Carol Bratt

My son-in-law came to me recently with a problem he was experiencing in MS Excel. He is a director in his company and is charged with keeping track of his employees' time. He wanted to be able to display a negative time in his MS Excel spreadsheet. ... I have to tell you -- I had a time figuring out this one. After doing some research and digging around a bit, I found that the easiest solution to this problem is to simply change the date system used by the workbook. I agree that it sounds a bit strange, but it works. The default date system for Windows versions of MS Excel is 1900 and if you are ... (view more)

You can use the Reading pane to very quickly go through your messages. Follow the steps below: Click the Mail or Folder List button on the Navigation pane and click the Unread Messages search folder. If you cannot see the contents of a message when ... you click its entry in the message list, click the Reading Pane button. Using this pane lets you quickly scan any message without having to open it. Follow these steps: Choose Tools | Options. Click the Other tab. Click the Reading Pane button to display the Reading Pane dialog box. Select Mark Item as Read When Selection Changes, to mark mail as ... (view more)

The dictionary is a very helpful feature in Word 2007. It will help make sure you have not misspelled words in your document. You cannot, of course, completely rely on the dictionary because it only checks for spelling and not content. The ... dictionary does have features that some see as a downside. If the dictionary does not recognize a word, it will highlight that word with a wavy red underline. Some folks find this to be a distraction. Because the dictionary in MS Word is not complete, it may underline words occasionally that are, in fact, correct. To use MS Word's dictionary feature to its ... (view more)

There may be times When you need to copy information from one of your Word 2007 documents to another, and you could simply copy the information from one document, open the destination document, click where you want to insert it, and paste it. Or, ... you could just right-click and drag the information from one document to another. The View Side By Side feature in MS Word 2007 makes it easy to do! Perhaps you might want to copy a picture in Document A to Document B. Follow the steps below to learn how: Open Document A. Open Document B and scroll to the place you want to insert the picture. Click ... (view more)

Most of my subscribers at www.carolscorneroffice.com are aware of MS Excel's AutoSum feature that allows you to quickly total spreadsheet data across a row or a column. Having said that, most users also avail themselves of this feature by obtaining ... the sum and then copying it down a range in their spreadsheet. Using AutoSum in this manner can save you time, but I am going to teach you another way that is even more speedy and efficient. You all know that I am all about saving time and keystrokes! Follow the steps below to learn how:Select the range of data in your spreadsheet. Click the ... (view more)

Access 2007's new Layout view allows you quickly add finishing touches to the design of your form. In the Layout view, you can add a form title, date and time field to the form's header. You can even add another field control and automatically ... readjust the tab order. Follow the steps below to make adjustments to your Access 2007 form: In the Navigation pane, double-click the form you want to change. On the Home tab, click the View icon and select Layout View. In the Controls group, click the Title command to add a title to the form header. If you wish to change the default title, click and ... (view more)

The Quick Access Toolbar (QAT) takes up real estate in the left side of the title bar in the latest version of MS Word, 2007. Were you aware that you could move it? Well, you most certainly can! You can move it below the ribbon by following the ... steps below: Right-click next to Add-Ins to get a menu and then you can customize it to include any button you like. To hide a ribbon in MS Word 2007: Double-click Tab. Click CTRL + F1 or right-click and select Minimize the Ribbon. The ribbon will now be treated almost like a menu as it will be hidden until you click the Tab or use the Alt key to bring ... (view more)

This is a different method for creating a macro in MS Excel 2007. You can use this method if you want to write your own script or if you want to copy and paste a part of another macro into an existing macro. You can also use this method to copy and ... paste a new macro. Follow the steps below:If the Developer tab is not available, do one of the following to display it: Click the Microsoft Office Button, and then click Excel Options. In the Popular category, under Top Options for working with Excel, select the Show Developer tab in the Ribbon check box. Click OK. To set the security level ... (view more)

Most of my readers have learned how to use Find and Replace efficiently in MS Word but I am betting that there are a lot of folks who have never used the More feature. I bet some folks have never even clicked on it! So go ahead, you now have my ... permission -- click it! Once you have done that, you will see lots of choices at your disposal which make your job even easier in MS Word! Suppose you want to find the word 'Smith', but you didn't want to find blacksmith or Aerosmith. This is where Find 'whole words only' comes into play. If you check that box, it will find only the word 'smith' for ... (view more)

You don't always have to use a formula in MS Excel. That's right, sometimes you can just utilize the Status Bar for your calculations. The far end of the Status Bar in MS Excel will show you calculations, displaying the results for average, count, ... number of numbers, maximum/minimum value, and the sum of any given range of numbers. Follow along below: Open a new page in MS Excel. In Column A, key in numbers, one below another. Highlight the numbers. If you look at the right-hand of the Status Bar at the bottom of your screen, you will see the result. Now here is the really cool part: Right- ... (view more)