The UsefulTechnology Blog: Microsoft Office

Customise your Microsoft Word Status bar

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 12:23:48 GMT

Microsoft Word 2007 can report a wealth of information in the status bar that adorns the bottom of the screen. To change what you have on display simply right click on the status bar and you’ll see this:

Just switch settings on and off until your status bar reports only the information you care about.

Rumours of my demise are greatly exaggerated

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 21:07:18 GMT

Sorry for the woeful lack of posts recently. Life has been busy on all fronts. However I was reminded this evening of the importance of maintaining one’s blog by an old friend in France who called me wondering what had become of me. So, for all my fans around the world, yes both of you, I am happy to confirm that all is well at Useful Technology Towers. More updates to follow when I figure out why Windows Live Writer has stopped working on my laptop.

And now, that same entry in French, thanks to www.worldlingo.com, the free* translation service included in the 2007 Microsoft Office system:

Désolé pour le manque affligeant de poteaux récemment. La vie a été occupée sur tous les avants. Cependant j'ai été rappelé ce soir d'importance de maintenir le blog à un par un vieil ami en France qui m'a appelé se demandant ce qui était advenu de moi. Ainsi, pour tous mes ventilateurs autour du monde, oui tous les deux toi, je suis heureux de confirmer que tout va bien aux tours utiles de technologie. Plus de mises à jour à suivre quand je figure dehors pourquoi l'auteur de phase de Windows a arrêté travailler à mon ordinateur portable.

* You know, I could have paid $92 to have that paragraph professionally translated but it’s much more entertaining in franglais.

Show formulae (or should that be 'show formulas'?) in Excel

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 11:40:39 GMT

I first learned this tip about a decade ago and had long forgotten it until reminded today.

When working in Microsoft Office Excel (any version), you can instantly change the view so that formulae appear in each cell instead of the results they generate. To do this hit CTRL+` (that's the accent key, normally the upper-leftmost key on your keyboard). Hey presto, your formulae are served! To revert to the normal view again, just press CTRL+` once more.

The Formula Auditing toolbar that appears is another handy side effect to this keyboard shortcut. Have a play to discover how easy it is to trace any errors in your formulae.

Another PowerPoint Power Tip

Wed, 12 Dec 2007 08:29:51 GMT

As a follow up to yesterday's PowerPoint 2007 tip, here's another useful 'guideline' that perfectionists like me will enjoy using.

- You can view on-screen Drawing Guides by right-clicking on a blank section of a slide, selecting Grids and Guides... then putting a tick next to the last option, Display drawing guides on screen. PowerPoint will then display a horizontal and vertical drawing guide crossing slap bang through the middle of your slide.

- To move the drawing guides, click on them from an area outside of your slide, and drag.

- To create additional drawing guides, hold down the CTRL key then click and drag an existing drawing guide line.

- To precisely position your drawing guides, hold down the ALT key while dragging.

With practice you'll be able to create very detailed grids that will allow you to align multiple objects precisely on the slide without any fuss.

Office 2007 - get Service Pack 1

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 18:11:26 GMT

Released just today, Service Pack 1 (SP1) for Microsoft Office 2007 is now available for download. You can also now get SP1 for Visio 2007 and Project 2007 too.

To get the updates simple head to this web page.

SP1 is focused mainly on stability, performance and security improvements. Fans of Outlook 2007 will be pleased with the printing improvements that have fixed some niggly bugs. A more detailed Knowledge Base (936982) article explaining the changes will be published at this page - although at the time of writing is not yet available.

The fabulous Selection Pane in PowerPoint 2007

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 09:18:21 GMT

This new feature in PowerPoint 2007 nearly passed me by!

As a long time user (and fan) of Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and Premiere I'm very familiar with the concept of creating my work on layers. I've grown to love the fact that layers allow me to easily control the visibility of objects on screen so I can build up detailed images without tearing my hair out trying to select partially hidden or buried objects.

So imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon the new Selection Pane in PowerPoint 2007 this morning. This neat tool mimics some of the features of Photoshop's layer palette and allows you to select, multiselect, show, hide or change the order of objects on a slide.

You can open the Selection Pane by pressing the marvelously convoluted shortcut ALT, H, SL, then P. Or you can just choose Selection Pane from the Arrange button on the options ribbon.

So, now what?

With the Selection Pane visible, press TAB to cycle upwards (from back to front) through the objects on your slide, SHIFT+TAB to cycle downwards.
With an item selected press SHIFT+CTRL+S to make the item invisible, SHIFT+CTRL+S to make it reappear. Or press the little 'eye' icon next to the item(s) in the Selection Pane. The great thing here is that all items are still there, they're just no longer visible on the slide. This is a fantastic time saver when building up complex slides.
You can reorder the items on your slide using the up and down arrows at the bottom of the Selection Pane
If you group items, they'll be arranged together in the selection pane, but you can still independently control their visibility and order within the group.
You can rename items listed in the Selection Pane by slowly double clicking them. This is handy if you have lots of objects on a slide and lose track of what's what.
- Cool extra feature: Your renamed items will also now appear elsewhere, for example in the Custom Animations Pane. Suddenly, developing complex layered slides with flashy animation that would put Disney to shame just became a lot simpler.