Small City Law Firm Tech

Office 2013: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

2013-05-13T13:10:14Z

My new post up this morning at Attorney At Work:

Microsoft Office 2013 has been available for several months, but Office 2010 has been stable and mostly well-received in our firm. And with staff and lawyers already overwhelmed by the never-ending stream of new technologies hurtling toward them, I wasn't eager to push yet more change on them. So I put off the idea of installing the new Office on any of our firm’s computers.

Until now, that is. Having nabbed a new desktop computer that came bundled with Office 2013, I've finally had a chance to complete an install of it. It didn't make much sense to downgrade to Office 2010. It was time to take the plunge. And what better workstation to start with than mine!

Head over to Attorney at Work to read all about The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Office 2013 before deciding whether Office 2013 will work in your office!

Filed Under "You Learn Something New Every Day": Posting from Word to Exchange Public Folders

2013-05-01T17:22:58Z

One of the many things I enjoy about my work is the constant learning and discovery. Even if it's a 'small' discovery, as this one is, it's often enough to make a difference in a workday.

I'm always looking for more efficient ways to deal with the mountain of information our office produces and must deal with daily. Some time ago we established a 'Red Tape Reduction' committee to identify workflow process that could use improvement. This post addresses one of those identified processes. Solving it resulted in the discovery of a simple process buried deep within Word that increased the efficiency in our workflow.

If you aren't running an Exchange server, with Outlook connected as the desktop email client, you can stop reading right here - this post won't be of any interest to you. But if you are working with Outlook connected to Exchange and use Exchange Public Folders, you may find this a helpful tip.

Essentially we were looking for the most efficient way to post to an existing Word .doc to a public folder to reduce duplication of work. We knew we could drag and drop the .doc from Windows Explorer to the Outlook Public Folder (but that required Windows resizing, so both the origin and destination locations were visible to allow for the drag and drop - and that can be fiddly). We knew we could copy and paste the .doc (or any file) from its original location to the Public Folder (but that requires a lot of clicking). There had to be a better way. It turns out there is - it's just buried in Word, and until today, I didn't know it existed (which is possibly negligence on my part, but let's keep that to ourselves...!) It's called the 'Send to Exchange Folder' command - and you can add it to your Quick Access Toolbar (Word 7 and later versions) for easy access. This command allows you to directly send the open Word document straight to the Public Folder, right from within Word - no drag and drop, no copy and paste required.

Here's how you do it:

Add ‘Send to Exchange Folder’ to QAT

Click the down arrow at the far left of the Quick Access Toolbar (QAT) to customize it to make the change
Click More Commands

In the ‘Choose commands from’ box, click the ‘down’ triangle to change the list from ‘Popular Commands’ to ‘All Commands’
Scroll down the (alphabetical) list of commands
Click once on ‘Send to Exchange Folder’ to select it
Click the ‘Add’ button (you’ll see the ‘Send to Exchange’ folder appear in the right side box, as shown below)
Click ‘OK’

That’s it – you’re done. You’ll now see the ‘Send to Exchange Folder’ on your QAT.

This is a one-time customization that should remain available to you at all times, now that it has been placed on the QAT.

To use this ‘Send to Exchange Folder’ function

Just do the following, with your Word document (In this case, the Pickup and Delivery Form) open:

Click the ‘Send to Exchange’ icon on your QAT
In the dialog box that opens – expand the ‘Public Folders’ (by clicking the + to its left)
Expand ‘All Public Folders’ (by clicking the + to its left)
Click to Select the Public Folder you wish to send the .doc to
Click ‘OK’

That’s it! Word sends the document off to the chosen Public Folder as simply at that, as you can see from the screenshot below. The document is posted there immediately, with minimal work on your part to get it there!

Live and learn!

Them’s The (Email) Rules!

2013-04-30T18:13:54Z

My latest post is up at the ABA Law Technology Today blog

Please head off here to read the full post:

A couple of weeks ago our offices installed a brand-spanking new VoIP phone system. I've been geeking out for the last little while, figuring out all the cool things we can do with the new system that we couldn't do with the old one. I love that I can log out of the phone at our desk, drive over to our other city office and log into a phone over there. Everything travels along to the new location with me – my extension, my voice mail, my direct line, phone customizations – all of it. It’s as if I am sitting at my own desk and not half-way across the city!

We can now also receive our voice mail messages as a .wav (sound) attachment to an email. I always have my email available to me – either directly in Outlook, or by way of Outlook Web Access, or on my mobile devices. Each one easily plays the message for me, without having to dial into my voice mail. And icing on the cake: the recordings can be saved permanently to a matter file.

And that’s what this column is really about – not a cool new phone system, but all the additional email now landing in my mailbox. The first day the new system was operational, I watched those incoming voice mail messages and watched everyone else doing the same – and then I watched as some manually dragged each message into a folder they created in Outlook, so the messages wouldn't ‘mix’ with the other email in their Inbox.

Painful. Very painful. I'm thinking repetitive stress injury territory, given how many voice mail emails arrive at the office…. Why do Outlook’s work for it, when you can lay down the law and make it do what you want it to do – make Outlook follow your Rules.

Remainder full post here

Silencing Email Read Receipts: Why You Don’t Always Get What You Want

2013-02-07T14:18:00Z

My latest is up at Attorney at Work this morning. Click at the link below to discover why you don't always get that email Read Receipt, even when you've asked for it very, very nicely...

Silencing Email Read Receipts: Why You Don’t Always Get What You Want

Back in the day when I was a young and naive pup, I didn’t pay much attention to how my email was set up. I’d sometimes be surprised by a little pop-up that accompanied an email I’d just opened in Microsoft Outlook, asking me to please confirm receiving and reading that email: aka a “read receipt.”

I may have been naive in those days, but I was also (and still am) private and paranoid. My reflexive privacy twitch always caused my finger to click “no” every time that box appeared. (“No, you can’t know that I received and read your email—that’s my business, not yours.”) Eventually, I began poking around for a way to turn off those occasional, annoying pop-ups.

Complete collection of Microsoft Office 2013 Quick Start Guides (Cheat Sheets)

2013-02-06T19:04:00Z

For those brave / adventurous enough to have made their way to Office 2013 here is a great collection of Cheat Sheets from Microsoft:

Links to Office 2013 Cheat Sheets, from Eric Ligman: Microsoft Small Business Community Blog:

Yesterday I sent out a series of tweets pointing people to the various

different Microsoft Office 2013 Quick Start Guides, which are printable guides that contain useful tips, shortcuts, and screenshots to help you find your way around. In other words, I like to think of them as your “Cheat sheets” for the various Microsoft Office 2013 programs.

Well, throughout the day yesterday, I started receiving pings and inquiries from some of my followers saying how much they liked the different Microsoft Office 2013 Quick Start Guides and asking if I had the full series posted in one place to see all of the ones available, as well as access and download them all from a single location. Since I had not put the collection together in one place yet and there seemed to be a consistent ask for this, I thought I would pull them all together here for you in a single post so you can see all of the ones available and download the ones you want for yourselves. Simply click on the pictures or names of the ones you want and download them, or right-click on them and select “Save target as,” to directly save them to your machine.

Microsoft Office 2013 Quick Start Guides (“Cheat Sheets”):

Simple Calculations in a Word Table

2013-01-29T16:17:00Z

I was working with one of our assistants yesterday – she was automating a set of documents to more efficiently serve one of our municipal clients – setting up ‘Ask’ fields', ‘Create Date’ and 'PrintDate' fields and more (I was pretty thrilled by this, to tell the truth!). Her precedent document also contained a simple Word table with some figures in a column, causing her to ask a question I don’t get asked very often:

“Can Word add up a column of numbers in the same way an Excel spreadsheet does?” (she wanted to avoid having to link a separate Excel spreadsheet to the precedent document).

And my answer was “Yes, it can” (though my 'Yes' was very qualified).

Below, I’ve created a single column table and put a number in each cell. If you add the numbers, you will see that they total 15, and that’s what the table shows.

However I didn’t type the number 15, I used Word’s ‘Formula’ command (when you the table, Word will display the 'Table Tools' Ribbon - look at the' Layout' Tab, then the 'Data' group and you'll see the 'Formula' command) to total the column and insert the total automatically in the last cells (Place your cursor in the bottom cell first and ensure it's empty)

Word inserts the total (sum) as a field (this is the default action in the Formula command), allowing you to change the column numbers in the future and update the total by updating the field.

The total (sum) does not update immediately upon changing a number in the column as Excel does (it will update automatically on reopening the document – not very useful timing!). To see the updated total right away you must select the total (sum) field, then press the F9 key to manually update it.

This is pretty handy for very, very simple calculations directly in Word, but Word Tables are subject to serious limitations you should be aware of: None of the cells can be empty. Word will only total contiguously numbered cells – if one cell is empty, it will not sum the entire column of numbers correctly. That means you **must** put a number in each column cell, even if that number is ‘0’.

Word will let you do other calculations than Sum in a Table, but I haven’t tried them and wouldn’t recommend them. If you want move involved calculations, use an Excel spreadsheet and link it to your Word document.

You ARE the Weakest Link | Law Technology Today

2013-01-25T17:02:00Z

Remember that turn of the century game show where weaker players were summarily dismissed from the game by a snarling game show host? Wrong answer, off the game the player was ordered, as the weakest link – no second chance. Only the strongest, most strategic players were left standing at the end to compete for the prize.

When it comes to computer security, YOU are that weakest link. If you lose, you might not only be sent home in humiliation, you may take your entire office and your clients’ confidentiality with you. Losing the computer security game is not a chance you want to take.

via lawtechnologytoday.org

My new post is up at the ABA's Law Technology Today blog. Click on over for the full post and don't forget to stay vigiliant out there.

Adobe Reader XI: A Worthwhile Download for Lawyers

2013-01-16T13:44:00Z

My latest is up at Attorney at Work, in my new regular 'Power User' column. Click through at the link below to read all about to goodness that is Adobe Reader XI. If you have an earlier version of Reader installed on your computer, this is a good upgrade.

Adobe Reader XI: A Worthwhile Download for Lawyers

By Vivian Manning | Jan.15.13 | Daily Dispatch, Power User, Productivity, Technology

Mostly in life, you get what you pay for. And when you pay nothing, you don’t often get much in return. Sometimes you get more than you bargained for, but not in a good way. Once in a great while, though, you get an unexpected prize. Adobe Reader XI, Adobe’s free PDF reader software, is one of those prizes: A rare, good, free thing.

Adding 'Advanced Find' to Word 2010's Quick Access Toolbar and/or Ribbon

2013-01-14T14:32:00Z

Way back in September 2011, I wrote a couple of posts about Word 2010’s ‘Find’. Basically I was whining about how Word 2010 replaced the ‘Ctrl F’ keyboard shortcut with the Navigation Pane, rather than Word’s old ‘Find’ Dialog box (and I preferred the old Find box). This change made the old ‘Find’ box more difficult to get to – and it required extra clicking to get there.

My original post laid out the various ways to access the old-fashioned ‘Find’ box, for those still wanting it, and my follow-up post elevated an extremely helpful comment from Deborah Savadra, Legal Office Guru, showing how to re-apply the old keyboard shortcut to the Find dialog box, allowing you to bypass the Navigation Pane and go straight to Find.

But I realized, the other day, while working on a Word issue, that I missed an additional way to access the old Find dialog box from the Quick Access Toolbar and/or the Ribbon. Because Microsoft never makes it easy, you know? They actually did do make the ‘Advanced Find’ command available for both the QAT and the Ribbon, it’s just not where I expected to find it – you know, next to ‘Find’! It’s up with the ‘A’s – under ‘Advanced’…

Add ‘Advanced Find’ to the Quick Access Toolbar

Click the ‘down’ triangle at the right of the QAT to reveal the drop-down menu
Click ‘More Commands’

In the ‘Word Options Dialog box

Choose commands from: ‘All Commands’
Scroll down the list of commands until you see ‘Advanced Find’ (choose the command with the binoculars) and click to select it
Click ‘Add’ button to add the command to the QAT (moved it up or down the list of commands as desired)
Click ‘OK’

You’ll now see the Advanced Find command icon on your QAT and clicking on it will bring up the old dialog box:

Add Advanced Find to the Ribbon

I wrote an extended post on how to Customize Word 2010’s Ribbon here: Word 2010 - Ribbon Customization (to add Print Preview and more). Please refer to that post for basic instructions on how to customize.

Essentially though, after you start the Ribbon customization process, you are looking in the ‘All Commands’ selection for ‘Advanced Find’ as you saw in the earlier instructions for customizing the QAT. Once you find that command, and move it into the new custom group created to hold it on the Ribbon (I think it’s best on the ‘Home’ Ribbon, right next to the default ‘Find / Replace / Select’ editing commands, you’ll see it appearing like this on your newly customized Ribbon. Clicking on it takes you straight to that lovely old-fashioned Find dialog box, where you can carry out your ‘find’ magic in your document :

Don’t Let Track Changes Trip You Up by Deborah Savadra at Lawyerist.com

2013-01-10T21:16:00Z

Click on over to the latest from Deborah Savadra at Lawyerist.com to read her latest always helpful post to learn how to ensure Word's helpful Track Changes feature doesn't blow up in your face:

Don’t Let Track Changes Trip You Up

However handy the Track Changes feature in Microsoft Word is, it’s also a minefield for the unsuspecting. Learning to use Track Changes intelligently can help you not get tripped up by it.