Carol's Corner Office

Although sorting a list in MS Word seems like an obvious, simple task, many users aren't familiar with how to do it. Using the Sort Function, you can sort text, number, or date lists in Word. Here's how you can Sort a List in MS Word: Launch MS ... Word. Paste or create a list (of text, numbers, or dates). Highlight the entire list using the mouse. From the Table menu on the toolbar, click the Sort option; the Sort Text window will appear. Under the Sort By Field, make sure that Paragraphs is selected. Beside the type field, use the drop down arrow to select the type of data you want to sort. For ... (view more)

Have you ever needed to extract images from a PowerPoint presentation? For example: say you've been emailed a PowerPoint file with some bitmap (pictures) in it. You want to extract these images -- but more importantly, you want them in their ... original resolution. If you've tried copying the images to clipboard and pasting them into PhotoShop or PaintShop, then you probably know that the images won't appear the same as the original bitmaps. They are either too big or too small! Follow these steps to get the bitmaps in their original resolution: Select the image. Copy to the clipboard. Load ... (view more)

When you print a worksheet in Excel, do you find yourself adding the same header and footer and resetting the same print options every time? For example, suppose you require that all worksheets are printed with the company's custom header and set to ... print in landscape mode. Each time you create a workbook, you will need to change the default print settings, unless you create a custom template that will automatically give you the appropriate settings. Here's how to create a custom template: Launch MS Excel. Open a blank document; select all sheets. Go to File | Page Setup. In the Orientation ... (view more)

If you use MS Word to create newsletters, marketing copy, or other printable documents that include images, there's one picture-editing tool that can make the difference between publishing an image that works and one that merely takes up space: the ... Crop tool. For instance, instead of publishing an image that shows a very small person in the middle of a lot of wasted space, you can use the Crop tool to zoom in on the important part of the image. You can practice using the Crop tool and see how it works: Launch MS Word. Copy a graphic image from a Web page and paste it into Word, or insert an ... (view more)

You don't have to be a spreadsheet wizard to create eye-catching "trend charts" in MS Word. If you can create a Word table, you can use Microsoft Graph Chart to create a visually appealing chart based on that table. First, you need a table with at ... least two rows. In the first row, enter descriptive labels for your data. In the rest of the rows, enter the data you want to chart. If you prefer, you can enter row-level text labels in the leftmost column of your table. If you do, the charting tool will ignore the first cell in the top-level corner of the table. Once you have a table, it takes ... (view more)

When you select anywhere inside a paragraph, Word's ruler bar shows the tab settings for that paragraph. If you select multiple paragraphs, however, the tabs on the ruler bar may be grayed out. This occurs when the paragraphs have different tab ... settings. In almost any case, an option that is grayed-out infers that the "option" (whatever it may be) is unavailable. With a grayed-out tab, however, that is not the case. One way to set consistent tabs for multiple paragraphs is to select [highlight] the paragraphs and then use the Format | Tabs command from the main menu. To do so: Double-click ... (view more)

Microsoft Outlook provides a new feature in versions 2000 and forward that allows you to color-code items that meet certain criteria. Using this feature you can identify a set of items without having to group or sort them. In fact, Outlook does it ... all for you! First you have to assign a common Category code to each contact you wish to assign to a color group, and then you can apply a color to that category group. To assign categories to your contacts: Launch MS Outlook. In the Contacts folder on the Tools menu, click Organize. In the Organizer, click Using Views, and then click to select by ... (view more)

From the earliest times of counting on our fingers and toes, to the use of the abacus to desktop calculators -- working with numbers has come a long way. And what's more: you can ramp up your Windows XP calculator with Microsoft Calculator Plus, and ... run applications your old pocket calculator never dreamed of. Best of all, this utility offered from Microsoft is absolutely free! The Calculator applet that comes with Windows XP is basically the same as the one that came with Windows 3.0. If you've always wanted an updated Calculator applet with some more advanced features, you owe it to ... (view more)

You're almost at the end of drafting your document when you realize that you used the registration symbol (®) throughout, instead of the copyright symbol (©). You would think you could simply go to Edit | Find and replace all instances of the ® sy ...mbol with the © symbol; unfortunately, it's not that easy. The problem is that when the Find And Replace dialog box is open, Word's menus and toolbars are unavailable, making it difficult to find and replace symbols in your document. And, you cannot use Insert | Symbol to enter the actual symbols in the Find What: text box. If a symbol has a shortcut ...ref="/news/1078/find-and-replace-special-character-symbols-ms-word" class="more-link">view more)

Do you copy and paste a lot of information from the web? If you do, then you probably know that it can be a real hassle to always click Edit -> Paste Special (when necessary) when using an MS Office application. So why not just put that Paste ... Special in a sub-menu? To do so: Launch any MS Office Application (MS Word, MS Excel, MS Frontpage, etc). Right-click any menu or toolbar and select Customize. Select the Commands tab on the Customize dialog. Select New Menu from the Categories list. 'New Menu' will appear in the Commands list on the right. Click and Drag it to the target menu, where ... (view more)