Carol Bratt

Do you frequently find yourself using the Slide Master or Handout Master in MS PowerPoint? If so, I know that you most likely feel like it's a pain in the neck to keep searching for menus to get where you want to be. I know users who finally just ... added buttons to their program window and it worked fine for them but there IS another way to accomplish this task that is much easier. I would like to familiarize you with the view buttons in the lower left-hand corner of the screen in MS PowerPoint. These handy dandy buttons allow you to quickly switch between the Normal View, Slide Sorter and ... (view more)

You may want to use Option buttons in MS Excel when there are a small number of options from which to choose. Option buttons are added by using the Forms toolbar. If the Forms toolbar is not visible, right-click on a toolbar and in the resulting ... shortcut menu, select Forms. Follow the steps below to learn how to add these buttons to your worksheet: From the Forms toolbar, click and drag the Option Button to place it in your worksheet. Select and delete the text in the box. While holding down your ALT key, drag the Option Button to the appropriate cell. Select the Option Button in edit format ... (view more)

You have gone to all the trouble to create a table in your document and fill it full of great data, but after you have finished your document you decide that you would rather have the information in the document instead of a table. I know you don't ... feel like copying and pasting all of that information and I don't blame you. But if I were to tell you that you could quickly and easily take the information out of your table and into your document you wouldn't mind doing it nearly as much would you? Well you're in luck because I am going to do just that! Follow the steps below to learn how: ... (view more)

Lord alone knows that I am forever correcting grammar in documents even though MS Word has tried to fix it for me! If you have that same complaint, I can show you how to pick and choose which grammar rules MS Word uses to check your documents! ... Follow the steps below: Click on Tools | Options. Click on the Spelling and Grammar tab. You can now select or deselect your options. You can use the drop-down list and choose to have MS Word check either Grammar Only or Grammar and Style. Click on Settings. If you select Grammar Only, you will only get the grammar portion and if you select Grammar and ... (view more)

Personally I always have my Ruler in view while working in MS Word. I would be lost without it. Most folks give me a hard time when I train them and tell them that they have to have their Show/Hide activated and their Ruler visible. They say they ... find it distracting to see all the non-printing characters and the ruler. I say to them is that they must learn to live with it so that they know what is going on in their documents. If you want to run with the big dogs and be a power user, you simply must become accustomed to having these features enabled. So now that you all have your Ruler visible ... (view more)

Somehow, some way, you have hit just the right key combination and now your Spellcheck is not checking your spelling in your documents! One should never rely primarily on MS Word's Spellcheck feature; you should also perform the old fashion ... proofread. Having said that, MS Word's Spellcheck is still pretty nifty to have and use and so you will want to rectify whatever you have done to make it stop working -- that is unless you enjoy going through a fifty page document word-by-word with a dictionary at your side. Nah, I didn't think you wanted to do that anymore than I would. If you want to ... (view more)

One of Word's more powerful yet lesser-known features is the ability to edit two different parts of a single document in the same window. Start by splitting the current window into two panes, either by using the Window\Split menu or by dragging the ... small slider at the top of the right scroll bar. You can then navigate to different parts of a document in the two panes, making sure, for instance, that what you say on page 2 is consistent with what you say on page 10. The F6 key lets you jump between the two. You can close the second pane with Window\Remove Split or by dragging the dividing line ... (view more)

Why would you want to set up Sheet1 in your workbook and have it set up perfectly the way you want it only to have to do it all over again for Sheet2 and Sheet3? Well of course you wouldn't want to do that! And the good news is that you don't have ... to! To quickly copy formulas, labels or formats from a single worksheet to a group of sheets within a workbook, follow the steps below: Select the sheet that contains the data you want to appear in each sheet. Use CTRL + Click or Shift + Click to select the group of sheets to which you want to add the data. Select the data itself and click the Fill ... (view more)

PowerPoint gives users the flexible option to add links to their presentation that will open on demand without distracting the audience. Using action links saves time and improves the flow of the entire presentation. Action links can be set up to ... open another presentation, files, programs URLs, or to reference another slide within the current presentation. To add an action link, follow the steps below: Select the text to add a link to. Click on the Insert tab located on the Ribbon. Click on the Action icon under the links heading. A window should appear and give the option for the link to ... (view more)

Most of us already know that we can use Symbols to give us the accents we want and need in our MS Word Documents. We also know that this method can be a bit awkward and use more time than we care to allow for it. Luckily, there is another method ... that you can use to effect the same outcome, only it's quicker and not nearly as awkward. Follow the steps below to find out: The first and most important step is that you must have the Num Lock key activated. The second most important step is that you must use the numbers located on the numeric keypad for this trick. If you use the numbers located ... (view more)