Outlook- Adding a signature to your emails

File, Options, Mail

Maybe you sign all your business emails in exactly the same way: "Yours sincerely, Joe Soap" and then you type in your telephone number and then your mobile and then...  Please don't. Stop it now.

Microsoft Outlook will sign off all your emails for you automatically and you can put all of your contact information into your signature and never have to type it again. All you have to do is create a signature, in fact you can create a few different ones to suit different situations. Perhaps a formal one with all your contact details and a business logo and another, simpler one for more casual correspondence. Start off by clicking the File tab, Options and then click Mail in the list on the left hand side. Looking over to the right, in the Compose Messages section click the Signatures button. 

Creating a signature

Click the New button and give your signature a suitable name. Click in the editing section below and type in everything you want to have included in your signature. Don't forget to do any fancy formatting you may require.

You will see that there are controls for adding Business cards, graphics and hyperlinks. You can type in any web links you want or you can select some text (like your company name) and link it to your website. It's all part of your signature.

Carry on and click New again to create as many signatures as you think you'll need. If you have different email accounts and signatures you can control which ones are used by completing the edit boxes for Email account, New messages and Replies/ Forwards. Associate your signatures with your various email accounts, for example your business email account can have all new messages to automatically have your business card signature and then your replies to be a simpler business signature. Your personal email account to have your personal signature.

Clicking the Hyperlink control to link the company name to its website

From this point forward, anytime you click New Email you will see your signature automatically appear. Should you need to change that signature, click the Signature control on the Message tab.  Creating a signature is a great way to make sure that everyone knows who your email is from and ensures that your recipients all have your current contact information.

Signatures are on the Message tab

If you need to make changes to your signature, click the Signatures control and select the signature that you'd like to change. Make your tweaks and then click Save.

An Outlook signature is an example of a Quick Part, bits of document text which can be inserted quickly and easily. See my article on AutoText if you want to include standard sentences or paragraphs in your emails without having to laboriously type them in or copy and paste them from other emails.

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AutoText, an element of Quick Parts

Don't you just hate typing the same old thing over and over again? If you've already created an email signature then you've already discovered Microsoft Outlook Quick Parts and you are perhaps asking yourself whether you can take it a bit further and create other fragments of text that you can use to automate your routine emails.

Of course you can, you need to create AutoText entries and give your fingers a rest.  AutoText is an element of Quick Parts and is a collection of sentences or entire paragraphs that can be dropped into emails to save typing and ensure accuracy and consistency.

Usually you are in the middle of typing an email when you say to yourself "I type that an awful lot" and then you create some AutoText. If you want to do it in advance then make sure that you are in the body section of an email otherwise you will not be able to find the things you need or they will be there but greyed out. So, click New Email.

Creating new AutoText

Type in some text and then select it. Go to the Insert tab, click the Quick Parts control and see if you can spot AutoText in the drop down menu. Click AutoText and then Save Selection to AutoText Gallery.

Enter a suitable name for your entry. You can name these anything you want, but be careful here as you won't be able to edit them once you've created them. Under Options decide whether the text should appear as a sentence (Insert content only) or as a paragraph (Insert content in its own paragraph)

So now anytime I need to put together a very routine email I go to Quick Parts and choose any one of my saved entries. See how quickly you can bash out standard emails. Grovelling replies, quotations, declarations, standard terms, sign off paragraphs etc. All your "blah-di-blahs" in one place. Just choose from a list and drop them in. 

Editing Quick Parts

You can't seem to edit your Quick Parts once you have created them. But you can override them. For example, if I decide that I want a particular AutoText to be a little bit different I can simply drop it into my email, change it, select it, go back to Quick Parts and Save. When I save it, I must use exactly the same name I used before and click OK. Outlook asks me if I would like to redefine the building block entry and I click Yes.

AutoText in your face

AutoText on the Quick Access Toolbar

Usually you want to have your AutoText right where you need it—in your face, not stuck on some ribbon tab!

If you use your AutoText entries all the time then why not put them on your Quick Access Toolbar? It takes a few clicks but then they're there forever.

Firstly, you must make sure that you are in the body of an email before you do this otherwise it is not going to happen. So, click New Email.

Click File, Options and down the left hand side, Quick Access Toolbar. Looking over to the right, click All Commands under Choose commands from.

Nearly there. The final bit is to scroll down the list to AutoText, select it and then click the Add button to add it to your Quick Access Toolbar. Click the OK button and you're finished.

Finding AutoText in the All Commands list

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Maintaining Formatting when Refreshing PivotTables

Maintaining Formatting when Refreshing PivotTables

PivotTables provide a great way to analyse large amounts of data and pull out the summarisations that you need. Once you have the PivotTable displaying the values you need, you can then format the table to make the data presentable—for a while.

Note: when you update the data on which the PivotTable is based, after you refresh your PivotTable, your formatting work may go away.

To prevent loss of format when refreshing follow these steps:

1. Make sure that your PivotTable displays the values you want.
2. Format the PivotTable to your liking.
3. From the PivotTable toolbar, select Table Options from the PivotTable menu. The PivotTable Options dialog box opens. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. The PivotTable Options dialog box.

1. Make sure the Preserve Formatting check box is selected.
2. Click OK.

When you now refresh the PivotTable, your formatting should remain on rows and columns previously applied in the PivotTable.

Note: If the refresh results in new rows being added to the PivotTable, then you will still need to format those, unless you are using an AutoFormat.

PowerPoint- Creating Slides in Outline View

Creating Slides in Outline View

PowerPoint's Outline View is a great way to quickly and easily create slides and bullets. When you start a presentation, the first thing you want to do is to brainstorm all the ideas and topics that you want to cover. 

Outline view helps you create your slides and focus on the content and order of your delivery, which is so important to a presentation. You can save the fancy things, like backgrounds, fonts and pictures, for later.

Click on the Outline tab on the left hand side of the Normal view. This switches the normal display of thumbnails to an outline of your presentation. Each icon on the left represents a slide. 

Enter and CTRL+Enter to make bullets 

To create the slides in a blank presentation, press ENTER. Type in some text and that's the title of your slide. You can create the bullet points on each slide as you go along or you can come back on yourself by doing the slides first and then doing the detailed bullets after.

Pressing ENTER makes a new slide. Pressing CTRL+ENTER indents down to the bullet level. Type in your first bullet then press ENTER to go on to the next one. When you want to do another slide, press CTRL+ENTER.

You can also use TAB and SHIFT+TAB to do the indents and outdents for the outline. 

When you want to change the order of your slides, click one of the slide icons (your mouse pointer changes to a four-headed arrow) then drag and drop the slide into a different position.

The slide layouts automatically used for your slides are Title for the first slide and Title and Content thereafter. In Microsoft PowerPoint 2013 the Outline pane has to be turned by clicking the Outline View control in the Presentation Views group on the View tab.

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Word for Mac- Make your own menu

I like Word for Mac but it makes me feel like a crazy mixed-up kid. I get so confused trying to find things; there's the traditional drop-down menus, there's the toolbar and then there's the ribbon. So many different ways of doing exactly the same thing. Which I wouldn't mind if they were all the same and you just decided which one you preferred to use. But they're not.

Each one is slightly different and some things are on one but not the other and then there's all the things which aren't there at all where you have to know and use the shortcut keys. I can see where they're going with the design and I like it; make Word really easy to use by putting all the everyday things on the ribbon and then tuck the twiddly bits away in the menu. It's just that I get frustrated when I'm trying to get things done.

For example, to work with Word fields you need to be able to update them. The shortcut key is F9. For some fields, like Table of Contents, you don't need F9 because Word gives you a button to click but you do need it for other fields but when you press F9 it doesn't work unless you change the Mac OSX keyboard assignments.

The Word for Mac shortcut keys are essentially the same as the Windows version but usually with Command (⌘) substituted for CTRL. I have to tidy up the formatting on documents quite a lot and one of my favourite key sequences is Select All, Reset Character Formatting and Reset Paragraph Formatting. This brings everything back to the base styles so that you can easily reformat. The shortcut keys are like this:

Command	Windows	Mac
Select All	CTRL+A	Command+A (⌘+A)
Reset Character Formatting	CTRL+Spacebar	Command+SHIFT+Z (⌘+SHIFT+Z)
Reset Paragraph Formatting	CTRL+Q	Command+Option+Q (⌘+⌥+Q)

Guess what? That last one doesn't work on my Mac! I have to change the keyboard assignments because it's nowhere to be seen either in the menu, the toolbars or the ribbon. Either that or it's there and I can't find it.  It makes you want to weep. Don't give up, try making your own menu for all the things you need. It's all done with a few clicks and you'll bless yourself.

Making your own Word menu

Have a think about all the Word commands that you tend to use frequently, especially the ones you can never find. They are the ones you need on your menu. Firstly, point to the menu or toolbar, right-click (CTRL+click if you can't do a right click) and click Customize Toolbars and Menus from the end of the shortcut menu.

Step 1. Customize Toolbars and Menus

The next thing is to make a new container for your menu. So click on the Commands tab at the top and then look down the Categories list on the left hand side for New Menu. It's right at the end so you will have to scroll down a bit before you can see it.

Step 2. Drag New Menu to a Toolbar or Menu

Now, big decisions to be made. Where shall we put our drop-down menu? You can place it on the Word menubar or a toolbar. Personally, I like to put it on the end of the general toolbar. Click New Menu in the Commands list on the right hand side. As you can see, it's the only one in the list. Drag and drop New Menu to your desired location. 

Step 3. Drag items onto your New Menu

For our next trick we need to find the commands for our menu. This can take some time as you have to search for them. Staying with the Customize Toolbars and Menus box, turn your attention back to the Categories list on the left. The categories vaguely follow the main Word application menu so if you know where something is in the menus it should give you a lead as to where to find it in the categories lists. But there's a lot more in the categories list than there is in the menu so be prepared to keep looking. Pretty much every command for Word is listed.

When you have found what you're looking for drag the item out of the list and drop it onto your New Menu. You should see the menu pop-out at you when you hover over it. Click the OK button when you're done.

Step 4. Admire your beautiful New Menu

It's high time to admire the beauty of your new menu. There's all those pesky Word commands that you can never find all gathered together into a nice, easy to use menu. I haven't finished yet, there's a few more Word commands I need on my menu, like Select All and Update Fields. No worries, you can always change your menu anytime you like by clicking Customize Toolbars and Menus again. 

Step 5. Choose Properties to rename your New Menu

Should you want to rename your menu just do the right-click thing again and this time click Properties in the shortcut menu. Then just enter some different text into the Name box.

Step 6. Renaming your menu

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Get the Office 2016 Preview for home

Office 365 subscribers

 Go to the Office My Account page

• Click Language and install options.
• Click Additional install options.

Open the Version drop-down menu and select the 32-bit or 64-bit Office 2016 Preview.

This will install the Office 2016 Preview on your device. You will stay on the Office 2016 Preview track until you uninstall the Office 2016 Preview or until Office 2016 is released.

All other Office users

If you don't have an Office 365 subscription, you can download a trial version of Office 2016 Preview from the list of choices below.

Use the product key provided below to activate your trial:

Product key for the Office 2016 Preview

NKGG6-WBPCC-HXWMY-6DQGJ-CPQVG

Download links 

Get Office 2016 Preview (32 bit) 
Get Office 2016 Preview (64 bit)

Once the trial period expires, you will have the option to purchase an Office 365 subscription or reinstall your current version using your original product key, learn more.

Just remember by loading this up it will remove your existing version of office.

The Excel Today function

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This week’s Function and Shortcut Keys

The Excel Today function

 returns the current date. The function has no arguments and therefore, the syntax of the function is simply:

TODAY()

 

Today Function Examples

The following spreadsheets show 2 simple examples of calls to the Today function, which were made on 6th January 2011. The first example shows the function used alone, and the second example shows the function used as a part of a formula that calculates the number of days that have passed since 31-Dec-2009.

The spreadsheet shows the format of the formulas and the spreadsheet on the below shows the results.

 

 

Today Function Problem

The following problem is encountered by some people when using the Excel Today function:

Common Problem

When you attempt to subtract another date from the result the Today function, (as in cell B2 of the example above), the result looks like a date (eg. "16/11/1900"), instead of returning an integer.

Possible Reason

This problem arises because the new cell or column is formatted as a 'date'. In this case, it is only the formatting of the cell that is wrong, NOT the value returned by the function.

To correct this:

• Highlight the cell(s) with the wrong formatting
• Right click with the mouse
• Select the Format Cells ... option and ensure the Number tab is selected
• Under the Category heading, select the option General and click OK

 

Selecting Cells

CTRL - Left Mouse Button	-	Selects multiple cells i.e. to select more than one cell (or range), first use the mouse to select on the first cell (or range), then press the CTRL key and use the mouse to select further cells or ranges
SHIFT - Left Mouse Button	-	Selects all cells between (and including) the previous active cell and the cell that is currently being clicked in i.e. to select a range, first use the left mouse key to click on a cell (or row or column) at the start of the range, then press the Shift key and select the cell at the end of the range
SHIFT   ↓	-	Moves the current selected range down a row
SHIFT   ↑	-	Moves the current selected range up a row
SHIFT   →	-	Moves the current selected range right by one column
SHIFT   ←	-	Moves the current selected range left by one column
CTRL-SHIFT   ↓	-	Selects all cells below the current selection, up to the edge of the current data region
CTRL-SHIFT   ↑	-	Selects all cells above the current selection, up to the edge of the current data region
CTRL-SHIFT   →	-	Selects all cells to the right of the current selection, up to the edge of the current data region
CTRL-SHIFT   ←	-	Selects all cells to the left of the current selection, up to the edge of the current data region
CTRL-Spacebar	-	Selects the whole of the current column(s)
SHIFT-Spacebar	-	Selects the whole of the current row(s)
CTRL-a	-	Selects all cells in the current worksheet

Inputting Data

CTRL - ;	-	Inserts the current date into a cell
CTRL - :	-	Inserts the current time into a cell
F4	-	While in edit mode within a cell, cycles through the 4 different combinations of absolute and relative references : A1 $A$1 A$1 $A1