Carol Bratt

How many times have you been asked to give a presentation based on an existing report or other document? If you can import the document into MS Word and convert its headings to Word's default "Heading 1" style, the rest is a piece of cake. Outlines ... in Word can be imported directly into PowerPoint in either of two ways: From inside Word, choose File | Send To | Microsoft Office PowerPoint. From inside PowerPoint, choose File | Open and in the Files of Type box, choose All Outlines. When you import an MS Word document, Level 1 headings (formatted "Heading 1" in Word) turn into the titles of new ... (view more)

Frequently you'll find an existing presentation with just the right design elements, even if the content is completely different from what you need. PowerPoint makes it easy to recycle the design of an existing presentation. If you have the original ... presentation file, you can "borrow" its design without changing the content of your current presentation in any way. Just choose Format | Slide Design. Scroll through the Apply a Design Template List and click the one you want to use. If you've downloaded a template or saved an existing presentation that isn't on the list, click the Browse link at ... (view more)

PowerPoint has myriad ways to navigate in a presentation. In addition to the navigation methods you've probably used (such as: left mouse button to advance, Backspace key to back up, Esc to end), PowerPoint also supports a wide variety of mouse and ... keyboard shortcuts: To advance from one slide to another, or perform the next animation on the current slide, you can click the left mouse button -- but you can also press Enter, N (for Next), page down, right arrow, down arrow, or the spacebar. You can also right-click the screen during a presentation and choose Next. To move to the previous slide ... (view more)

While it isn't possible to assign categories to the Flags that Outlook provides for flagging e-mail, you can get around this limitation by creating a Flag toolbar. Creating the Toolbar From the Inbox menu, select View | Toolbars | Customize. Make ... sure the Toolbars tab is selected, then click New. Give the New toolbar a name, such as Flags. Click OK. Click Close. The new toolbar should display on your screen. It may be difficult to see, but you can later drag it to a more suitable location. You don't need to worry with that now. Adding the Flag Icons to the Toolbar Now that you've created the ... (view more)

You can print the markup balloons as they appear in a document by selecting the 'Document Showing Markup' option from the 'Print What' list via the Print dialog box. You can also print the Reviewing Pane without the document text by selecting the ... 'List Of Markup' option from the Print What list. Markup balloons printed with the document appear in the margin designated on the 'Track Changes' page in the Options dialog box. Whether you print comments with the document or just the Reviewing Pane, the number of the pages on which the comment mark appears is included with the comment text, as well ... (view more)

When you try to print an MS Word document, have you ever gotten the message: "The margins of section X are set outside the printable area of the page. Do you want to continue?" If you click No, Word will cancel printing your document. If you click ... Yes, MS Word will print your document, but some of the text may be cut off at the end of the page. The reason this happens is that your margins are set closer to the edge of the paper than your printer is capable of printing. (Most printers can't print all the way to the edge of the paper.) To rectify this problem, you could try to ... (view more)

You have just finished a huge massive document when you're told that a block of text, such as the word "Confidential," needs to appear in the right margin for each page of your Word document. Learn how Word's Header and Text Box features make it ... easy to add this text to your documents. When you need to display the same block of text (i.e. DRAFT, CONFIDENTIAL, COPY) on every page, you can place it in a header or footer. However, it becomes more complicated if you want to display the text in a specific section of the pages, such as the right margin or the middle of every page. ... (view more)

You can use the Clear Formatting command to remove formatting and styles from text in MS Word. When you remove all formatting and styles from text, it adopts the attributes of the Normal style. You can remove formatting and styles from a single ... instance or from all instances of that formatting or style. Clear Formatting command appears at the top of the Pick formatting to apply list in the Styles and Formatting task pane whenever the Show option is set to Available formatting, Formatting in use or Available styles. Since the Normal style is a paragraph style, all font, paragraph, tab, border ... (view more)

Using colors in Excel has never been easier! When you're working in Excel and not sure what color font you should use, you could click on the font color tool and then click on one of the colors to see how it looks on a selected cell. This can become ... quite tedious, as you have to click twice to view each different color until you come up with the right one. One solution is to drag the Font Color box off the toolbar so that it floats and you need only to click the color. Or, you can add the Cycle Font Color button to your toolbar -- it will let you cycle through each color until you come up ... (view more)

Ever get tired of sending out the same old e-mail to everyone in your department every month? Well do I have a cool tip for you! In Outlook 2003 you can create an e-mail message and save it as a template so that you can use it over and over again. ... If you use Word as your e-mail editor, you will have to disable that option. To do this, select Tools | Options and select the Mail Format tab. De-select the Use Microsoft Word to edit email messages, then click apply and OK. From the Outlook menu, select File | New, Mail Message. Complete the Subject portion of the message and type any desired text ... (view more)