Issue #12 July 30 2002

1. The Power of Right-Clicking (Part 2) When using PowerPoint, right-clicking gives you access to many options quickly. In Slide development mode, right-clicking on the background allows you to set the slide layout, color scheme and background graphics. If you right-click on a text box, you can set the font, colors and border. Right-clicking on…

Issue #11 July 16, 2002

1. The Power of Right-Clicking (Part 1) I am always looking for ways to be more efficient when using software applications, and clicking the right mouse button is one way to do this. In this issue, I will deal with some of the features in Word and Excel, and next issue I will address PowerPoint.…

Issue #10 July 2, 2002

1. Keep Software Upgrade files Almost all software upgrade files, patches or service releases are now downloaded from the Internet. I always download the files to a common upgrade download directory on my hard drive so they are always in a common spot. Then, on a regular basis, I copy these upgrade files to a…

Issue #9 June 18 2002

1. Moving objects a small amount in a document In order to make drawing objects like lines and boxes line up in Word or PowerPoint, I usually set the Snap to Grid option on so that everything aligns. The only problem is that sometimes I want to move an object just a small distance, not…

Issue #8 June 4, 2002

1. Tips for backing up files to CD’s Having a backup of your key files is an essential part of any business strategy. For many small to medium sized businesses, backing up to a CD has become a great way to take care of this necessary task. There are many programs to copy files to…

Issue #7 May 21, 2002

1. Paste vs. Paste Special for copying text When we copy and paste text from one place to another or from one application to another we usually just use the shortcut keys of Ctrl-C to copy and Ctrl-V to paste without even thinking much about it. Sometimes you may find it useful to use the…

Issue #6 May 7, 2002

1. Opening E-mail attachments Sometimes we receive e-mail attachments that we are expecting and we can’t open the document by double- clicking on it in the e-mail (you should always immediately delete any e-mail with an attachment that you did not ask for, it can be a virus). This happens when our e-mail program does…

Issue #5 April 23, 2002

1. Controlling Line Breaks in PowerPoint When you are entering text into a text box in PowerPoint, the text moves to the next line based on the right margin of the text box. Sometimes we want to move to the next line before the text reaches the right margin. Pressing the Enter key does not…

Issue #4 April 9, 2002

1. One way to use a PDA to ease tax calculations Many of us have just finished filing our income taxes and one area that can be a real hassle is calculating the business use of our vehicle. The tax department wants to see what percentage of the distance we traveled during the year was…

Issue #3 March 26 2002

1. Important Adobe Acrobat Update If you are using Adobe Acrobat 5.0 to create Adobe PDF format files, you may run into a serious incompatibility with Microsoft Office 2000 and XP programs. The original macros that Acrobat installs into Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint cause those programs to crash either when starting up or shutting…