February 5, 2009

A menu that makes browsing file folders obsolete

  • Date: September 19th, 2008
  • Author: Susan Harkins

To open a Word file, you probably click the Open button or choose Open from the File menu. Or, you might be a bit more savvy and use the Favorites folder. I actually modified my cheapest price for cialis target=”_blank”>Registry to display work folders in the Open dialog box’s Object bar, but that’s a lot of work. Regardless of how you initiate the process, you end up slopping through the folder hierarchy to find the file you want.

For quicker access to frequently used files, you can add the Works menu to the menu bar as follows:

  1. Choose Toolbars from the View menu and then select Customize.
  2. Click the Commands tab.
  3. Select Built-in Menus from the Categories list box (near the bottom).
  4. Find Work in the list of commands and drag it to the menu bar.

To add an item to the Work menu, choose Add To Work Menu from the Work menu. Now, the files you use the most often are just a click away.

september2008blog7fig1r.jpg

Unfortunately, I can’t find the Work menu’s counterpart in Word 2007.

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Quickly move Word paragraphs

  • Date: September 22nd, 2008
  • Author: Susan Harkins

cheapest generic cialis align=”justify”>Moving text usually involves a cut-and-paste task. First, you highlight the text you want to move and press Ctrl + X to copy the text to the Clipboard. Then, you position your cursor where you want the text to be and press Ctrl + V. It’s helpful, but it’s more work than necessary if you’re moving an entire paragraph. To quickly move a paragraph in a document, do the following:

  1. Click anywhere in the paragraph you want to move.
  2. Hold down Shift + Alt.
  3. Press the Up or Down Arrow key, accordingly, as many times as necessary.

Word will reposition the entire paragraph above or below its current position each time you press Up or Down Arrow. If you change your mind, just press Ctrl +Z to undo the move.

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Transfer data from a Word form to an Access table using the Import Text Wizard

  • Date: September 23rd, 2008
  • Author: Mary Ann Richardson

When you’ve collected info via a Word form, you don’t have to manually enter it into Access. Mary Ann Richardson steps through an example that demonstrates the wizard way to knock out the task more efficiently and accurately.


A Word form makes it easy to gather information from users or clients so that you can analyze it later. But getting the information into an Access table can be time-consuming, not to say error-prone. To avoid having to print out and reenter data into a table, you can use the Access Import Text Wizard to bring in the form data for you.

Before you can use the wizard, you must save the form’s data to a text file. In this example, we have asked employees to complete the form shown in Figure A.

Figure A

word form

Follow these steps to save the data in each completed form to a text file that will be imported into Access:

  1. Open one of the completed forms.
  2. Go to Tools | Options, click the Save tab, and select the Save Data Only For Form check cheapest cialis prices box. (In Word 2007, click the Office button, click Advanced, and then scroll to Preserve Fidelity When Sharing This Document and select the Save Data As Delimited Text File check box.)
  3. Click OK.
  4. Save the file as a text file (for example, Project DatesTraining1.txt ) and then click Save.
  5. When the File Conversion dialog box appears, click OK.

You can now import the data in the text files into an Access table by following these steps:

  1. Create a blank database.
  2. Click File | Get External Data | Import. (In Access 2007, click the External Data tab and then click the Text File button in the Import Group.)
  3. Click in the File Name box and enter the full path name of the text file your want to import (Figure B).

Figure B

text file

  1. Click Import and then click Next.
  2. Click the Delimited Button (Figure C) and then click Next.

Figure C

delimited button

  1. In the following window (Figure D), click Next again.

Figure D

next window

  1. Click the Field One Column and enter Project ID in the Field Name box.
  2. Click the Field Two Column and enter Project Name in the Field Name box.
  3. Click the Field Three Column and enter Project Start Date in the Field Name box.
  4. Click the Field Four column enter Project End Date in the Field Name Box (Figure E).

Figure E

import wizard

  1. Click Next.
  2. Click Choose My Own Primary Key.
  3. Select Project ID from the drop-down list and click Next.
  4. Enter Training Projects in the Name box.
  5. Click Finish and then Close.

To add the next form, close the Training Projects table and follow these steps:

  1. Start the Import Wizard in Access.
  2. Enter the full path name of the next text file.
  3. Click the Append button and select Training Projects from the drop-down list.
  4. Click Next twice and then click Finish (Figure F).

    Figure F

    second form

    Important Note: If you need to enter more than a handful of forms a day, you should consider using  ADO (ActiveX Data Object) to create a code connection to the table that will automate the data transfer process.

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Stay current on all daily transactions with the help of Excel functions

  • Date: September 23rd, 2008
  • Author: Mary Ann Richardson

With a handful of well-constructed formulas, you can keep on top of the latest information in your Excel worksheets.


By adding a few formulas to your worksheet, you can keep your employees up to date on the latest sales figures. For example, suppose you use the worksheet shown in Figure A to keep track of daily sales for the month.

Figure A

worksheet data

To cheap generic cialis show the Total Sales-To-Date, enter the labels and formulas shown in Figure B.

Figure B

sales formulas

The formula in E2 searches the data cells in the column for a match to today’s date, calculated by the Today()function in E1. When Excel finds a cell whose value matches the date in E1, it returns the address of the cell to the right of the match. The SUM function uses the INDIRECT function to specify E2 as last cell in the range to be totaled.

You can perform different calculations by replacing the SUM with another function. For example, to find the average sales for the month up to today, replace SUM in the formula in E3 with AVERAGE.

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Work with your files without leaving Word

Date: September 23rd, 2008

Author: Mary Ann Richardson

Word’s Open dialog box is full of functionality that lets you perform all sorts of file tasks. See how to take advantage of this convenient — and sometimes essential — approach to file management.


If you’re working on a private network, you may be restricted as to what you can do in Windows Explorer. In fact, you might not even be able to open the Explorer cheap cialis soft window. So what can you do if you want to work with one of your files? Just use Word’s Open command.

You don’t need to go outside of Word to work with another file. You can navigate to the file in Word’s Open dialog box and simply right-click it to display a shortcut menu. From there, you can perform most any function you would do using Windows Explorer.

For example, do you need to copy a file to a CD or floppy? Simply right-click it and send it to the appropriate device. Do you want to move all your files to a new folder? Click the Create New Folder button on the Open dialog box toolbar, enter a name for the folder, and then drag or cut and paste your file to it.

If you need to print a copy of two or more files, press the Ctrl key while clicking each of the files you want to print; then, right-click the selection and choose Print. Word will open all the documents and send them to the printer automatically.

To create a new document containing the contents of an existing document in your list, follow these steps:

Right-click the document containing the information you want in the new one (Figure A).

Figure A

shortcut menuClick New, click OK, and then close the Open dialog box.

Word creates a new document containing the information from the original document, which you can then edit and save as a new document.

You also don’t have to leave Word to open a file created in another application, such as an Excel or PDF file. Simply right-click the file, click Open With, and then choose the appropriate application. Word will open the selected file in a new window.

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