouse over the change.
  
• You can accept/reject changes individually. Think of it as selective Undo.
• Just look at all the colors!

Tracking changes and collaborating on documents is covered in Webucator’s Advanced Microsoft Word 2007 Class.

The Mystery of the Runaway Mouse: Solved!

Have you ever tried to select just certain cells in Excel and before you knew it, you were down at row 2002? You can spend a great deal of frustrating time selecting just the right cells – you can go down too far, then go up too far, too far to the left, or too far to the right – that is what I call the runaway mouse. Maybe you know the trick that you can click in the first cell, hold down the Shift key, then click in the last cell and release the Shift key. If the sequence of the keystrokes is just right (and I mean perfect) then you get what you want.

But I have a much simpler way to select a range of cells in Excel. It is the F8 key – just one keystroke with no sequential movements.

1. Click in the first cell that you want.
2. Tap the F8 key once and let it up.
3. Click in the last cell that you want.

Now you have your range of cells! You can name that range of cells by clicking once in the name box area, typing in a name and pressing Enter.

To stop the highlighting, simply press the ESC key and you are free to mouse into any cell you want without continuing the selection process. Instantly, you are back into the normal mouse.

Use your newly named range in any of the formulas that you want.

Learn more easy tricks in our Excel classes.

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You just loaded Office 2007 on your computer and opened Excel 2007 and what is this that you are seeing?  Where is your menu bar and the toolbars?  How are you going to be able to get anything done now that the look is totally different?  Well, Microsoft decided that instead of memorizing where all of the shortcuts and great tools are hidden they would now put them out there on “ribbons” for us to be able to spot with just a glance.  But how do you know which ribbon you should be looking at?  When you open Excel, you see seven ribbons.  The Home ribbon has the most common tools that you will use when you are creating an Excel spreadsheet.  And most of the buttons on this ribbon have drop-down arrows that will give you more choices so there is less memorization needed.

The rest of ribbons are organized logically by topics.  And more ribbons appear as you need them.  For example, assume you are working with the following simple list in Excel 2007:

Put your cursor inside your list and go to the Insert ribbon and click on Table button in the first section of that ribbon.

Now your list is converted to a table and a new Table Tools Design ribbon appears to the right of the View ribbon. The Table Tools Design ribbon provides buttons to accomplish the common formatting tasks that you do with a list for ease of comprehension.  Right next to the column headings, there are drop-down arrows which allow you to filter your list to show just what you were looking for. Now you can even have Excel check for duplicates in your lists.  Look for Remove Duplicates in the Table Tools Design ribbon.

These are just so many new features that are now available with a click:

• Build a chart with just one click (Insert ribbon).
• Check the cell references of your formulas using the formula auditing tools (Formula ribbon).
• Add new Smart Graphics (Insert ribbon again).

What wonderful tools to be able to make those spreadsheets more professional in appearance.  It may take a little time getting use to the new ribbons in Excel, but it is definitely worth the effort.

The ribbon is covered in Webucator’s  Introduction to Microsoft Excel 2007 class.

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OK, you’ve just spent quite a while getting the titles for your Microsoft Word document just right. You’ve tweaked the font and font size. You’ve applied Small Caps (I love Small Caps in titles). And you’ve added some extra spacing, and maybe a border, before and after the title.

A masterpiece!

Something you’d like to be able to reuse in other Microsoft Word documents.

You could write down all your settings and apply them to text in the new document. You could copy some of the formatted text and paste it the new document, using the format painter to copy you settings. Or you could just create a new Quick Style.

1. Select the text with the formatting you want to copy.
2. Click the More button next to the Style Gallery on the Home tab. This will display all the styles, and the option to create a new Quick Style.
   
3. Click “Save Selection as New Quick Style…”
   
4. Give it a name a little more meaningful that “Style1“.
5. Click the Modify… button.
6. Towards the bottom of the dialog box, select “New documents based on this template.”
   
7. Click OK.

From now on, whenever you create a new document in Microsoft Word, the style you created will be available in the Style Gallery.  Give it a try and let me know (via a comment) if you have any questions.

Customizing formatting with styles and themes is covered in Webucator’s Intermediate Microsoft Word class.

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