Carol Bratt

In most applications, you're stuck with whatever the software company decides to put on its shortcut menus (the set of commands that appear when you right-click your mouse). For instance, Mr. Gates must have considered hyperlinks very important ... because in Word 2003, you can insert a hyperlink from 26 of the 62 shortcut menus. The shortcut menu that the majority of people use is the Text shortcut menu, which appears when you right-click within the text of a document. Luckily, you are able to rearrange any of the 62 shortcut menus in Word according to what you find to be important. For instance ... (view more)

An Excel worksheet is packed with hundreds or thousands of cells containing data. You can either view the complete data region in the worksheet or magnify or reduce the selected data region to the size of the window. Follow the steps below: Select ... the current region an press CTRL + *. Choose View | Zoom. Select Fit selection. Click OK. You can increase the amount of data that appears in the window by hiding window elements such as the sheet tabs, toolbars, formula bar and status bar. Choose Tools | Options. Select the View tab. Clear the check boxes for Row ... (view more)

MS Word's Format Painter is a very cool means of copying just the format of one word or paragraph, then pasting (or painting) it onto others. It's a shortcut that is very easy to master and pays off handsomely in a document with inconsistent ... formatting. Format Painter works on two levels: character and paragraph. You can copy just the character formatting -- fonts, font sizes, font attributes -- or character style from one word and apply it to other words. Or you can copy the paragraph formatting (line spacing, alignment, indentation, et al.) or paragraph style from one paragraph and apply it ... (view more)

When you click Add during a spell check, the marked word is not added to Word's Main Dictionary, but to your Custom Dictionary. A spell check will not stop on any word added to your Custom Dictionary. Editing the Custom Dictionary At time you may ... need to edit or delete an entry inadvertently added to your Custom Dictionary. You might also wish to add entries manually. To edit your Custom Dictionary: Choose Tools | Options Click the Spelling ... (view more)

In a well designed style-based document, few, if any, paragraphs are actually left in the Normal style. Since most paragraphs have a specific role to play in a document, they should be formatted with the appropriate style. Normal style is typically ... reserved for paragraphs with unique or ad hoc formatting. Normal style's main role is to hold the document's basic formatting, particularly the document's base font. That way, if you need to change the base font, you need only to change the Normal style. Once Normal is changed, other styles based on Normal will change as well. Changing the Document ... (view more)

There are several different methods of entering time into a cell. Take a look below to see them. After you've read all about it, open MS Excel and take them for a test drive. I find that if I use a function I'm more likely to remember it the next ... time I need it. To enter the current time into a cell you can use a keyboard shortcut: Select a cell and press CTRL + Shift + ; To enter the current time into a cell by using a formula that returns the current date and time: Enter the formula: =NOW () To get a formula that calculates the current time, change the format of the cell containing the NOW ... (view more)

Setting up a distribution list in your Personal Address Book or Outlook Address Book is relatively easy. You can create a distribution list using addresses from multiple address books, which means, that you could include addresses from your Contacts ... folder and Personal Address Book. You can also include addresses of different types such as Internet addresses and Exchange Server addresses. Usually it's easiest to set up a distribution list if all the addresses that will be included already exist, but you can enter addresses on the fly if necessary. Follow these steps to create a distribution ... (view more)

After you enter text, numbers or a formula into a cell, you may need to change it. You can always retype the entry, if it's short. If it's long, you can easily edit it instead. One way to do this is to click in the formula bar and make changes. When ... the mouse pointer is over the formula bar, it appears as an I-beam, which looks like a capital I. This makes it easy for you to click between letters to place the insertion point where you want to begin making corrections. Sometimes it's easier to make a minor change to the contents of a cell rather than start over from scratch. You can edit the ... (view more)

If you're tired of reformatting Excel cells over and over with the same format, then take heart because you don't have to any longer! If you want to format each cell containing a sum total with a single line top border and a double-line bottom ... border you can do that! If you want the total results to be in currency format you can do that too! To create a style that will automatically format these cells for you, follow these steps: Click on one of the total cells in your worksheet. Go to Format | Style. In the Style name box, type Total cell. Click Modify. Under the Number tab, select Currency ... (view more)

After you've built a budget for a single period of time, you often have to repeat the process for several other time periods, say the next month, quarter or year. MS Excel provides the AutoFill feature to copy text, numbers and formulas to adjacent ... cells. You can also use the feature to create a sequence. AutoFill saves you the trouble of typing the same text, numbers and formulas repeatedly. Copy Data The active cell is surrounded by a bold rectangle, and on the lower-right corner is a small black square called the fill handle. Select the cell you want to copy. Place the mouse pointer over ... (view more)