Carol Bratt

You have just opened your new restaurant and are creating menus in MS Word. Ok, piece of cake, no pun intended. The menu that you print out looks just fine in the letter sized folders you purchased for them. But wait, you wanted to put a smaller ... version of the 'Pizza' menu inside one of those smaller acrylic holders to place on the tables. You could use a photocopier and reduce the document...but then the print would be so small that no one could read it without a magnifying glass! There has to be a way to do this. There certainly is a way to do it in MS Word and it is relatively painless. ... (view more)

You want your audience to remember who you are and how to get in touch with you, once your presentation is finished, right? One way to do that is to include your e-mail address in your presentation. Follow the steps below to learn how: Open your ... PowerPoint presentation. Select the object, text or shape to which you wish to assign the e-mail link. Right-click the object and select Action Settings from the menu. The Action Settings dialog box appears. Click Hyperlink to: Select URL... from the drop-down list. Enter your e-mail address into the text box using the format below: mailto: ... (view more)

When you enter text into your Word document other than English, chances are Word will not recognize it and will interpret it as misspelled. If it is necessary for you to have sections of non-English text within your English-language Word documents, ... then you know how annoying it is when Word checks the spelling of the non-English text using its English dictionary. Word is programmed to automatically proofread your document for the language version that is installed on your computer. If you purchased your licensed copy of MS Word in the United States, your text will all be marked as English (U. ... (view more)

In MS Word 2007 there is a great new feature that I love and I think once you learn of it you will grow to love it as well. Don't you hate it when you have your document all finished and then decide you don't like the margins? Unfortunately, when ... you change the margins in your beautiful new document all of the tabs are off. Well, guess what? The 'Alignment Tab' feature in MS Word 2007 allows you to change your margins without fussing over the tabs! This great new feature aligns data in relation to the margin in your document so that when you change your margins your text will automatically be ... (view more)

Your boss has just dropped a memo on your desk with a note attached asking you to analyze information contained in a company database and create a report for him to use at the annual meeting later in the week. Only problem is, the report is an ... Access database and you don't have MS Access installed on your computer! Now what?? You don't want to tell your boss that he will have to ask someone else to take care of this, right? I have the answer for you! You don't have to own MS Access; MS Excel can step in and take care of this problem for you. That's right, you can use MS Excel to open the ... (view more)

A reader recently inquired: "I have a table and would like to color the entire background of a single cell in the table. I am able to color the text in the cell, but not the entire background of the cell. I use MS Office 2003. Any suggestions are ... much appreciated." My reply: Place your cursor in the cell in which you would like to have shading. Now click on Format | Borders and Shading. Click on the Shading tab. On the left side, under Fill, select the color you would like to use. On the right side, under Apply to, use the drop-down arrow and select Cell. Click on OK. That's really all there ... (view more)

A reader recently wrote and asked: "I loaded Office 2002 on a HP computer with Vista. When I opened word, the document appeared with the borders buttons in the document. When going to print preview they were still there. I had previously loaded on ... another computer with Vista and did have this problem. Can you kelp me?" Thanks. My reply: If you're seeing just crop marks and not any other "text boundaries," then the problem is that you have most likely installed support for an Asian language. To rectify this situation follow the steps below: Go to Start | Programs | Microsoft Office Tools | ... (view more)

We all have our own way of setting up our documents, our own "look", so to speak. Many folks like single-spacing in their documents. I prefer lots of room between my lines of text, simply because it's easier for me to read. In any event, line ... spacing is a very important factor in document formatting. The default line spacing in MS Word 2007 is 1.15. Luckily, it is fairly simple to format your line spacing in MS Word 2007. Follow the steps below for Line Space formatting in Word 2007: On the Home tab of the ribbon, in the Paragraph group, click on the Line Spacing button. You have lots of ... (view more)

Recently a reader wrote to me with an query about AutoComplete in MS Word. Below is the query: "To insert today's date (and/or time) in Word 2007 you are supposed to be able to type the first four characters of the month and AutoComplete will assist ... you. This does not work for me. It is like AutoComplete is not tripped in my Word 2007. Also, when I click on Insert I find nowhere to insert the date from. I have to admit I am a fish out of water with MS Word 2007." -- Mark My reply: Well Mark, you are not the only person who feels like a fish out of water with this newest version of Word but ... (view more)

Autonumbering will advance your numbered rows and keep them current, even if you should delete or add a row. Unfortunately, MS Excel does not ship with an autonumbering feature (like that found in MS Access), that increments a number each time you ... add a new row. In Excel 2003 and 2007 however, you can use the Row function to add your own autonumbering to a list. Say you want to create a list of all of your school's classes and their corresponding learning materials. Follow the steps below to add autonumbering to the list: In A1, enter the formula below: =TEXT(Row(A1),"000-000") Enter the name ... (view more)