Carol Bratt

Have you ever wanted a curved line in your MS Word document? Well, with a little tweak here and there you can do it! Follow the steps below: Launch MS Word if it is not already open. Make sure the Drawing toolbar is displayed. If the Drawing toolbar ... is not displayed, follow the steps below: Click on View | Toolbars and select Drawing, or right click on an empty space on the toolbar areas and select Drawing. On the Drawing toolbar, click on AutoShapes. Word will display a menu of different shapes. Click on the Lines option. Word will display a palette of different variations of lines. Click on ... (view more)

A reader recently wrote and asked how she could protect sections where a form appeared in one section. She has MS Word 2003 and wants to have part of a document as a form which would be locked and the rest of the document able to be edited. My ... Reply: It is absolutely possible to accomplish this task in MS Word. Follow the steps below: Place a section break before and after the part that you want to protect. In the Protect Document task pane, after you select Filling in forms in the Editing Restrictions area, a Selected sections link will appear below that dropdown. Click that and uncheck any ... (view more)

There may be times when you will want to have numbering in your table. Sometimes the numbering is an important part of your table and other times it is useful in identifying and referencing certain rows. Luckily, this is very easy to accomplish in ... all versions of MS Word from version 2000 forward. Follow the steps below to learn how to insert consecutive numbers in your table rows: Launch MS Word if it is not already open. Create a table with five rows and five columns by doing the following: Click on Table | Insert | Table | 5 rows | 5 columns. Position your cursor above the first column ... (view more)

Recently a reader wrote to me about Multiple Footnotes with the same reference. Her question was: "I know how to do footnotes ... (view more)

In a recent article, I told you some of my favorite tips and tricks to use in MS Word when looking to save time and keystrokes. Get ready for some of my favorite timesaving tips and tricks to use in MS Excel. Want to copy an entire worksheet? Simply ... select the tab of the worksheet. Hold down the Ctrl key and drag the tab of the worksheet to either the left or right. You will see what looks appears to be a little sheet of paper with a plus sign on it Drag the little sheet wherever you wish to copy it. Release the mouse and you are finished! Want to clear cells in a worksheet? I know that you ... (view more)

There are lots of tips and tricks to use in MS Word to save time and keystrokes and you all know that I love anything that saves time and keystrokes! Below are some of my favorite time savers: Selecting a Word: If you want to select a word, simply ... double-click on the word. MS Word will select the word and the space behind it as well. The punctuation behind the word is ignored, however. Selecting a Sentence: Press CTRL and click on the sentence that you want to select. Selecting a Paragraph: Triple-click anywhere within the paragraph. Save lots of documents simultaneously: Press SHIFT and ... (view more)

A reader recently wrote me asking, "What are the main uses of Outline View in MS Word? " My reply: I wrote an article on this subject in January for Infopackets and I am going to redo it just for that reader! Using MS Word's Outline View is just ... wonderful for very long documents and can save you oodles of time. Why? You should be familiar with MS Word's styles and headings and make use of them. If you do that, Outline View will allow you to view all of your Headings collapsed to any heading level you desire. Using Outline View is an excellent method to get to a section in your document very ... (view more)

You can use shortcut keys when evaluating row data in MS Excel. Let's say you had 35 sales during the past year. You list each sale in Row 1, starting in Column B and you list each sales region in Column A. For each sale, you enter the response rate ... for each area. To see which sales had a 75% response rate for the Eastern area, follow the steps below: In the Eastern area row, click on the first cell that contains 75. Press Shift | Space to select the entire row. Press CTRL | \ in a selected row. Excel will select all the cells that did not match the active cell so you can see which sales had ... (view more)

A reader recently wrote to me asking me how to remove the blank page at the end of the table in her document. When you create a table that ends at the bottom margin in an MS Word document, Word will automatically insert a new blank page. This takes ... place whether you want it or not because there is a paragraph inserted by default at the end of your document. If you click on the pilcrow on your toolbar (looks like a backwards P) it will turn on the Show/Hide button, which will reveal a paragraph mark after the table. This can be very annoying, especially when you do not need an extra page. Word ... (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. Follow the steps below: Open your PowerPoint presentation. Select the ... object, text, or shape that you wish to assign the email link to. Right-click the object and Select Action Settings from the pop-up menu. The Action Settings dialog box appears. Click Hyperlink to: Select URL... from the drop-down list box. Enter your email address into the text box using the format below: mailto:your_email_address@yourdomain.com . ... (view more)