Quick Tips that Work with Any Office App
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Quick Tips that Work with Any Office App
from Microsoft Office 2000 for Windows: Visual QuickStart Guide, by Steve Sagman
ONE ADVANTAGE OF working in Microsoft Office is that the applications share a body of procedures, menus, and toolbars. If something works a certain way in one application, it almost always works identically in all the others. Try these tips in any of the Office 2000 apps: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, or Outlook. You'll use them constantly.
SELECTIVELY UNDO YOUR ACTIONS
Click the arrow button next to the Undo button on the Standard toolbar to display a list of recent actions that Office will let you undo. You can select any or all of these actions.
UNDO UNDO
To redo something you've undone, click the Redo button on the Standard toolbar. You can also choose Redo from the Edit menu or press Ctrl+Y. (Redo is not available in Access or Outlook.)
GET HELP FROM THE WIZARD
Some of the icons on the tabs in the New Office Document dialog box represent wizards that will lead you through the process of creating various types of new documents.
RELOCATE
THE OFFICE ASSISTANT
Move the Office Assistant to a convenient place on your desktop by dragging it, or right-click to display a shortcut menu that lets you choose another Assistant or hide the current one.
MOVE THE TEXT INSERTION POINT
You can hold down the Ctrl key while pressing the right or left arrow key to move the insertion point a whole word to the right or left. Hold down the Ctrl key while pressing the up or down arrow key to move paragraph by paragraph. Other key combinations that move the insertion point:
SELECTING TEXT
With a mouse:
To select a word, double-click it.
To select a paragraph, triple-click the paragraph.
With the keyboard:
Press the Ctrl and Shift keys along with the left or right arrow keys to select one word at a time.
Press and hold Shift and press the down arrow key to select multiple lines of text.
COPY TEXT
To copy rather than move text (leaving the original intact), press and hold the Ctrl key while you drag it.
FORMAT WITH THE FORMAT PAINTER
Select an object with the formatting you want to copy, then click the Format Painter button on the Standard toolbar. Next, select the object you want to format. To apply formatting to an entire sentence, press and hold the Ctrl key and then click any word in the sentence.
The Format Painter
button is the one with the
paintbrush icon (fifth from the right).
DISPLAY A NEW TOOLBAR
You can display a new toolbar by right-clicking any visible toolbar and then choosing a new one from the shortcut menu.
FLOAT--OR DOCK--A TOOLBAR
You can let a toolbar "float," or you can "dock" it. Change a docked toolbar to a floating one by holding down the mouse button on the toolbar (without selecting a button) and dragging the toolbar toward the center of the program window. Dock a floating toolbar by dragging its title bar back to the original position.
ADD OR REMOVE TOOLBAR BUTTONS
To add or remove toolbar buttons, click the arrow at the end of the toolbar and then choose Add or Remove Buttons.
KILL THE PROPERTIES DIALOG BOX
You can turn off the Properties dialog box that appears whenever you save a new document. Choose Options from the Tools menu, and click the Save tab in Word and PowerPoint or the General tab in Excel. (The Properties dialog box does not appear in Access or Outlook.)
A SHORTCUT TO SAVED FILES
If the file you want to open is one you've used recently, it may appear in the list of recent documents at the bottom of the File menu. If so, just select it to open it again.