Issue #65 August 17, 2004

1. Don’t put text at the bottom of your slides

When you are designing your PowerPoint slides, leave the bottom 10-15% of the slide blank or for footer graphics or logos. Many room setups have the bottom of the screen so low that anyone past the front row can’t see the bottom 10-15% of the screen because of the heads in front of them. You will see the audience members bobbing and weaving to try to see around the heads in front of them when you put your points too low on the slide. I was in the audience at a recent presentation and saw this happen. I suggest using this space at the bottom of your slides for your web site address, your logo and perhaps the client logo as well. You may even put a horizontal line at about that spot to separate your points from the slide footer information. I had this room setup problem happen to me recently and this is what I did. During the pre-presentation checks, I tested how my slides looked by sitting half way back in the room with one or two people directly in front of me. I suggest you perform this test when setting up for your presentations as well. You want to do everything possible to make sure that each member of the audience can see the points you are making easily and clearly.

2. Clearing certain cells in Excel

I recently had an e-mail exchange with a subscriber on how to clear only certain elements from a range of cells in Excel. What she was trying to do was clear just the values from these cells without affecting any cells that had formulas so that her spreadsheet could then be used as a template for others to use. This is quite a common occurrence so I thought I would share the solution she came up with after we went back and forth trying different things. It actually involves a technique to select only the cells containing constant values from a range of cells. Once the correct cells are selected, the delete operation can be done. Here are the steps: 1. Select the range from which the data should be removed. 2. Click the Edit menu item and Click the Go To menu option. 3. In the dialog box, Click the Special button to display another dialog box. 4. Click the radio button beside Constants, and then check the applicable checkboxes in the Formula list (Text, Numbers, etc.) 5. Click OK and only the cells containing the type of constants you selected will now be selected and highlighted. 6. Press the Delete key to clear the selected cells. The next time you want to create a template for others from a spreadsheet you have created, remember this technique.

3. Useful Resource – http://www.word-answers.com

Most of us use Microsoft Word on a regular basis, some of us multiple times per day at least. I discovered a great resource web site if you have a question on Word. According to the site “There are 919 articles and tips available on this site, categorized across 112 topic areas.” I explored a few of the categories, enough to know that there is a ton of great ideas on this site. Check it out at http://www.word-answers.com.