MIcrosoft Archives

How to Start with Microsoft Teams — A Few Basics

Microsoft Teams, the messaging/meeting/hub program, allows us to centralize a few things we had to do “à la carte” before. By gathering stuff in one place, we can save time and effort. After we install it, one of the main things is to set up …

How to Create a Theme in Microsoft PowerPoint

In PowerPoint, themes are an important part of the presentation. Even if nobody directly notices them, they are as necessary to the slide deck as the foundation for a house. Consistent appearance throughout the show improves understandability, and its professional look. Creating a theme is …

Microsoft Word – 10 Features that will Improve Your Workflow

With so many features packed inside each Microsoft application, it’s easy to overlook some that can really add value to your daily workflow. Below is a list of some of the features you may have never noticed but will quickly become part of your daily routine.

Styles

Styles are not only a great time-saver, but they form the basis of a variety of other Word features.

Styles allow you to assign in bulk a variety of different formatting attributes, like font size, style, color, alignment, line spacing, borders, shades, indentation, etc… The list is quite voluminous. Once styles are applied to text, the text can then be bulk-updated simply by changing the style. If you modify the style, Word will automatically apply the change to all text whose appearance was created from the style. Imagine the time saved when making minor alterations like changing the font size of all headings. Change the style and all of the headings are updated to match.

Once you have your styles in place, you can now also navigate more effectively through your document via the Navigation Pane. Any text formatted with a heading style will appear as a list entry. This will become one of the greatest time-savers when navigating large documents.

Project – Change Currency Styles in Costs

If you’re used to changing the way currency values are displayed in Excel, you might want to exercise the same choices when viewing costs in Microsoft Project. Although changing the look of costs can be done in Project, it’s not as immediately obvious as to how.

Excel – Hide Records with Zeroes in Pivot Table Calculations

One of the most asked questions of beginning, and sometimes seasoned, pivot table users is “How do I hide the entries in a pivot table whose totals equal zero?” On first blush, this seems like an easy feat, but users quickly discover that it’s not as easy as predicted. There are ways to sort the source data and then exclude the entries with zero values, but that task of sorting and filtering the source data would have to be performed each time the source data is updated. This is not an appealing prospect.

There is actually a very easy way to not display pivot table records that equal zero.

Microsoft Project – Display Estimated Durations with a Different Color in a Gantt Chart

When working with tasks in a project, it is common practice to display a duration as an estimate. Displaying an estimated duration prepares the viewer for possible changes in scheduling. An estimated duration takes the form of a question mark placed after the declared duration.

Estimated1

The issue is that some project viewers fail to notice the question mark; then when durations are updated, project viewers wonder why things have changed. One way to ensure that people’s attention is drawn to the estimated durations is to change the color of the Gantt bars to reflect an estimated status. There is no built-in state for displaying estimated durations in a separate color, but with a few short clicks this behavior can be achieved.

Excel Hidden Camera Tool – Great for Dashboards

If you are an Excel user who likes to create charts, design dashboards, or just likes to play with neat toys in Excel, this tutorial is going to be right up your alley.

Excel contains (in a super-secret place) a hidden camera. “But why would I need a hidden camera in a spreadsheet program?” I’m glad you asked. If you have ever created a chart on one sheet, but you need the chard displayed simultaneously on a different sheet, and you don’t want to make two of the same thing, the camera tool will solve this problem.

First thing’s first; we have to find the camera before we can put it to creative use.

12 Excel Keyboard Shortcuts for Every User

Keyboard shortcuts are a great way to improve the speed at which documents are built, regardless of the application. It seems like there is a keyboard shortcut for just about every feature Excel contains; and there may be that one guru in the office that knows them all. But most of us fall somewhere between Guru and Labrador retriever (hopefully, closer to the former.)

The good news is that it’s not an “all or nothing” proposition when it comes to keyboard shortcuts. Knowing just a few of the most productive keyboard shortcuts will serve you far better than knowing none at all.

So let’s get this show on the road!

CTRL+SHIFT+L – Turn On/Off Filter Controls

Filters are of tremendous use when analyzing large numbers of records in a table, but you are only interested in a select set of records that met a specific criteria. Activating your filters is just a CTRL-SHIFT-L away. This keyboard can also be used to turn off all of the filters and display the entire list. (Filters are on by default when you convert a straight table to a Data Table, and not always desired.) Finally, if you hit the “L” key twice (CTRL-SHIFT-L & L) you can effectively clear the current filters to start fresh with a new filter query.

Excel – Conditional Formatting with Subtotals

If there has ever been a more “You’ve got your chocolate in my peanut butter!” moment, it’s the blending of Conditional Formatting with the Subtotals tool in Excel.

If you have ever used the Subtotals tool to group information you have probable been impressed with its ability to group data by some changing event (like States) and have those groups aggregated and then structured into a collapsible outline.

Before Subtotals

After Subtotals

CondFmt2

But the one shortfall when it comes to the Subtotals tool is that there are no built-in artistic styles that can be applied to give the list a bit of pizazz.

Using Excel MODE Function to Return a Text Response

Excel’s MODE function is a great tool for returning the most frequently occurring number in a set of numbers. But what if you want to return the most frequently occurring word in a list of words?

MODE with Numbers

Using the MODE function in Excel is quite simple; you point to a list of numbers and MODE will tell you which number occurs the most often.

In this list, the number “4” appears more often than any other number.

MODE with Words

As you can see, the MODE function does not work very well when pointing to a list of words.

Mode2

The function returns a “#N/A” error message.

Not to fear; MODE can be made to return words, but it take the combined efforts of SEVERAL functions, none of which are MODE! (How odd does THAT sound?)