MS PUBLISHER

Under the option ‘Choose a Publication Size’, select ‘Custom’. You may then enter the physical dimensions of your printed piece making sure the orientation is correct. Once you finish, click ‘OK’.

The Nudge Option
In order to achieve a high degree of control over the positioning of objects on the page, use the ‘Nudge’ option. Just select the object you need to move and use [Alt] [Arrow key] (up, down, right, or left), and your object will move one pixel for each keystroke. Use Arrange > Nudge to change the increment of movement.

Add a Reply Form To A Publisher 2000 Publication
Reply forms make it easy for your readers to respond to a survey, sign up for an event, or place an order. Add a reply form from the Publisher 2000 Design Gallery to your brochures, newsletters, catalogues, Web sites, or other similar publications.

In order to add a reply form to your publication, go to Insert > Design Gallery Object. Under ‘Categories’, click ‘Reply Forms’. Now, double-click the reply form you want. Drag the reply form to the desired position in your publication, and resize if necessary. Be sure to replace any placeholder text, such as “First Question” and “Answer A”, with the appropriate text.

Use The Design Checker To Check For Missing Text
Missing text often occurs when you resize a text frame after inserting text, or when you add a graphic that pushes text into an adjacent text frame. Adding a continued notice to a text frame can also cause missing text. Publisher indicates that text is missing by showing the text in the ‘Overflow’ symbol at the bottom of a text frame when the frame is selected. Use the Design Checker to check your publication for missing text. It analyses your publication, stops at every text frame that contains text in the overflow area, and also suggests possible solutions.

To run the Design Checker, go to Tools > Design Checker. To check your entire publication, click ‘All’; or, to check specific pages, click ‘Pages’, and then type the page numbers in the ‘From’ and ‘To’ boxes. Click ‘OK’.

Publisher checks the design, and displays a dialog box if it finds a problem. If you want to fix the problem, go to the publication, and make your changes; you don’t have to close the ‘Design Checker’ dialog box. When you’ve finished, click ‘Continue’ to have Publisher continue checking your publication. If you don’t want to fix the problem, click ‘Ignore’ or ‘Ignore All’, and click ‘Continue’. Click ‘OK’.

Get Your Publisher Files Together
When you take your publication to another computer, you can be sure it looks the same on the other computer as it does on yours by including the fonts and graphics you used in your publication with the files you save. When you use the Pack and Go Wizard to pack your files, Publisher can include both fonts and graphics with your files.

If you are taking your files to another computer on disk, Publisher automatically compresses and splits your files so they fit on multiple disks. Publisher also includes a program to unpack your files on the other computer. To start the Pack and Go Wizard, go to File > Pack and Go, and then click ‘Take to Another Computer’. The Pack and Go Wizard takes you through each step of the packing process.

Keep An Object’s Centre In The Same Place
To keep the centre of an object in the same place in your publication while you resize the object, click the object, then hold down [Ctrl] while you resize the object. Release the mouse button before you release [Ctrl].

Apply Text And Graphics Formatting Multiple Times
If you have ever wanted to make several non-sequential words stand out by using a special font, or have ever wanted to change certain solid lines to dotted lines in graphics created with the drawing tools, you might not realise how easy it is. 

Instead of clicking the ‘Format Painter’ button on the Standard toolbar every time you want to apply the new format, you can take advantage of the button’s ‘sticky’ feature.

First select the item whose format you would like to copy. To copy the selected format to several items, double-click the ‘Format Painter’ button. The button stays selected, or ‘sticky’. Select the text or graphic where you want to apply the new format. When you have finished applying the format, click the ‘Format Painter’ button again or press [Esc].

To add additional Adjust handles, hold down [Ctrl] and click where you want the new handle to appear. To delete a handle, hold down [Ctrl] [Shift] and click the handle. Once that is completed, click anywhere on the page.

Make Alignment A Snap
Align objects in Publisher without hassling over your mouse. Click Arrange > Rules guides and choose either ‘Add Horizontal Ruler Guide’ or ‘Add Vertical Ruler Guide’. To move the guide, hold [Shift] and drag the guide to the position you want. Click Tools > Snap to Guides. Now any object you move near the guide will snap to the grid and be automatically aligned.

DREAMWEAVER

Close Some Panels
Dreamweaver by default comes with all the panels (or ‘palettes’) open, taking up all the space on your screen, and making the program hard to use. Since you need only a few of these panels, open the panels listed below and close all others (all panels are listed in the Window menu. You can always open them again later through the Window menu). So, keep the following panels open: Objects, Properties, Site Files, CSS Styles, History.

HTML Styles
Don’t use ‘HTML Styles’. HTML Styles aren’t real stylesheets; they are good only for one-time formatting. If you use real style sheets-CSS (Cascaded Style Sheets) Styles-you can change a style anytime you want and the change will be automatically applied to every instance
of the style.

Add An Extra Space Between Items
To add an extra space between items in a bulleted list, place your cursor at the end of the item and press [Shift] [Enter] twice. This adds two <BR> tags after the list item instead of adding another

In these cases, simply press [F3] when you reach the argument that you want the Named Range in, and Excel will display the ‘Paste Name’ dialog. Click the name you want, and click ‘OK’.

Catching Formula Errors
Whenever typing one of Excel’s functions, especially nested ones, into a cell, use lowercase. This way when you press [Enter], Excel will capitalise only the names of the functions you have entered correctly.

Transpose Formulas Without The Reference Changing
In cell A1 of sheet 2, put “=Sheet1!A1”. Copy this a maximum of 255 rows. Now with the formulas selected, go to Edit > Replace, and Replace “=” with “#”. Now select and copy cell B1, go to Edit > Paste special, and choose ‘Transpose’. Delete column A, and with row 1 selected, go to Edit > Replace, and Replace “#” with “=”.

Display Or Hide Scrollbars
Go to Tools > Options > View. Select or clear the ‘Horizontal scroll bar’ checkbox and ‘Vertical scroll bar’ checkbox.

Add Colour To Sheet Tabs
First select the sheets you want to colour. On the ‘Format’ menu, point to ‘Sheet’, and then click ‘Tab Color’. You can also right-click on the sheet tab and then click ‘Tab Color’. Click on the colour you want and click ‘OK’.

Four Conditional Formatting Options
Conditional formatting in Excel allows for three conditions. However, by setting up conditions correctly-from least to most restrictive-you can really allow for four conditions, when the default formatting of the cell is considered.

For example, say you want to add colour to your data in the following manner. You have four ranges, with fill colours Red, Yellow, Green and Black respectively. The four ranges are “Less than or equal to -25”, “Between 0 and -25”, “Between 0 and 25”, and “Over 25”. This can be achieved by doing the following.

First select your range of cells. Click ‘Conditional Formatting’ on the ‘Format’ menu. Under ‘Condition 1’, in the first two boxes, choose ‘Cell Value Is’ and ‘less than or equal to’ respectively. Then type the value “-25” in the third box. Now click the ‘Format’ button, choose a red fill colour from the ‘Patterns’ tab, and click ‘OK’. Click ‘Add’. Under ‘Condition 2’, choose between in the second box, type the values “0” and “-25” in the third and fourth boxes, and then choose a yellow fill format. Click ‘Add’ again.

Under ‘Condition 3’, choose ‘Between’ in the second box, type the values “0” and “25” in the third and fourth boxes, and then choose a green fill format. Click ‘OK’ to close the ‘Conditional Formatting’ dialog box. Finally, while your range is still highlighted, choose a black fill from the colour palette. Your range is now pseudo-conditionally formatted to cover all four cases!

Change Cell Background Colour Using VBA
To modify the background colour of a cell using Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), you need to use the ‘Interior’ property of the cell, and then you can use ColorIndex (to use one of the 56 ‘preset’ colours in Excel) in this way, for example:  ActiveCell.Interior.ColorIndex = 36 Instead of ‘ColorIndex’, you can use ‘Color’. In this example, you are colouring cells A1 through A6:
Range(“A1:A6”).Interior.Color = RGB(200,160,35)

View Multiple Sheets Or Workbooks
To view multiple sheets or workbooks at the same time, open the workbooks you want to view. To view multiple sheets in the active workbook, click ‘New Window’ on the ‘Window’ menu. Switch to the new window, and then click a sheet you want to view. Repeat for each sheet you want to view. On the ‘Window’ menu, click ‘Arrange’. Under ‘Arrange’, click the option you want.

In order to view sheets in only the active workbook, select the ‘Windows of active workbook’ checkbox.

Change The Colour Of Cell Gridlines
Select the sheets on which you want to change the gridline colour. Go to Tools > Options, and then click the ‘View’ tab. Under ‘Window options’, click the colour you want in the ‘Color’ box. To use the default gridline colour, click ‘Automatic’.

Change The Hole Size In A Doughnut Chart
Click a data series in the doughnut chart you want to change. On the ‘Format’ menu, click ‘Selected Data Series’, and then click the ‘Options’ tab. In the ‘Doughnut hole size’ box, type a value between 10 and 90 to specify the diameter of the hole.

Change The Plotting Order Of Data Series
Click a data series in the chart you want to change. To change the plotting order of data series in a surface chart, click a legend key. On the ‘Format’ menu, click ‘Selected Data Series’ or ‘Selected Legend Key’, and then click the ‘Series Order’ tab.

In the ‘Series order’ box, click the series you want to move. To place the series in the order you want, click ‘Move Up’ or ‘Move Down’.

Change The Cell Range A Chart Is Based On
Click the chart you want to change. On the ‘Chart’ menu, click ‘Source Data’, and then click the ‘Data Range’ tab. Make sure the entire reference in the ‘Data range’ box is selected.

On the worksheet, select the cells that contain the data you wish to appear in the chart. If you want the column and row labels to appear in the chart, include the cells that contain them in the selection.

MS OUTLOOK

Display Non-consecutive Dates
The Outlook Calendar displays dates consecutively-usually in single week or month view. But sometimes it’s useful to see several non-consecutive, key dates at a glance. For example, if you met with the same client on January 12 and 19, March 31, and April 4, you might want to view those dates in a single pane, giving you easy access to meeting summaries, attachments, and lists of attendees.

To view non-consecutive dates, on the right side of the window in the Date Navigator (the small calendar that displays the current month), click the first date you want to view. Then, while holding down [Ctrl], click any other dates you want to view. To remove a date, click it again.
You can display up to 14 non-consecutive days.

Save Multiple Attachments Simultaneously
When you receive an Outlook message containing several attached files, you don’t have to open and save each file separately. You can save multiple attachments to the same location in a single step.

Click ‘Save Attachments’ on the ‘File’ menu. When the ‘Save All Attachments’ dialog box opens, click OK. Then select the folder where you want to save the files, and click ‘OK’.

When you use this shortcut, you must save all the files to the same folder. To save each attachment to a different folder, you will need to save them individually.

Calendar-Viewing Shortcuts
In Outlook Calendar, do the following:
Press [Alt] [-] to display the current week.
Press [Alt] [=] to display the current month.

Use vCards
Outlook supports the use of vCards, the Internet standard for creating and sharing virtual business cards. By adding a vCard to your e-mail signature, you can easily include your business contact information with every e-mail message you send.

If you receive a vCard and would like to save the information it contains, simply double-click it, and it will open as a contact item that you can easily save to your Contacts folder.

To include a vCard with your e-mail signature, go to Tools > Options, and then click the ‘Mail Format’ tab. Under ‘Signature’, click ‘Signatures’, and then click ‘New’. Select the options you want, and then click ‘Next’. Under ‘vCard options’, select a vCard from the list or click ‘New vCard from Contact’.

Get Rid Of Space-Stealing Files In Outlook
When it’s time to clean up their mailboxes, most people have trouble finding and deleting the messages that take up the most space, such as those with large attachments. Here’s a fast way to expose the space stealers hiding in your Outlook folders.

To create a customised search file in Outlook, go to  Tools > Advanced Find, and then click the ‘More Choices’ tab. In the ‘Look for’ box, click ‘Messages’. In the Size list, click ‘greater than’, and then type a number such as 500 (for files that are 500 kilobytes or larger). Select the remaining search options you want, and click ‘Find Now’.

When the search is complete, you can save it as a shortcut. Here’s how: click ‘Save Search’ on the ‘File’ menu of the ‘Advanced Find’ dialog box, and save it somewhere you can find it easily later, such as your desktop. Then, the next time you want to run this search, just double-click the shortcut.

Colour-Code Your Calendar
In your Outlook Calendar, you can use colours to help you manage your appointments. For example, you can choose colours with predefined labels such as “Personal”, “Needs Preparation,” or “Must Attend”; or, you can create your own labels. Here’s how.

To colour an appointment or meeting with a predefined label, click ‘Calendar’. Right-click an appointment or meeting, point to ‘Label’ on the shortcut menu, and then click a colour-coded label in the list. To remove the colour from the appointment or meeting, in the ‘Label’ list, click ‘None’.

To create your own coloured label, click ‘Calendar’. Right-click an appointment or meeting, point to ‘Label’ on the shortcut menu, and then click ‘Edit Labels’. Pick the colour you want to rename, type in your new label name, and click ‘OK’.

You can also use a shortcut to find related messages. When you open an e-mail message you have already replied to, a yellow information bar indicates the date and time you replied to the message, and provides a link you can use to find all related messages. Click the information bar to view related messages. In Outlook 2002, the bar also indicates if the sender is currently online, and if that sender is an Instant Messenger contact.

Return Meeting Responses To The Right Person
Most administrative assistants have permission to send meeting requests from their bosses’ accounts-but sometimes, responses to those meeting requests end up in their bosses’ mailboxes. Here’s a way to return responses to the administrative assistant.

You can grant someone permission to send e-mail requests for you by using the ‘Delegate Access’ feature: go to Tools > Options, click the ‘Delegates’ tab, and click ‘Add’. With that done, it’s easy to specify that responses be returned to that person as a delegate.

To return responses to delegates, go to Tools > Options, and then click the ‘Delegates’ tab. Select ‘Send meeting requests and responses only to my delegates, not to me’.

Open, Dismiss, Or Snooze Multiple Reminders
Did you know that you could act on more than one reminder at a time in Outlook 2002? Your reminders are listed in the ‘Reminders’ window, which is accessible from the ‘View’ menu. From there you can open, dismiss, or ‘snooze’ multiple reminders with a single click.

To work with multiple reminders, first select the first reminder. Hold down [Ctrl]. Select any additional reminders. Click ‘Open Item’, ‘Dismiss’, or ‘Snooze’.  

MS POWERPOINT

Making Auto-Fit Text Stop Auto-Fitting
To turn this feature off, go to Tools > Options, click on the ‘Edit’ tab, and uncheck ‘Autofit text to text placeholder’.

Using Ctrl-Drag To Copy
You can quickly make a copy of any object by holding down [Ctrl] while you drag on the object. You will then ‘drag off’ a new copy.

Using Guides To Measure
Make the Guides visible by clicking View > Guides.  Then, hold down [Shift] while you click and hold a guide; the tool-tip for the guide will display “0:00”.

As you move the guide, the distance the guide covers from the beginning of the drag will be displayed in the units of your ruler. In this way, you can measure distances between objects, place guides at specific places, and so on.

Selecting Small Or Covered Objects
Hit [Esc] to ensure that nothing is current selected. Next, repeatedly hit [Tab], which will toggle you through a selection of all of the objects on a slide. This is useful to select very small objects, or those objects covered up by larger ones.

Change How A Linked Or Embedded Object Appears
Select the linked object or embedded object you would like to change. On the ‘Edit’ menu, point to the object, for instance, ‘Worksheet Object’-and click ‘Convert’. Follow any one:

If you want to display the content, clear the ‘Display as icon’ checkbox.
If you want to display as an icon, select the ‘Display as icon’ checkbox.

Control How Linked Objects Are Updated
Go to Edit > Links. Click the linked object you want to update. To select multiple linked objects, hold down [Ctrl] while you click each object. Now do one or more of the following:

(a) Change a linked object’s setting to automatic or manual updating: to update a linked object each time you open the file that contains it-or any time the object changes while the file is open-click ‘Automatic’ or ‘Automatic update’. To update a linked object only when you click Update Now, click ‘Manual’ or ‘Manual update’.

(b) To manually update a linked object when you choose, click linked object, then click ‘Update Now’.

(c) To break a connection to a linked object, click ‘Break Link’. After you break the connection to a linked object, you must reinsert it into your file to reconnect.

(d) To reconnect a linked object when the source file moves or is renamed, click ‘Change Source’. In the ‘File name’ box, enter the name of the file to which you want to reconnect the linked object. If you don’t see the file you want, select a different folder in the ‘Look in’ box.

Using A PDF File
You cannot insert a PDF file into PowerPoint as an embedded object. You can, however, link to a PDF file from within a presentation using hyperlinks: select the text or object you want to use to link to the PDF file. On the ‘Insert’ menu, click ‘Hyperlink’. Under ‘Link to’, click ‘Existing File or Web Page’. Select the PDF file you want to link to, and click ‘OK’.

Draw A Curve
This tip is indicative of how to draw in PowerPoint. On the ‘Drawing’ toolbar, click ‘AutoShapes’, point to ‘Lines’, and then click ‘Curve’. Click where you want the curve to start, and continue to move the mouse and click wherever you want to add a curve. To end the curve, double-click any time.

(a) To add one or two arrowheads, click ‘Arrow Style’, and then click the style you want.

(b) To remove all arrowheads, click ‘Arrow Style’, and then click ‘Arrow Style 1’.

Flipping An Object
This tip, again, is indicative of how to use the Drawing toolbar. Select the AutoShape, picture, clip art or WordArt that you want to flip. Then on the Drawing toolbar, click ‘Draw’, point to ‘Rotate or Flip’, and then click ‘Flip Horizontal’ or ‘Flip Vertical’.

About Grouping And Ungrouping Objects
When you use the Group commands, under ‘Draw’ on the Drawing toolbar, to group objects, you combine them so you can work with them as though they were a single object. You can flip, rotate, and resize or scale all objects in a group as a single unit. You can also change the attributes of all objects in a group at one time-for example, you might change the fill colour or add a shadow to all objects in the group. Also, you can select an item within a group and apply an attribute, without ungrouping.

You can also create groups within groups to help you build complex drawings. You can ungroup a group of objects at any time and then regroup them later.

(a) To group objects, simply select the objects you want to group. Then on the Drawing toolbar, click ‘Draw’, then ‘Group’.

(b) To ungroup objects, select the group you want to ungroup. On the Drawing toolbar, click ‘Draw’, then click ‘Ungroup’.

(c) To regroup objects, select any one of the objects that was previously grouped. Then on the Drawing toolbar, click ‘Draw’, and then
click ‘Regroup’.
   
FRONTPAGE

Cool ‘Backward’ And ‘Forward’ Links
Say you have a Web site with a series of pages in a row. You could be showing slides, for example. It would be nice to have backward and forward arrows on each page. You can do it in FrontPage by inserting a little text into the HTML. It’s a simple JavaScript trick. Use this code:
  <FORM>
  <INPUT TYPE=”button” VALUE=”BACK” onClick=”history.go(-1)”>
  <INPUT TYPE=”button” VALUE=”FORWARD” onCLick=”history.go(1)”>
  </FORM>

Using Themes
What if you like the idea of Themes but don’t like the options available? Most of the themes that come with FrontPage have a very standard look to them. That just won’t do with something as personal as a Web site. Your first option-and this works with both FrontPage 2000 and FrontPage 98-is to buy a theme from a third- party company.

If you don’t want to buy one, you can always design your own theme. FrontPage 98 came with a theme designer program on the CD. But one of the more exciting options available in FrontPage 2000 is the ability to edit an existing theme or create a new one from directly within FrontPage.

You will notice there is a ‘Modify’ button at the bottom of the ‘Themes’ dialog box. Clicking it will open up three options for editing: the Colours, the Graphics, and the Text. Modifying the colours lets you either pick a scheme for your theme, or lets you pick colours for the colour elements modified by a theme.

The colour options are all on an Internet-safe palette. Modifying the graphics gives you a chance to replace or modify any graphic element on the theme. You can create your own elements in whatever graphics program you choose. The final option, Text, lets you modify or create the text elements of your theme.

Once you are done modifying your theme or creating a new one, you simply click the ‘Save As’ button in the bottom of the ‘Theme’ dialog box, and give it a name.

Note that with Office 2000, themes are now used across the tools-Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and others. Consider making use of your new theme in everything you do.

Use Folders Effectively
Folders make your life easier, and have the added bonus of making navigation easier for your audience. It is easy to put everything into the root directory-and that is the program default-but in fact, you don’t have to, and there will come a point where you wish you didn’t.

Web sites have a tendency to get large rather quickly, and a little advance preparation is always worth the effort.

Create a folder for every group of documents you’ll have on your site. Put your images in one folder, your ‘about’ information in another, and your documents in another.

Label the folders and directories in a way that makes sense. There is simply no need to ever have to say, “Where did I put that file?”

Use sub-folders as deep as you want if it makes sense. Remember, FrontPage keeps track of where every file is, so if you move a file from one folder to another, it will make sure the paths are correct. This is useful if you are contemplating if it would be worth it to organise that out-of-control Web site.

Not only is this technique good for you, it’s also easier for the viewer. If your site starts to make sense through the URL structure, they will have another navigation tool for your site-always a good idea.

Quickly Find Clip Art
When you open the ‘Clip Art’ dialog box in either FrontPage 98 or 2000, there is an under-documented button that can make your life easier. Select the ‘Clips Online’ button-which, in FrontPage 98, resembles the Internet Explorer shortcut symbol in the lower right hand corner-to open up the Clips Online Web Site.

The Web site will first ask you to agree to the EULA. You’ll then be taken to a Web site that is updated on a regular basis, which is a searchable database of clipart, photos and sounds that are all usable as part of your FrontPage license.

You can view clips by a number of categories or types, but the real value lies in the ‘search by’ option where, you can enter a term on which you’d like to see some clip art. Considering the size of this database, you will surely find something. Once you do, you can either download it by selecting the piece, or checking each piece and downloading a collection in a shopping cart-type of format when you finish looking.

If you select the piece directly, you will see the categories under which this piece was listed. You can select any of these categories to find other similar items. Use this feature if you are looking for a collection of similar pieces.

FrontPage does all the work needed to transfer the file type to something readable on the Web, and Microsoft updates this site on a regular basis.

Make Sure Your Site Works On All Browser Versions
New to FrontPage 2000, and not well-documented, is the ability to choose the browser type and version as well as the server type that you wish to design your site for. To use this tool, open the ‘Compatibility’ Tab in the ‘Page Options’ dialog box. The browser’s drop-down menu lets you choose between Netscape, IE, and WebTV, and combinations of the three.

The ‘Browser Version’ drop down menu lets you pick the browser version type. The Server drop-down menu lets you pick the type of server you are designing the site for. Below this are a number of technologies that are either going to be supported or not depending on if the box is checked.

You can check or uncheck any of these items. In case an item is not selected, you will not be able to create anything that uses that functionality. Not all browser types use the technologies on this dialog box. If you want to make sure that your site is as viewable on as my types of browsers as possible, deselect all the fancy options.

It is important to note that this feature won’t prevent you from entering anything that uses these types of functions directly into the HTML.

HTML Formatting And Optional Reformatting
You can tell FrontPage 2002 how your HTML page should be formatted, from how many indents should come before each tag, or whether or not to use optional tags.

By default, FrontPage preserves the formatting of existing HTML, but applies new HTML formatting to content you add to the existing page. HTML formatting is viewed in the HTML pane.

The formatting options you choose will apply to all pages you create in FrontPage. New in FrontPage 2002 is the ability to take a page that has been imported into your Web site and reformat it according to your preferences.

In order to apply your HTML formatting preferences to a Web page, open it in FrontPage 2002 and perform the following: go to Tools > Page Options, and then click the HTML Source tab. Click ‘Reformat using the rules below’. Then under ‘Formatting’, select the options you want.
For instance, if you would like all tags to appear as lowercase instead of uppercase, select ‘Tag names are lowercase’.

Under Tags, select the tag and attributes you want. For example, select ‘Body’, and then change indent to 12 spaces. FrontPage will change the HTML pages you create in FrontPage to use these formatting rules.