Office XP Tips
Page 1

Adjusting the Office XP Task Pane
To adjust the width of the docked task pane in any Office application, move the pointer over the left edge until the pointer changes to a double-sided arrow. Then click the edge, and drag to the desired width. To make the task pane float, double-click its title bar. You can then move it to any position on the page. To return the task pane to its docked position, double-click the title bar again. To adjust the size of a floating task pane, move the pointer over any edge until the pointer changes to a double-sided arrow. Then click the edge, and drag to the desired size.

Understanding the Drawing Canvas in Word XP
In Word XP, Microsoft made a change in how you create drawing objects. Now, when you click on one of the drawing tools, Word creates a "drawing canvas" in your document, at the location of the insertion point. This canvas has the words "Create Drawing Here" visible within it.

The purpose of the drawing canvas is to help you organize your drawing objects. It provides a container for the pieces and parts that make up your drawing. The drawing canvas is initially transparent and has no border around it, but you can change those settings using the same techniques that you use to change colors and borders on other drawing objects.

The drawing canvas is supposed to be an organizational aid. It comes in very handy when you are creating a drawing that contains several individual AutoShapes. If those AutoShapes are contained within the drawing canvas, then they are easier to manage as a whole.

If you are simply adding one or two independent drawing objects to your document, then the drawing canvas will be of little value. If you know you won't need the drawing canvas, you can dispense with it right after it appears by pressing Ctrl+Z, Backspace, Esc, or Del right away. This gets rid of the drawing canvas, but does not turn off the drawing tool you selected. You can continue to place the drawing object in your document, as desired.

There is one benefit to using the drawing canvas that you should be aware of - it allows you to use connectors between AutoShapes. Connectors are lines that stay "connected" to set points on an AutoShape. If you move the AutoShapes that are connected by a connector line, then the line expands, contracts, or moves as necessary to keep the connection in place. Connector lines are available only within a drawing canvas.

Getting Rid of the Drawing Canvas In Word XP
When you click on one of the drawing tools in Word XP, you will see a drawing canvas appear in your document at the insertion point. This drawing canvas is clearly visible, with the words "Create Drawing Here" in the middle of the canvas.

Depending on how you create drawing objects in your document, you may find the drawing canvas to be more of a bother than it is worth. Word allows you to turn off the drawing canvas completely. Just follow these steps:
1. Choose Options from the Tools menu. Word displays the Options dialog box.
2. Make sure the General tab is selected.
3. Clear the Automatically Create Drawing Canvas When Inserting AutoShapes check box.
4. Click on OK.

From now on, whenever you select a drawing tool, Word does not display the drawing canvas. You can still create drawings--you just won't have the drawing canvas visible any more.

Use the Office Clipboard with Other Applications
Office XP lets you use the Office Clipboard with any application. For example, suppose you found three items on the Web that you want to save to a Word document. Follow these steps to cut and paste between applications:

1. In Word XP, open the Clipboard in the Task Pane on the right.
2. Minimize Word.
3. Open your browser and copy the item you want to paste into Word. The following message is displayed next to the Clipboard icon in the Taskbar at the bottom of your screen: "1 of 24 - Clipboard item collected."
4. Continue copying items. As each item is copied, Office displays a message indicating the number of the item on the clipboard.
5. Open the Word document into which you want to paste the items and, in the Task Pane, click the item you wish to paste.

Create a PowerPoint Presentation With More Than One Design Template
In PowerPoint XP you can easily use more than one Design Template within a presentation. To do this, open a new presentation. Click the down arrow in the Task Pane and choose Slide Design - Design Templates. Click on a template to apply it to your presentation. Add several slides. Click on the slide on which you want to apply a different design. Make sure the Design Templates are showing in the Task Pane. Right-click or click the down arrow on the design of your choice and choose Apply to Selected Slides. You can select multiple slides in the Slide panel by using your Ctrl key. Then just click on the design to change it.

Create and Print a Booklet
Word XP makes it easy to create and print a booklet. With just a few clicks of the mouse, Word does the page layout for you; you just have to give Word the number of pages and add the text and graphics. Follow these steps to create an eight-page booklet that reads from left to right:

1. Open a blank Word document, click File, Page Setup, and click the Margins tab.
2. In the Multiple Pages drop-down list, choose Book Fold. Word will change the document layout to landscape mode and the page size to 8 1/2 inches by 5 1/2 inches.
3. In the Sheets Per Booklet drop-down list, select 8.
4. Change the inside and outside margins of each booklet page as desired, set the gutter size to accommodate the booklet binding, and click OK.

Enter text, graphics, headers, and footers. When completed, follow these steps to print the booklet:

1. Select File, Print.
2. Set your printer for printing on both sides of the paper.
3. Click Print.

PowerPoint Movies in PowerPoint XP
PowerPoint doesn't limit you to the custom animations you can apply to PowerPoint objects-you can also insert short movies into PowerPoint slides. To check this out, run PowerPoint and open a blank slide. Choose Insert, Picture, ClipArt. When Insert ClipArt opens in the Task Pane, click the down arrow to the right of Results Should Be: choose Movies. Click Search. Next click on one of the Movies. Press F5 to view the slide show.

The Office XP Task Pane
If you have a newer version of MS Office and find yourself disliking the Task Pane that automatically appears on the right side of your screen every time you open a program, there are ways to disable it. One way to disable the Task Pane is to uncheck the "Show at startup" option at the bottom. Another way is to go to Tools, Options, View and remove the check mark in front of Startup Task Pane.

Smart Tags
A Smart Tag is pop-up menu that allows access to more commands that are relevant to the current task in Office XP programs. If you don't want to see the Smart Tags, you can hide them.

To hide Smart Tags from view in Excel:
1. From the Smart Tag shortcut menu, select Smart Tag Options to open the AutoCorrect dialog box. Or, from the Tools menu, select AutoCorrect Options.
2. Select the Smart Tags tab, and from the Show Smart Tags As dropdown list, select None.

To hide Smart Tags from view in Word:
1. Same as above.
2. On the Smart Tags tab, deselect Label Text With Smart Tags and Show Smart Tag Actions Buttons; click OK.

Add Text to Drawing Objects in Word XP
1. Start with a blank document.
2. On the Drawing toolbar, click AutoShapes, and select the type of object that you would like to draw. Press the Delete key to remove the drawing canvas from the screen.
3. Click and drag to create a new drawing object.
4. When you are ready to add text inside the drawing object, right-click inside it. Select Add Text from the shortcut menu. Note that some AutoShapes automatically put the insertion point inside the shape.
5. Type your text inside the object, and then format the words.
6. Try filling the shape with color or a pattern by clicking the Fill Color button on the Drawing toolbar.
7. To make the shape stand out, add a drop shadow to it by clicking the Shadow Style button. Click the Shadow Settings button to explore more drop shadow options.

Draw Borders in Excel XP Worksheets
Excel XP allows you to draw borders around cells, rows and columns.
1. On the Formatting toolbar, click the down arrow to the right of the Borders button, and then click Draw Borders on the palette.
2. On the Borders toolbar, click the down arrow next to the first button on the left and choose Draw Border or Draw Border Grid. Then choose a Line Style and a Color.
Do one or more of the following:
1. Click on one line or click and drag on multiple lines to draw a border.
2. Click in the center of a cell and drag across the row to draw an outside border around the row.
3. Click in the center of a cell and drag down the column to draw an outside border around a column.
When you are finished drawing borders, close the Borders toolbar.

Keyboard Shortcuts for the Draw Borders Feature in Excel XP
Open the Borders toolbar (see previous day's tip) and then:
1. To draw borders around every cell within the row or column, press the Ctrl key while you drag the cursor.
2. To erase the borders you've drawn around a row or column, press the Shift key while you drag the cursor across the row or down the column.
3. To erase the borders you've drawn around every cell within a row or column, press Ctrl + Shift while you drag the cursor across the row or down the column.

Replace Fonts Globally in PowerPoint XP
If you don't like a font you have used throughout your PowerPoint presentation, you can quickly change it on all slides by using the Replace Font dialog box. On the Format menu, choose Replace Fonts. In the Replace Font dialog box, click the font you want to replace in the Replace list. In the With list, click the font you want to apply. Click Replace and review the font change. If you like what you see, click Close. If not, you can continue making choices in the Replace Font dialog box until you find what you want.

Create a PowerPoint XP Photo Album
1. Start PowerPoint XP.
2. Go to Insert, Picture, and then click New Photo Album.
3. Click File/Disk or Scanner/Camera to insert your pictures.

Tip: You can select a group of pictures by using the Shift + click technique. Click on the first file that you want, press Shift, and then click the last file that you want to select. Then click Insert.

4. In the Photo Album dialog box, under Album Layout, choose Picture layout and Frame shape options. See how the photos look in the Preview window.
5. Select other options that you would like to use. When you're finished, click the Create button.
6. Save your presentation, and then view the photo album in Slide Show view. Don't forget to add slide show transitions and sounds to make your photo album even more fun to view.

Create a Drop Cap in Word XP
You can make the first letter of the paragraph stand out by making it larger than the rest of the text and dropping it down a few lines.
1. Open Word; then either open a document that you've already created, or start a new one.
2. Select the first letter of a paragraph, and then select Drop Cap from the Format menu.
3. Select either Dropped or In margin.
4. Choose a different font if you want the letter to stand out even more from the surrounding text.
5. Decide how many lines you want the letter to drop, such as 3.
6. Control the distance from the text (0.1" works well), and then click OK.
Tip: Experiment with different fonts for the drop cap. Some fonts are really fancy and contain many twists that work nicely in a drop cap.

Track Word Count as You Work in Word XP
If you need to know how many words are in your document, there's a very easy way to do it in Word XP. Instead of clicking Word Count on the Tools menu each time you want a recount, use the new the Word Count toolbar. On the View menu, go to Toolbars and click Word Count. Then click Recount on the toolbar to update the count any time you want. You can also click the down arrow next to the count to see the current number of characters, lines, pages, and paragraphs.

Using the Mail Merge Wizard
In older versions of Word, Mail Merge was a little difficult to use. The new Mail Merge Wizard in Word XP walks you through every step of the process. It helps you:

1. Select the type of document: letter, label, or envelope.
2. Open or create a list of recipients.
3. Insert merge fields, such as name and address, into the document.
4. Preview the document and remove any recipients before merging.
5. Print the finished documents.

To access this new feature:
On the Tools menu, go to Letters and Mailings, and click Mail Merge Wizard.
When the Mail Merge task pane appears, just follow the instructions that lead you through creating a Mail Merge.

Get Easy Access to New AutoSum Functions
In older versions of Excel, the AutoSum feature was handy, but limited. In Excel XP, the AutoSum button is linked to a longer list of formulas that you can add to your worksheet. With this more powerful AutoSum, you can quickly calculate the average of selected cells, find the maximum or minimum value in a range of values, and much more. Click the cell below the column of numbers, or to the right of the row of numbers, you want to calculate. Click the arrow next to AutoSum on the Standard toolbar, click the formula you want to use, and then press Enter.

Sizing the Office XP Task Pane
The Office XP task pane can be resized to fit the way you work. To adjust the width of a docked task pane, move the pointer over the left edge until the pointer changes to a double-headed arrow. Then click the edge, and drag to the desired width.

Design a CD Case Label in Publisher XP
Open Publisher XP. Click Labels in the list of publication designs in the New Publication pane. In the list of Labels, click Compact Disc. Click the Compact Disc Case Liner template. Select a Color Scheme and then a Font Scheme. The right side of the layout is the front of the label (the title of the CD). The left side is the inside label, where you can write details about the contents of the CD. Add your own text to the front of the label and the inside. Be sure to format the text to make it look as fancy or plain as you like. Add pictures to your label if needed. Save your label, and then print it.