New Year's Resolutions with Office
and Crabby
By the Crabby Office Lady
As January 1
approaches and you yet again find
yourself typing up those
same old ho-hum New Year's resolutions,
consider giving yourself a gift that
keeps on giving: Microsoft Office
resolutions that are easy to keep.
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Yes, it's that time of
year again. You've jingled and wassailed
yourself into a stupor, and now it's
time to haul yourself off the sofa and
make yourself useful once again. With
these five Office resolutions,
you'll find your productivity all firmed
up, in shape, and ready for the beach in
no time.
#1: Learn your keyboard shortcuts
Why are you still hunting and
pecking through the menus like a starving, desperate
chicken when you need
to insert a hyperlink, format an entire
document, or check your spelling? Using
a keyboard shortcut can boost your
productivity and get you to that kernel
of chicken feed in no time.
A keyboard shortcut is a special
combination of keys (the buttons on the
keyboard) that causes something to
happen when those keys are pressed at
the same time. For example, if you want to
insert a hyperlink into your Web page,
document, or spreadsheet, hold the
CTRL key down and then hit the K
key at the same time. It's quick, it's
easy, and it's sure to please. In fact,
you can even create your own keyboard
shortcuts.
To find a
list of all keyboard shortcuts in an
Office
program, press F1 to open Help and then
search for "keyboard shortcuts." What
could be easier?
More information about keyboard
shortcuts
#2: Customize Office once and for all
How would you like to spend your days
walking around in Grandma Bessie's
flowered housedress, corset, and white orthopedic
shoes? Sure, you'd be dressed, but
would you be able to get your work done
if you were all cinched up and fenced in like that? I use that
analogy to remind you — yet again — that
customizing Office is one of the best
ways to make yourself a
more comfortable, happier, and
more productive Office user.
Here are a few examples of things
that you
can customize in Office:
- Menus
- Toolbars
- Themes
- The Normal (default) template
- Outlook calendar colors, fonts,
and views
So please
take the time to customize your
programs. Or try and make yourself as
comfortable as possible in a girdle.
It's your choice.
More information about customizing
Office
#3: Organize your Outlook Inbox
Admit it: Your Microsoft Outlook®
Inbox is an overstuffed, out-of-control
beast. What if there were a way to
organize e-mail as it arrives or neat
tricks to quickly scan what's already
there to find specific parts of an
e-mail thread that you need? Well, by
golly, there are several ways to
customize
your Inbox and get out from under the
beast.
These are just a few examples:
- Color-code your e-mail messages
- Group your messages by date, sender, or conversation
- Set up e-mail rules for messages as they arrive
- Get all of your e-mail from all
of your accounts in one place
There's all kinds of help out there to
make sure that you're making the most of
the organizing features available in Outlook.
More information about organizing your Inbox
#4: Stop
avoiding using formulas in Excel
I'm guessing that the word "formula"
makes you want to run screaming from the
room. Hold on, because Microsoft Excel
formulas aren't what you think they are.
They're not complicated bundles of
keystrokes and symbols designed to boost
the egos of only accountants or tax attorneys. In
fact, sometimes a formula has nothing to
do with numbers at all.
Simply speaking, formulas are
equations that perform calculations on
values in your worksheet. These values
can be numbers, dates, text, or anything
else you can type into a cell. Here are a
couple of useful things you can do with
formulas:
- Convert times (such as from
standard time format to decimal format)
- Calculate a running balance
- Calculate the difference between
two numbers as a percentage
- Remove spaces from the beginning
and end of a cell
- Count unique entries in a list
Take a little time to learn about
Excel formulas. Once you get the hang of
it, using them can really save you time
and enable you to do complicated things
you never thought possible.
More information about formulas in
Excel
#5: Upgrade to Office XP
If you ask me, you're a bit behind
the times if you're running any version
of Office that's earlier than Office XP. Not that there's
anything wrong with being retro, of
course — even if the AMC
Gremlin you're driving still has ABBA's Greatest Hits in the 8 track. But retro
software? It's just WRONG.
Here are a few examples of
improvements that Office XP programs
offer and earlier versions don't:
- Outlook 2002 Multiple
reminders in a single dialog box with a
Dismiss All button (oooh....ahhhhhhh)
- Microsoft Word 2002 Easier
formatting with the Styles and
Formatting task pane and the
Reveal Formatting task pane
- Excel 2002 Task-based
formula help
- Microsoft PowerPoint® 2002 New
animation effects and schemes
- Microsoft FrontPage® 2002 eCommerce
functionality
- Microsoft Access 2002 Extensible
Markup Language (XML) support
- Microsoft Publisher 2002 More
commercial printing capabilities
So get with it, Grandpa - it's easy to
upgrade, and frankly, you'll be able to use more of the handy tips that I cover
in my columns. How's that for
motivation?
More information about upgrading to
Office XP
Happy New Year, everyone. See you next year.
About the author
The Crabby Office Lady
gets her column ideas from your
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there is a place for you to say it
(and listen to what others have to say
too, and perhaps learn a few things):
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