Monday 9 December 2013

Word - Doing it with Styles

Word Styles

Styles Gallery
Do you spend ages formatting the text in your Word documents? If that's a "yes" then the bad news is that you've possibly been spending more time than you need to. The good news is that you can save time formatting so long as you try to get in the habit of using Styles.

Applying Styles

All of the text in a Word document is in the Normal style. The format of the Normal style is defined by the document template, usually the Normal template. If you are not used to using styles then you don't bother with any of this, you just select your text and change its format. That's fine as far as it goes but you're not really getting the best out of Word unless you use styles. The fundamental way to format text in Word is to apply a style, particularly where you have headings and subheadings.

Applying Heading Styles to headings
To apply a style to your headings and subheadings, select them one by one and apply a Heading Style from the Styles Gallery on the Home tab.

Use the built-in Heading styles that you can see in the gallery: Heading 1,  Heading 2 etc.

Don't worry if you don't like the look of your headings because you can always change them. Not by changing their format but instead by changing the definition of the heading style. Once a style has been applied you can change it as many times as you like and in as many different ways as you like.

To change the appearance of all the body text in your document you modify the Normal style. To change all the main headings, you modify the Heading 1 style etc.

The built-in heading styles go from Heading 1 to Heading 9 and you can apply them using shortcut keys. The shortcut keys only go from ALT+CTRL+1 for Heading1 to ALT+CTRL+3 for Heading3. But three levels of headings is usually enough for most documents. CTRL+SHIFT+N to apply Normal style is a good one to know for when you apply a heading style by mistake.

Word formats everything with styles, you can usually see where they have been applied just by looking at the text but there is a very handy document view, Draft View which some people prefer as it allows them to see exactly which style has been applied to each paragraph.

When your styles have been applied you can modify them as you like and if you prefer the appearance of your styles to the standard template styles then you can change the default so that your text looks exactly as you want it to on every new document.

Draft View

Word's Draft View is designed to show only the text formatting and gives a simplified view of the layout of the page so that you can type and edit swiftly. Most people don't bother with it and much prefer the standard Print Layout view. But it is invaluable when you need to see exactly what's going on with your styles.

Draft View showing Styles
Usually you can tell by the appearance of a heading that you have styled it.

But what you can't see are your mistakes such as where you have managed to apply Heading 1 to some white space. Maybe you're just a control freak and you always have that urge within you where to have to know what's happening.

To show the view, click the Draft control on the View tab. Your styles are not normally shown in this view and you must change a Word Options setting in order to see them. 
Setting the width of the Style area pane

You only ever have to do this once. Click the File tab, Options, Advanced, Display section, Style area pane width in Draft and Outline views: and enter a suitable width. Around an inch or 2cm is about right.


Modify your Styles

Modifying Normal Style
Very few people find the appearance of the built-in styles suitable for their purposes but all you have to do is Modify your styles so that you get exactly the font, paragraph and other formatting that you want.

Then you can either change the Word defaults so that you never have to do this again or create a single Style Set which you can apply to the whole document in one step.

Modify Styles
The whole point about styles is that you never actually do any formatting apart from applying a style. When you change the properties of the style then everything with that style in your document gets changed.

For example, many people like to change the font being used in a document and do this by selecting all the text and then choosing a different font from the font control.

This works fine but paragraphs have over a hundred different properties and if you then wanted to say, change the line spacing as well, you would have to go through the whole selection routine again. And then you change your mind...

The alternative and much easier method is to modify the Normal style. Right-click Normal style in the Styles gallery on the Home Tab. In the illustration above we changed all the body text in the document with a few clicks in the Modify Style dialog; changing the font style, size and justification (1) and then clicking the Format button (2) to change the paragraph formatting.

Modified Styles
Repeat the same process to change the appearance of the heading styles but don't forget to click on the text where the heading style has been applied first before you modify it. There's nothing more annoying than changing a paragraph of body text to Heading 1.

You don't like the look of the twenty or so headings in your document? Click on one of them and modify the heading style. The change goes through the entire document.

Or would you prefer to do twenty selections and around another forty formatting clicks to change all your headings? No contest.

Applying styles ensures speed, consistency and stability in your document. Speed, one change to a style ripples through the document irrespective of how long it is. Consistency, everything formatted with a style complies with the style. Were my main headings 18pt or 16pt? If you have to do them individually then you're bound to get some of them wrong. Stability, you can not delete an in-built style. Under certain circumstances it may reset to its default values but it's always there.

Saving your Styles

Change the Default Styles
After all that hard work modifying your styles you will not want to repeat it. If you know exactly what you want for all new documents then change the default. This changes the standard Word document template on which all new documents are based. It does not change documents that you have already created.

Click the Change Styles control on the Home tab and choose Set as Default.

Alternatively, you can create a Style Set which consists of a collection of style definitions. Then you can have your own collection of Style Sets which you can apply to different types of document. Click the Change Styles control, choose Style Set and Save as Quick Style Set from the fly-out menu. Enter a suitable name for your style set and Word saves it as a template. Whenever you want to apply the style set, click anywhere in your document and choose from the list. 

Cleaning Up Existing Documents

Usually it's best to do all of your document formatting with styles but that's not always possible. Sometimes you have a document that you've already started formatting or, more likely, you inherit documents from other people which are amazing mixtures of all sorts of styles and fonts. What you want is a nice, clean document that you can format from scratch.

Select all of the text in the document by pressing CTRL+A and then press CTRL+Space to remove any character formatting (colours, fonts, bold, italic etc.) Finally, press CTRL+Q to reset any paragraph formatting (alignment, space after etc.)

All the paragraphs revert to their default values. Any heading styles used will remain in place but all the additional formatting is removed.

Using your Styles

Identifying your body text and your different levels of headings gives your document a structure. A structure that Word can use for a variety of useful tasks. The following sections are a brief guide to how Word can use your styles and make it well worth the effort of applying them.

Navigation Pane

Navigation Pane
If you're sick of having to scroll up and down through long documents then you will really appreciate Word's Navigation Pane which opens on the left hand side of the Word window and gives you a bird's-eye view of the headings in your document.

To show the Navigation pane, either click the relevant checkbox in the Show group of the View tab or press the shortcut key CTRL+F. Click the leftmost icon tab in the pane to browse through your headings.

View of document and Navigation Pane
Click one of the headings in the Navigation pane and you move to that place in the document. This alone would make me happy but you can also reorganise your work in this pane by dragging and dropping the headings.

The two other tabs in the pane show either thumbnails of each page or Search.


Table of Contents

Creating a TOC
A Table of Contents (informally known as a "TOC") is a summary list of the contents of your document with numbered page references typically included after the title page. You can easily generate a TOC based on your heading styles, click in your document where you want to insert the TOC and then click the Table of Contents control on the References tab and choose one of the Built-in tables.

Table of Contents
The Table of Contents is a snapshot of the current state of the document. When you update your document don't forget to update your TOC to reflect the changes you have made. Click anywhere in the TOC, the entire table is selected and shaded (it's a Word field) then click the Update Table control or press F9.

TOC styles control the appearance of the TOC and you can modify them if you don't like the look of your TOC. They are available in the Styles Window, to see this window either click the dialog launcher at the lower right of the Styles group of the Home tab or press the keys ALT+CTRL+SHIFT+S. When you can see your TOC styles, right click or click the drop-down arrow on the style. Choose Modify from the shortcut menu.

Hyperlinks and Cross-references

Document Links
Hyperlinks are those underlined and coloured words that you see in web pages where you click to jump to another page or location. You can insert them into Word documents to jump to a web page, an email address or, most commonly, a Place in This Document.

Word Hyperlinks create a convenient navigation structure for anyone reading your document. To create one, click the Hyperlink control in the Links group on the Insert tab. Click Place in This Document and you will see all your headings listed on the right hand side. If you don't want to link to a heading then you must create a Bookmark first and then link to it, your Bookmarks will be listed under the headings.

To create a Bookmark select some text in your document and click the Bookmark control. Enter a name for the Bookmark and click the Add button. Bookmarks are place markers in the document, you can't actually see them unless you choose Options, Advanced, Show Document Content.

Cross-referencing to a Heading
Word can create Cross-references to your headings or bookmarks which can be updated as the document changes. For example we have some heading text, "Geography" to which we have applied the Heading 2 style and we wish to create a cross-reference that reads like this, "See Geography on page 4".

Click where you want the cross-reference, type in the word "See" followed by a space. Then click the Cross-reference control.

Choose Heading from the Reference type list and Heading text from the Insert reference to list. Click the Insert button. That gives you the "Geography" bit and will update it should you subsequently change the text of the heading. Finish off the cross-reference by typing " on page " and then repeat the process but this time choose Page number from the Insert reference to list.

Whenever you want to update your cross-references and make sure that their information is up to date, select the entire document by pressing CTRL+A and then function key F9 to update.

Paragraph Numbering

Word List Styles
Word heading styles are ideal when you want sequential paragraph numbering in a hierarchy that goes something like this: 1, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 2, 2.1, 2.2 etc. What you need is a List Style which will group existing heading styles and relate them to each other. Fortunately, Word contains a library of built-in List Styles which are easily applied and you can create your own but that's a lot more work.

Create your document and apply the various heading styles to your headings as usual. You don't actually do any numbering yourself, instead you let the heading styles and the List style apply the numbering for you.

List Style library
Select all the text in your document by pressing CTRL+A and then click the Multilevel List control in the Paragraph group on the Home tab. Browse the List Library and select one of the Lists which are clearly based on the heading styles and Word numbers all your paragraphs automatically.

If you can't find a List Style that works for you then you will have to create your own. This is not the easiest of tasks but it's the only way if you want something special. Click Define New List Style in the Multilevel List menu.

In the Define New List Style dialog, enter a name for the list then click the Format button and choose Numbering. Click the More button and then link each list level to your heading styles and set the number style and formatting.  I'll be doing a step-by-step on this torturous process in a future article.

Automatic Paragraph Numbering

Outline View

Word's Outline View is often neglected, a great shame as it is the best tool for the job when you are having to manage long documents such as reports, proposals, contracts etc. These documents usually have several sections and require extensive editing and reorganisation before the final version is produced. 

Re-arranging paragraphs in Outline View
Create your document as usual and apply heading styles to the headings. Click the Outline control on the View tab to turn on the Outline view. 

In this view you see a condensed version of the full document showing the normal body text paragraphs and the headings shown at their various levels, Heading 1 style corresponds to Level 1, Heading 2 style corresponds to Level 2 etc.

It is now so easy to reorganise your document, all you have to do is drag and drop a heading to move the heading and all its associated subheadings and body text. There's absolutely no need for all that selection and cutting and pasting work that so many people inflict upon themselves. If you have set up automatic paragraph numbering you will see that all the numbering updates to comply with the new structure.

You can use shortcut keys if you don't like to drag and drop, click a heading and then press ALT+SHIFT+Up Arrow or ALT+SHIFT+Down Arrow to move that section up or down in the document.

Creating a PDF file

Word's built-in heading styles are easily interpreted as PDF bookmarks. One of the most useful additions that you can make to most PDF's is to create bookmarks for navigation. PDF bookmarks are the clickable objects shown on the left of the Adobe Acrobat window that you use to expand and collapse the headings and show the different levels. Much the same idea as Word's Navigation pane.

Creating PDF Bookmarks
Creating bookmarks manually is a very painful task but there is no need to bother with that as you can set the built-in headings in your Word file as PDF bookmarks when you save the document as a PDF file. Click the Options button in the Publish as PDF or XPS dialog and check the checkbox Create bookmarks using and the option button Headings.

Conclusion

That's the end of the Word styles propaganda. As we've seen, Word formats everything with styles but it's not just document formatting where styles can help us get our work done efficiently, there's quite a few other things a well. If you've been using Word for a bit and you've not yet tried using styles give them a go and see if they work for you.

Training Courses

If you've still got that "I just don't know what I'm doing" feeling then you might like to arrange a Microsoft Word training course for yourself or with some of your colleagues. It's really easy to book one of our courses and they're great value for money. See our website for full details.

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Tuesday 26 November 2013

PowerPoint Balance Diagrams

Balance Diagrams

SmartArt Balance diagram
Have you seen the Balance diagram in PowerPoint's collection of SmartArt layouts? It's a really effective visual method of comparing the advantages and disadvantages of two different options.

You get two text boxes for headings and underneath them up to four items stacked on top of each other. The balance automatically tilts to the side with the greater number of items. Like all the SmartArt layouts, balance diagrams are very easy to do and you can format them with a couple of clicks.

Which of the two slides shown here is best, the balance diagram above or the more traditional opposing bullet points generated by the standard Comparison layout master seen below?

Death by PowerPoint
Of course, it's a matter of personal opinion but I would vote for the balance diagram as it is visually more striking and better attracts the audience's attention. The eternal bullet points seen in so many presentations rapidly induce that awful "death by PowerPoint" syndrome. Those nodding heads, the heavy eyelids, such ennui...

Show people something attractive and they might actually listen to what you're saying. Another advantage of the diagram is that it obliges you to keep your text short and sweet. Any more of this and I'll have to create a balance diagram in favour of balance diagrams.

Creating the Balance diagram

To create the diagram, insert a new slide using the Blank or Title and Content layout. On a blank slide, click the SmartArt control on the Insert tab, on a slide with a content placeholder, click the SmartArt icon.

SmartArt Graphics
When the Choose a SmartArt Graphic dialog appears click the Relationship category on the left, the Balance layout is the first one in the gallery.

The SmartArt task pane opens on the left hand side of the SmartArt diagram. Enter the two main headings next to the two bullet points that are not indented, in this case Pros and Cons. Then enter up to four items for the bullets that are indented. Your items are stacked with the first item entered shown at the bottom of the stack.

When you have finished entering your text items you can close the task pane by clicking the Close box in the top right hand corner. To open it up again, click the arrow on the left hand side.

SmartArt task pane
SmartArt Tools
That's the diagram completed and to make it look beautiful, you go to the Change Colors control on the SmartArt Tools Design tab and also experiment with the huge variety of SmartArt gallery options. You are sure to have a handsome diagram in no time at all.

But it can be frustrating when you can't get exactly the diagram that you need. You have to work within the constraints of the SmartArt layout. What if you want more than four items in the stack or you want to remove the headings at the top?

The trick here is to convert the elements of the SmartArt to individual shapes then you can have exactly what you want. The trade-off is that it takes a bit longer to do.

To reduce the SmartArt diagram to individual shapes you need to ungroup its elements twice. Click the outside edge of the SmartArt, click your right-hand mouse button and choose Group, Ungroup from the shortcut menu. Then repeat the process and you have the individual shapes which you can now manipulate as you see fit.

Ungrouped balance diagram
This graphic started it's life as a SmartArt balance diagram but we needed to have five items stacked on the Pro side of the scale and felt that the headings at the top were then not required.

Four items were added to the original diagram, enough to tilt the scale in the right direction. Then the SmartArt was ungrouped, the headings were removed by pressing the Delete key and the extra item for the Pro stack was copied and pasted from an existing one.

When you copy and paste shapes they never arrive in the right position; either drag them or use the keyboard when you want fine control and exact placement. Pressing an arrow key moves a selected shape, holding down the CTRL key as you move Nudges the shape precisely.



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Training Courses

If you've still got that "I just don't know what I'm doing" feeling then you might like to arrange a Microsoft PowerPoint training course for yourself or with some of your colleagues. It's really easy to book one of our courses and they're great value for money. See our website for full details.

Tuesday 5 November 2013

Excel, the CTRL key tricks

The CTRL key. That dull, grey-beige looking key that lives an unassuming, lonely life on the edge of your keyboard actually leads an exciting double life in Excel. Now, this is not going to be a life changing experience for you but it may bring a touch of fun into otherwise unexciting everyday tasks.


Copying and Moving


Copying and Moving Worksheet Cells

Drag and Drop
Cut and Paste is most peoples's favourite method of moving data from one cell to another. A simpler alternative is Drag and Drop; point to any of the cell's borders, wait for the arrow pointer to display and then drag your data to another cell.

If you want to drag your selection onto another worksheet, drag down to the sheet tabs and then hold down the ALT key to switch over to the other worksheet.


Copying cell data
To change your move into a copy (Copy and Paste), hold down the CTRL key as you drag. You should see that a plus sign is displayed next to the arrow pointer. Keep your CTRL key held down until you have released the mouse button.

Cell drag and drop is usually enabled. Should you find that the arrow pointer does not display then you need to turn it on. The settings is in Excel Options (File tab), Advanced section, Editing options: Enable fill handle and cell drag-and-drop.


Copying and Moving Columns and Rows

Moving a column
Drag and Drop works in exactly the same way for moving or copying entire columns or rows. Just click the column letter or row number first to select it and then point to the edge of the selection. Drag to move or CTRL+Drag to copy.




Copying and Moving Worksheets

Copying Sheets
You've already figured it out; the drag and drop method is equally effective for copying and moving entire worksheets. Point to the sheet tab and click, the document icon will display. Now drag to the left or right hand side to move the worksheet into a new position in the workbook.

To make a copy of an entire worksheet, point to the sheet tab and click. When the document icon displays, hold down the CTRL key and you will see a plus sign displayed on the icon. Now, drag the sheet to the left or right hand side to create a copy. Try doing that with Copy and Paste.

A copied sheet
On some keyboards you need to hold down the CTRL first before clicking the sheet tab.



If your worksheets are in different workbooks then you can still drag and drop your worksheets but you need to have both of the workbooks visible first. Arrange the documents on the screen by clicking the View tab,  then go to the Window group and click Arrange All, Tiled.  Drag to move a worksheet, CTRL+Drag to copy.
Copying worksheets from one workbook to another


And the Shift Key

Hold down SHIFT as you drag...
When you drag and drop one cell onto another you usually overwrite the data in the destination cell or range of cells.

But when you hold down the SHIFT key as you drag then you insert cells into the destination range without overwriting data.

...to shift cells down
Watch the I-beam as you drag, the vertical I-beam means Shift cells right and the horizontal I-beam means Shift cells down.

In the illustrations we took the 450 cell value over to the right and dragged it into the E5 cell position and the rest of the cell range moved down to accommodate the data insertion.



Filling Data with the Fill handle


Numbers

Number sequence
The Fill handle is that little black cross-shaped mouse pointer that appears at the lower right corner of the active cell. Not unreasonably, it is popularly known as the "little black cross". When you drag the Fill handle down or across you fill the data from the active cell across or down: formulas are copied, numbers are copied as constants and text stored in an Custom list, such as days of the week, triggers the list sequence.

When you hold down the CTRL key as you drag you will see a plus sign displayed on the black cross and this reverses the normal behaviour of the fill. For example, if you drag a cell containing the value of 1 then the number 1 will remain constant but if you hold down the CTRL key then you will generate the sequence of values: 1,2,3,4 etc.

Text

Custom Lists
Normal text is copied as a constant but Custom list text is entered in the order of the custom list. Custom lists can be very handy; for example you type "March" into a cell then you drag to enter the other months of the year.

But this can be irritating if you wish the month name to remain constant. This is where you hold down the CTRL key to reverse the usual action. Type in "March" and then CTRL+Drag to enter "March" into the cells below.

Excel Custom lists can be viewed, edited and set up in Options (File tab), Advanced section, scroll down to General and click the Edit Custom Lists control.

Repeating Patterns

Repeating
Sequences of numbers may be generated by creating a seed pattern in a few cells and then selecting this seed pattern and dragging to extend the sequence. For example a plus 10 sequence is seeded by typing 10 and 20 into consecutive cells, then you select the two cells and drag to generate the sequence 10,20,30,40,50 etc.

Repetitions of the seed pattern are obtained by holding down the CTRL key as you drag. The sequence of values is then repeated; 10,20,10,20,10,20 etc.

Text values can be treated in much the same way, enter and select an initial pattern of text and then CTRL+Drag to create repetitions of the original. In the illustration below, we wanted the headings "Budget" and "Estimate" repeated across the top of a financial report. Instead of Copy and repeated Pastings the headings were dragged across to the right with the CTRL key held down.

Repeating Headings

Making Selections


Cells

CTRL key for multiple selection
A multiple selection of cells is where you select one range of cells and then you hold down the CTRL key and keep it held down as you continue to add to your initial selection and create a collection.

If you make a mistake then there's nothing to be done other than to click a cell to clear your current selection and start over again.

This sort of selection is so useful for cell formatting as you can apply your formats to the entire selection in one fell swoop instead of having to format each range individually and invaluable where you want to plot cell ranges which are not immediately adjacent to each other on an Excel chart.

Columns and Rows

Adjusting the width of alternate columns
The same method of selection is easily applied to entire columns or rows by clicking the first column letter or row number, then you hold down the CTRL key and click on the others.

With multiple rows selected you can apply actions such as deletion to all the selected rows or with multiple columns selected, as in the illustration, you can change the width of alternate columns in your worksheet. The more you use collections the more ideas you will have. Not all actions can be applied to a multiple selection but it is always worth experimenting.

Worksheets

In the illustration below we coloured alternate sheet tabs red in one go by holding down the CTRL key and clicking on the relevant sheet tabs. Right-click any selected tab to access the Tab Color command.

Colouring alternate sheet tabs


And the Shift Key again

SHIFT key for block selection
The other method of selection that is useful to know is Block selection which uses the SHIFT key. This is the selection of a continuous range of cells effected not by dragging, as is usual, but by clicking. You click the first cell of your selection, hold down the SHIFT key and then click the last cell. It's Click, Shift, Click.

This feels very awkward if you never tried it before as you can not stop yourself from dragging but if you practice the technique on small ranges of cells then you will rapidly master it. And then you can apply in so many different situations: selecting huge ranges of cells, ranges of sheet tabs etc.

Click, SHIFT, Click
Now you're an expert in the dark art of Excel cell selection you will find that you can use these selection techniques on other Excel objects and in other Microsoft Office applications. 

Extend Mode

A final word on multiple selection, using your keyboard. The CTRL key with a normal mouse is the easiest thing in the world, you hold the key down with your left hand and select with your right hand. But left-handers don't always have such an easy time of it and some touch pads can make you wish that you had a third hand. This is where you need Extend Mode with the keyboard.

Press function key F8 to open extend mode and then select your first cell range either using your mouse or by using your keyboard: hold down the SHIFT key and extend the selection by pressing your arrow keys.

Extend Selection
Now, lock your current selection by pressing SHIFT+F8 and then move on to make your next selection. This is best done by pressing the arrow keys to exit the current selection and then pressing SHIFT and arrow keys again to make the next selection. Press SHIFT+F8 again to lock this selection and continue in this way until the selection is complete.

I can assure you that this is a lot easier to do than it is to read about it.


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