Carol Bratt

When entering numbers in Excel you can type the numbers into a cell by using the keys on the top row of the keyboard or, if Num Lock is turned on, by using the keypad on the right side of the keyboard. To do so, follow the steps below: Type the ... numbers in the cell and press Enter. If you type decimals, such as 1.5000, Excel often eliminates the trailing zeros and displays 1.5. Note that another future article will tell you how to control this. You can also type dollar signs, commas, or percent signs, and Excel displays them with the numbers. Even when you type these symbols, Excel interprets ... (view more)

Suppose your Excel worksheet has a long list of numbers to add. You can sum them instantly using Excel's AutoSum feature. Don't count on your fingers or pull out a calculator; Excel can calculate more quickly and accurately. Even more importantly, ... whenever a number changes, Excel instantly recalculates and displays the corrected sum. You can use either of these two methods to total the numbers using Excel: Click the cell below the list to make it the active cell. Click the AutoSum button. Excel surrounds the cells it thinks you want to total with a moving border. Press Enter or click the ... (view more)

You've just gotten a new computer and it's Windows XP. You're thrilled to have a new machine and an upgraded operating system -- that is, until you click on the Start button. Windows XP, has a new Start Menu and a very different layout than previous ... releases of MS Windows; luckily you can very easily switch to the Classic view that you're used to. Just follow the steps below: To change the Start menu to the Classic Start menu: In Control Panel, double-click Appearance and Themes. Click Taskbar and Start Menu. On the Start Menu tab, click Classic Start menu and then click OK. If you want the ... (view more)

When you've inserted a picture in MS Word, the first thing you notice is where it's located and how large it is. You can modify the picture to fit your needs. Some of the ways you can change a picture include those outlined below: Size the picture ... (larger or smaller). Crop, or trim off, one or more edges. Change it to black and white or grayscale (shades of gray) instead of color. Increase or reduce contrast and brightness, just like a television screen. The first step in modifying is to click the picture to select it. When you do this, sizing handles appear at each corner and edge of the ... (view more)

While you are building an Excel worksheet, it is held in a temporary memory within your computer (called "RAM", or random access memory). Unlike human memory, the computer won't remember anything unless you save your work. If you turn off the ... computer or if the power goes out, all your work disappears. To store your work permanently, you must save it on a disk. The First Time You Save You can save a spreadsheet by using any of these methods: Choose File | Save. Click the Save button on the toolbar. Use the shortcut key Ctrl+S. The first time you save, the Save As dialog box appears ... (view more)

A newsletter or article usually begins with a larger title or headline. To have a headline span the width of several columns in MS Word, it must be formatted with a different number of columns. Formatting Pages with Section Breaks Whenever you have ... different page-level formatting applied to a single document, you need to break it into different sections with something called a "section break." In doing so, sections of a document can be formatted with different margins, page orientation, number of columns, headers and footers, page numbering, et cetera. For example: in a newsletter ... (view more)

Although tables are used to present text that must remain in side-by-side columns, they would be clumsy to use when creating a newsletter. MS Word provides a different feature that lets you create "snaking" or newspaper-style columns, where the text ... flows down the page in a narrow column and then continues to the next column. To establish this multi-column format, you'd use the Columns button in Word. Newspaper-style columns are used whenever you have a lot of text to fit on a page, particularly a large page. If the pages were printed in long lines that ran the width of the page, ... (view more)

Sometimes you may want MS Word to place a tab character in your footnotes -- for example: between the actual footnote reference number and the text of the footnote. Unfortunately, Word doesn't allow you to do this automatically. In fact, Word ... doesn't even allow you to specify what character should appear between the footnote reference number and the footnote text, as you can with numbered lists. Instead, Word places a space between the footnote reference and you text. There are a number of ways you can go about making sure that the footnote includes a tab separator. Please note though that ... (view more)

You can add special symbols to the number format in Excel, such as symbols that are not included in the currency or accounting formats. The "CHAR" formula displays the symbol; to add a symbol to the new format you create, copy the symbol to the Type ... box. For example, to create a format with the Euro symbol: Enter the formula =CHAR(128) in the cell. Press F2 and F9 to delete the formula and leave the value in the cell. In the Formula bar, select the € symbol, and press Ctrl+C (copy). Select another cell. Press Ctrl+1. Select the Number tab, and choose Custom. In the Type box, press ...<a href="/news/1242/adding-special-symbols-number-format-ms-excel" class="more-link">view more

Are you looking for a great way to get a 'Yes' or 'No' decision from an end user using Excel? In that case, try presenting your question in the form of a Check Box. If the user selects the box, the answer is Yes. You can store the result of the ... decision as a value in a cell and use that value in your code or calculations. To see how the check box works: Open a blank worksheet Go to View | Toolbars, and choose Forms. Click the Check Box tool once, and click and drag in the worksheet to draw a check box. When you release, click the Forms toolbar's Control Properties tool, or right-click the new ... (view more)