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Category: The Office Tech Pro

PowerPoint bells and whistles: noise or not?

I recently heard a train-the-trainer presenter refer to all animations and transitions as unnecessary fluff and distractions. While I agree that animation beyond basic slide transitions can be distracting, I do think there is a place for well-placed advanced features in your PowerPoint. Here are my basic guidelines:

What If Analysis in Excel: Goal Seek

You’ve plugged in the values for a PMT (payment) function to determine how much the payment will be only to find that the payment is a bit too much for your budget. You could keep plugging in numbers until you get the right answer, or find out the exact answer in a couple of clicks with one of the “What If” analysis tools in Excel.

SharePoint document workspaces

Are you using SharePoint 2007 or 2010 as a glorified file server? There are many opportunities to make SharePoint do some heavy lifting beyond just keeping your files organized. One such opportunity is the actual creation of a complex document like a procedures manual. Using a template called a Document Workspace in SharePoint.

3 great Excel questions

Some people ask why I keep teaching these applications. “Don’t I get bored?” Not with great questions like these! I solved one of the following questions awhile back for my own use. The other two started out as “I don’t know, let’s see…”

Outlook 2010 View Tips

Just about everything you need with regard to changing your view in Outlook can be found on the View tab in Outlook 2010. Here’s a little tour through the View ribbon. View Ribbon Left Current View In this group you’ll find 3 handy buttons. Have you assembled a view that met a specific need, but now […]

3 OH NO moments in Excel and what to do about it

‘My Ribbon is gone!’ This is a common exclamation by new Office 2007 and 2010 users. We come from a long line of “double clickers” even though precious little needs a double click. One of the things you might actually double click on is a tab on the Ribbon (Home, Insert, Page Layout, etc.). If […]

Beyond Find in Word

Many people have used Find for years in Microsoft Word without ever clicking on the More>> button. Find More Here are all the things you can look for specifically: Your search words in the case you type them in, so This, THIS, or this. Words that sound like other words (searching for cash, will also […]