This next Microsoft Office Trick and Tip is especially handy when you work at a “public” computer at the office. This probably isn’t necessary at home unless you’re working with multiple users at one computer. The problem is that when you leave your computer for one minute, willing people might check what your doing and the recent items is the first thing they’ll check. Here is a Windows Tutorial for leaving this field empty.

How to Hide the Recent Documents and Programs in Vista

• Right click the Start
• Select Properties from the menu

• Than go to the Start Menu tab if it isn’t open already.
• Now uncheck “Store and display a list of recently opened files” and “Store and display a list of recently opened programs”.
• Click apply and then OK and you’re done.

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The number of invites, we receive for writing software reviews is pretty amazing. Most products will change the world or they pretend to even solve the world hunger problem. They are all incredible… Not. Most of the request we receive will land in the bin immediately, especially if they write in the first paragraph that they are unmatched and the best in the field. This wasn’t the case a couple of weeks ago. I received a short, friendly email from a company called Novosoft, it was a nice lady asking me if I could check out her backup software.

I have to say that normally I would have been a bit hesitant; how many back up utilities are there? Hundredths? Thousandths? I don’t know but a lot. However, it happens that we were looking for a good backup solution for at least a couple of months. We were looking for an all-round solution. Of course the application needed to be able to make scheduled backups of the computers in our network but we also wanted to make backups of our servers and databases.

The site that she talked about was Handy Backup. Their site is straight to the point and instantly delivers what the visitor asks for which is a good backup solution for home or business use. Handy Backup comes in 3 different packages; standard, professional and a server edition for corporate networks. I was particular interested in the enterprise network edition, but I decided to give the standard edition a test run first.

I don’t know why they call it the standard edition because it comes with a ton of features. Obviously, it's possible to schedule backups of all your photo’s, music, documents and other folders but those aren’t the cool functions. The cool functions are file filtering and the free plugins that you can use. File filtering will assist you in automatically backing up your Powerpoint presentations or for example your Excel files. The plugins are amazing, I haven’t seen these options with any of the other “top of the bill” back up solutions. They have plugins for Firefox, Skype, Winamp, WMP, Dreamweaver, several messengers and a whole lot of others.

So I decided to give the free trail a test run. This is where you can Download Handy Backup for free. Installation with the wizard is very easy. Even the most inexperienced computer use can do this is. You can choose during setup which version of Handy Backup you want to install.

When you use Windows Firewall you’ll get a popup asking you want to allow Handy Backup access to your network. You need to select Unblock.

For this Handy Backup Review, I selected from a nice long list my Desktop, my Disks and Outlook. I also selected my email messages. For which I needed to enter my server details.

Then select a location in the next step. Followed by the type of back up; full or incremental and then you’ll be asked about the time and schedule.

I have never seen such a complete solution with such ease of use. And trust me when I say that I’ve seen and tested a whole lot of different application. I always thought of it lightly, making backups is important, losing my photo’s or document won't happen to me, I have a good system. Until a couple of years back when I lost a HD with all my movies and half of my music collection. Don’t make the same mistake as I did.

If you are interested in giving Handy Backup a free test run; this is where you can Download Handy Backup for free.

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Today I have another cool trick for you and it’s a Tip and Trick for Windows XP. Whether it’s real useful is debatable but its fun to know anyway. Today I want to show you how easy it is to create a icon on your desktop that closes down your system without any confirmations.

To create a XP shutdown button on your desktop you’ll need to follow the next simple steps.

·         Right click on an empty space on your desktop.

·         Select new and shortcut.

·         Now type in the window shutdown -s -t 0 (the last character is a zero.)

·         Click on next

·         And type a name for the shortcut

·         And click on finish.

Now you should have a XP shutdown button on your desktop.

·         If you now want to modify your XP shutdown button you’ll need to right click on it.

·         Select properties

·         And click on change icon.

·         You might see a warning message that shutdown.exe contains no icons

·         Click OK

·         And choose a new icon.

Now you have your own customized XP shutdown button on your desktop. If you want to have some fun with your colleagues; change it into a Word or Excel document icon;). Anyway, I hope you’ve enjoyed this tip and trick and I’ll talk to you all tomorrow with a new Outlook Tutorial.

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Did you ever made a PowerPoint Presentation and set the timeframe for the slideshow without irritating yourself??

Using the “mouse click” option is by far the easiest. If you are a little bit more advanced in giving presentations than you’ll use a standard timeframe for the slideshows. I can still see myself sit behind my desk, wondering, wondering and wondering and than after 10 -15 minutes I was pretty frustrated because I couldn’t come-up with a good timeframe.

If you want to give a Professional PowerPoint Presentation; here’s a cool tip. Start practising your Presentations and use the Rehearse Timings option.

If you don’t want to rehearse your entire PowerPoint Presentation several times and you’ll only need to fine-tune it just a little more. Run it again and press O to skip the slide without adjusting the timeframe.

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Okay, it’s time for some cool Microsoft Word Tricks. Yesterday I showed you how to number you pages in MS Word. Well that wasn’t really special. Today I want to take it a step further. As I said yesterday; the standard setting of the page numbering in MS Word is that the numbering starts from the first page which is probably your cover.

If you are working on a multi-paged document then you most likely don’t want to number your cover and your index pages. There are two ways to stop this so you’ll be continuing the numbering on any page that you want.

We’ll continue from the moment that we created the numbering in your document.

The first Trick is to begin the numbering on the second page.

• Select your document.
• Go to the tab Page Layout.
• Click on the Page Setup Dialog Box launcher.

• Here you’ll need to select the Layout tab.
• And check mark Different first page.

• Click OK and you’re page will look like this.

The second possibility is to start numbering on the second page with 1.

• You’ll need to follow the steps for removing the page number from the first page.
• The go to the Insert tab
• And click on Page Number
• And click on Format Page Numbers.

And your document now looks like this.

I hope you’ll like these Word Tricks. Have a great weekend and ill talk to you all on Monday. See you!!

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It is time for the fourth and final Excel tutorial of this Excel week. The tutorials that we’ve covered this week are some pretty cool ones. The first was the tutorial with a formula for checking future dates followed by the Excel tutorial for using the TEXT and the TODAY functions and we discussed yesterday a tutorial for combining the TEXT and the NOW functions.

In today’s Excel tutorial I want to show you how you can combine 3 columns that hold different date values into one column.

It’s a pretty simple formula but its Friday so I don’t believe it’s a real problem. Entering all the data in the spreadsheet takes up most time.

• First you’ll need to create a spreadsheet that looks similar to this one.

• Select Cell D2:D8
• And type in the following formula =DATE(A2;B2;C2).

• Then Click CTRL+ENTER and you’re done, you’re spreadsheet should look like this.

And that’s it for another Excel Tutorial week. I really hope you’ve enjoyed this week and that you’ve learned something. Next week we’ll continue with our normal Tips and Tricks. Have a great weekend and I’ll talk to you all on Monday.

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This next Excel Tip and Trick is a follow-up of the article that I wrote last week about using the same formatting for multiple excel cells. I’m now using also using the Format Painter Tool. In the first article I explained how to copy the format to the second cell and how we can drag the formatting to the cell next to it.

This works great unless the cells don’t connect. I’m using the Format Painter Tool in this Excel Tip and Trick to apply to same formatting in non connecting cells.

For this example I used the same table that I used as the earlier article.

• If you want to use the same formatting on “random” cells you need to click on cell A1.
• And double click on the Format Painter Tool.
• Now you can click on the cells you want to apply this formatting on.

As you can understand this is quite random and I know it doesn’t make any sense but it’s only for the example;).

You can also apply the Format Painter for columns or rows.

Now I want the same formatting as row 1.

• Now click on the 1 on the right side of the spreadsheet.
• Click on Format Painter
• And click on 5

And you’re done.

I hope you all like this Excel Tip and Trick. I’ll see all you next time.

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Here’s an Excel Tutorial to show a drop down list to auto fill your cells.

·         First you’ll need to select the cell that you want to auto fill (in this case B7)

·         Press ALT+DOWN ARROW

Now a list should appear with all the entries from your B column.

·         If you now release the buttons then you can use the UP- and DOWN ARROW.

·         Select your entry this way.

·         And press ENTER

And you’re done.

Danielle I hope this Tip and Trick will help you. It’s a huge time saver and I use this Excel Tip and Trick pretty much always. I hope you all liked it and I’ll talk to you all on Monday, enjoy the weekend!!

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It’s the second day of the Excel Tutorial week. Yesterday was Monday and Monday is of course the day that we need to take it a bit slow and we did so with an Excel Tutorial with the formula for checking future dates.

Today we are taking it a bit further. It is still kind of a easy Excel formula but it’s too warm you up a bit for later this week, when we are really starting to use Excel for calculating with dates and time spans.

But before I begin the actual Excel tutorial I need to explain something that you’ll need to know about Excel for later this week. Microsoft Excel saves a date as a sequential number. Excel has to do that otherwise the program can’t use the value to calculate with. The sequential numbering started on January 1, 1900. So January 1, 1900 has the value 1 and May 27, 2008 has the value 39594 because it’s 39594 days after January 1, 1900.

Today I want to show you an Excel tutorial for using the TEXT and the TODAY functions.

• First you’ll need to type the formula =TODAY() in cell B1.

• The project will take you ten days so you’ll need to type in cell B2 the formula =TODAY()+10.

• Now you’ll need to select cell A3 and type the following ="The project starts on "&TEXT(B1;"MM/DD/JJJJ")&" and starts on "&TEXT(B2;"MM/DD/JJJJ") .

• After you pressed enter you’re spreadsheet should look like this.

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In today’s Tip and Trick I have cool XP Tweak for you. With this XP Tweak you can fully turn off the system beeps in Windows XP.  

To turn off the system beeps in Windows XP you’ll need to follow the following steps.

• Go to start
• Select run
• And type “regedit”

• Now navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Sound

• Now right click on Beep.
• And select Modify.
• Change the value equal to “no”.

• Click OK
• Reboot and you’re done.

Now your beeps are gone ”forever”. I’ll see you at the next XP Tweak, Tip or Trick.

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