Office Tips

If you click Word's magnifying glass pointer in Print Preview, and the zoom is already set to 100%, the zoom won't increase even though the pointer displays the plus sign. This is not a bug. The control is set to 100%.

Microsoft has stated that all their current applications will deal properly with the year 2000. Don't want to take their word for it? Check the Office applications yourself. (You an also use these same techniques to check programs from other companies.)

Open Excel and select cell A1. Choose Format|Cells and then choose Date under Category. Select one of the longer date formats (in Excel 7, choose March 4, 1995) and click OK. Now type into cell A1,

and press the down arrow. If the result is too large to display and you see a cell full of ###s, double click the line between A and B to widen the cells. The cell should read January 2, 2000. Programs not designed to deal with the change will revert to 1900 when you enter 00.

Here's a test to see how Excel deals with the Year 2000. Try a calculation that goes past January 1, 2000; say you want to see how many days there are between two dates. Select cells A1 and A2 and then choose Format, Cells. Click Date (the type doesn't matter) and click OK. Now click on cell A4 and leave the format set to the default.

To check what happens when you make a calculation that crosses from 1999 to 2000, type into cell A2

A reader likes to use Word's automatic hyphenation but says there are times when she wants to turn off automatic hyphenation of specific paragraphs. She wants to know if there's a way to eliminate hyphens in a single paragraph without turning off the feature globally.

Yes, you can turn off hyphenation for a single paragraph. But before we get to that, let's take a quick look at how to turn on automatic hyphenation. Choose Tools, Hyphenation. When the Hyphenation dialog box opens, select the check box labeled Automatically Hyphenate Document and then click OK. Once you've made the selection, Word will place hyphens in your document automatically. (By the way--if you choose to use automatic hyphenation, you should always check your document to make sure the hyphenation is as you want it.)

To turn off the hyphenation for a specific paragraph, click in the paragraph (or where the new paragraph will begin) and choose Format, Paragraph. When the Paragraph dialog box opens, click the Text Flow tab. Now, select the check box labeled Don't Hyphenate and then click OK to close the dialog box and register your change.

Enter your paragraph and press Enter. If you now want to return to automatic hyphenation, you need to choose Format, Paragraph again. Click the Text Flow tab and then deselect the Don't Hyphenate check box. Click OK to record your change and close the dialog box.

You can quickly turn a normal Excel cell reference into an absolute reference. (An absolute reference forces Excel to always refer to the cells you specify. Let's say you have entered

into cell A7. Double-click cell A7 and then use the mouse to select the reference A1:A5. Now press F4 and then press Enter. The cell contents will change to the absolute reference form of

There are times when you don't want a number to display as negative, even if the calculation produces a negative. For example, let's suppose that you want to use Excel to calculate the number of days between two dates. You can enter into cell A1

Now, if you enter the current date into A2, you can calculate the number of days since January 1. So, you type into Cell A3

This will produce a negative number. So, let's take the absolute value. Type into cell A3

Note: Yes, we know that you can subtract A1 from A2 and get a positive number. It's only an example.

When you enter a formula in an Excel worksheet, you usually use the relative reference form. The formula

is a relative reference formula. If you copy this formula and move it to a new location, the formula will change to reflect its location. However, there are times when you might need a formula that uses absolute referencing. One way to handle this is to convert an existing formula to absolute. You don't even have to remember how to enter an absolute formula. All you have to do is double-click the cell that contains the formula and then use the mouse to highlight the formula. Now press F4 and then press Enter. Now you have a formula with absolute referencing.

While a formula is selected, you can use F4 to switch among all the referencing forms. If you'd like to give this a try, type in a formula, select it as we described, and then press F4 and watch the changes.

When you design an Access form, you may find that you have several entry boxes that aren't used by most people. Even if you want to keep these boxes in order with associated boxes, you can change the tab order so that most people don't have to access them. While in Form Design view, choose View, Tab Order. When the dialog box opens, click a row that you want to change and drag it to its new location. Whenyou're finished arranging the tab order, click OK.

Let's say you're just working away on a multiple-sheet workbook. You suddenly realize that you really should have a sheet between Sheet 1 and Sheet 2. All is not lost. You don't have to start all over. All you have to do is click the Sheet 2 name tab to select it and then choose Insert, Worksheet. This will insert a new sheet before Sheet 2. Since Excel's default workbook contains 16 sheets, the new sheet will be named Sheet 17.

This creates a neat effect. As you step through your slide show, each slice you discuss appears to pop out of the chart and take on a bright color. When you move to the next slide, that slice moves back into the pie and a new slice pops out and changes color.

To try this, choose Insert, Microsoft Graph. Then click the chart to select it, right-click the selected chart, and choose Chart Type. Select a pie chart (any of them will do) and click OK.

With the pie chart in place, click one of the slices twice (don't double-click--click once, wait, and then click again). Right-click the selected slice and choose Format Data Point. When the Format Data Point dialog box opens, select one of the grays under Area and click OK. Repeat this procedure for each slice in the chart.

When all the slices are assigned a shade of gray, select the chart by clicking it and press Ctrl-C to copy the entire chart. Press Ctrl-M to create a new slide. Make the slide selection and then press Ctrl-V to paste the chart onto the new slide. Then select the slice you want to discuss first and move it out away from the rest of the chart. When the slice is in position, right-click it and choose Format Data Point. Select one of the colors under Area and click OK.

Repeat this procedure for each slice that you want to discuss. As you move one slice out and color it, move the previous slice back into the chart and change the color back to its original gray.

In the last tip, we showed you how you can use Excel's IF function to determine the application of a bonus. This time, let's look at how to use SUMIF to directly apply the bonus.

Let's say that you have a column of names, total sales, and standard commissions. If the sales for the month exceed $10,000, you want to add a 1 percent bonus to the standard commission. For this example, names are in B2 to B5, Sales are in C2 to C5, Commissions are in D2 to D5, and we'll put the bonus values in E2 to E5. Here's a formula for cell E2 that will add the bonus to the standard commission provided the minimum sales condition is met:

As usual, you can select E2 and drag it through E5 to copy the formula to the remaining cells.

You can add text to PowerPoint shapes as you draw the shapes or after the shape is already drawn and in place. Try this: Open a blank slide and select the Rectangle tool. Draw a rectangle and then, while the rectangle is still selected, type

Click somewhere away from the drawing to deselect the shape. Now, you can move or resize the shape, and the text will remain anchored to the shape.

To add text to an existing shape, select the shape and type in the text. Click away from the shape to deselect it. The result is exactly the same as if you typed in the text when you first drew the shape. So, if you don't know what text you want to use when you draw the shapes, you can always add the text later.

Several readers have asked if there's a way to print an Excel worksheet showing the formulas rather than the data. There is a way, and here it is:

You'll see that the worksheet now displays the formulas instead of the results of the calculations. So choose File, Print while the formulas are displayed, and the printout will also display the formulas.

Note that the viewing selection we described will remain in effect until you change it or load a new worksheet. A new worksheet will automatically default to displaying the cell values rather than the formulas.

If you create a pie chart in Excel (or any other Office program), you may end up with one slice that is thin to the point of invisibility. To make it more noticeable, click on the slice in question. (If it's extremely small, you may have to try this a few times before you hit it.) Once the slice is selected (you'll see the handles), use the mouse to drag the slice away from the pie chart a little. Don't worry about the slice getting out of line--you can only move it straight out and straight in.

In previous tip, we showed you how to modify the colors of the bars in a bar chart. You can do the same for your pie charts, but the method is slightly different. Insert your pie chart. You'll get those same weak colors that you get by default in the bar chart.

First, double-click the chart. Next, click one of the slices to select it. Now right-click the selected slice and choose Format Data Point. When the dialog box opens, click the Patterns tab and choose your new color. Click OK to close the dialog box and apply the color selection. Repeat as necessary.

If you need to use a lot of words with strange capitalization, words such as AutoCorrect, AutoFormat, and ClipArt, here's a tip that may save you some time and energy. When you run a spelling check, words such as AutoCorrect will be tagged as incorrect if the word appears as Autocorrect or AUTOCORRECT, because of the way the capitalization appears in the Custom dictionary. However, if such words are in the Custom dictionary in lower case only, the case differences won't get tagged.

So, if you have a long list of oddly capitalized words in your Custom.dic file, you can save yourself some time if you make them all lowercase. To do this, choose Tools, Options and click on the Spelling tab. Now click on Custom Dictionaries. With CUSTOM.DIC selected, click on Edit. With your list of words available, you can either go through the list and make the necessary case changes, or you can make all the words lowercase by pressing Ctrl-A to select all the words and then choosing Format, Change Case. When the Change Case dialog box opens, select Lowercase and click on OK.

Now choose File, Close to close the dictionary file. Say Yes to all the questions about saving. If asked about format, you want Text Only.

When it comes to cell addresses, it's all a matter of how you prefer to think. You can choose how you want to address an Excel worksheet. The default form is A1, A2, etc. For example, you can enter numbers in cells A1 through A5 and then type into cell A7

to get the sum. However, if you prefer to think in terms of rows and columns, choose Tools, Options and click the General tab. Under Reference Styles, you'll see two radio buttons: A1 and R1C1 (for "row 1, column 1"). For right now, select R1C1 and click OK.

Now go back to your number list in cells A1 through A5. This time, type into cell A7,

to indicate that you want to sum the numbers in row 1, column 1 through row 5, column 1 and you'll get the correct sum.

Note that you have to choose between the two formats--when you choose R1C1, the standard method (A1) will no longer work.

If you'd like Word to run a grammar check on your documents, you should decide what type of checking you want done. Choose Tools|Options, then click the Grammar tab in the Options dialog box. Click the down arrow at the right side of the Use Grammar and Style Tools list box to expand the list. Now choose the type of testing you'd like to use. Choose the one that seems to best fit a particular document.

In the last tip, we told you how to check the spelling in all the sheets of a workbook (Right-click on a tab, choose Select All Sheets, and choose Tools|Spelling.) We also said that you need to ungroup the sheets after you finish the spelling check (right-click on the current tab and choose Ungroup Sheets).

The reason for this is that, when all sheets are selected, whatever you do on one sheet affects all the sheets. This might prove dangerous if inadvertently left on. That's because deleting a cell on the first sheet will delete the same cell on all the sheets.

You can use this feature to your advantage when developing a new workbook, though. Suppose you'd like to put the company heading on all the sheets in your workbook. All you have to do is right-click on a tab and choose Select All Sheets. Now put the company heading on the first sheet and then right-click on the current tab and choose Ungroup sheets.

A reader asks if there's a way to add a button for a specific dialup connection to the Office shortcut bar. Yes, there is and here's how we did it:

With the shortcut bar in place on the screen, double-click My Computer to open it. Then double-click Dial-up Networking. Drag your account icon to a blank spot on the Microsoft Office shortcut bar and release the mouse button. The icon will stay put and you can click it at any time to dial the account.

Here's how you can access system information in both Office 95 and 97. Using Word 95 as the example program, you choose Help, About Microsoft Word. When the dialog box opens, you should see a System Info button. Click it, and you'll get a dialog box that displays a considerable amount of information about your system.

If the option doesn't appear in your system, it probably wasn't installed. To install this option, click Start, Settings, Control Panel. When the Control Panel opens, double-click Add/Remove programs. When the Add/Remove Programs dialog box opens, select Microsoft Office and click Add/Remove. When Setup opens, click Add/Remove in that program. Select Office Tools and click Change Option. Now, select the check box labeled MS Info, and click OK. Click Continue and follow through with the installation. After you add MS Info to your Office System, System Info will be available.

In the last tip, we showed you how to locate macros that ship with Microsoft Office 95 Professional Version. This time, let's focus on one of the supplied macros. This one is called SuperDocStatistics. You'll find it in Macros7.dot.

When run, SuperDocStatistics will tell you everything you could want to know about the currently open document. You'll get a report on the file name and folder, the time spent editing the document, and the number of words, characters, and paragraphs. SuperDocStatistics will also allow you to run a grammar check and look for any objects, tables, and links that your document is using. And you can even print a report.

This is a macro that you'll probably find very useful, so let's create a toolbar button for it. Choose View, Toolbars, and click Customize. When the Customize dialog box opens, locate Macros in the Categories list and select it. You'll see SuperDocStatistics in the Macros list. Drag SuperDocStatistics to the toolbar and release the mouse button over the location where you want the button to appear. Now you can assign the name, or choose an icon--whichever you prefer. Click Close to close the dialog box and save your changes.

With the SuperDocStatistics button in the toolbar, open a document and click the new button to see a report on the open document.

Suppose you're working hard on a long Word document and you decide to delete (not cut) a paragraph. After a lot more serious editing, you decide that you really wish you hadn't deleted that paragraph. The thing is, you'd like to have that paragraph back, but you don't really want all the other junk that you deleted along with the desired paragraph. Here's something to try:

Choose File, Save As and save your document under a new name. Press Ctrl-Z (Undo) until the paragraph reappears. Select the paragraph and press Ctrl-C to copy it. Open your saved document now, click where you want the paragraph to appear, and press Ctrl-V to paste it.

It may seem like all that saving and opening is a lot of trouble, but it's a lot quicker than going through all that editing again.

Want to quickly sum a row of numbers in Excel? With all the numbers entered, click on the cell where you want the sum to appear. Now click the sum button in the toolbar (it looks like a capital M on its side). Use the mouse to select the numbers you want to sum, then press Enter. The sum will appear and you didn't even have to type in a formula.

If you want to total the numbers in cells A1 through A5 of an Excel worksheet, you may want to display the sum in cell A7. Select cell A7 and enter

Then click on cell A1, hold down the Shift key and click cell A5. Press Enter and your sum will be displayed because Excel will make the cell entries for you.

Presenters sometimes use basically the same slide show for different audiences by using hidden slides. Let's say you're developing a slide show that you will present to both managers and engineers. The engineers will want specific technical information that the managers won't want, and the managers will want financial information that others don't need to see. All you have to do is hide the financial slides when you present your show to the engineers and hide the technical slides from the managers.

To hide a slide, open the slide show and choose View, Slide Sorter. In Slide Sorter view, click the slide you want to hide and then choose Tools, Hide Slide. You can hide as many slides as you want. After you hide the slides for each show, make a list of the hidden slides and their numbers for possible use during your presentation.

Now, let's suppose that you're making your presentation to the managers and one manager wants to see some technical details. Assuming you can't dissuade him or her, right-click the screen and choose Go To, Slide Navigator. When the Slide Navigator opens, select the slide you want and click Go To.

You know that you can paste Clipboard contents into Word by choosing Edit, Paste. You can also press Ctrl-V. And, although it seems to have been largely forgotten, you can press Shift-Ins (or Insert).

If you'd like, Word will even allow you to paste with only the Ins (or Insert) key. To see if you might like this arrangement, choose Tools, Options and click the Edit tab. Select the check box labeled Use the INS Key for Paste and then click OK to save your changes and get rid of the dialog box.

Now copy some text and then click on a blank spot in your document. Press Ins (or Insert), and the copied text will appear.

In a recent tip, we described how to paste pictures into the bars of a bar chart. A reader asks if there's a way to paste WordArt text into the bars.

Since WordArt is a picture object and acts much the same as inserted ClipArt, you can paste WordArt into the bars just as you would a picture. The only difference is that you need to manipulate the WordArt to make it the right size and in the correct alignment, before you do the copy and paste.

Let's say you'd like to place names in the bars to show how each salesperson did during a quarter. Let's start from scratch and type the following names in cells A1, B1, and C1, respectively

Now, select all the cells and choose Insert, Chart, On This Sheet. Draw the chart area using the mouse and then click Finish. Next, choose Insert, Object and select Microsoft WordArt. Type Bob and click Update Display. If your chart bars are vertical (the default), click the vertical text button in the WordArt toolbar (the icon is an A lying on its left side). Now, click Update Display again and click the Close box to close the Enter Your Text Here dialog box. Size the WordArt so it approximately matches the size of your chart bars. Select the WordArt and choose Edit, Copy.

Move to the chart and double-click the bar into which you want to insert the name. This should select the bar. If it doesn't, click on the bar once more. With the bar selected, choose Edit, Paste, and the name will appear inside the bar. Repeat the process to add the other names.

To avoid incorrect capitalization assumptions by AutoCorrect, create an AutoCorrect exception. To do this, choose the AutoCorrect command from the Tools menu. This opens the AutoCorrect dialog box. Click Exceptions here to open the AutoCorrect Exceptions dialog box. Click on the INitial CAps tab and add the characters you want excused from automatic correction. Click OK, and when you get back to the original AutoCorrect dialog box, click OK again.

You size pictures in PowerPoint by selecting the picture and then using the mouse to drag it to a new size. If you want to keep the vertical-to-horizontal ratio (the aspect ratio) the same, hold down the Ctrl key while you drag to the new size.

You may know that you can place a series of characters into Word's AutoCorrect feature and let it add the text for you. Did you know that you can ask AutoCorrect to add formatting, too?

Suppose, for example, that you have a line of bold, italic text followed by a line of text in the Heading 1 style. Type in your text and then press Enter. Now select the Heading 1 style and then select both lines. Choose Tools, AutoCorrect and select the Formatted radio button. Add the characters you want AutoCorrect to respond to and click OK. Now when you type in the selected sequence, AutoCorrect will add the line, the carriage return, and the style change for you.

As we described in a previous tip, you can use Word to create tickets for things like raffles or entry into events. But did you know that you can also use a macro to automatically number your tickets? You will need to create the labels manually. But once you've created the labels, you can click a single button to take care of duplicating and numbering the labels.

and then click Create. Now, enter the following text as shown below. Remember that Word supplies Sub MAIN and End Sub. You have to enter everything else.

After you enter all the code, press Ctrl-S to save it. Choose File, Close to close the macro. To add the macro to a toolbar button, choose View, Toolbars and then click Customize. In the Customize dialog box, click the Toolbars tab and then locate Macros and select it. Your new macro will now appear in the right pane of the dialog box. Drag the name to the toolbar and release the mouse button. Click Assign to assign the name Tickets to the button. Click Close to close the dialog box.

Now, you need to create the tickets. Choose Tools, Envelopes and Labels. When the Envelopes and Labels dialog box opens, click the Labels tab. Now, click Options, select Avery 5163 from the Product Number list, and click OK. Finally, click New Document.

Choose Format, Font and select the font and font size you want to use in the Font dialog box. Click OK to close the dialog box and save your font selections. Now it's time to run your new macro. Click the new Tickets button. You'll be prompted to enter the number of tickets you want to create. Enter the number and press Enter. Note: This prompt is in the Status bar at the bottom left of the window.

That's it--the macro will now insert the number field and copy the contents of the first label.

You know that you can place a series of characters into Word's AutoCorrect and let that feature add the text for you. Did you know that you can ask AutoCorrect to add formatting, too?

Suppose, for example, that you have a line of bold, italic text followed by a line of text in the Heading 1 style. Type in your text and then press Enter. Now select the Heading 1 style and then select both lines. Choose Tools|AutoCorrect and select the Formatted radio button. Now add the characters you want AutoCorrect to respond to and click OK. Now when you type in the selected sequence, AutoCorrect will add the line, the carriage return, and the style change for you.

Do you always start your day by loading Word and Excel? If so, why not let a Word macro start Excel for you?

Note that Word enters Sub MAIN and End Sub, so all you have to enter is the one remaining line. Choose File, Save to save the new macro. Since an AutoExec automatically runs, you don't need to assign a button or key to the new macro. All you have to do is close Word and then open it again. When you open Word with the macro in place, Excel will also open.

In the last tip, we described a method for storing pictures in AutoText. This time, let's take a closer look at dealing with words and pictures in AutoText. AutoText will allow you to store formatted text or pictures. For example, if you'd like to store in AutoText a framed company logo that you can move anywhere in your document, try this:

Assuming you've already created a logo, insert the logo into a document. Select the graphic and choose Insert, Frame. Now, select the logo (frame and all) and choose Edit, AutoText. The logo should appear in the Preview pane. If it doesn't, you probably haven't selected the entire logo with the frame. Once the logo appears in the Preview pane, name it and click Add. Now you can insert your logo anywhere and move it anywhere.

The reason you are having trouble locating the AutoText entries is that Word stores them in the Normal.dot template. With all the AutoText entries stored in the default template, they are available to all documents. To confirm this, open a Word document and choose Format, Style. When the Style dialog box opens, click Organizer. When Organizer opens, click the AutoText tab. You can now view your AutoText entries.

Sorry, you can't have it both ways. If you want Word to automatically make backup copies of your files, you can't use Fast Saves.

If you'd like to have Word automatically make backup files for you, just follow Tom's procedure. After you make your selection, click OK to close the dialog box and save your changes.

To put a watermark into a Word document, try this: First make sure the Drawing toolbar is in view. If not, choose View, Toolbars and select the check box labeled Drawing. Click OK to close the Toolbar dialog box. Now, open a blank Word document and choose View, Header and Footer. When the Header and Footer toolbar opens, click the Text Box button in the Drawing toolbar (its icon resembles a page of text). Use the mouse to draw a text box.

Click inside the text box, and then choose Insert, Object. When the Object dialog box opens, click the Create New tab, then locate and select Microsoft Clip Gallery. Click OK to continue. Now, select a picture from the ClipArt Gallery and click Insert. Size and place the image, then click Close in the Header and Footer toolbar. Add some text to your document and choose File, Print Preview to see the text with the watermark in place. Remember to use a rather lightly colored ClipArt picture to make sure you can see the text over it.

If you paste a PowerPoint 7.0 slide with a shaded background into a Word document, the color resolution appears to be lost. When you're running at 256 colors, PowerPoint handles shaded fill displays differently than Word does. Your printout should be OK, even if the picture doesn't look so good on screen.

In a recent tip, we described how to insert a ClipArt picture into the bars of an Excel bar chart. Subscriber Willard T. asks if it's possible to insert a different picture into each bar in the chart.

The answer is yes. You can insert a different picture into each of the bars. Let's say you have a chart with bars that represent polling by demographic groups. Let's suppose further that the groups are men, women, and children. Insert your chart into an Excel worksheet.

Once your chart is inserted into an Excel worksheet, choose Insert, Object. When the Object dialog box opens, select Microsoft Clip Gallery and then click OK. Select a suitable picture to represent men and click Insert. Repeat this procedure for women and children.

With all the pictures available in the worksheet, select the male figure and choose Edit, Cut. Next, make sure the chart is deselected and then click the bar that represents men three times. Make sure that bar--and only that bar--is selected. Press Ctrl-V and the male figure will appear in the bar. Repeat the steps to insert the pictures of women and children.

Here's a test to see how Excel deals with the year 2000: try a calculation that goes past January 1, 2000; say you want to see how many days there are between two dates. Select cells A1 and A2 and then choose Format|Cells. Select date (the form doesn't matter) and click OK. Now click on cell A4 and leave the format set to the default.

To check what happens when you make a calculation that crosses from 1999 to 2000, type into cell A2 12/25/99. Next, go to cell A1 and type 1/1/00. Move to cell A4 and type =A1- A2. The result should be seven days.

No matter how careful you are, there's always a chance that you could lose a document. Why not make the odds in your favor a little better by telling Word to always make backup files of your documents? Choose Tools, Options and click on the Save tab. Now select the Always Create Backup Copy check box and click on OK.

To retrieve a backed-up file, choose File, Open. When the dialog box opens, click on the arrow at the right side of the Files of Type list box to expand the list. Select All Files(*.*) and look for files with your document's name, but with a .wbk extension. Load the .wbk file.

Here's another Word 95 tip from John Palmer of Microsoft. Those of you who don't have Word 95 might still want to check out these tips. Many of them apply to Word 6.0 as well as Word 95.

Have you met the Office 95 Answer Wizard? If not, you should get acquainted because the Wizard can do a lot to help you use Word and the other Office programs. To get started, choose the Answer Wizard command from the Help menu. A dialog box will pop up.

Now all you have to do is ask the Answer Wizard a question in plain English, click Display, and you'll get an answer based on your questions. For example, if you type in "Header and Footers," and click Display, you'll get information on headers and footers.

If you'd like to start Word with no document at all (not even a blank one), right-click your Word shortcut icon, then choose the Properties command to open the Properties dialog box. When the dialog box opens, click the Shortcut tab. Now add /n to the command in the Target text box. Your new command should look something like this:

Yesterday, we told you about the Advanced dialog box, where you can choose between On-Screen Viewing and Best for Printing. If you know you're only going to view a presentation on screen, don't choose Best for Printing, unless you're using photographs in your presentation. Most graphics look just as good on screen in 256 colors, and there's a huge difference in file sizes. In general, a 24-bit picture is three times the size of an 8-bit picture.

No, there's no bug. The most likely reason for the Open File dialog box opening is that you've used names that contain a space. For example, let's say you name a sheet

to access the data. If you don't use the single quote marks, the Open File dialog box appears asking you to look for a file named Sales. If your names have no spaces, you can enter them without the quotes. So if you have data in cell A5 of a sheet named June, you can enter

If you commonly use names with and without spaces, it's a good practice to use the quotes in all your formulas.

You're right; this approach places the date and time that the document was last saved. The date and time automatically updates each time you save the document. But it won't update when you simply open the document.

Thanks. Yes, it is worthwhile. If you use one of the larger monitors, you might find you like working with large icons in your Office programs. Here's how to set the icon sizes:

In each program (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access), choose View, Toolbars. When the Toolbars dialog box opens, select the check box labeled Large Buttons and click OK. Like Rebecca, you'll probably find the larger icons more appealing on those very large monitors.

You almost had it, Moshe--you need to use single quotes (not double-quotes) around any sheet name that contains a space. Try this:

As long as your sheet has a single name (no spaces), you can leave off the single quotes. For example, your first sheet is named Opening. So, if you need a cell value from that sheet, you could simply enter

If you use a workbook with mixed sheet names--some with spaces and some without--we suggest that you use the single quotes around all sheet names to avoid confusion.

You often need larger row sizes in Excel. This is especially true when you want to put titles in a worksheet. There are two ways to handle row size--to make an empty row larger, select the row and choose Format, Row, Height. Type in the new height and click OK.

When you use titles, you don't have to bother setting the row size. All you have to do is click the location for your title and then choose a font size (click the arrow at the right side of the Font Size list box and make a selection). Excel will automatically resize the row to fit the font.

You may find that when you paste a bitmap file from Word into PowerPoint, the picture is distorted. The reason for this is that Word assumes the system palette remains constant. So Word places palette information for a Device Dependent Bitmap (DDB) and a Device Independent Bitmap on the Clipboard. The default pasting uses DDB. The way around the problem is to use Paste Special and always choose Device Independent Bitmap when pasting from Word into PowerPoint.

Have you had a problem seeing both a WordArt object and a graphic in a text box or frame using Word? To correct this, choose Tools|Options, click the Compatibility tab and select the check box "Don't blank the area behind metafile pictures."

In the last tip, we showed you how to locate and install Imager, a program from the Microsoft Office 95 Valupack folder. Let's take a look at some more stuff you might like to check out in Valupack.

One folder we like, Photodsc, contains a collection of very nice BMP photograph files in both 8-bit and 24-bit versions. All are excellent, and there's a good possibility that you might like to use some of them in your Microsoft Office projects.

You can use the images directly from the CD, or you can copy them to your hard disk. Since they take up quite a bit of space, we recommend that you load them from the CD, modify them (perhaps using Imager), and then copy the modified version to the hard disk.

You can use bookmarks in Word to mark a specific paragraph, location, or graphic. To use Bookmark, select the item you want to mark. If you want to set a bookmark for an empty location in the document, simply click where you want the mark to apply.

Now choose Edit|Bookmark, give your bookmark a name and click Add. To return to the bookmark later, choose Edit|Bookmark, select the name and click Go To. The cursor will jump to the marked location. When you're finished with the Bookmark dialog box, click Close.

If you have Microsoft Office with Bookshelf, you've probably already experimented with Bookshelf and its powerful and fast information search tools. You can open Bookshelf from the CD. Insert Disc 2 into your CD-ROM drive, then click Start and select Programs, Microsoft Reference, Microsoft Bookshelf.

If you have Bookshelf loaded in your CD-ROM drive, Word will open it for you. Select the phrase you'd like to check and then choose Tools, Look Up Reference. You have three choices: Keyword, Full Text, and None. Keyword uses your selection to search through keywords in all the books in Bookshelf; Full Text searches for occurrences of the entered text; and None opens Bookshelf without performing a search.

She is correct--there is a Borders button in the toolbar. If you click the arrow at the right side of the Borders button, Excel opens a graphical list of border types from which you can click to select.

We've had e-mail from subscribers indicating that they have problems using the text box in Excel. Although we've covered this topic before, let's take another look.

To use a text box, first you have to have access to the Drawing toolbar. Choose View, Toolbars and select Drawing. You can let the toolbar float in the window or you can drag it to the top or the bottom of the screen to anchor it.

Now that the Drawing toolbar is available, click on the Text Box button (it looks like a small page of text). Use the mouse to draw and size the text box. Don't worry too much about size or placement right now, though. You can change both later.

Next, click on the edge of the new text box to select it and then right-click on it and choose Format Object. When the Format Object dialog box opens, click on Font and choose the font and font size you want to place in the box (choose the color, too, if you want). Click on any of the other tabs to make your text box look just the way you want. Make sure you click on Alignment if you'd like to center the text. To center the text both horizontally and vertically, select the appropriate radio buttons and click on OK.

Now you can add your text. When you save the file, your new text box will save along with it, so when you open the worksheet again the text box will still be there.

When you place a header or footer into a Word document, the header or footer applies to the entire document--unless you separate the document into sections, in which case you can use a different header and footer for each section.

Open a blank Word document and choose View, Header and Footer. Insert something into the header. Now, press Enter until you get to a new page. Choose File, Print Preview. If you zoom in, you'll see that the header appears on both pages.

Now, go back to Page 1, about halfway down the page. Choose Insert, Break. When the Break dialog box appears, select Continuous and then click OK.

Click in the new section and choose View, Header and Footer. Enter your new header (or footer) text. Make sure the Same As Previous button is NOT selected (it's the fourth button from the left in the Header and Footer floating toolbar). Click Close, and your new header will take effect. To view the headers, choose File, Print Preview and zoom in if necessary.

When you have a file linked into a Word document, the time may come when you want to break the link. For example, once you're sure the linked file will no longer change, there's not much point in maintaining the link. To break the link, choose Edit, Links. When the dialog box opens, click on Break Link. Word will ask if you're sure. Tell it Yes. The object will remain in your Word document, but it is no longer linked to its source file. Any changes you make to the object's file will not appear in the Word document.

When you want to specify precisely where a new page should start within a document, just insert a page break using Ctrl-Enter.

then go back and select the data and tell Word to use bullets (Format|Bullets and Numbering). When you do, Word asks if you want to eliminate the numbers. This isn't a problem, but if you type

and try to bullet them, Word will still ask if you want to eliminate the numbers. This doesn't happen in Word 7.

PowerPoint's spelling checker has a problem with some words. The abbreviation etc., for example, will be tagged as an incorrectly spelled word. However, the spelling checker will suggest etc. (with a period) as the correct spelling. If you click Change, you'll get etc.. (with two periods.) The only way around the problem is to ignore the spelling checker's protest and leave etc. as is. This is a bug in PowerPoint (even in Office 95), and we'll let you know if we hear of a fix.

Bulleted lists are a nice, clean organizational touch, but did you know that you can make them look even better by using special bullets? Try this: Select a bulleted list, then right-click on the selection. This opens a menu from which you choose the Bullets And Numbering command. When the Bullets And Numbering dialog box opens, click Modify. This opens another dialog box called Modify Bulleted List. In this dialog box, click Bullet to open the Symbol Character Map. In the Character Map, select a new bullet symbol and click OK. Back in the Modify Bulleted List dialog box, you can change the color, size, etc. When you're finished making your changes, click OK twice, and your new selection will appear in the document.

A reader writes to share a short macro she created for a special bullet assignment.

So, all you have to do is click the Bullets button on the Word toolbar. But, if you often need another type of bullet (as described in the last tip), you may want to assign a separate button for the alternate style.

Assuming you've already chosen a special symbol by following the steps described in the last tip, all you have to do is choose Tools, Macro. When the Macro dialog box opens, type in a name (we'll use the name Special for our example), and click Record. You'll get a new dialog box at this point--just click OK to begin recording. Now, choose Format, Bullets and Numbering and then click Modify. Choose your newly added special symbol and click OK. Click OK again to close the next dialog box and save your changes. Finally, click the Macro Recorder Stop button to stop recording the macro.

To add the Macro to the toolbar, choose View, Toolbars and click Customize. When the Customize dialog box opens, click the Toolbars tab. Locate Macros and click to select it. Your new macro will now appear on the right side of the dialog box. Drag it to the toolbar and place it between the Numbering and the Bullets buttons.

When the Custom Button dialog box opens, click Assign to use the name (Special) or click a button that you'd like to use and then click Assign. In the Customize dialog box, click Close to save your changes.

Now, you can change the default bullet assignment back to the one you use most frequently. To use your special symbol, click the Special button.

In a previous tip, we told you how to change your bullet symbol (right-click a bulleted list, then click Bullets And Numbering, Modify, Bullet). This time, let's look at even more bullet symbol options. Go through all the steps we discussed in the last tip, but when you get to the Character Map, go to the Symbols From list box and click the down arrow at the right side of the box to expand the list.

Select Wingdings. Now you can choose a new bullet from the rich symbol source that the Wingdings font offers. Once again, click OK after you make your choice, then you can change its color and size. Click OK twice to get back to your document.

We know that you seldom make mistakes. But just in case you accidentally choose the Go To command from the Edit menu, then click Cancel while you're editing a footnote, the insertion point will move to the body of your document. Just click the Footnote pane to get back to where you were.

Is the published interest rate what we're really paying? Let's use Excel to find out. Let's say you're about to make a purchase, and the interest rate as published is 12 percent per year. However, you read the fine print and find that the interest is compounded quarterly. You can use Excel's Effect function to determine what your actual rate is going to be.

since the interest will be compounded four times a year. Excel reports that the actual interest rate is 12.55%. If the interest is compounded monthly, you'd enter

The Effect function is part of Excel's Add-Ins. If you get no result when you use Effect, choose Tools, Add-Ins and select it from the list. If it isn't on the list, close Excel and run Office Setup to install the Add-Ins.

In the last tip, we showed you how to add a button to the Toolbar (Tool|Customize|Toolbars|File). What if you have a bunch of buttons on the toolbar that you never use? To get rid of unused buttons, choose Tools|Customize. When the dialog box opens, click the Toolbar tab. Now you can use the mouse to drag unwanted buttons to the dialog box, deleting thebuttons. When you're finished, click Close.

In the last tip, we showed you a macro that you can use to create a table. This time, we'll show you how to make a toolbar button for the new macro (or any macro).

Choose View, Toolbars and click on Customize. When the Customize dialog box opens, click on the Toolbars tab. Now scroll down until you locate Macros. Click on it once to select it and the macro list will appear on the right side of the dialog box. Use the mouse to drag your new macro to the toolbar. When you reach the macro's chosen location, release the mouse button.

When the Custom button dialog box opens, select a button, or just use the suggested text name and click on Assign. Now click on Close and your new toolbar button should work just fine.

If there's a button image that you'd like to use for a custom button, you can make a copy of any button in the Word toolbar and use its icon in one of your custom buttons. To do this, choose View, Toolbars and click on Customize. Now click on theToolbars tab. At this point, you can click on (once) on the toolbar button you'd like to copy. Now choose Edit, Copy Button Image.

Now you're ready to copy the image to a custom button. Create the new button by dragging a command to the toolbar (this could be a macro or a command). Click on Assign and then choose Edit, Paste Button Image. You can click on Close now to close the Customize dialog box.

By the way, since the button image is in the Clipboard, you can paste it into your Word document if you like. Simply choose Edit, Paste.

As we work with Word, we have a tendency to add words to the custom dictionary. Sometimes we add words that are useful at the time but aren't needed later.

If you'd like to check your dictionary and possibly eliminate some words that you no longer need, choose Tools|Options and click the Spelling tab. First, deselect the Automatic Spell Checking check box, then click Custom dictionaries. When that dialog box opens, Custom.dic should be selected. Click Edit to open the dictionary.

You can now delete words from or add words to the custom dictionary. After you make all the changes, choose File|Save to save the dictionary, then choose File|Close to close the custom dictionary window. Do not choose Save As from the File menu. This will lead you to saving custom.txt if you're not careful.

When you're finished with the dictionary, turn automatic spell checking back on. Choose Tools|Options|Spelling and select the check box labeled Automatic Spell Checking, then click OK.

If you choose the Cut command in the Open dialog box in Word 7 or Excel 7, the icon that represents the cut file doesn't dim. This is contrary to the Cut operation in Windows Explorer and My Computer, where the icon dims when you cut the file. The command function is OK, you just don't get the visual indication that something has happened. This is a problem and we'll keep you posted.

Yesterday we showed you how to correct text inadvertently typed with the Caps Lock key activated. There's another way to handle the Caps Lock problem. Choose Tools, AutoCorrect. When the AutoCorrect dialog box opens, select the Correct Accidental Usage Of cAPS LOCK Key check box. Click OK to close the dialog box. Now if you accidentally toggle the Caps Lock key, Word will not only produce correct text, it will toggle off the Caps Lock key.

A reader asks if there's an easy way to change the capitalization of a sentence.

Yes, there is. Let's say you've written a sentence in all caps, and now you'd like to make it a regular sentence with the first word proper cased. Select the sentence and choose Format, Change Case. When the Change Case dialog box appears, select the radio button that best describes what you want. For our example, you'd select Sentence case and then click OK.

There's also a convenient shortcut--you can select the sentence you want to change and press Shift + F3. The first press will cause a change to all uppercase, a second press will produce all lowercase, and the third press will result in a normally capitalized sentence.

Thanks for the tip. To format an Excel column, click the column into which you intend to enter numbers and choose Format, Cells. When the Format Cells dialog box opens, select Accounting (you don't have to select the Dollar sign if you don't need it) and then click OK to close the dialog box and record your selection. Enter your numbers without commas: Excel will supply them.

using the keyboard's numerical pad. This will produce a check mark in the current cell.

However, all this is difficult to remember, and cumbersome to perform, so why not write a macro to do the job for you? To generate the macro, choose Insert, Macro, Module. When the new module opens, enter the following exactly as shown.

The last line (ActiveCell.FormulaR1C1 = ) is where you enter the check mark symbol. Hold down Alt and use the keypad to enter 0214. Now, save your current workbook to make sure the new macro is saved.

To add a button to the Excel toolbar for your check mark macro, right-click the toolbar and choose Customize. When the Customize dialog box opens, select Custom from the Categories list. Now, drag one of the buttons to the toolbar. When you release the mouse button, the Assign Macro dialog box will open. Select your new macro and click OK to close the dialog box and record your macro assignment. Back in Customize, click Close to dismiss the dialog box.

All you have to do now to enter a check mark is select the cell you want to use and click your new macro button.

Want to make a quick change in one of your Office toolbars? In Word and Excel you can double-click the area around the toolbar (not on the toolbar itself) to open the Toolbars dialog box.

Several people have asked about changing the font in a Word label. Although this isn't a difficult task, discovering how to do it isn't all that obvious. Try the following:

Open a blank Word document and choose Tools, Envelopes and Labels. When the Envelopes and Labels dialog box opens, click the Labels tab. Now, right-click the Address entry box and choose Font from the popup menu. You can now use the Font dialog box to select a font, font size, and font color.

To change the image of a button on a toolbar that you created, open Windows Explorer, locate your MS Office folder and double-click it. Locate the folder that you used for your toolbar, and open it. Right-click on the shortcut for the button that you want to change. When the menu opens, choose Properties. In the Properties dialog box, click the Shortcut tab. Click Change Icon, and select a new icon. When you are finished, click OK.

A reader says he hasn't seen any tips about using the Microsoft Organization Chart in PowerPoint slides. We have run some Org Chart tips, but it's been quite a while. So let's take a quick look at the basics.

To insert an Organization Chart onto a slide, choose Insert, Object. When the Insert Object dialog box opens, locate MS Organization Chart and select it. Click OK to continue. This opens the Microsoft Organization Chart window. Using the existing template as a guide, type in the names and titles for your organization. You can delete and add boxes to make the chart fit your company. To get rid of a box, select it and press Delete. To add a box, click the appropriate button (Manager, Assistant, and so on) in the Org Chart window and then click the existing box to which the new box will be attached.

After you finish adding names and titles to your chart, choose File, Exit and Return to Presentation. You'll be prompted to update the presentation. Click Yes to continue. The Microsoft Organization Chart window will close and the chart will appear in your PowerPoint slide. If you need to edit the chart further, double-click it and the Microsoft Organization Chart window will open.

A reader says there's no reason to have an Excel pie chart that looks just OK when you can make it really stand out. He points out that you can change the viewing angle and the rotation of a 3-D pie chart. This allows you to display the optimum view in your Excel worksheets.

This may be difficult to visualize at first, since there's no way to show you the sample worksheet that he sent. So, let's run through a very simple example.

Open a blank worksheet and enter dates across the first row. We used the months MAR, APR, MAY, JUN, JUL, and AUG. In Column A, enter the steps required. For example, we entered

We expect to purchase all the components in March, so click the cell under MAR and choose Format, Cells. When the Format Cells dialog box opens, click the Patterns tab. Select a pale yellow to show that MAR is the month in which all the purchasing is scheduled. Let's assume that you expect to build the prototype in May. Select that cell and make it yellow also. Repeat this procedure for all your expected milestones.

Now, let's say that you didn't get all the purchasing completed in March, so you ran into April. Click the cell under APR and choose Format, Cells. This time, make the cell red to indicate that you missed the milestone.

Finally, why not assume that you made the deadline to begin manufacturing in August. Make the cell under AUG a light green to indicate that you were on time.

That's all there is to it--just color the cells to indicate your progress. And, as Harold commented, you can enter the costs in those milestone cells to keep track of expenses.

No, you don't need to upgrade--not just to solve this problem anyway. Word allows you to determine what is spell checked. By default, Word's spelling checker is set to ignore words that are in all uppercase. To modify this, choose Tools, Options. When the Options dialog box opens, click the Spelling tab. Now (under the heading Ignore), deselect the check box labeled Words in UPPERCASE and then click OK to close the dialog box and save your changes.

This tip isn't exactly earthshaking, but it can save you a bit of time. Before you run a spelling check, press Ctrl-Home to move to the beginning of the document. This way, you won't get the dialog box asking if you want to continue checking the document from the top. And since we're trying save some time, use the keyboard shortcut to run the spelling checker. So, press Ctrl-Home and then press F7.

A reader says she frequently wants to see document statistics when she works with Word documents. You can do this by choosing File, Properties. Then, when the dialog box opens, click the Statistics tab.

Since she uses the stats frequently, she decided to assign keystrokes to open the document statistics dialog box. To do this, choose Tools, Customize. When the Customize dialog box opens, click the Keyboard button. Now, click File and then select DocumentStatistics. Click once in the entry box labeled Press New Shortcut Key and press Alt-S. Click Assign, and then click Close to close the dialog box and save your changes. When you press Alt-S now, the statistics dialog box will open. Click Close to close the Statistics dialog box.

Yes, we do know of a way. Suppose you are currently on Sheet 1. Hold down Ctrl and click the tabs of all the worksheets that you want to check (there's no point in selecting empty worksheets). Now, just press F7 and the spell checker will examine all the selected worksheets.

To deselect the sheets, click any sheet tab other than the one you're currently viewing and Excel will navigate to that sheet--deselecting all the others.

It's definitely possible; how practical it is depends on your text file and your temperament. The only potential problem lies with how the data is separated in your text file. Excel needs some kind of separator in order to import the data into separate columns. For example, if your text file consists of name and address data separated by tabs or commas, as shown here, you can easily import the file into Excel.

In this case, all the data is separated by commas. Now, let's say the filename is Data.txt. Run Excel and choose File, Open. When the Open dialog box appears, click the arrow at the right side of the Files of Type list box to expand the list. From the list select All Files (*.*). Then select the file you want to import and click Open. When the Text Import Wizard appears, select the Delimited radio button and click Next. Under Delimiters, select the Comma check box and click Next.

The next Wizard page allows you to tell Excel what kind of data is in each column. For this example, click each column and then select the Text radio button. After you set all the columns to Text, click Finish. The data will now appear in your Excel worksheet in separate columns.

Although we discussed only the comma delimiter, you may need to use one of the others for some of your text data. Just select the appropriate radio button and continue as described above.

Need to undo something that you did three or four steps ago? Rather than choose Edit|Undo X-number of times, click the down arrow next to the toolbar's Undo button. This opens a menu from which you can choose the action you want to undo. All actions from the selection up will be undone.

It's easy enough to apply bullets to a Word list. All you have to do is click where you want to start the list and then click the Bullets button on the Word toolbar. If you don't like the default bullet symbol, you can choose Format, Bullets and Numbering and click the Bulleting tab. Now, you can choose from one of the default symbols, or you can choose to locate a special symbol.

Let's say you'd like to use one of the Wingdings symbols as your special bullet. Click Modify to open the Modify Bulleted List dialog box. Now, click Bullet to open the Symbols dialog box. In the Symbols dialog box, click the arrow on the right side of the Symbols From list box to expand the list. Locate and select Wingdings. Now, select a symbol and click OK. Back in the Modify Bulleted List dialog box, click OK to save your changes and close the dialog box. Your new symbol will now be applied by default until you choose a new one.

If you want to clear the Word 6.0 most recently used file list, choose Tools|Options and when the Options dialog box appears, click the General tab. Deselect the Recently Used File List option. Click OK. To reactivate the list, choose Tools|Options, then click the General tab and select the Recently Used File List. Click OK. Now the list is cleared but still activated so newly used files will appear in the list.

Using Microsoft Office Manager in Office 4.x, you can hold down the Alt key and click on an active program's icon to close that program. Note that this doesn't close Run or Find File because they are not programs with distinct executable files.

We certainly can. Let's say you want to make the column fit the widest entry. You would move to that column's header and then place the mouse over the column separator on the right side of the column. When you're over the separator, the cursor will change to a double arrow. At this point, you can double-click to set the column to the width of the widest entry.

So, let's say you want to adjust column A. Move to the separator line to the right of the A. When the cursor turns into a double-arrow, double-click. Column A will adjust to the widest entry. Note that the width will decrease in some cases. For example, if all the entries in column A consist of two digit numbers, the column width will decrease to match the number widths.

The Clipboard comes with Windows 95/98 and is part of the system. When you copy (or cut) any object in an Office program, the information is sent to the Windows Clipboard. When you paste an object into an Office 95 document, it is transferred from the Clipboard to your new document. Objects remain in the Clipboard until replaced by new data (or you turn off the computer).

Don't worry about your Office 95 copy and paste operations. They will work just fine.

You can close applications by holding down the Alt key and clicking on the application's button in the Microsoft Office Manager toolbar. This only works with executable applications, however, meaning you can't shut down operations such as Search this way.

Most people use their toolbar more as they gain experience with Word and the other Microsoft Office programs. If you find that you like using the toolbar, but miss some of the menu commands, you might like to add a button for the command you're missing. One of these might be Close. If you'd like to add a Close button to the Word toolbar, choose Tool|Customize to open the Customize dialog box. Click the Toolbars tab, then select File under Categories. Now look on the right side of the dialog box to locate the Close folder (top row, fourth from the left) and use the mouse to drag it to an empty space on the toolbar. We suggest dragging it to the area between the Save button (a floppy disk icon) and the Print button. When the Close icon is in place, release the mouse button, then click Close. With the Close button, all you have to do to close a document is click your new button.

Recently, we showed you a macro designed to save the current document, close it, and open a new blank document. This time, let's modify that macro.

Since you may not always want to open a new document after you close the current one, this version of the macro uses a message box to give you the option of opening a new document, or simply saving and closing the current document.

If you've already written the SaveAndCopy macro described previously, click Edit. If not, click Create. In either case, enter the following.

Now choose File, Save to save the macro. To assign your new macro to a toolbar button (if you haven't already done this), choose View, Toolbars and click Customize. When the Customize dialog box opens, scroll down through the Categories list and locate Macros. Select Macros and your new macro will appear in the Macros list. Use the mouse to drag the macro to the toolbar.

When you release the mouse button, the Custom Button dialog box will open. You can assign the macro name to the new button, or you can select one of the buttons. After you make your choice, click Assign. When you get back to the Customize dialog box, click Close to close the dialog box.

If you've already assigned SaveAndClose to a button, the button will function with the modified macro.

When you click the SaveAndClose button, the macro will give you the option of saving and closing the file and opening a new document (click Yes), or saving and closing without opening a new document (click No).

He is correct, blue is a good choice for those of us who use both color and black and white printers. To set the color of a heading (let's say Heading 1), click the heading to select it and then choose Format, Style. When the Style dialog box opens, click Modify. Now, click Format and choose Font from the list. In the Font dialog box, click the arrow at the right side of the Color list box and select your new color. Click OK to close the Font dialog box. In Modify Style, click OK to close the dialog box and save your changes. Back in the Style dialog box, click Apply to apply your new settings and close the dialog box.

If you've been appointed to produce a newsletter for your organization, club, or church, you can use columns to make the newsletter look more professional. Many Word users seem reluctant to use columns, but they're much easier to deal with than most people imagine.

Let's say you decide to create a two-column newsletter. This isn't a problem at all. Simply choose Format, Columns. Click on Two and click on OK. To view the document properly in two columns, choose View, Page Layout.

People run into problems when they want to use a full-width banner headline over a two-column page. But it can be done fairly easily. Go to the very top of the document and choose Insert, Break. When the dialog box opens, select Continuous and click on OK. This inserts a section break. Now click above the section break line and choose Format, Columns. This time, click on One and click on OK.

Now you can type in your headline and make it long enough to cover the entire width of the page, if that's what you want. In any case, you can center it on the page by clicking on the Center Text button in the Word toolbar.

Another source of problems people experience comes in trying to place graphics or pictures in the columns. We'll discuss that in the next tip.

Yes, you can select single columns. Let's say that you have a column such as the one shown here:

Suppose now that you would like to select only the numbers in column B. Just hold down the Alt key while you use the mouse to make your selection. You'll find that you can select almost anything using this method. Your job will be much easier though if the columns have spaces between them.

When you enter commas into a cell's contents, make sure you get them in the right place. If you don't, you'll confuse Excel.

and Excel will assume you want it to be a text entry. If you enter a number with commas, and you don't see the number move over to the right side of the cell, check those commas.

In Word, you can make good use of switches, additional parameters you add to commands to change the command's behavior. For example, the /n switch tells Word to load without even a blank document on screen. And /t tells Word to open to the document of your choice. For example, to always open Word with the file called MyDoc.doc, you could use /t MyDoc.doc. This is handy if you work from a form letter or template a lot of the time.

To add a switch in Windows 95, right-click a Word shortcut icon and choose Properties. When the Properties dialog box opens, click the Shortcut tab. Add the switch to the command line. For example, you could enter

Last time we told you about switches, those extra characters you add to commands to change the command's behavior. For example, the /n switch tells Word to load without even a blank document on screen. And /t tells Word to open to the document of your choice. To add a switch in Windows 95, right-click a Word shortcut icon, choose Properties, click the Shortcut tab, and add the switch to the command line. For example,

In Windows 95, you can create different Word shortcuts for specific jobs, using different Word switches for each shortcut. For example, you could have a shortcut called Word Letters and use the /t switch with that shortcut to open your form letter. You could have another shortcut using only the /n switch to make Word open without a document, and yet another using no switches at all.

Yipes!! Delete some Word text you didn't mean to? You can get it back by choosing Edit|Undo Clear. You can also retrieve it by holding down the Alt key and pressing Backspace.

To view the actions that you can undo in Word 95, click the down arrow at the right side of the Undo button. This will open a list of actions that you can select to undo. When you select one of the actions in the list, Word will undo that action and all actions that occurred after the selection. For example, if the list looks like this one

selecting AutoCorrect will undo both the AutoCorrect and the Undotyping listed above AutoCorrect.

There are several ways to view all the notes. Open the worksheet and choose Insert, Note. When the Cell Note dialog box opens, you'll see all the notes in that worksheet. Another way to identify cells with notes is to press Ctrl-Shift-?. When you do this, Excel will select all the cells that contain notes.

Some readers have asked about using callouts in text. Is there a way to make the primary text wrap around callout text? Yes, there is--well, sort of. What you can do is insert a frame (Insert, Frame) then draw a callout inside the frame.

Before you insert the callout, place the frame where you want it to appear when finished (at least as close as possible). Now, if you don't see the Drawing toolbar, choose View, Toolbars and select Drawing. Once the toolbar is visible, click the callout button (it looks like one of the speech bubbles you see in a comic strip) and draw the callout inside the frame.

Now you can right-click the frame and choose Format Frame. In the Frame dialog box, choose to have text wrap around the frame. When you're finished here, click OK. Now you can enter your callout text. If you need to change the placement of your callout, move the frame and then move the callout back inside it.

There are several ways to copy text you've just entered to a new location. You can, of course, select the text and then press Ctrl-C to copy any text, new or old. Then you click on the new insertion point and press Ctrl-V.

Here's another way to copy freshly entered text: Type in the text, then click on a new insertion point and press F4. Your new text will be entered automatically at your selected point.

A reader asks if you can use Word's drag-and-drop feature to copy text from one place to another.

Although we usually use drag and drop to move text rather than copy it, you can use it for copying, if you like. Just select the text you want to copy, just as you would if you were going to move it. Now, press Ctrl while you use the mouse to drag a copy of the text to a new location.

If you use Tools|Word Count to see how many words there are in a document, know that it can fail to report the correct number. Here's what happens: In Word 6 (and all prior versions) the largest number of words that Word can count is 65,536. So when a document has more than 65,536 words, the first time you choose the Update button, Word restarts the counter at 1. This problem was eliminated in Word 7.0.

If you're writing a long Word document, you can lose track of such things as the number of headings. If you need this information while you're working, here's a quick way to see how many occurrences of a particular style you've got in a document.

Choose Edit|Replace. Click the Find What text entry box, then click Format. When the menu opens, choose the Style command. Now select the style of your headings or whatever it is you want to count. Click the Replace With text entry box and select your heading style (or whatever) again.

For Search select All. Now click Replace All. What happens is that you're replacing a style with the same style. After the process finishes, a dialog box tells you how many replacements were made.

Here is an Excel question that we receive quite often. This one is from a reader:

Excel ignores blank cells by default. As long as a cell is blank (or contains text), Excel won't include it in the calculations. If you'd like to check this out, enter into cells A2 through A6

The average is 3. So, the blank cells A1, A7, A8, and A9 don't figure into the calculation at all.

We aren't sure we ran a tip on this subject, but we do sometimes use Find and Replace to count the number of occurrences of a heading (or other style) in Word documents. You said you always use Heading 1 as the title, so you'd press Ctrl-H to open Find and Replace. Click in Find What. Now, click Format and choose Style. The styles in the document will appear in the Find Style dialog box. Select Heading 1 and click OK. Now, press the Tab key to get to the Replace With entry box. Click Format, Style and choose Heading 1 again. Click OK to continue.

After you enter the style in both entry boxes, click Replace All. A dialog box will open to display the number of replacements made. This is the number of occurrences of Heading 1 in your document.

What you're doing is finding Heading 1 and then replacing it with Heading 1. So, no harm is done, and you get your article count.

If you've just finished a long Word document and decide that you really need a cover page, you don't need to jump through a lot of hoops, all you have to do is go to the top of your document and press Enter. Now choose Insert|Break and select the radio button labeled Page Break. Click OK to close the dialog box and record your request. This inserts a blank page before your document and you can type whatever you want on this new page.

Now that you've created your report, you have to present it at the stockholders meeting. And since no one wants to spend half an hour watching you talk, you must turn the main points of your presentation into a slide show. The right tools for that job are your word processor's outliner (for extracting the main points from your document) and your suite's presentation program. Unfortunately, these tools aren't always on speaking terms. Here's how to get them to cooperate.

To help with your learning curve, Microsoft PowerPoint can read Word files, helping you turn them into effective presentations in just a few steps. The trick is to set up your document using Word's outline-based heading styles (Heading 1, Heading 2, and so forth).

If your document isn't already using these styles, load it into Word and select View*Outline. Scroll through your document, using and - to assign outline levels to the paragraphs you consider important enough to include in your slides. When you're satisfied with the outline, close and save your file.

When your document is ready-but isn't open in Word-enter PowerPoint. Ignore any wizards that pop up to help you create a document; you don't need them.

Select File*Open. In the resulting dialog box's Files of Type list, select Outlines (in Office 7.0, it's All Outlines). Choose the document you want to convert, then click OK.

PowerPoint will create a new file from your document and switch to Outline View. All paragraphs in the Heading 1 style will become individual slides. Subheadings will fall into place naturally, typically appearing as bulleted lists. Paragraphs that weren't styled as outline headings in Word won't appear at all.

Unfortunately, PowerPoint won't bring in any pictures, worksheet tables, and other objects from your Word document. You will have to go through your document and copy these items over one by one, using Edit*Copy in Word and Edit*Paste in PowerPoint.

To view your presentation in a more graphical way, select View*Slide Sorter. Use the various options in the Format menu to select a layout, a color scheme, and other elements to give the presentation the look you want. To edit an individual slide, double-click it.

If you write a large number of documents that call for numerous technical terms, you'll find it handy to create a special dictionary for that purpose. To create a dictionary, open a new Word document and type the words you want to enter in a single column. Your entries should appear in a list like the one in this sample:

After you've added all the words you need at the moment (you can add more later), choose File, Save As and type in Special.dic. Now click the arrow at the right of the Save as Type list box to expand it. Select Text Only (*.txt) and then locate the folder c:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Proof and click Save.

The location can vary, depending on the Windows version and the Office version you use, and on your own installation. You may find that you need to save to the folder named c:\windows\msapps\proof.

When Word asks about saving a text file, tell it to go ahead. When you close the document (or close Word) you'll be asked about saving a nonstandard file again. Once again, tell Word to go ahead and save the text file.

Now, back in Word, choose Tools, Options and click the Spelling tab. Click Custom Dictionaries. If your new dictionary appears in the list, select it and click OK. If it doesn't appear in the list, click Add. Your new dictionary should appear in this dialog box. Select it and click OK. Now locate it in the list and select it. Click OK to add the dictionary and close the dialog box.

In past tips we've discussed how to add a drop cap to one of your Word documents. Many people like to set the drop cap to a font other than the one used by the normal document style.To change a drop cap's font, select the drop cap and choose Format|Drop Cap. When the dialog box opens, click the down arrow to the right of the Fonts list box to expand the list. Make your font selection and click OK.

A word of warning: Don't get too weird on the drop cap font. A font that really stands out from the rest of the text is too distracting. Aim for a more subtle effect.

Sometimes you need only part of a picture in Word. If this is the case, you don't have to crop the picture before you insert it into Word; you can do the cropping in your Word document.

Insert a Clip Art picture (Insert|Picture|Clip Art), size it, and then hold down the Shift key while you drag the edge of the picture to crop it. When you do this, Word doesn't delete any part of the picture; it simply hides it from view. So, if you need to change the cropping later, just repeat the process.

You may know that you can make a perfect circle or square in PowerPoint by selecting the appropriate tool and then holding down Shift while you draw the object. But what do you do if you've already created the drawing, and now you want to make it perfect? Just select the object and then hold down Ctrl while you double-click one of the corner sizing handles. If you want to change the size, hold down Shift while you resize the drawing.

To start a slide show, locate the presentation's icon and right-click it. Choose Show from the menu and your show will start without visibly starting PowerPoint. When the show terminates (you press Esc or whatever you do to terminate your show) PowerPoint will close without your audience ever seeing it open.

When you open a Word 2.x template in Word 6.0, you'll find that Word won't customize the standard toolbar. Word will instead define a separate Word 2.0 toolbar and to display it, you have to choose View|Toolbars and select it.

To select toolbars on the fly, locate a blank spot on any toolbar and right-click it. A pop-up menu will, well, pop up. From the menu, you can choose which toolbar you'd like to view, or which toolbar you'd like to stop viewing. You can also get to the Customize Toolbars command using the same technique. Right-click a blank spot on a toolbar and choose Customize.

Here's another way to cut and paste inside a Word document. Highlight the text you want to move and then press Shift-Delete. Now move the insertion point to where you want to place the text and press Shift-Insert. (Note: Some keyboards use Del and Ins rather than Delete and Insert.)

The Spike is a special AutoText function that acts as a multiple cut-and-paste tool. Let's say that you have a paragraph that you're inclined to delete, but afraid that you might need later. You can use the Spike to save the paragraph for later use. Use the mouse (or keyboard) to select the paragraph. Now, press Ctrl-F3 to cut the paragraph and place it on the Spike.

Suppose now that you decide to use the paragraph in a new location in your document. Just click at the desired insertion point and press Ctrl-Shift-F3. This will paste the paragraph into your document and clear the Spike.

If you'd like to paste the material in the Spike without clearing it, choose Edit, AutoText and select Spike. Click Insert to insert the Spike contents and close the dialog box. In this case, the text is still available for use in another location.

To make your Word 6.0 toolbar buttons look their best in Small mode, create all your buttons in Small Button mode and run Word with the Large Button mode turned off. If you want to run in Large mode, then create all your buttons in that mode. If you want to switch back and forth between small and large, create two sets of buttons -- one for each mode.

If you choose the Cut command in the Open dialog box in Word 7 or Excel 7, the icon that represents the cut file doesn't dim. This is unlike the Cut operation in Windows Explorer and My Computer, where the icon dims when you cut the file. The command function works, you just don't get the visual clue that something has happened.

If you'd like to add the days of the current week to your worksheet on a Monday morning, you can select a cell and type

Now select five cells beginning with the one you just entered today's date into and choose Edit, Fill, Series. Then select Date and Weekdays. Click on OK and the column will fill with the days of the current week. But why go through all that when you can use a simple macro to do it for you? Let's look at the macro first, and then we'll talk about how to install and use it.

To add the macro to Excel, choose Window and select Unhide if it's available. If Windows, Unhide is grayed out, choose Tools, Record Macro. When the dialog box opens, type in

for the name and then click on Options. Make sure Personal Macro Workbook and Visual Basic are selected and click on OK. Now click on the Stop button on the floating Recorder window. At this point, Window, Unhide will be available, and you should select it now.

A dialog box will appear with Personal.xls selected (if something else is there and selected, select Personal.xls). Click on OK and the blank module page will appear. Type in the macro exactly as shown in the listing. When you finish entering the macro, choose File, Save to save Personal.xls. Next, choose Window, Hide to rehide Personal.xls.

Now you can choose Tools, Macro and double-click on Personal.XLS!AddDate to run the new macro.

AddDate selects cell A2 and inserts the current date (we assume you'll use this on Monday morning). Then it selects for more cells to hold the remaining days of the week. Next, it places the dates in the selected cells and then formats the date and the cell width. The macro then moves the cursor to the bottom of the row. This deselects the previously selected cells.

When you close Excel, you'll be asked about saving the personal workbook. Tell it Yes.

If you want to enter a date and time into a single Excel cell, type in the date, type a space, then type the time. Excel runs on 24-hour (military) time, so if you enter 2:00, Excel will assume that you mean 2:00 a.m. To enter 2:00 p.m., type the time, then a space, then the letter p. Of course, you can also type 14:00 to accomplish the same thing. By the way, 12:00 is noon. If you want to enter midnight, you can enter 0:00, 24:00, or 12:00 a. (Excel recognizes 24:00 as a matter of mathematical principle, even though it isn't traditionally used.)

As you've already concluded, the problem is most likely because the date isn't in text format. Try this: Enter into cell A1

If you need to work with dates in date format, you can use the Text function to convert the date to text and then get the serial number. For example, enter

The Text function will convert the date to text in the mm/dd/yy format. Datevalue will then calculate the serial number from the text version of the date.

There are two ways to deal with the date in an Office program: The first is that you choose Insert|Date and Time then choose the format you want to use and click OK. This inserts the current date, and it's this date that will remain in your document. If you'd like to make sure that the date is the one on which you printed the document, select the Update Automatically check box before you click OK. The check box will remain selected until you deselect it. So when you want the current date to stick, deselect the Update Automatically check box.

As you've pointed out, Excel doesn't offer dd/mm/yy as a standard format. However, you can select it as a custom format. To do this, enter

into cell A1. Now click cell A1 and choose Format, Cells. When the Format Cells dialog box opens, click the Number tab. Now, select Custom from the Category list. Under Type, select any date format. Next, select the date format in the Type entry box and delete the current entry. Type in

and click OK to close the dialog box and record your selection. Your date will now read

Note: There is a problem with using this format--you must enter dates in the standard American format first for this to work. For example, if you want to enter 2 June, 1999 into cell A1, you'd type

The best use for this particular formatting method is when you need to convert a column of dates that you've already entered using the standard mm/dd/yy format. Just select the entire column and choose Format, Cells. Select Custom and proceed as we described above. After you enter dd/mm/yy, click OK and all the dates in the selected column will appear in dd/mm/yy format. If you must make a change to any date in this column, use the standard mm/dd/yy format to enter the date. Excel will automatically convert it to dd/mm/yy.

You can enter fractions into an Excel cell and use them in your calculations. The only problem is that you have to be careful about how you enter fractions. For example, if you enter

and press Enter, Excel will think you're entering a date and convert the number to the current date format. So, 5/6 becomes something like 6-May.

To get around this problem, make a habit of entering fractions in the form zero, space, the fraction. It should look like this:

Now Excel knows you want to enter a fraction and will deal with the number correctly.

Previous versions of Office were automatically installed in a folder that was a direct subfolder of the root directory. Office 97 installs into

Although you can pick a different folder as the destination for the installation, some components will still be installed in the C:\ProgramFiles\Microsoft Office folder.

There are times when you choose File, Open in a Microsoft Office document and just happen to notice a file that needs deleting. You don't have to wait until you finish what you're doing and then use Windows Explorer to delete the file. All you have to do is select the file in the Open window and then press Delete. This will delete the file, and you can go ahead with your work.

When you select Word text and press the Delete key, the text is not copied to the Clipboard for future pasting. To copy text to the Clipboard, select the text and press Ctrl-X or hold down the Shift key and press Delete.

There are times when you might need to use an Excel file in some program that doesn't use Excel files. If this happens to you, check to see what kind of files the program will handle. Many programs will read delimited ASCII files. This means that each Excel column must be separated by some character. It can be a Space, a Tab, or a comma.

Let's give this a try. Open a new worksheet and enter text and numbers into three or four columns. Perhaps something like this:

Column 1	Column 2	Column 3
1	4	6
2	5	7
3	6	9

This will do fine as an example. Choose File, Save As. Type in a name for your file and then click the arrow at the right side of the Save as Type list box. Scroll down to CSV (Comma Delimited)(*.csv) and click Save. You'll get a warning telling you that you're not saving the file as a standard Excel file. Tell it Yes, you want to do it. Now you can quit Excel if you like. When you do, you'll get another warning about saving a nonstandard file. Tell it that you do want to save it.

You can open NotePad now and then open the new file, YourName.csv. The file will appear in the form shown here:

At this point, you can try reading the new file into that choosy program. If your program requires tab- or space-delimited files, just select the appropriate option when you choose File, Save As.

Need a printout of a specific sheet, but don't want to print the entire workbook? Or would you rather print the entire workbook? Excel's easy, either way. Click on the sheet you want to print and choose the Print command from the File menu (Alt+F+P or Ctrl+P on the keyboard) to open the Print dialog box. If you select the radio button called Selected Sheet(s), Excel will print only the sheet you selected before you opened the Print dialog box (this is the default). If you select the radio button labeled Entire Workbook, then Excel will print that. If you select a portion of a worksheet before opening the Print dialog box and then click the Selection radio button, Excel will print just that portion.

The Print dialog box will also let you choose the number of copies you want to print and the range of pages you'd like.

Let's imagine that you need to print a few Word documents. Word isn't open right now, so you open Word by double-clicking the document file. Then you choose File, Print. Although this method works just fine, you don't have to open Word before you begin. If you place a shortcut to your printer on your desktop, all you have to do is drag a file's icon to the printer shortcut and drop it on top. Word will open the document, print it using the printer defaults, and close.

To create a desktop printer icon, choose Start, Settings, Printers. In the Printers window, find your printer's icon and drag it to the desktop. Click Yes in response to the warning box, and there's your shortcut.

If you're getting ready to install Office 97, you might like to know how much disk space is required. Here are the figures for the various types of installation.

Ordinarily when we discuss resizing inserted pictures (such as Clip Art) we tell you how to do it without distorting the picture. There are times, though, when you might want to distort a picture to enhance its appearance. For example, suppose you're making up a document (Word or PowerPoint) for a weight-loss program. Perhaps you'd like to show a before-and-after cartoon. To do something like this, you could import one of the Clip Art images of a cartoon person. There are several available.

You may want to do this in PowerPoint rather than in Word, because PowerPoint offers more options for working with Clip Art. If you need the pictures in Word, you can import them later. Insert one of the pictures. If there are extraneous objects in the picture you want to use (such as a briefcase) select the object and choose Draw, Ungroup. Now click away from the drawing and then click the extraneous object. Move it away from the main drawing and press Delete.

Now that you have a clean drawing, press Ctrl-A to select everything and then choose Draw, Group to put the object back together again. Now select the picture and choose Edit, Copy. Next, choose Edit, Paste. Position the two copies as you want. Now click the picture on the left and use the mouse to stretch it horizontally. Now that you have a genuinely overweight person, you can either leave the original version alone, or use the mouse to make that person even thinner.

Since you may want to import the pictures into a Word document, press Ctrl-A to select both and then choose Draw, Group. From now on they'll stay together. You can click the picture and choose Edit, Copy to copy it to the Clipboard. Then you can move to Word and choose Edit, Paste to paste the picture into your Word document.

When you run a spelling check in Excel, you check only the current page. If you'd like to check all the worksheets in a workbook, right-click on one of the tabs (any tab) and choose Select All Sheets. Now you can choose Tools|Spelling to check all the worksheets. After you finish checking your spelling, right-click on the current tab and choose Ungroup Sheets.

When you need to work with multiple sheets in Excel, you may want to make the headers the same on all the sheets. Here's a little trick that works very well.

Hold down the Ctrl key and click the name tab of each sheet that you intend to use. Now type in your headers on one of the sheets. Hold down the Ctrl key again and deselect all the sheets except Sheet 1. Now click Sheet 2. The header will appear on Sheet 2 just as it did on Sheet 1, and just as it will on all the sheets you selected initially.

You're not limited to entering headers--you may also want to enter formulas this way.

This trick is handy for entering headers. Just don't forget to turn it off before you start entering data. Otherwise, all the sheets will show the same data.

One of Word's Replace features you may find handy is its ability to locate and replace styles. Suppose you have a style called Subhead 2 and you decide it doesn't look good in a particular document. If the document is more than a page or two long, you might have a big job ahead of you if you try and manually replace Subhead 2 with something else. To get Replace to do your work for you, press Ctrl+H to open the Replace dialog box. Click in the Find What text box, then click the Format button at the bottom of the Replace dialog box. From the pop-up menu, choose Style, and Replace will open the Find Style dialog box. Now scroll down until you find the style you want to replace (Subhead 2); Select it by clicking on it, then click OK. Next, click in the Replace With text box and click Format once again. This time when you get to the Find Style box, choose the style you want to use to replace Subhead 2. Now click Find Next and the cursor will move to the first instance of Subhead 2. If you want to make that change, click Replace. If you're a trusting soul and believe that Word won't let you down, click Replace All and let Word do its thing.

There are two ways to deal with the date in an Office program: The first is that you choose Insert, Date And Time, then choose the format you want to use and click OK. This inserts the current date, and it's this date that will remain in your document. If you'd like to make sure that the date is the one on which you printed the document, select the Update Automatically check box before you click OK. The check box will remain selected until you deselect it. So when you want the current date to stick, deselect the Update Automatically check box.

Word users need to generate documents that contain equations. This is certainly no problem for Word. Here's how to add equations to a document.

As an example, let's assume that you want to create a document for some young arithmetic students, such as:

You can make this look better if you choose Insert, Object, Microsoft Equation. Now type in the equation, and the Equation editor will put the line into a more pleasing form.

The real advantage of the Equation editor becomes apparent when you need to enter more complex equations. For example, showing a square root in Word can be cumbersome, but if you use the Equation editor, it will look just as any mathematician would expect it to look. Because we can't show you samples, the best approach is to open the Equation editor and experiment with it.

What you need to do is use the Accounting format. Select the cell you want to use and choose Format, Cells. When the Format Cells dialog box opens, select Accounting from the Category list and then select the check box labeled Use $. Click OK to apply the new format and close the dialog box. The dollar signs will now always appear at the left side of the formatted cells.

Last time, we explained how to brighten your documents with pictures. If you've followed our instructions, you may have noticed that Word 97 inserts full-size pictures--which, in most cases, are way too big. Quick thinker that you are, you tried to shrink the pictures by dragging the "handles" (the small black squares) around them inward. But woe is you: After spending a few moments adjusting a picture's size in this fashion, you found that it was warped out of proportion.

How can you get the picture back into proportion and then make sure it stays in proportion when you resize it? To return a picture to its original size--and simultaneously, to its original proportions:

Adding Office components from a new disk drive Offhand, you wouldn't think adding a second hard disk drive to your computer would have any effect on your Microsoft Office installation. Here's a potential problem though: Suppose that you decide to add some Office components after you install the new disk drive. In this case, you probably installed Office from a CD in Drive D. Now the CD-ROM drive is Drive E.

Office knows from whence it came, so when you attempt to modify your installation, Office will tell you that it can't find the requested files on Drive D. The solution is to use the Setup on the CD rather than the one in your Office folder. When you do this, Setup will completely reinstall Office. Choose Custom to make sure you get all the components you had originally. From now on, Office will look for its files on Drive E.

If you ever need to save an Excel worksheet in some format other than the Excel default, you'll find that Excel offers you a wide variety of choices. Choose File, Save As. When the Save As dialog box opens, click the arrow at the right side of the Save As Type list box to expand the list. If you scroll through the list, you'll find that you can save the file in the format of Lotus, dBase, Quattro Pro, and a whole slew of other formats.

Note that Excel will save only the active worksheet in some of the formats. This is because many of the associated programs can't handle multilevel worksheets as Excel does. We just wanted to let you know, in case you encounter a problem saving to one of the formats.

As you create a Word document, you may encounter phrases of two or three words that you'd rather not have split between lines. For example, you may prefer to keep the phrase "The Supreme Court" on a single line. You can use Ctrl+Shift+Space to add a non-breaking space. So, you'd type

When typed this way, the phrase will stay together as though it was a single word.

When you add text to PowerPoint slides, always avoid hyphenating words. This may be acceptable on printed material, but hyphenated words on a slide will cause your audience some confusion. They are required to pause and interpret what they see.

If a word requires hyphenation, try reducing its size. If this isn't practical, try placing that word on a line by itself.

You can't tell Word's spelling checker to ignore repeated words, but if you use anything like Walla Walla or Bora Bora very often, you can tell Word to ignore those particular words. All you have to do is format them as No Proofing, then enter them into AutoText. Try this: Type Walla Walla. Now use the mouse to select the words, then choose Tools|Language. In the resulting dialog box, scroll all the way to the top of the list and you'll see No Proofing. Select it and then click OK. With Walla Walla still selected, choose the Edit|AutoText. When the AutoText dialog box opens, give your new entry a name (we used Walla), make sure that Formatted Text is selected, and click Add. Now when you need to type Walla Walla, type Walla and press F3. Walla Walla will appear in your text, and the spelling checker will leave it alone.

and press Enter. Excel will respond with True. This is the correct response because 23 is not equal to 25. Therefore, it is True that 23 doesn't equal 25. If you change cell A2 to

then cell A5 will display False because 23 is equal to 23. Therefore, 23 is NOT not equal to 23. Whew!

If you'd like to write in Word without giving any immediate thought to your document's formatting, try using the draft font. Choose Tools|Options to open the Options dialog box. Click the View tab and select the check box labeled Draft Font. After you've finished writing and editing your document, you can apply whatever formatting you need.

You probably know that you can select text (words, sentences, paragraphs) and then grab the selected text with your mouse and move it to a new location. You hold down the mouse button during the drag and release it when you reach its new home.

Word also lets you copy selected text using the drag-and-drop method. To do this, all you have to do is select the text and then hold down Ctrl while you drag the text to a new location.

She is correct. If you have a document that includes numerous drawings, everything will slow down because Word has to deal with those pictures. To hide your drawings, choose View, Page Layout. Now, choose Tools, Options. When the Options dialog box opens, click the View tab. Next, deselect the check box labeled Drawings and click OK to close the dialog box and save your selection. To view your drawings again, choose Tools, Options and select the Drawings check box. Click OK to save your selection and close the dialog box.

When you insert clip art into an Office document, you may want to add other drawing objects to get the clip art to look just the way you want. To do this, choose View, Toolbars and select Drawing. This adds the Drawing toolbar to your window.

Now insert a clip-art object (choose Insert, Object and select Microsoft Clip Gallery). Once the clip art is in the document, you can click on the drawing tools in the toolbar to add objects to the clip art. For example, you may feel that adding a few lines will improve the picture. Click the Line button to add a line to the art.

You can also add callouts to the art. Let's say you've inserted the bear image and you'd like to depict the bear saying something. Click on the Callout button and use the mouse to add the object to the drawing. With practice and imagination, the possibilities are unlimited.

Sure. Let's say you'd like to start a sentence with a symbol--perhaps a fancy R or F. Click where you want to insert the character and choose Insert, Symbol. Select the symbol you want to use and click Insert. Now, with the symbol in place, click Close to close the Symbol dialog box.

Select the new symbol and choose Format, Drop Cap. When the Drop Cap dialog box opens, click Dropped and then click OK to close the dialog box and save your selection.

The drive is not ready for use; the door may be open. Please check drive x and make sure that a disk is inserted and that the drive door is closed.

You'll most likely to experience this if you're running Windows NT 3.51 and you install a Matsushita LF-#1094c PD CD-ROM drive. In this case, it occurs if you attempt to start the shortcut bar and the drive is empty or contains a read-only disc. What happens is that when you start the Office Shortcut Bar it makes a call to the Windows Registry looking for feedback. Using Windows NT 3.51, you get an error when running the LF-#1094c. You won't get the error if a writable disc is installed. This error does not occur in Windows NT 4.0 or Windows 95.

One of the easiest ways to dress up an otherwise dull- looking Word document is to use drop caps. To do this, select the character you want to drop. This is usually the first character in the first sentence of the first paragraph, but there's nothing wrong with a bit of eccentricity. After you select the character, choose Format|Drop Cap. When the dialog box opens, decide how you want your drop cap to look. Select the type of drop cap you want and the number of lines you want to drop (try the default first), then click OK. If you're not in Page Layout view, Word will ask if you want to switch. Tell it Yes. Now your drop cap will appear in the text just as it will print.

You can remove a drop cap by double-clicking the character to select it and then choosing Format|Drop Cap again. This time, select None and click OK.

In past tips, we've discussed how to add a drop cap to one of your Word documents. Many people like to set the drop cap to a font other than the one used by the normal document style. To change a drop cap's font, select the drop cap and choose Format, Drop Cap.

When the dialog box opens, click the down arrow to the right of the Fonts list box to expand the list. Make your font selection and click OK.

A word of warning: Don't get too weird with the drop cap font. A font that really stands out from the rest of the text is too distracting. Aim for a more subtle effect.

Although everyone knows that you can select Word text and then use the mouse to drag the selected text to a new location, many users don't know that you can do the same thing in Excel. To see how drag and drop works in Excel, open a new worksheet and type

into cell A2. Select the two cells and move the mouse near the edge of the cells. When the pointer changes from a plus sign to a pointer, press and hold the mouse button. Use the mouse to drag the cells to a new location and release the mouse button.

The reason many people miss this Excel feature is that you need to make sure you don't grab the handle, or end up inside the cell. You have to grab just the edge and only after the cursor turns to a pointer.

When you work with charts in PowerPoint, you have some options that you don't have in Excel. For example, if you'd like to use some ClipArt pictures along with your pie chart (or other chart types), you can follow the procedure discussed here.

Although you can insert a ClipArt picture onto the slide and then drag it over the chart area, this doesn't attach the ClipArt to the chart in any way. To associate the ClipArt with the chart, first insert the ClipArt as you normally would (choose Insert, ClipArt and select a picture to insert). Once the ClipArt is present on the slide, click it to select it and then press Ctrl-X to cut the picture and place it on the Clipboard. Now, double-click inside the chart area and then choose Edit, Paste.

Although you can size the ClipArt picture and move it around inside the chart area, you can't move it outside the chart area. You'll notice too, that the picture moves along with the chart.

When you click on the Highlight button to highlight Word text, the cursor turns to a marker. You then highlight text by dragging the marker over it. However, you can make things a bit easier for yourself if you use some of Word's standard editing procedures.

For example, with Highlight active, you can double-click on a word to highlight it. To highlight a paragraph, triple-click on it.

You can edit existing toolbar buttons in Word 95. The problem is that the method isn't especially obvious. Try this: Open a blank document in Word 95. Let's say you'd like to edit the New button. Right-click the New button and choose Customize. When the Customize dialog box opens, right-click the New button again. This time choose Edit Button Image. This opens the Button Editor. Modify your image and then click OK to close the editor and record your changes. Click Close to close the Customize dialog box.

You use this method to edit any button on the toolbar. This includes any buttons you may have added for macros or styles.

There's a widely circulated rumor that says you can't edit a Word document while it's in Print Preview mode. We're not sure about the origin of the rumor, but check out Print Preview mode for yourself.

Open a document that you can afford to mess around with, and then choose Print Preview (click the toolbar button, or choose File, Print Preview). Use the magnifying glass cursor to zoom in on the page. Now, click the Magnifier on the toolbar (it looks like a small magnifying glass). At this point, you can add, delete, copy, and paste text.

We're not suggesting that you should use Print Preview mode for editing; we're only suggesting that you should be careful what you press when you're in Print Preview. You could lose something.

A reader sent a description of a PowerPoint slide design that he likes to use for the first slide in some of his presentations. The slide starts with a completely black background, then stars begin to appear, followed by the title assigned to the slide show. He tells us that this Star Wars type of opening is a very effective attention grabber.

To build the slide described, run PowerPoint and open a completely blank slide. Choose Format, Custom Background. When the Custom Background dialog box opens, click the arrow at the right side of the list box and choose solid black from the color palette. Click Apply to apply the color change to the current slide.

Now, let's add some stars. Double-click the Oval tool and then hold down the Shift key while you draw some random small circles. After you've drawn some circles over the entire slide, press Ctrl-A to select them all. Click the Fill Color button in the Drawing toolbar and set all stars to white (or the color of your choice). With the stars still selected, choose Tools, Animation Settings. When the Animation Settings dialog box opens, click the arrow at the right side of the Build Options list box and then select Build. Select the check box labeled Start When Previous Build Ends. Next, click the arrow at the right side of the Effects list box and choose Dissolve. Click OK to close the dialog box and record your selections.

It's time to add some scrolling WordArt. Choose Insert, Object and then select Microsoft WordArt. Type in your message and click Update. Now, click the Shading button in the WordArt toolbar (the icon is a crosshatch pattern). When the Shading dialog box opens, select a red foreground and a black background. Click OK to close the dialog box and save your changes. Double-click the slide to close WordArt.

Now, use the mouse to drag your WordArt text to the top of the slide. With WordArt selected, choose Tools, Animation Settings. When the dialog box opens, select Build. Next, select the check box labeled Start When Previous Build Finishes and then choose Fly From Bottom from the Effects list box.

With everything in place and ready to go, you can run the show. However, he suggests adding more stars at this point and then applying the Dissolve effect to them. With more stars added, the stars continue blinking after the text scrolls upward. This leaves the audience with the impression that the stars blink continually, even as the text is scrolling up.

To view the slide in action, choose View, Slide Show. When the Slide Show dialog box opens, select the check box labeled Loop Continuously Until Esc and then click Show.

Often when you size artwork in PowerPoint, you need to size it so that several elements retain the same size relationship to each other. The best way to accomplish this is to size all those elements at the same time. Let's suppose you have three pictures that need sizing and must retain their size relationship. Click on the first picture then hold down the Shift key and click the other two pictures. Now use the mouse to drag the pictures to their new size.

What happens is that Notepad doesn't recognize the ellipses symbol (Notepad doesn't recognize many symbols of any kind). So, the symbol simply appears as a block.

There are several solutions to your problem, so you can select the one that best fits your needs. First, you can save the Word document as a text file that you can open with Notepad. When you save the Word file as a text document, Word converts any ellipses in that document to three periods. You can now open the document in Notepad and three periods will appear for the ellipses in the original Word document.

If you prefer to just use three periods in the first place, choose Tools, AutoCorrect. When the AutoCorrect dialog box opens, type three periods into the Replace entry box. This will bring the ellipses AutoCorrect line to the top of the list. Click to select it and then click Delete. Click OK to close the dialog box and record your change. Now you can type in three periods and Word will no longer convert them to ellipses. You can copy and paste from Word to Notepad without ending up with a black block in place of the three periods.

Slides may not show up in Word 95 when you use PowerPoint's Write-Up. The notes will look OK, but instead of slide images you'll get an empty box with resize handles. This happens when you have enabled the picture placeholders in Word 95. To disable the holders choose Tools|Options and click the View tab. Deselect the check box labeled Picture Placeholders.

Even when you have Smart Quotes turned on, Word doesn't generate a real apostrophe if you add it to an existing line. Check it out. Say you want to enter the date as '97. The apostrophe is backwards. To make a real apostrophe, make sure the Numlock key is active and hold down Alt while you enter 0146 using the number pad. This produces a true apostrophe--even if Smart Quotes is turned off. While we're on this topic, there's another way to create the true apostrophe--hold down Ctrl and press the apostrophe key. Now release Ctrl and press the apostrophe key again.

A reader says that we have often discussed using Format Painter in Word, but never in Excel. As he points out, this feature works just as well in Excel as it does in Word.

He is correct; Format Painter is a useful Excel feature. Let's say you have a row of numbers formatted as decimal with two places. You need to format several cells at another location the same way. You can select the cells and choose Format, Cells and select the Number format. Or, you can click one of the formatted cells and then click the Format Painter button in the Excel toolbar (the button icon is a paintbrush). When the mouse pointer turns into a paintbrush, you can use the paintbrush pointer to select the cells you want to format.

Would you like to add a picture to the bars of an Excel chart to set them off? Try this: Create a chart, then click away from the chart and choose Insert, Object, Microsoft ClipArt. Choose the figure that you think will look best and click OK to insert it into Excel. Now choose Edit, Cut, then double-click one of the bars. Finally, choose Edit, Paste, and the image will appear in the bar.

AutoSave is a handy Excel feature--one that saves many of us from disaster. Although Excel doesn't use AutoSave by default, you can easily add it. Choose Tools, Add Ins. Now select the AutoSave check box and click OK to record your choice and close the dialog box.

After you select AutoSave, the command will appear in the Tools menu. Choose Tools, AutoSave now, and you can tell Excel how often you want to invoke AutoSave. After you enter the time period of your choice, click OK.

If you're developing a very large Excel spreadsheet, you may want to temporarily disable the automatic calculation option. This way, you can enter all the formulas you want without ever having to wait for a recalculation. To turn off automatic calculation, choose Tools, Options and click the Calculations tab. Now select the Manual radio button, then click OK to close the dialog box. To check a calculation while you work, press F9. Don't forget to turn automatic calculation back on when you finish developing that monster spreadsheet.

When you develop those truly cool worksheets, you don't want to miss anything. So, let's see what concatenation can do to help you make that cool worksheet even more cool. If you have information in several cells that you want to pull together into one cell, try this:

Let's say that cell A1 contains the word Priscilla and cell A2 contains Priscilla's sales total for the month. You can go to cell C3 and type

Here's an Excel function you may not have seen. It's called Proper and its job is to render text with initial capitals.

Why would you need to use Proper? Well, if you purchase mailing lists, you know that many of them come in all caps. This is a poor stylistic choice for mailing labels.

This is where Proper comes in. Of course, its most efficient use is in a macro, but you can check it out without writing a macro. Press the Caps Lock key and type something into cell A1. Try something like

Proper deals with any text--uppercase, lowercase, or mixed. Whatever you apply it to will come out with the initial character of each word capitalized.

If you want to quickly set the format of a single cell in Excel, select the cell and then right-click it. When the pop-up menu opens, select Format Cells to open the Format Cells dialog box. Once in the dialog box, you can click the Number tab to set up the cell's format. While you're at it, you can also set Alignment, Font, Border, Patterns, or Protection. Make your selections and click OK to record your choices and close the dialog box.

If you have a relatively small Excel worksheet that is determined to print several blank pages, make sure you didn't place a formula in some obscure cell far removed from your work area.

Some people will place a calculation in a cell that's out of sight. If you do this, then Excel considers that part of the worksheet and prints the whole thing. To get around the problem, select only the part of the worksheet that you want to print.

If you need to type a lot of text into a single cell, you can control the width of your text by pressing Alt-Enter to insert a carriage return. When you need to use a tab, press Ctrl-Alt-Tab.

You can quickly turn a normal Excel cell reference into an absolute reference. (An absolute reference forces Excel to always refer to the cells you specify.) Let's say you've entered

into cell A7. Double-click cell A7 and then use the mouse to select the reference A1:A5. Now press F4 and then press Enter. The cell contents will change to the absolute reference form of

One of our subscribers asks if there's a way to paste Excel charts into a PowerPoint slide without pasting the entire worksheet. Yes, there is. To do this, you right-click the chart and then choose Copy. Now move to the PowerPoint slide and press Ctrl-V (or choose Edit, Paste). This technique will get the chart into PowerPoint without dragging the whole worksheet along with it.

If you want to place widely varying Excel data into a pie, doughnut, or three-dimensional pie chart, you'll find that it can be hard to see the smallest segment. When you insert a chart into a worksheet, you can choose an exploded pie chart if you like.

To insert a chart, select the data and choose Insert, Chart. Use the mouse to draw the chart's area. Now follow the chart wizard and choose a pie-type chart. When the wizard offers different pie chart styles, choose one of the exploded views. If you choose the view that shows one slice separated from the rest of the pie chart, that slice will be the smallest of the group. This makes the data easier for viewers to see.

Recently, we showed you how to produce an exploded Excel chart by choosing one of the exploded views from the chart wizard's pie chart styles. There's another way to create an exploded pie chart, though: Choose which slice to separate after you've already produced the chart.

Let's suppose you have a completed pie chart and one of the slices is considerably smaller than the others. Click the chart to select it, then click the slice you'd like to move out. Use the mouse to drag the slice to a new location.

Don't worry about messing up your chart. The chart will let you drag the slice only in a direction that will maintain the chart's perspective. If you decide to put the slice back into the pie, click the slice and drag it toward the center of the chart as far as it will go.

To add text to an existing chart, first choose View, Toolbars, Drawing to get the Drawing toolbar on the screen. Now choose the Text Box tool and use the mouse to draw your text box. Enter the text and choose the type of text formatting you want from the toolbar.

During worksheet development, you might find that you wish you had put your data in rows rather than in columns, or in columns rather than in rows. The problem with this scenario is that you don't want to make all these changes manually. What if Excel could do it for you? It can.

Select the data range you want to transpose and then press Ctrl-C to copy it. Now click where you want the data range to appear and choose Edit, Paste Special. When the dialog box opens, select the Transpose check box and click OK.

When you enter commas into a cell's contents, make sure you get them in the right places. If you don't, you'll confuse Excel.

and Excel will assume you want it to be a text entry. If you enter a number with commas, and you don't see the number move over to the right side of the cell, check those commas.

You can do more with Excel's date formatting than you might think. Suppose you'd like a particular cell to show only the month and the day. Click the cell (to select it), choose Format, Cells, and select Custom. Double-click the entry that's in Type and press Delete to get rid of it. Now, under Type enter

and then click OK. Let's say the date you enter into the cell is 7/17/00. The cell will display July 17.

Now let's suppose you'd like to show the day of the week, the month, and the day (numerical). Choose Format, Cells and select Custom again. This time, type

and click OK. The cell will display Monday, July 17. If you want to add the year, go back to the Format Cells dialog box and type

Here's more Excel date information. When you enter an incorrect date into an Excel cell, Excel doesn't query or warn you. However, the incorrect entry will remain left-justified instead of kicking over to the right side of the cell. This is the most immediate way to spot an incorrect date entry.

You can also tell when the date is incorrect if you attempt to change the cell format to another date type. For example, enter

Now click in the cell and choose Format, Cells and select Date. Then choose a new date format and click OK. If the date is incorrect, the cell won't accept the new format. If the date is correct, the format will change.

In a recent tip, we mentioned that you could enter a date into an Excel cell and then drag that cell to enter sequential dates. You can do the same for sequential weeks (or any time period). For instance, if you'd like a list of Mondays, you can enter the date for the first Monday in one cell, then the date for the following Monday in an adjacent cell. Now highlight both cells and drag. Excel will create a sequence of Mondays (or whatever day you want--use Friday if it will make you feel better).

Highlight both cells, grab the little handle and drag down three cells. Excel will now display

Although special date formats aren't so obvious in the Excel shipped with Office 4.x, they are there. Type

in cell A1. Let's suppose you'd like this date to appear in its most complete form. Click on cell A1, choose Format, Cells, and click on Custom. You can choose from one of the formats listed, or you can enter your own format in the Code Entry box. Since we want to use a format that isn't there, delete the current information in the Code Entry box and enter

Note that you can add commas or other separators to your format. For example, if you enter in the Code Entry box

the hyphen will appear between the day of the week and the month. So the information displayed becomes

If you'd like to add the dates of the current week to your worksheet on a Monday morning, you can select a cell and type

Now select five cells beginning with the one you just entered today's date into and choose Edit, Fill, Series. Then select Date and Weekday. Click OK and the column will fill with the dates of the current week. But why go through all that when you can use a simple macro to do it for you? Let's look at the macro first, and then we'll talk about how to install and use it.

To add the macro to Excel, choose Window and select Unhide if it's available. If Window, Unhide is grayed out, choose Tools, Record Macro. When the dialog box opens, type in

for the name and then click on Options. Make sure Personal Macro Workbook and Visual Basic are selected and click OK. Now click the Stop button on the floating Recorder window. At this point, Window, Unhide will be available, and you should select it.

A dialog box will appear with Personal.xls selected (if something else is selected, select Personal.xls). Click OK and the blank module page will appear. Type in the macro exactly as shown in the listing. When you finish entering the macro, choose File, Save to save Personal.xls. Next, choose Window, Hide to rehide Personal.xls.

Now you can choose Tools, Macro and double-click Personal.XLS!AddDate to run the new macro.

AddDate selects cell A2 and inserts the current date (we assume you'll use this on Monday morning). Then it selects more cells to hold the remaining dates of the week. Next, it places the dates in the selected cells and then formats the date and the cell width. The macro then moves the cursor to the bottom of the row. This deselects the previously selected cells.

When you close Excel, you'll be asked about saving the personal workbook. Choose Yes.

If you'd like to know how many days are left until Labor Day, run Excel and type

(or that day's date) into a cell. Excel will return the number of days (47) between the two dates. How many days until New Year's Day? Enter

and you'll get 166 days. The trick here is to remember to use the quotation marks. If you don't use them, you'll get some very strange results.

Here's an Excel Dollar tip for you--you can have more than one Dollar format in an Excel worksheet. Try this:

Now click cell A1 and choose Format, Cells. When the Format dialog box opens, click the Number tab (if necessary). Next, click Currency and then click OK to accept the default and close the dialog box. The number will appear right-justified in the cell--just what you'd expect.

and press Enter. This time, the number will be in Dollar format, but it will be left-justified in the cell. The reason for this apparent anomaly is that the DOLLAR function converts the number to text format.

This doesn't mean that the number formatted by the DOLLAR function won't work in calculations. To confirm its proper operation, click cell A3, type

and press Enter. Cell A3 will display $8,468.44, which demonstrates that both numbers were included in the SUM.

Although most of us know that you can select Word text and then use the mouse to drag the selected text to a new location, many users don't know that you can do the same thing in Excel.

into cell A2. Select the two cells and move the mouse near the edge of the cells. When the cursor changes from a plus sign to a pointer, press and hold the mouse button. Use the mouse to drag the cells to a new location and then release the mouse button.

When you use the drag-and-drop technique in Excel, you must make sure to grab just the edge and do so only after the cursor turns into a pointer.

In the last tip, we told you how to check the spelling in all the sheets of a workbook (right-click on a tab, choose Select All Sheets, and choose Tools, Spelling). We also said that you need to ungroup the sheets after you finish the spelling check (right-click on the current tab and choose Ungroup Sheets). The reason for doing this is, when all sheets are selected, whatever you do to one sheet affects all the sheets. This function might prove dangerous if inadvertently left on. That's because deleting a cell on the first sheet will delete the same cell on all the sheets.

You can use this feature to your advantage when developing a new workbook, though. Suppose you'd like to put a company heading on all the sheets in your workbook. All you have to do is right-click on a tab and choose Select All Sheets. Now put the company heading on the first sheet, right-click on the current tab, and choose Ungroup Sheets. The heading will appear in the same place on all the sheets in the workbook.

There are times when you might need to use an Excel file in a program that doesn't read Excel files. If you find yourself in this situation, check to see what kinds of files the program will handle. Many programs will read delimited ASCII files. This means that each Excel column must be separated by a space, a tab, or a comma.

Let's give this a try. Open a new worksheet and enter text and numbers into three or four columns, perhaps something like this:

Choose File, Save As. Type in a name for your file and then click the arrow at the right side of the Save As Type list box. Scroll down to CSV (Comma Delimited)(*.csv) and click Save. You'll get a warning telling you that you're not saving the file as a standard Excel file. Choose Yes.

Now you can quit Excel if you like. When you do, you'll get another warning about saving a nonstandard file. Tell Excel that you want to save the file. Then open NotePad and open the new file, YourName.csv. The file will appear in the form shown here:

At this point, you can try reading the new file into that choosy program. If your program requires tab- or space-delimited files, just select the appropriate option when you choose File, Save As.

When you're working with an Excel worksheet, you frequently need to set a cell's format. You can click the cell, choose Format, Cells, and make your selection from the dialog box.

There's a quicker way to make those cell format changes, though. All you have to do is press a key combination, and you can apply the standard form of a number of formats. Let's say you want to use the Currency format. Just click the cell to select it and then press Ctrl-Shift-$ to apply the default Currency format. Here's a list of some other formats and their appropriate keystrokes.

When you enter a formula into an Excel worksheet, you usually use the relative reference form. The formula

is a relative reference formula. If you copy this formula and move it to a new location, the formula will change to reflect its location. However, there are times when you might need a formula that uses absolute referencing. One way to achieve this is to convert an existing formula to absolute. You don't even have to remember how to enter an absolute formula. All you must do is double-click the cell that contains the formula and then use the mouse to highlight the formula. Press F4, then Enter. Now you have a formula with absolute referencing.

Although Excel converts fractions to decimals in order to calculate them, it reports results as the nearest fraction.

You can often gain some accuracy by clicking on the sum (cell A5 in this case) and then choosing Format, Cells. When the dialog box opens, click on the Number tab, choose Up To Three Digits, and click OK. In this case, using a three-digit fraction results in the number 83/288.

If accuracy is the most important consideration, click on the formula cell (A5), choose Format, Cells and select Number. Now you can select the number of digits to use and click OK. We selected four digits, which resulted in 0.28819 in cell A5.

You can enter fractions into an Excel cell and use them in your calculations. The only problem is that you have to be careful about how you enter fractions. For example, if you enter

and press Enter, Excel will think you're entering a date and convert the number to the current date format. So, 5/6 becomes something like 6-May.

To get around this problem, make a habit of entering fractions in the form zero, space, fraction. It should look like this:

Now Excel will know that you want to enter a fraction and will deal with the number correctly.

We recently published a tip on how to get Excel worksheets to display formulas rather than data. We suggested you choose Tools, Options, click the View tab, and then select the check box labeled Formulas. Click OK, and the formulas display in place of the associated data.

A number of subscribers pointed out that there is a much easier way--all you have to do is press Ctrl-Tilde (~), and Excel will toggle between data display and formula display. Thanks to all who sent email on this topic.

When you add a label to an Excel chart by using a text box, you'll find that the text box doesn't move along with the chart. To get around this, open the Drawing toolbar. Now click the text box, then hold down Shift and click the chart. From the Drawing toolbar, click the Group button. This action groups the text box and the chart, and the text box will now go wherever the chart goes.

If someone inadvertently types a date into a cell formatted for numbers, there's no error generated--you just get some incorrect numbers. Actually, you get the number that represents the date, but not in date format.

Excel's date is really a number of days that have passed from January 1, 1900, to the entered date. So if you were to enter 03/03/00 into a number-formatted cell, you'd get 36588. That's the number of days between 1/1/1900 and 03/03/2000.

You probably know that the drag-and-drop action applies in Excel as well as in Word. But if you've tried it in Excel, you may have given up! The problem is, while drag and drop works in Excel, you need to practice it a bit to get good at it. Drag and drop is much touchier in Excel than it is in Word.

Let's say you have a group of three cells that you'd like to drag to a new location. You select the cells and then attempt to drag them. Instead of filling the new cells with the contents of the original cells, you just end up selecting more and more cells.

Here's the solution: Select the cells. Now move the mouse pointer toward the edge of the selected cells. If the pointer turns into crosshairs (or a plus sign), back off and try again. When the pointer (while still a pointer) is right over the edge of the selected cells, press the mouse button and drag to your new location. It'll work--it just takes a little practice.

If you press the End key to get to the end of an Excel row, you'll get a surprise instead. Pressing the End key simply turns on the End mode.

To check out the End mode, click the first cell in a row of data and press End. Now press the right arrow key, and Excel will navigate to the last cell in the row that contains data. If there's no data in the row, Excel will go to the last cell in the row.

If you press End and then press the down arrow, Excel will navigate to the last cell in the column that contains data. If there is no data, Excel will simply move to the last cell in the column.

If you're entering a number into an Excel cell and you see that you've made an error, all you have to do is press Esc. Pressing Esc erases the cell, and you can start over.

A reader sends this macro written to put headers and footers into an Excel worksheet. This macro will insert your choice of headers and footers into the Excel worksheet and then open Print Preview so you can check them.

To enter the macro, run Excel and choose Window, Unhide. This will open a dialog box from which you should choose Personal.xls and click OK. Now, type in the macro shown below exactly as it appears.

For the items shown as My Header, My Left Footer, etc., enter your own values. After you've entered the macro, choose File, Save and then choose Windows, Hide.

Now you need to assign the macro to a button. Choose View, Toolbars and click Customize in the Toolbars dialog box. In the Customize dialog box, choose Custom and then decide which button you want to assign to the new macro. Drag the button to the toolbar.

When you drag the button to the toolbar, Excel will ask what macro you want to assign. Select your new macro and click OK. When you get back to the Customize dialog box, click OK.

Word isn't the only Office program that can use headers and footers. Excel can use them, too. The process just isn't as obvious or as versatile as it is in Word.

Let's say you'd like to add a personalized header to an Excel printout. Choose File, Page Setup. When the Page Setup dialog box opens, click on the Header/Footer tab. If you want to set the font, choose either Custom Header or Custom Footer and click on the Fonts button (it's the one with the big A icon). Select the font and click OK.

Now you need to decide where you want the information to appear: Left, Center, or Right. Type the new message into the area of your choice and then click OK. When you get back to the Page Setup dialog box, click OK again.

Yes, you can add a background picture to an Excel 95 worksheet. Let's say you have a logo that you'd like to use as a background. Choose Format, Sheet, Background. When the Sheet Background dialog box opens, locate your picture file and select it. Click OK to insert the background and close the dialog box. Unless the picture is a BMP file, you'll get a dialog box that offers to convert the file. Click OK to continue. Excel will tile the logo to cover the entire worksheet.

There are a few possible problems that you need to know about. For example, if you decide to use a scanned photograph, you'll have to choose a rather light picture. If the picture is too dark, you'll have trouble seeing your data entries.

To remove the background, choose Format, Sheet, Background. When the Sheet Background dialog box opens, click None.

To add text to an existing chart, first choose View|Toolbars|Drawing to get the Drawing toolbar on the screen. Now choose the Text Box tool and use the mouse to draw your text box. Enter the text and choose the type of text formatting you want from the toolbar.

If you've developed a customer list in Excel that's beginning to get rather large and cumbersome to deal with, you may want to consider converting it to an Access list. To do this, click anywhere in the list and choose Data, Convert to Access. A wizard will open and guide you through the conversion. We can't describe the process in more detail because the choices you make in the wizard depend on your specific list. After the conversion is finished, you'll get a message informing you of the new file's name and location.

Word isn't the only Office program that can use headers and footers. You can use them in Excel, too. The process just isn't as obvious or as versatile as it is in Word.

Now you need to decide where you want the information to appear: Left, Center, or Right. Type the new message into the area of your choice and then click on OK. When you get back to the Page Setup dialog box, click on OK again.

If you'd like to insert the date into the formula bar, press Ctrl-; (semicolon). To insert the current time into the formula bar, use Ctrl-: (colon). Bear in mind that the colon is a shifted character, so you actually press Ctrl-Shift-;.

If you want to get to the last data cell in a worksheet, press Ctrl-End. There is only one problem with this method, but it's a small one: Pressing Ctrl-End will take you to the last cell you modified. Let's say your worksheet uses only cells A1 to F20. But while you were developing the worksheet, you entered a number into H25. Then you later deleted the number in H25 and confined your worksheet to the smaller area. If you press Ctrl-End, Excel will move to H25 rather than to F20.

If you want to enter a date and time into a single Excel cell simply type in the date, type a space, then type the time. Excel deals with 24- hour (or military) time, so if you enter 2:00, Excel will assume that you mean 2:00 a.m. To enter 2:00 p.m., type the time, then a space, then the letter p. Of course, you can also type 14:00 to accomplish the same thing. By the way, 12:00 is noon. If you want to enter midnight, you can enter 0:00, 24:00, or 12:00 a. Excel recognizes 24:00 to keep things mathematically straight, but it isn't traditionally used.

Yes, you can. It's easier if you follow a few conventions, though. If you don't already have headers in your worksheet, you need to add some. The example below shows a portion of a worksheet you can import into the Address Book.

You must now save the worksheet as a comma-delimited text file. To do this, choose File, Save As. When the Save As dialog box opens, click the arrow at the right side of the Save As Type list box and select CSV (Comma Delimited) from the list. Give your file a name and click Save. You will get a message stating that you are about to save a special file type. Click OK to continue. When you choose File, Exit, you'll get another dialog box about file types. This time click No to keep your original file format choice (CSV).

Now open Outlook Express and click Addresses to open your Address Book. In the Address Book, choose File, Import, Other Address Book. When the Address Book Import Tool opens, select Text File (Comma Separated Values) and click Import. Click Browse to locate your CSV file, then follow the wizard to import what you need.

Want to raise a number to a power? Excel gives you not one way to do this, but two. Let's say you want to raise 10 to the fifth power. You can type

Take your pick. The second method is the better one when you're writing Basic applications.

Do you ever need to rank your Excel data? Call on Excel's Rank function. Let's say you have a worksheet that contains sales data for your entire sales force, and you need to keep track of who your leading salesperson is so you can present that person with a fake Rolex watch. To test this function, enter some numbers in a column to represent totals for three or four salespeople. Let's say you enter numbers in A1 through A4. Now click a blank cell, type

If you link data in Word as an Excel worksheet, you won't see any gridlines. However, if you make changes to the linked worksheet in Excel, the gridlines will appear in Word. This happens because Excel creates a default printer (not screen) metafile, and Word therefore displays the sheet as it would print. If Excel is set to print gridlines, they will show in Word. To get around the problem, you can switch to Excel after you establish the link and retype a cell's contents. Word will then display it correctly.

Alternatively, you can set Excel to print the gridlines. To do this,choose File, Page Setup. Choose the Sheet tab and select Gridlines. Click OK.

If you want to turn off the gridlines in Excel, you choose Tools, Options, click the View tab, deselect the Gridlines check box, and click OK. To turn the gridlines back on, you repeat the process and select the Gridlines check box.

If turning gridlines on and off is something you need to do often, why not use a simple macro to do the job for you? Reader E.L. supplied a macro that toggles gridlines on and off. This macro is simple to use because it's a true toggle program. Run it the first time, and it turns off the gridlines. Run it again, and it turns them back on. Here's the macro:

To create the macro, choose Window, UnHide, select Personal.xls, and click OK. When Personal.xls opens, there may already be a macro in the window. If so, click the Insert Module button (it's the top-left button in the Visual Basic floating toolbar). Now type in the macro (or cut and paste it from this message). When you're finished, press Ctrl-S to save the new macro and then click the Insert Module button. Answer yes to any questions about saving your macro.

When you enter percentages in Excel, be sure to enter the numbers as decimals. Excel multiplies by 100 all entries in a cell formatted as Percentage. For example, 20 is 20%. To see how this works, enter

into cell A1. Now select the cell and choose Format, Cells. Next, click the Numbers tab, select Percentage, and click OK. The number in cell A1 will become 20%.

We recently ran a tip describing 1900 as a leap year. Quite a few of you noticed that it was not. Congratulations! This fact has escaped Microsoft through at least three versions of Excel.

Leap years occur in every year that is exactly divisible by four, except when the year is also exactly divisible by 100 (an even century year). These years are leap years only if they are exactly divisible by 400. Therefore, 2000 is a leap year, since 2000 divided by 4 equals 500 and 2000 divided by 400 equals 5. However, since 1900 divided by 400 equals 4.75, it wasn't a leap year. Treating 1900 as a leap year is definitely a bug in the versions of Excel shipped with Office 4.x, Office 95, and Office 97.

There may be times when you don't want a number to display as negative, even if the calculation produces a negative. In Excel, the ABS (absolute value) function takes any number and makes it positive in value. For instance, 7 stays 7, and -7 becomes 7.

Let's suppose that you want to use Excel to calculate the number of days between two dates. You can enter into cell A1

Now, if you enter the current date into cell A2, you can calculate the number of days since January 1. So, you type into cell A3

which will produce a negative number. So, let's take the absolute value. Type into cell A3

Note: Yes, we know that you can subtract A1 from A2 and get a positive number. It's only an example.

Now that a better way of writing numbers has been around for a thousand years or so, wouldn't you think people would stop using Roman numerals? They haven't, though. You still run across them in copyright dates and other places where you don't really expect them.

If you're like most of us, you don't have a great memory for converting numbers to Roman numerals. Everyone can do I to X or so, but suppose you'd like to be cool and use Roman numerals just like the movie moguls do? All you have to do is run Excel, enter into a cell

and then press Enter. Excel will present you with the date in classical Roman numeral form. If MyDate is 1998, Excel will present MCMXCVIII. The 0 after the date tells Excel that you want to use the classical form. If you enter

where MyDate is 1998, Excel will display MLMVLIII. This is a more concise form of Roman numeral. So it's up to you--do you want the original style or the new, improved version?

Excel offers two ways to calculate the power of a number. Let's look at both.Click in cell A1 to select it. Enter

and press Enter. Excel will perform the calculation and report that 22 to the third power is 10648.

then press Enter. Once again, Excel will report that 22 raised to the third power is 10648.

If you need to print a blank sheet between two or more worksheets that contain data, you'll find that Excel ordinarily declines to print a data-free worksheet. However, Excel will print a blank page if you select a group of empty cells and then choose File, Print Area, Set Print Area.

If you want to print a blank page showing the Excel gridlines that you can use as a form, choose File, Page Setup and then click on the Sheet tab. Select the Gridlines check box and click OK.

Sometimes it's not easy to guess how many pages an Excel worksheet will require when you print it. To see how the worksheet is going to look, choose File, Print Preview. If the sheet will require more than one page, Print Preview will tell you.

If your worksheet isn't much longer than a single page, you can choose File, Page Setup and click on the Page tab. Select the Fit To check box and tell Excel to make the worksheet fit on one page. Click on OK to close the dialog box and record your changes. You can see how it will look by checking Print Preview again.

Note: Using the Fit To option to reduce your worksheet is a valid selection only if the worksheet is a little more than one page. If it is larger, then the reduction may make the printout difficult to read.

If you want, you can expand a small worksheet's printout to make it more legible or just more impressive. Choose File, Page Setup and click on the Page tab. Use the Adjust To spin box to set the amount of enlargement you'd like to try. After you make a selection, click on Print Preview to make sure the entire worksheet will fit on the page. Click on Close when you finish with Print Preview. When you're happy with your settings, click on OK.

You often need to enlarge the row sizes in Excel. This is especially true when you want to put titles into a worksheet. There are two ways to handle row size--to make an empty row larger, select the row and choose Format, Row, Height. Type in the new height and click OK.

Want to quickly sum a row of numbers in Excel? With all the numbers entered, click on the cell where you want the sum to appear. Now click the sum button on the toolbar (it looks like a capital M on its side). Use the mouse to select the numbers you want to sum, then press Enter. The sum will appear--and you didn't even have to type in a formula.

If you want to set the format of a cell or group of cells, all you have to do is select the cells and choose Format, Cells and then select your format from the dialog box. However, you can set some cell formats even more quickly: Simply select the cells and then choose the format by clicking the appropriate button on the toolbar.

For example, if you want to set an entire column to the standard Accounting format, select the column by clicking on the letter ID of the column (A, B, and so on). Next, click the Dollar Sign button ($) in the toolbar. Or, to set a cell or cells to the Percent format, select them and click the Percent Sign button (%).

By default, when you use Excel's Add-in AutoSave, the program will prompt you when it's time to save the document. If Excel is minimized when the time for a save comes, its taskbar icon will blink. So, if you see a blinking icon, don't worry--it's just Excel asking if you want to save the document. You can put an end to this prompt if you like. Choose Tools, AutoSave. When the AutoSave dialog box opens, deselect the Prompt Before Saving check box and click OK. No more blinking icons for you.

Some users have trouble working with the text box feature in Excel. To use a text box, you must first have access to the Drawing toolbar. Choose View, Toolbars and select Drawing. You can let the toolbar float in the window, or you can drag it to the top or the bottom of the screen to anchor it.

Next, click on the edge of the new text box to select it, then right-click on it and choose Format Object. When the Format Object dialog box opens, click Font and choose the font and font size you want to place in the box (choose the color, too, if you want). Click any of the other tabs to make your text box look just the way you want. Make sure you click Alignment if you'd like to center the text. To center the text both horizontally and vertically, select the appropriate radio buttons and click OK.

Now you can add your text. When you save the file, your new text box will save along with it; when you open the worksheet again, the text box will still be there.

If you want to total the numbers in cells A1 through A5 of an Excel worksheet, you may want to display the sum in cell A7. Select cell A7 and enter

Then click on cell A1, hold down the Shift key, and click cell A5. Press Enter, and Excel will make the cell entries for you and display the sum.

There are two ways to view and edit Excel formulas. If you select a cell that contains a formula, the formula will appear in the formula box right above the worksheet. You can click in the formula there to edit it. You can also view and edit the formula right in the cell. Double-click the cell and the formula will appear, ready to be edited.

The ability to add comments to an Excel worksheet is especially useful when several people are reviewing it. For example, suppose you regularly create worksheets that you send to Wendy. This time, the total really doesn't look quite right to you, so you'd like Wendy to take a good look at the numbers. Click your Total cell and choose Insert, Comment. When the Comment dialog box opens, type in your message to Wendy and save the worksheet. You'll notice that a small red triangle appears in the upper-right corner of the cell that contains the comment.

When Wendy opens the worksheet, she will see the comment indicator. She can read the comment by simply moving the mouse cursor over the marked cell. To enter a response to your comment, she can right-click the cell and select Edit Comment.

When Wendy passes the file along to Hugo, he'll see the marker and move the cursor over the cell. Now he can read both comments and add one of his own.

In the last tip, we showed you how to insert a new worksheet between two existing sheets. In that tip, we mentioned that the Excel default is 16 sheets to a workbook. If a given workbook needs only one or two sheets, why keep all those other sheets around?

Let's say you have a workbook that uses only one sheet. Go to the bottom of the worksheet and click Sheet 2. Now hold down the Shift key and use the Move To End button (it looks like a right arrow running into a vertical line) to move to the end of the workbook. Click Sheet 16. Now choose Edit, Delete Sheets. You'll get a dialog box warning you that you're about to permanently delete the worksheets. Click OK.

If you should need another sheet, you can choose Insert, Worksheet. The new sheet will be placed before Sheet 1 and will be named Sheet 17.

When you're dealing with a large worksheet, you may have trouble finding all the formulas. All you see in the worksheet are the results. You can show the formulas in a worksheet by holding down Ctrl and pressing the Tilde key (~). This is the key to the left of the 1 key.

When you press Ctrl-Tilde, Excel will display all the formulas in the worksheet. To get back to normal view, press Ctrl-Tilde again.

Suppose you're working away on a multiple-sheet workbook. You suddenly realize that you really should have a sheet between Sheet 1 and Sheet 2. All is not lost. Just click the Sheet 2 name tab to select it and then choose Insert, Worksheet. This will insert a new sheet before Sheet 2. Since Excel's default workbook contains 16 sheets, the new sheet will be named Sheet 17.

In the past, we've said that you can name those Excel sheets anything that suits you. Well, you can--but there's a caveat or two. Let's assume that you've named one of your sheets something along the lines of "My 1997 Sales Data." Will this work? You bet. Just be careful when you make a reference to the newly named sheet.

Suppose you have data in cell A1 on the worksheet named "My 1997 Sales Data." You'd like to place this data into cell A1 of Sheet1. You need to enclose the new sheet name in single quotes. For example,

There is no problem with assigning names to any combination of cells. Try this: Open a blank worksheet and add some numbers to a few cells. Now, select the cells and drag to the right. Next, select all these cells and drag them downward. This will fill a sizable area with numbers.

Now, select a few rows across the entire group of filled cells and choose Insert, Name, Define. When the Define Name dialog box opens, type a name and click Add. Now, click OK to close the dialog box and save your new name assignment.

Next, select some columns in the same set of data. Make sure your selection includes some of the previously named range. Choose Insert, Name, Define and type a new name. Click Add, and then click OK to close the dialog box and save your new name.

Let's say that you named the first range One and the second range Two. Go to an empty cell and enter

If you want to move to a new sheet in Excel, press Ctrl-Page Down. To move to a previous sheet, press Ctrl-Page Up. To get to the very last data cell in your worksheet, press Ctrl-End. Ctrl-Home will take you to cell A1.

There are two ways to scroll through an Excel worksheet without changing the cell selection. One way is to use the scroll bars. You can scroll anywhere you want by clicking on the vertical or horizontal scroll buttons. Another, easier way to scroll without changing the cell selection is to press the Scroll Lock key and then use the arrow keys to scroll through the worksheet. You suspected that Scroll Lock key was good for something, didn't you?

When you run a spelling check in Excel, you check only the current page. If you'd like to check all the worksheets in a workbook, right-click on any one of the tabs and choose Select All Sheets. Now you can choose Tools, Spelling to check all the worksheets. After you finish checking your spelling, right-click on the current tab and choose Ungroup Sheets.

Let's suppose you're developing a very large workbook with numerous worksheets. You could make the workbook look better by placing the most important totals on the first sheet and leaving all the detailed stuff on the other sheets. This is no problem for Excel, since it lets you refer to cells in any worksheet.

Suppose you have a long detailed list of numbers on sheet 2. In cell B35, you have the formula to sum all the numbers in B1 through B33. On sheet 1, you can put something like 2000 Total in cell A2. Then you can go to cell B2 and enter

to display the sum from sheet 2. Alternatively, you could leave out the sum in sheet 2 and simply enter in sheet 1, cell B2

Layout is important when you're designing a complex Excel worksheet. But it's hard to see how the layout looks when you can view only a portion of the worksheet at once. To see how your entire worksheet looks, try this:

Choose View, Full Screen. Now press Ctrl-End to move to the last cell used by your worksheet. Press Ctrl-Shift-Home to select the worksheet from the last cell to cell A1. Choose View, Zoom and select Fit Selection. Click OK, and there's the entire worksheet. You won't be able to read anything, but you can see how the layout looks.

You can edit an Excel cell by selecting the cell and entering new data. You can also select the cell and edit the entry one character at a time in the Formula bar. This is handy when you only need to make a small change in a long cell entry.

There are times when you can make good use of Excel's IF function in your worksheets. Let's say you have a sales sheet that you use to determine who might qualify for a bonus. You have a list of names in the first column (say column B) and the monthly sales amounts for each one in column C.

So, in our example, you can use the IF function in column D to indicate qualification. Let's assume that the minimum for bonus qualification is $10,000. If your names are in B2, B3, B4, and B5, and your sales totals are in C2, C3, C4, and C5, type into cell D2 the following formula:

You should get your result for cell C2 now. Select cell D2 and then grab the little handle and drag down to D5. This copies the formula to the remaining cells.

In the last tip, we showed you how you can use Excel's IF function to determine the application of a bonus. This time, let's look at how to use SUMIF to directly apply the bonus.

Let's say that you have a column of names, a column of total sales, and a column of standard commissions. If the sales for the month exceed $10,000, you want to add a one-percent bonus to the standard commission. For this example, the names are in B2 to B5, sales are in C2 to C5, commissions are in D2 to D5, and we'll put the bonus values in E2 to E5. Here's a formula for cell E2 that will add the bonus to the standard commission provided the minimum sales condition is met:

As usual, you can select E2 and drag it through E5 to copy the formula to the remaining cells.

If you ever import text from another program into Excel, you may need to use the Trim function. Trim gets rid of all the extraneous spaces in a text string.

into an Excel worksheet. Chances are, you don't want any extra spaces in the string. Let's say the imported text is in cell A1. Go to cell F1 and enter

A reader asks if we could publish a table that shows the keystrokes for the accented characters used in many European languages. For example, what keys do you press if you need to type an umlaut U?

It's difficult for us to publish a complete table via e-mail because we can't show the characters. However, here is a list of the more common ones:

In a recent tip, we said that you could use the Extend command to help you select text more efficiently. To use Extend, double-click the EXT button at the bottom of the Word window--it's grayed out, but it will work. With Extend active, you can select text using the arrow keys--hands off (you don't have to hold down any keys). When you're finished with Extend, turn it off by pressing Esc.

Subscriber J.A.S. points out that you can extend Extend even further. If you double-click EXT and then open Find (Ctrl-F) and type in a word you want to search for, EXT will select all the text between the current cursor position and the word located by Find.

Many people ask why a sentence's font doesn't change when they choose Format, Font and make a new selection. When you change the font, the change applies to all text that is typed after the change. It doesn't apply to text already typed--not even in a currently unsaved sentence.

If you want to change the font of existing text, you need to select the text you want to change and then make your font selection. To select all the text in the document, use Ctrl-A.

If you need to change the font or size of existing text, select the text and right-click the selection. Choose Font and make the changes when the Font dialog box opens. After you make the changes, click OK to close the dialog box and record your selection."

If you'd like to know how a font, or several fonts, will look when printed, you can choose the font in Word, type in a sentence or two, and then print it. But since you're using Windows 95, there's an even quicker way to examine a font.

Run Windows Explorer and locate the Windows folder. Click on the little plus sign to the left of the folder and then locate the Fonts folder. All the fonts will appear in the right pane of the Explorer window. Locate the font you're interested in and double-click on it. This opens a dialog box showing the font in various sizes. Click on Print to see how all the sizes look on paper.

This technique saves time because you can print out several fonts very quickly. It requires one page per font.

When it comes to saving Word documents, you can choose between fast and safe. If you want to be safe, choose Tools, Options. Click the Save tab and then select the check box labeled Always Create Backup Copy. Click OK to save your choice and close the Options dialog box. If you'd like to use fast saves, choose Tools, Options, click Save and select the Allow Fast Saves check box. You'll notice that this automatically turns off Always Create Backup Copy. You have to choose between the two. After you make up your mind, click OK to get back to work.

To try this, choose File, Print. When the Print dialog box opens, deselect Collate and click OK. You could time the printing of a particular document both with and without Collate selected to see if you do save some printing time. We found that we saved about 10 percent on a three-page document.

When you're working with lists in a Word document, you can use the right-mouse button to manipulate the list. To try this, create a short list. Now, select the list and right-click it. A handy pop-up menu will open than contains the following helpful commands:

Note that Promote and Demote are grayed out unless you're using a multilevel list.

You know that you can add text to AutoText and then insert that text into your document at a later time. For example, you could type

and select it. Then choose Edit, AutoText. When the AutoText dialog box opens, type in a name for the entry (perhaps JD would do in this case) and click Add. From this point on (until you change it), you can type JD and press F3 to enter the full name.

A reader asks us to point out that it's sometimes handy to embed an AutoText name in a field code. To see how this works, press Ctrl-F9. Now, inside the field marks, type

If you're using Microsoft Office 95, you can assign long file names to your documents. All long file names have a corresponding short file name, one that you can use in MS-DOS and in applications that can't use long file names. Unfortunately, the short versions of some file names can be difficult to interpret.

Let's say you're working on two files, one named Inventory for June 1999, and the other named Inventory for July 1999. The short file names are Invent~1 and Invent~2. If you'd like to see what the short file names will be before you copy the files to a floppy to give to someone else, name and save each file, choose File, Properties, and click the General tab. To see the short file name, look for MS-DOS Name.

On the Windows NT platform, if you save an Excel file with a name that contains more than one period, the file may not appear in the Open dialog box when you want to call it back up. What happens is that Excel treats the portion of the file after the first period as the file extension. To display such files, go to the Files Of Type list box and select All Files. The best way to avoid this problem, of course, is to avoid using more than one period in a file's name.

Sometimes, you may choose File, Open in a Microsoft Office document and just happen to notice a file that needs deleting. You don't have to wait until you finish what you're doing and then use Windows Explorer to delete the file. All you have to do is select the file in the Open window and then press Delete. This will delete the file, and you can go ahead with your work.

Sometimes you may need to save a file in text format. The problem is, you'll lose all the formatting. One way to preserve at least part of the formatting is to choose File, Save As and then click on the arrow to the right of the Save As Type list box. When the list expands, select MS-DOS Text With Layout (*.ASC). In Office 4.x, select MS-DOS Text With Layout (No *.ASC). The text file will be saved with the .ASC extension and will at least maintain the line formatting.

"I often wish I could save a PowerPoint slide (or just a ClipArt on the slide) as a separate file. Is there a way to do this without buying more software?" asks a reader.

You bet there is. First copy the picture to the Clipboard and then paste it into Paint. Once it's in Paint, you save it as a BMP file. If you want to save an entire slide as a BMP file, press Ctrl-A to select all the objects on the slide. Next, press Ctrl-C to copy the objects to the Clipboard. Now, click Start, Programs, Accessories, Paint. When Paint opens, press Ctrl-V to paste in the Clipboard contents. All you have to do now is choose File, Save As and give the new file a name.

If you want to save a single ClipArt picture to a file, click the picture to select it, press Ctrl-C to copy it to the Clipboard then follow the procedure described above.

Yes, you can change the default. The only problem is that you can change it only for the current session. When you close PowerPoint and start it again, the green fill comes back.

To change the default for the current session, open a blank slide and click one of the drawing tools--oval will do for this purpose. Use the mouse to draw your oval and then choose Format, Colors And Lines. When the Colors And Lines dialog box opens, click the arrow at the right side of the Fill list box and choose No Fill from the list. Next, select the check box labeled Default For New Objects and click OK to apply your settings and dismiss the dialog box.

All objects you draw for the rest of this session will appear without fill. But, when you quit PowerPoint and then run it again, it will revert to the green default fill.

Yes, there is. In fact, you can make up your own Fill list for just about anything. Let's say you have a list of names that you commonly use in your worksheets, "Jim, Sue, Chris, Mike, Sharon, Megan, Casey," for example. To add this list to Excel's Fill list, choose Tools, Options. When the Options dialog box opens, click the Custom Lists tab. Then click in the List Entries box and type in the names as shown above. After you type in all the names, click OK to close the dialog box and save your changes.

into cell A1 and press Enter. Now, grab cell A1 by the handle and drag it to the right. The remaining names in your new list will appear in the cells to the right of A1.

in cell A1 and press Enter. Now, grab cell A1 by the handle and drag downward. The names from your new Fill list will appear in the cells below A1.

To check this out, open a Word document--one with a fair amount of text. Now, press Ctrl-F to open Find. Enter a common word--one that you're sure appears a number of times in your document--and click Find Next to find the first occurrence. Next, click Close to dismiss the Find dialog box and then press Shift-F4. Word will locate the next occurrence of your word or phrase without opening the Find dialog box.

A reader, reminds us that you don't have to keep opening Find (Ctrl-F) to repeat a search. All you have to do is press Shift-F4 and Word will perform a search for the word (or phrase) most recently entered in Find.

To check this out, press Ctrl-F to open Find. Enter a common word or phrase (the, and, lottery winner, etc.). Click Find Next to find the first occurrence and then click Close. Now press Shift-F4 and Word will locate the next occurrence of your word or phrase.

The following Word 95 tip comes from John Palmer, a Microsoft employee who has been providing Word for Windows support for 3-1/2 years. Those of you who don't have Word 95 might still want to check out it. Many of his tips apply to Word 6.0 as well as Word 95.

Do you ever get messages about corrupted documents from the Find Fast program? If so, here's why:

The Office Setup program installs Find Fast in the Windows 95 Startup folder so that all Office documents are automatically indexed at system startup and at two-hour intervals. Find Fast must have access to the documents' contents to successfully complete the indexing process. When Find Fast attempts to open and index a damaged document, it may stop and display the message:

To restart Find Fast, remove the file, then double-click the Find Fast icon in the Windows Control Panel. Remove or repair the damaged document and then restart Find Fast.

We recently ran a tip suggesting that you hide the Office Toolbar to keep it out of the way when you're not using it. One reader. (and several others) say they can't find a way to hide the toolbar.

To use Auto Hide, you must right-click the Office Toolbar on a blank spot. The Auto Hide command will appear in the menu. Auto Hide is a toggle command--when checked, it's active and when unchecked, it's inactive.

If you don't get a template selection when you choose File|New, choose Tools|Options. When the dialog box opens, click the File Locations tab. Next, select User Templates, then click Modify. Now double-click the directory that contains your templates (...\Winword\Templates). Click OK, then Close.

If you need to correct your ClipArt setting while you're at it, open the Tools|Options dialog box again and this time select ClipArt pictures, then click Modify. Double-click \Winword\ClipArt. Click OK, then Close.

We've discussed leftover temp files before, but several subscribers have recently asked about them. Here's the story: Usually, you'll get leftover temp files only when your system has shut down abnormally. Office programs keep temp files while a file is open, then delete them when you close the file. If the system shuts down (or locks up) while the Office program is still running, the files aren't deleted.

Before you delete temp files, check your documents to make sure they're all intact. Or, since you probably have many documents and no time to check them all, copy the temp files to a floppy to keep around for a while. After you make the copy, go ahead and delete the original temp files.

If your system shut down abnormally, you may find that you have a lot of temp files that won't go away. Since some of these file might possibly cause problems somewhere down the line, why not get rid of them?

Before you delete temp files, check your documents and make sure they are all intact. Since you may have many documents and no time to check them all, you may want to copy the temp files to a floppy to keep for a while. After you make the copy, go ahead and delete the temp files.

The first time you run Help in a Microsoft Office 95 program, you may notice that it takes a long time for the Help application to find information. That's because the first time you run Help, the program has to set up the Help file. If you try to find a topic before the setup finishes, then you slow things down even more. Don't worry, this only happens the first time (and it isn't a bug).

If you use a laser printer that has a manual feed source, choose File, Page Setup. When the Page Setup dialog box opens, click the Paper Source tab. You'll notice that you can choose the feed source for the first page and the other pages separately. This is to make it easier for you to use that preprinted letterhead paper. If you select Manual Feed for the first page and the default tray for the other pages, Word will pause for you to insert the preprinted paper to print the first page. After that page finishes, the document will continue to print on the standard paper loaded in the printer's default bin.

If your printer doesn't have any provisions for manual feed, you'll just have to insert the preprinted paper into the feed bin as needed.

Office's floating toolbars can be handy at times. At other times, you'd rather have them docked. To quickly dock a floating toolbar, double-click its title bar. To turn a docked toolbar into a floater, grab it with the mouse (someplace between buttons) and drag it into the document window. To change a floating toolbar's position, grab it with the mouse and release the mouse button when you reach the desired position.

When you develop a complex worksheet, some people may have problems following all the numbers in a row. One way to make this easier is to set every other row of numbers to a color. The result is something like that printout paper that uses alternating green and white rows.

To do this, click one of the rows at the far left of the window (in the numbers). Now, press and hold down the Ctrl key while you select the remaining rows that you want to color.

After you select all the rows you want to work with, choose Format, Cells and then click the Patterns tab in the Format Cells dialog box. Under Color, click the color of your choice to select it (we recommend a light yellow or green). Click OK to record your changes and close the dialog box. With every other row in the new color, those numbers will be much easier to follow.

Suppose you're working in Word (or one of the other Office programs), and you need something from your Data folder. To get to the folder, you might need to minimize Word and several other programs. However, you can add that Data folder to the Microsoft Office Shortcut Bar (Microsoft Office Manager, or MOM, in 4.x) and have it always available when you're using Word (or whenever the Shortcut Bar is active).

To add a folder, right-click the Shortcut Bar and choose Customize. When the Customize dialog box opens, click Toolbars and then click Add Toolbar. Now click Browse and locate your Data folder (or whatever folder you want to use). Select the folder and click Add. Back in the Customize dialog box, click OK. (To get back to your standard Office toolbar, right-click the Shortcut Bar and select Office.)

Previous versions of Office were automatically installed in a folder that was a direct subfolder of the root directory. Office 97 installs into Drive:\Program Files\Microsoft Office, where Drive: is the drive on which you installed Windows. Although you can select a different folder as the destination for the installation, some components will still be installed in the C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office folder.

Many people ask why a sentence's font doesn't change when they choose Format|Font and make a new selection. When you change the font, the change applies to all text typed in after the change. It doesn't apply to text already typed--not even in a currently unsaved sentence.

If you want to change the font of existing text, you need to select the text you want to change and then make your font selection. (To select all the text in the document, press Ctrl-A.)

If you get a Word document from someone and find that the font looks terrible on your computer, you may not have the font that the document's creator used. When this happens, Word will substitute a font that you do have for the one you don't. The problem is that the substitute font sometimes doesn't look very good in the document.

If this is a problem that you encounter often, it may be worth purchasing the needed font. But an alternative approach is to reformat the document using a font that you have--ideally one that looks better than the one Word selected.

If you get a Word document from someone else and find that the font looks terrible on your computer, you may not have the font that the originator of the document used. When this happens, Word will substitute a font that you do have for the one you don't. The problem is that the selected font sometimes doesn't look very good in the document.

If this is a problem that you encounter often, it may be worth purchasing the needed font. An alternative approach is to reformat the document using a font that you do have--one that hopefully looks better than the one Word selected.

We have received several questions very similar to this one over the past year or so. Windows 95/98 and Word use TrueType fonts. When these fonts are sent to a standard laser printer, they will print essentially the way you see them on the screen. However, if your network printer is set to print only one of its installed fonts, there is probably nothing you can do about it at your end.

The reason the IS employees suggested that you use Times New Roman is that it is probably closest to the installed printer font. If you use another font, you may get some layout surprises when you print documents. Some companies use fixed fonts because they want all their documents to appear only in that font. The problem with doing this is that you must use the suggested font or what you see on the screen may vary significantly from the printer output.

If you'd like to print only the data from a Word form, you can instruct Word to do this for you. Choose Tools, Options. When the Options dialog box opens, click the Print tab. Select the check box labeled Print Data Only for Forms and click OK.

The selection remains in effect only for the current document. When you open a new document, the selection will return to the default.

Here's a cool trick that many Word for Windows users overlook--format pasting. If there's a format in your document that you'd like to apply in some other part of the document, don't bother with a lot of fancy manipulations. All you have to do is click on a line that contains the format you want to use and then click the Format Painter button (it looks like a paint brush) in the toolbar. Clicking the Format Painter button will change the icon to a brush. Move to the text to which you want to apply the format and use the mouse to 'paint' over the text. That's all you have to do. Word will reformat your text.

In Word 95, you can change formatting quickly by right-clicking the paragraph mark of the paragraph you want to change. This opens a menu that offers Font, Paragraph, Bullets and Numbering, and Paste. If you choose, for example, the Font command, Word opens the Font dialog box allowing you to change the font for that paragraph. Of course, you can also choose Paragraph to open the Paragraph dialog box, or Bullets and Numbering to turn on that feature. If you have something on the Clipboard that you want to paste at that paragraph mark, choose Paste.

You can make changes to a document's formatting using Replace. Suppose you'd like to underline all occurrences of the word "software." Open the Replace dialog box (Ctrl-H) and enter "software" in the Find What text box. Click Replace With but leave it blank (since we don't want to change the word itself), and click Format. When the menu appears, choose Font, which opens the Replace Font dialog box. Don't select a font here. Remember, we only want to add underlining, not change the font. In the list box labeled Underline, click on the arrow at the right side of the list box, then click OK. This takes you back to the Replace dialog box. At this point, you've told Replace to look for all occurrences of "software" with no underlining and told it not to replace the word, just underline it. You can now click on the either Find Next or Replace All to implement this change.

When you're working with an Excel worksheet, you frequently need to set a cell's format. You can click the cell, choose Format, Cells and make your selection from the dialog box.

There's a quicker way to make those cell format changes, though. All you have to do is press a key combination, and you can apply the standard form of a number of formats. Let's say you want to use the Currency format. Just click the cell to select it and then press Ctrl-Shift-$ to apply the default Currency format. Here is a list of some other formats and their appropriate keystrokes.

Here are some formatting keys that you'll find handy to use in Word, not to mention other Microsoft Office programs.

To apply the formats to existing text, select the text and the use the appropriate keystroke. To remove the formatting, repeat the procedure.

When you copy text from a Word 6 document and paste it into a document from another application, the pasted text may lose its formatting. This happens when you paste Word text into a program that doesn't support OLE 2.0. Only OLE 2.0-compatible programs can read the ClipBoard's formatting information.

We've often discussed how to use the Format Painter in Word. We've even touched on how to use it in Excel. But, PowerPoint always gets left out and a reader wants to know why. We apologize for ignoring PowerPoint's Format Painter. Here's how to use it:

Let's say you have a slide show that uses a number of text bullets. On slide 1, you run across a font that you want to use for all the text in the show. Using Format Painter, you can change the font on every slide quite easily.

Click the font that you like so well, then double-click Format Painter in the toolbar (the icon resembles a paintbrush). Now, move to the next slide and click in a text box--your new format should now be applied to the text. If this doesn't get all the text, swipe the Format Painter cursor over the text to convert it. Move to the next slide and repeat the process. Repeat for all the slides in the show. When you're finished converting all the fonts, press Esc to turn off Format Painter.

Here are some formatting keys that you'll find handy to use in Word, not to mention other Microsoft Office programs.

To apply these formats to existing text, select the text and then use the appropriate keystroke. To remove the formatting, repeat the procedure, and it toggles right off.

Do you sometimes need to remove a formula from a cell without losing the value that appears in that cell? Just select the cell, then choose Edit|Copy. Now choose Edit|Paste Special. In the dialog box that appears, select the radio button labeled Values, then click OK.

"Is there a problem with entering fractions into Excel? If I enter 1/2 into a cell, I get 2-Jan instead of 0.5."

When you enter a fraction in a form that Excel understands, you won't have a problem. For example, 1 5/8 or 2 3/16 won't cause any trouble at all. However, if you enter a single fraction that happens to match a date format, you'll get a date entry rather than a fraction as you have noticed.

To correct this situation, just enter a zero before your fraction. So, to enter 1/2, you'd type

To use fractions in an Excel worksheet, click the cell that you want to enter a fractional number into and type the fraction, for example:

Press the down arrow and click the cell to select it. You'll see in the formula bar that the decimal value is 3.875.

If you want Excel to convert a column of decimal entries to fractions, select the column and then choose Format, Cells. When the dialog box opens, click the Number tab. Click Fraction to select it and then choose the type of fraction you want (one digit, two digits, etc.). After you make your selection, click OK to close the dialog box and save your changes.

When you grab a frame with the mouse to resize it, Word 6 resizes the picture as well as the frame. It seems like you can't resize the frame alone just by stretching it out with the mouse. There is a way to resize it, though. Click the picture and choose Format|Frame. Now adjust the frame size settings and click OK.

When you insert a WordArt object into a Word document, you don't automatically get a frame. So your text won't do the old wraparound trick until you insert a frame. Just right-click the WordArt and choose Frame Picture. Now right-click the framed WordArt and choose Format Frame. Make your wrapping choices and click OK.

Although Word 6 and Word 7 won't let you create a circular frame, you can place text so it will fit a circular picture. Try this:

From the Drawing toolbar, click on the Oval button and draw a circle around the framed picture. (This is to provide you with a guide; you can make it disappear later.)

Using the circle as a guide, place spaces in the text to make it fit the circle as closely as possible. Once all your text is in place, right-click on the circle and choose Format Drawing Object. Click on the Lines tab, select the None radio button, and click on OK. This will make the circle invisible without making any other changes.

Word offers two ways to deal with text in a box: You can frame text, or you can add text to a text box. First, let's look at framed text.

To add a frame to your document, choose Insert, Frame. Use the mouse to draw a frame. Now you can click in the frame and add text. Use the mouse to drag the frame to the location of your choice. To set up the frame, right-click it and choose Format Frame. In this dialog box, you can choose how you want text to wrap around the frame, along with how far the text should be from the frame and other parameters. After you make all your selections, click OK.

Next, let's look at the text box. To add a text box, click the Text Box button in the Drawing toolbar. If the Drawing toolbar doesn't appear in your Word window, choose View, Toolbars, select Drawing, and click OK.

After you've drawn the text box, click it and then enter the text. If you use the mouse to move the text box over some existing text, you'll see that text doesn't wrap around it. You can place the text box over text and other objects in your document.

In conclusion, use the frame when you want text to wrap, and use Text Box when you don't.

Want to put a frame around an imported picture? Right-click the picture and then choose Frame Picture from the resulting menu. Couldn't be easier.

Here's an Excel Dollar tip for you--you can have more than one Dollar format in an Excel worksheet. Try this:

Now click cell A1 and choose Format, Cells. When the Format dialog box opens, click the Number tab (if necessary). Now click Currency and then click OK to accept the default and close the dialog box. The number will appear right-justified in the cell--just what you'd expect.

and press Enter. This time, the number will be in Dollar format, but it will be left-justified in the cell. The reason for this apparent anomaly is that the DOLLAR Function converts the number to text format.

This doesn't mean that the number formatted by the DOLLAR function won't work in calculations. To confirm its proper operation, click cell A3 and type

and press Enter. Cell A3 will display $8,468.44, which demonstrates that both numbers were included in the SUM.

So. You've installed Office 97 and you already had Microsoft Exchange 4.x on your computer. You've decided to remove Exchange 4.x and now when you try to run Outlook 97 you get the message

What you need to do is reinstall Outlook 97. To do this, click Start|Settings|Control Panel. In the Control Panel, double-click Add/Remove Programs. When you get to the list of installed applications click Microsoft Office 97, Professional Edition or Microsoft Outlook 97-whichever is available. Now click Add/Remove. In the Setup dialog box, click Reinstall. When prompted to do so, restart Windows.

When you add a label to an Excel chart using a text box, you'll find that the text box doesn't move along with the chart. To get around this, open the Drawing toolbar again. Now click the text box, then hold down Shift and click the chart. Now, from the Drawing toolbar, click the Group button. This groups the text box and the chart, and the text box will now go wherever the chart goes.

As a reader points out, you can move toolbar buttons by holding down the Alt key and dragging the button to a new location on the toolbar. When you release the mouse button, the toolbar button will appear in its new location. To delete a toolbar button, hold down the Alt key and drag the button down over the document. When you release the mouse button, the toolbar button will disappear.

If you want to place widely varying Excel data into a pie, doughnut, or three-dimensional pie chart, you'll find that it can be hard to see the smallest segment. When you insert a chart in a worksheet, you can choose an exploded pie chart if you like.

To insert a chart, select the data and choose Insert|Chart. Use the mouse to draw the chart's area. Now follow the chart wizard and choose a pie-type chart. When the wizard offers different pie chart styles, choose one of the exploded views. If you choose the view that shows one slice separated from the rest of the pie chart, that slice will be the smallest of the group. This makes the data easier for viewers to see.

Very often, you'll want to open the very document that you were working with when you left work for the evening. Although many Word users seem to ignore its presence, the program has a neat little feature called the Most Recently Used list. To access the list, choose File and you'll see the list at the bottom of the menu. Select the file you want to load and get back to work right where you left off.

By default, the list holds the four most recently accessed files. You can change the number of files in the list, though. You can set it from zero to nine. Choose Tools, Options and click the General tab. Now use the spin box to set the number of files you want to retain in the list. After you make your selection, click Close to close the dialog box.

If you're looking for some cool graphics for your PowerPoint slides, don't forget the special fonts that are on your computer. Wingdings is especially rich in symbols that you can use in PowerPoint slides.

Suppose you'd like to add a slide that reads "Don't get behind the eight ball?" You could replace the words 'eight ball' with a Wingdings eight-ball symbol. To do this, open Character Map and select the Wingdings font. Now locate the eight ball, and click it. Next, click Select, then Copy, then Close.

Now open you PowerPoint slide and select an insertion point. Choose Edit|Paste and the eight ball will appear on the slide. Since the eight ball is a character, you can't resize it with the mouse as you would a picture. What you have to do is select a new font size. An advantage to using symbols in a TrueType font (which Wingdings is) is that the resolution remains the same even when you make the symbol very large.

If you have an Excel worksheet that occupies less than a page, Excel by default will print it in the upper-left corner of your paper. You can make it look better in print by forcing Excel to print it in the center of the page.

Choose File|Page Setup and click the Margins tab when the dialog box opens. Now select the two check boxes (Horizontally and Vertically) under Center on Page. If you think your worksheet looks better when centered only horizontally, select the Horizontally check box and leave Vertically deselected. (Or vice versa.) Click OK and run to the printer.

Want to put a frame around an imported picture? Right-click the picture and then choose Frame Picture from the resulting menu. Couldn't be easier.

Automatic hyphenation may not always hyphenate the way you would if you had a choice. You do have a choice, though, since you can manually hyphenate a document. To do this, choose Tools|Hyphenation. When the dialog box opens, click Manual. Now Word will open another dialog box in which each hyphenation will be suggested. You can choose to accept it or reject it. This way, you can help Word help you with hyphenation.

When you have a group of objects on a PowerPoint slide, you may want to align all of them so that they fall into the general categories of left, center, or right.

Let's say you have three pictures on a slide. You'd like to have them all appear to be standing on the same floor. Click one of the figures and then press and hold the Shift key while you click the other two to select them. Choose Draw, Align. Next select Bottoms. Now all the figures will be aligned across the bottom.

If you link data in Word as an Excel 7.0 worksheet, you won't see any gridlines. However, if you make some changes to the linked worksheet in Excel, the gridlines will appear in Word. This happens because Excel creates a default printer (not screen) metafile and Word therefore displays the sheet as it would print. If Excel is set to print gridlines, then they will show in Word. To get around the problem, you can switch to Excel after you establish the link and retype a cell's contents. Word will now display it correctly. Alternately, you could set Excel to print the gridlines. To do this, choose File|Page Setup. Choose the Sheet tab and select Gridlines. Click OK.

Often you'll find that copying a graphic element from Word 6 and pasting it in another MS Office application doesn't work. This is because you've used frame formatting for the Word graphic. This is a bug in Word 6, but you can get around it by removing the frame formatting before using the Copy command.

When you select the Remove All option in Office 97 or 7.0 Setup, you may find the entries aren't removed from the Windows 95 registry. The values are simply changed to Value not set. This is not a bug.

In Microsoft Office 95, you may find that you have some problems saving a file with a non-standard extension. For example, if you try to save a NotePad file that you want to name TEST.XXX, your file will be named TEST.XXX.TXT. You can save TEST.XXX if you enclose the filename in quotes. So type "TEST.XXX" and click OK without changing any other options in the dialog box.

Word can use several switches-the /n switch tells Word to load without even a blank document on screen, and /t tells Word to open to the document of your choice. For example, you could use /t MyDoc.doc to always open Word with the file called MyDocs. This is handy if you work from a form letter or template a lot of the time.

To add a switch in Windows 95, right-click a Word shortcut icon. This opens a menu from which you choose Properties. When the Properties dialog box opens, click the Shortcut tab. Add the switch to the command line. For example, you could enter

You can get a word count in Word by simply choosing Tools, Word Count. When Word performs the count, it also repaginates the entire document. The longer the document, the longer it takes to get the word count.

We're sorry, but the time required to get a word count depends entirely on the length of the document and the speed of your computer.

When using Windows 95 and either Word 6 or 7, have you ever tried to insert an ANSI symbol by holding down the Alt key and typing the number on the numeric pad, only to have the mouse start jumping around the screen? Chances are, you've enabled Mouse Keys. To get around the problem, choose Insert|Symbol and choose your ANSI symbol graphically. If you don't need Mouse Keys at all open the Control Panel, double-click Accessibility Options, click the Mouse Tab, deselect the Use Mouse Keys check box, then click OK.

There is a practical difference, although you may not see it by just switching between the two options. To see the difference, open a blank document and enter a full page of text. Now choose Insert, Frame. Place the frame at the upper-left side of the page and choose Format, Frame. Make sure the frame position is set to Relative To Page and then click OK to save your changes and close the dialog box.

Now, create another frame (choose Insert, Frame) and place it as closely as possible below the first frame. Choose Format, Frame and set the position to Relative To Margin. Click OK to close the dialog box and save your changes. The bottom frame will now move to the right as it takes its position relative to the margin.

If you later change the margins of your document, the first frame (Relative To Page) will stay in its current position. The other frame (Relative To Margin) will move to maintain its position relative to the margin.

There are two ways to print a document: portrait and landscape. Portrait (when the text is printed vertically down an 8.5-by-11-inch page) is the more common. In landscape orientation, the page is rotated 90 degrees, making it 11 inches wide by 8.5 inches tall. You can make part of a multipage document portrait and part of it landscape. To change the format for a single page, select all the text on the page. Then choose the Page Setup command from the File menu and select Landscape. Click OK and you're done. You can mix and match as many pages in one document as you like--just don't expect Word to attempt two orientations on the same page.

We've discussed leftover temp files before, but several subscribers have recently asked about them. Here's the story. Usually, you'll only get leftover temp files when your system has shut down abnormally. Office programs keep temp files while a file is open, then delete them when you close the file. If the system shuts down (or locks up) while the Office program is still running, the files don't get deleted.

If you want to eliminate the Tip Wizard during a Word session, you can choose View|Toolbars and deselect the Tip Wizard check box and click on OK. When you close Word and open it again, the Tip Wizard will reappear.

To completely get rid of the Tip Wizard, choose Tools|Options and click on General. Deselect the Tip Wizard Active check box and click on OK.

You're working in Excel and you feel the need to organize the pages of your workbook. To move a sheet from one location to another, click the tab of the sheet you want to move. Choose the Move or Copy Sheet command from the Edit menu (or press Alt+E+M). The Move or Copy dialog box opens. Decide where you want the sheet to appear, select the position, and click OK. If you want to copy the sheet rather than move it, select the check box labeled Create a Copy before you click OK.

There are times when you may want to create your own template. For example, if you commonly use a particular letter format, and there's no existing template to do what you want, you can create your own template and even make its style available in Normal.dot, where you can access it in any document.

To create a template, simply open a new document and type in all the information you need. Choose the font, font size, and style for each paragraph. For example, for a letter format, you might type in placeholders for the various elements of a business letter and format them however you want.

As you add the guide text to your new template, choose the styles you want to use for each element. When your template is as you want it, choose File, Save As. When the Save As dialog box opens, click the arrow at the right side of the Save as Type list box to expand the list. Select Document Template (*.dot) from the list. Give your new template a name (one that isn't already in use) and click Save.

To make your new template's styles available globally, choose File, Templates. This opens the Templates and Add-Ins dialog box. In this dialog box, you should see Normal in the Document Template entry box. To add your new template to Normal.dot, click Add. This opens the Add Template dialog box. Select your new template and click OK. When you get back to the Templates and Add-Ins dialog box, click OK to close the dialog box and save your changes.

Want to add some text inside a picture in a Word document? Here's one way to do the job -- frame the picture. To do this, right-click the picture. When the menu opens choose Frame Picture.

Now for the text. Choose Insert|Frame. The cursor will turn into a cross hair. Use the cross hair to draw a new frame. Now add text to your new frame. At this point, since both the picture and text are in frames, you can place them both wherever you want, and placing the text frame over the picture frame is no problem at all.

If you need to create a document that includes a number of pictures or drawings, you might like to use Word's AutoCaption feature.

Let's suppose that your document will include drawings and pictures that will always be labeled Figure x, in which x is a sequential number. Choose Insert|Caption, then click AutoCaption. Now select the check box that describes the type of document for which you want to insert a caption. In this case, you can select Microsoft ClipArt Gallery, then click OK. Now when you insert a ClipArt image, the label will automatically be added.

In the last tip, we showed you add to automatically caption figures in a Word document. This time, let's consider adding captions when you intend to frame your pictures.

If you insert the picture, then insert a frame around it, the caption will appear outside the frame. If you want to use AutoCaption and frames (with the caption inside the frame), create the frame first, then insert the picture into it. Now the caption will appear inside the frame along with the picture.

In the last tip we discussed how to add words to Excel's Fill list. Now let's look at another way to use Fill in a worksheet.

Let's say that you've added names to the Fill list, as we described in the last tip (choose Tools, Options, click the Custom Lists tab, and type in the names). For our example, let's say the first name in the list is Jim and the second name is Sue. If you type in "Jim" and drag downward, the list will be filled in with the remaining names.

But you don't have to start with the first name in the list. Let's say you type in the second name--Sue, in our example. Instead of dragging downward, grab the cell's handle and drag upward one cell. "Jim" (the first name in the list) will appear in the cell above the name you just entered.

You can add a background picture to an Excel 7 worksheet. To do this, choose Format|Sheet. Then, from the submenu, choose Background, then select a picture you want to use. The downside is that although you can add the background and enjoy it all you want on your screen, you can't print it. This isn't a bug. Microsoft decided to disallow this because printing a picture in the background is slower than slow.

If you want to insert the date and time into an Excel worksheet, you can click a cell and enter the date. To insert the current date into a cell, you can type

and press Enter. If you're in too much of a hurry for all that typing, try pressing Ctrl-; (semicolon) to insert the time, and Ctrl-: (colon) to insert the date. The inserted information will display using the cell's current format.

If you want to know what keys are assigned to a particular function in Word, choose Tools|Customize, then click the Keyboard tab. Now you can select the function that you're interested in and Word will show you what its key assignment is (if there is one).

If you'd like to see what Word key assignments you've made, you can choose File|Print, then click the arrow at the right of the Print What list box to expand the list. Select Key Assignments and click OK. This will print all the global key assignments that you've added to your Word installation.

A reader asks if we can repeat a tip that described a way to make a flashing sign to alert the audience before the actual show begins.

We ran a tip on how to set up a clock that displays how long it will be before the show starts. You could adapt that tip to create a "neon" sign. Let's run through the steps.

Open a new blank slide and click the Text tool (its icon is a big A). Now, use the mouse to draw the area where the text will appear. Type in your message--something like this:

Set the font and font size by selecting the text and choosing Format, Font. While you're in the Font dialog box, select a light gray for the text color. Click OK after you've made all your changes.

Now, press Ctrl-A to select all the objects on the slide. Next, create a new slide (press Ctrl-M) and then press Ctrl-V to paste the original slide contents onto the new slide. Select the text on the second slide and choose Format, Font. When the dialog box opens, choose a new color for the text--choose a bright red or blue.

To make the text blink, choose View, Slide Sorter. Right-click the first slide and choose Slide Transition. When the dialog box opens, select Automatically After and enter 1. Repeat with the second slide. Now, choose View, Slide Show. When the Slide Show dialog box appears, select Use Slide Timings and Loop Continuously Until Esc, and then click Show. As PowerPoint cycles between the two slides the text will appear to blink on and off.

One of PowerPoint's most impressive features is its gradient fill. You can add (or modify) the gradient fill to your slide show at any point. Choose Format, Custom Background to open the Custom Background dialog box. Click the arrow at the right side of the list box and choose Shaded.

PowerPoint opens the Shaded Fill dialog box, from which you can choose the type of fill you want, along with its colors and variants. When you're finished, click OK to return to the Custom Background dialog box. Click Apply to apply your selections to the current slide, or click Apply To All to apply your changes to all the slides in your show.

In our last tip, we mentioned the Advanced dialog box, where you have a choice between saving slides as an 8-bit image (Best For On-Screen Viewing) or as a 24-bit image (Best For Printing). If you know you're going to view a presentation only on screen, don't choose Best For Printing unless you're using photographs in your presentation. Most graphics look just fine on screen in 256 colors, and there's a huge difference in the file sizes.

If you run an OEM version of Office for Windows Version 4.3c-CD, you may have a problem inserting pictures into a document. When you attempt a picture insertion in Word, you might get the message

where the filename shown in parentheses is the graphics filter name that you would use to read the picture file. In Excel, you might not get an error message, but the picture won't be inserted. In PowerPoint, you get the message

This happens because some of the graphic filters that are installed during Setup are still in compressed format. These files are as follows:

To eliminate the problem with compressed pictures described in the last tip, use the Extract utility to extract the graphic filter files. You'll find the files in the following directories/CAB files (on the Office CD):

To extract the files, first find and then copy EXTRACT.EXE to the root directory of your hard disk. Go to the MS-DOS prompt and type the following (all on one line) in this format:

D: is the drive that contains the Microsoft Office CD. To this, directly following the /L switch, add the path for the directory and .CAB file that contains the filter you need to extract. The line that begins c:\windows should be your Microsoft Windows directory and the name of the graphic filter you're extracting.

Note: Using the /Y switch will allow Extract to overwrite the existing compressed file. The space before the filename is important--make sure you don't omit it.

If you'd like Word to run a grammar check on your documents, you should decide what type of checking you want done. Choose Tools, Options, then click the Grammar tab in the Options dialog box. Click the down arrow at the right side of the Use Grammar And Style Tools list box to expand the list. Now choose the type of testing you'd like to use. Choose the one that seems to best fit a particular document.

Excel doesn't offer any function that will automatically make the conversion for you. The best solution to your problem is to put together a worksheet that uses a number of different colors. Now, choose File, Print Preview. Since your system is set up to use a black-and-white printer, the preview will display in black and white and look much like the worksheet will look on paper. You can experiment with a variety of colors using this method and make notes of the colors that look best.

In general, you should stay away from dark, fully saturated colors. For example, saturated red and blue will both look almost black on a black and white printout.

When you create a table in Word, the table will appear in the document with gridlines. However, the gridlines don't appear on the printed sheet. If you'd prefer to work without the gridlines, you can choose Table, Gridlines. This is a toggle--so to turn the gridlines back on, choose the same command. If you want printing gridlines, select the table and choose Format, Borders and Shading. When the dialog box opens, click on Grid and then click on OK. The gridlines will appear in your document and will also appear in the printer output.

A gutter is an additional margin added to the left margin of odd numbered pages, and to the right margin of even numbered pages. A gutter is usually used to print documents that you intend to bind. You can set the gutter to whatever values you need.

Let's take a look at how to set up a gutter. Open a Word document and choose File, Page Setup. When the Page Setup dialog box opens, click the Margins tab (if you're not already there). Now, select the check box labeled Mirror Margins. When you do this, you'll see that two pages appear in the Preview pane. Next, use the Gutter spin box to increase the gutter value. As you increase the gutter, you'll see the margins change in the Preview pane. Once you've set the margins, click OK to apply your new settings and close the dialog box.

If you run an OEM version of Office for Windows Version 4.3c-CD, you may have a problem inserting pictures into a document. When you attempt a picture insertion in Word, you might get the message

This happens because some of the graphic filters that are installed during Setup are still in compressed format. These files are as follows:

Using Office 95, you'll often find that when you use Save As, the first time you save a file, it will end up in the wrong folder. Also, using Open, you'll find yourself looking at the wrong folder. This occurs when you click the down arrow in the Look In list of the Save As dialog box or the Open dialog box. What happens is when you move the mouse over the list, and then click the down arrow again, the application will select the folder that you last highlighted. To keep this from happening, make sure you select the folder you want before you do anything to remove the focus from the Look In or Save In list in the Open or Save As dialog box.

When you copy text from a Word 6 document and then paste it into a document from another application, the pasted text may lose its formatting. This happens when you paste Word text into a program that doesn't support OLE 2.0. Only OLE 2.0-compatible programs can read the ClipBoard's formatting information.

Although you usually place the same header and footer on all the pages (or almost all) of a document, you're not stuck with this selection: You can alternate headers and footers on left and right pages. Choose View, Header And Footer. Now go to the Header And Footer floating toolbar and click the Page Setup button (it looks like an open book). When the dialog box opens, click the Layout tab and select the Different Odd And Even check box. Click OK to close the dialog box and get back to Header And Footer.

If you do this when you start a new document, you'll only be offered the odd page header (for page 1). To work on the footer, you'll have to click the Switch Between Header And Footer button on the toolbar. To enter the even page header and footer, you'll have to create page 2 (or wait until you get to page 2 as you work).

Well, maybe not really free because you paid for them when you bought Microsoft Office 95. To see the photos, insert the installation CD in the CD-ROM drive. Open the disc, or use Windows Explorer, to read the contents. Open Valupack, then locate the Photos folder. When you open Photos, you'll see that there's quite a collection of folders from which to choose. Check them out and then copy the ones you like to your hard disk.

OK. Let's suppose that, for whatever reason, you want to hide row 8. Move to the left side of the worksheet (in the gray area that contains the row numbers) and move the mouse pointer under the 8. When the pointer is in the proper position, it will change into a horizontal line with up and down arrows. Now, click and hold down the mouse button while you drag upward until the 8 disappears and you see only the 7 and the 9. The grid line below the 8 will merge with the grid line below the 7.

You can do the same with columns. If you'd like to hide column D, go to the gray area that displays the column letters and use the mouse to drag the line to the right of column D over the column C line. When you're in the correct position, the pointer will turn to a vertical line with left and right arrows.

To recover hidden rows or columns, you need to watch the mouse pointer very closely. Move the pointer until it changes to the up/down or right/left arrows. Now, move the mouse very slowly until you see the pointer line turn white. When the pointer line turns white, drag in the direction opposite that which you used to hide the row or column.

You can use the Advanced tab in the Options dialog box to control the way PowerPoint 7.0 handles 24-bit graphics when it saves slides in the .WMF format. Begin by choosing Tools|Options. Then click the Advanced tab and make sure the check box labeled Render 24-bit Bitmaps at Highest Quality is selected. If you select the radio button Best for Printing, the slide will be saved as a 24-bit image. If you select Best for On-Screen Viewing, the image will be saved with a depth of 8 bits.

In the old days, when we presented a show using overhead transparencies, we'd keep a marker or two handy to highlight certain points in our slides. There's no reason to give up that flexibility just because you now use PowerPoint for your presentations. Try this:

The pen color is black by default, but you can change that if you wish. Right-click the screen again and choose Pointer Options, Pen Color. When the color list opens, click a new color to select it. The color will default to black when you open a new show.

By the way, if you think a blank white screen would look better than a black screen, you can press W to turn the screen white. To resume the show, press W again.

During a computer-based slide show, you may need to pause for a moment and explain something. Perhaps you have to deal with an unscheduled question. In any case, the best way to handle this pause is to stop showing slides. But, rather than letting the current PowerPoint slide stay on the screen while you address a point, why not turn the screen black?

To turn the screen black, simply press B. That's it--just press B for black. When you're ready to resume the show, press B again. Alternatively, you can pause a show with a white screen. To do this, press W. To resume, press W again.

When you create an Excel macro, you have several options when deciding how you want to run it. We usually suggest assigning the macro to a button in the Excel toolbar. However, if you'd prefer, you can assign a macro to a button in the current worksheet. The advantage is that you can place the button where a user would expect to see it.

As an example, let's use a frequently requested macro that simply toggles gridlines on and off. To generate the macro, open a workbook and choose Insert, Macro, Module. When the module sheet opens, enter the following lines exactly as shown.

Choose File, Save As and give your new workbook a name. Click Save to save the file and close the dialog box. Now, let's add that button. Scroll down to near the bottom of the worksheet--just where a user might want to see how the worksheet looks with no gridlines. If you don't currently have the Drawing toolbar visible, choose View, Toolbars. When the Toolbars dialog box opens, select the check box labeled Drawing and click OK.

Now, click Create Button in the Drawing toolbar (its icon is a plain gray button) and use the mouse to draw the button. When you release the mouse button, the Assign Macro dialog box will open. Click the new macro name to select it and then click OK. Press Esc to deselect the button. You can now click the new button to toggle your gridlines off and on.

To name your new button, right-click it and choose Format Object. When the Format Object dialog box opens, click the Protection tab. Deselect the check box labeled Lock Text and then click OK. The button will be selected when the dialog box closes. Click in it and type in the new name. When finished, press Esc twice to deselect the button.

If you want to fill an Excel range with the same value or formula, select the range, then press Ctrl and click on the first cell. Enter the value or formula in that cell, then hold down Ctrl and press Enter. Excel will fill in the entire range.

If you're getting ready to install Office 97, you might like to know how much disk space is required. Here are the figures for the various type of installation.

Installation Type	Professional Edition	Standard Edition
Typical	112.9 MB	91.5 MB
Complete	159.9 MB	133.9 MB
Run from CD	60.2 MB	51.1 MB

Installing PowerPoint by using Setup always results in its using the American English spelling dictionary, even if you set Windows' country setting to the United Kingdom. When you install Microsoft PowerPoint using Setup it adds the line

to the [Spelling] section of the POWERPNT.INI file, ignoring the Windows country setting. This doesn't happen with Word or Excel, both of which will use the British dictionary if Windows calls for it in the country setting.

To use the British dictionary in PowerPoint, first close PowerPoint if it is running. Next use a text editor (NotePad will do fine) to open POWERPNT.INI file (in the Windows folder). Now locate the [Spelling] section, and change the Speller entry to

Save the changes and run PowerPoint. To see if the British dictionary is being used, type 'color' to see if the word is flagged. If the British dictionary is being used it should suggest that 'colour' is the correct spelling.

When you simply type in a hyphen, Word doesn't understand what you want. It will treat the hyphen as just another character. So, if you type in a hyphen near the end of a paragraph, that word may well end up in the middle of a sentence, incorrectly hyphenated. This type of hyphen is called a hard hyphen.

To add a soft hyphen--one that Word can deal with during document formatting--press Ctrl-Hyphen. When you do this, Word will insert a hyphen only when the target word appears at the end of a line.

If you have a series of words that you want to keep together on a line, you can enter Ctrl-Shift-Hyphen. This is called a nonbreaking hyphen. For example, if you wanted to type in something such as

you'd use Ctrl-Shift-Hyphen. Using the nonbreaking hyphen tells Word to keep all these words together on one line.

Last year sometime, we ran a tip on how to use non-breaking hyphens in Word documents. Reader Del G. has a question about hyphenated names using non-breaking hyphens:

When you press Ctrl-Shift-Hyphen, the hyphen looks like an em dash. This is done to show that you inserted a non-breaking hyphen rather than a plain old standard hyphen. When you print the document, the hyphenated name will appear on a single line, and the hyphen will print properly.

If you would like to see how your hyphenated name will appear in print without using paper, just choose File, Print Preview and zoom in on the hyphenated name.

Here's a very popular macro that we ran in our Office 97 Tip of the Day and have modified for version 95:

If you frequently use Notepad, you might like to place a Notepad button on your Word toolbar. To do this, you first need to write a very simple macro. To begin, choose Tools, Macro. When the Macro dialog box opens, type in the macro name. In this case, you can use the name Notepad. Now, click Create and type in the following script exactly as shown:

Note: The lines Sub MAIN and End Sub are supplied by Word. You'll need to type just the middle line. Press Ctrl + S to save your new macro and choose Alt, F, C to close the macro window.

Back in Word, choose View, Toolbars, Customize. When the Customize dialog box opens, click the Toolbars tab and scroll down the Categories list to locate Macros. When you find Macros, click it once. Your new macro will appear in the right pane of the dialog box. Use the mouse to drag the macro up to the toolbar. When you reach the position where you want to place the new button, release the mouse button. Next, click Assign to assign the name Notepad to your new button. Back in the Customize dialog box, click Close to record your changes and close the dialog box.

All you have to do now to open NotePad is click the Notepad button in the Word toolbar.

Sometimes pressing the Tab key doesn't insert a tab character on the screen. Instead, the text gets adjusted to the left by a small amount.

Microsoft Word 95 has an editing feature called "Tab as Indent." Testing shows that when the desired result is an indented line or paragraph, many users press the Tab key. When Tab as Indent is turned on, Word guesses when an actual Tab is desired and insets a tab. Of course, Word doesn't guess correctly all the time.

When this feature is on, pressing the Tab key while the insertion point is at the left side of the second or greater line in a paragraph results in the paragraph being indented by 0.5 inch from the left margin. Pressing Backspace at this point moves the paragraph back to the original margin. To enter a tab character rather than an indent, press Ctrl-Tab.

You can disable Tab as Indent by choosing the Options commands from the Tools menu. This opens the Options dialog box. Click the Edit tab, deselect the check box labeled Use Tab and Backspace Keys to Set Left Indent.

When you work with Excel worksheets that you pass along to others, you may want to visually block out cells that require no entry. Doing so will prevent someone from entering data in the wrong cells.

To make sure nobody enters data in an incorrect adjacent cell, you can block out the surrounding cells. Let's work with a blank worksheet and suppose that your data needs to go in cell D5. You want to make sure that some people don't inadvertently enter data in cells C5 or E5.

Click cell C5 and choose Format, Cells. When the Format Cells dialog box opens, click the Patterns tab. Now, click the arrow at the right side of the Pattern list box to expand the list. Select one of the crosshatch patterns and click OK. Cell C5 will now be blocked out by the crosshatch pattern. Although one could still enter data in the cell, it would be illegible and the crosshatch pattern sends a clear signal that data doesn't belong in that cell. Repeat the above procedure for all cells that you want to block out.

This error will result when you are using a third-party product that is not fully compatible with Word, such as MasterWord version 2.0 or Woody's Office Power Pack (WOPR) version 2.0. One way around the problem is to rename the macros. For example, you could rename FileOpen to XFileOpen, FileSave to XFileSave, and FileNew to XFileNew. This will cause Word to return to its original functions, rather than running the macros.

This problem usually occurs when you upgrade to a new version of Word. You may need to contact the third-party software vendor for upgrades.

Want to enter a text number in an Excel cell? (A text number is a number that needs to be used as text only, meaning it will not be included in any calculations.) Try this: Type an apostrophe ('), then enter the number in your cell. The number will look just like a number, but Excel reads it as text and ignores it.

If you'd like to use hanging indents for several paragraphs in a Word document, select the paragraphs you want to modify, then choose Format, Paragraph. When the Paragraph dialog box opens, click the Indents And Spacing tab. In the list box labeled Special, click the down arrow to expand the list and choose Hanging. Click OK to close the dialog box and record your changes.

Once you've crunched the numbers in an Excel worksheet, you often go back through the sheet to make it look better. In some cases, you might like to have the entire worksheet start in the second column. The problem is that you've already used column A. You can easily insert a new column. All you have to do is click column A and choose Insert Columns. The whole worksheet moves over by one column.

But what if you don't want the indentation to be quite as large as the default column width? In the label area, move the mouse pointer over the line between A and B and drag the line to the left until the spacing is just right for your worksheet.

A reader wants to know if you can use AutoText to insert pictures and other graphics. Yes, you can. Let's look at an example.

Yes, there are some keystrokes, and we did run a tip on this topic. Here's a recap for new subscribers.

All you have to do is select the cell and press the desired key combination. If you need to change the format of a group of cells, select the cells and then press the key combination for the desired format.

If you're thinking about installing Office 97, you should know that it comes in two versions: a retail version that installs on any computer and an upgrade version that installs only if you have a qualifying product. To help you make your decision, the qualifying products are listed below.

If you have fond memories of the Word for Windows 2.0 toolbar, you can still use it in Word 6 or 7. Choose View|Toolbars to open the Toolbars dialog box. Select the Word for Windows 2.0 check box and click OK. And there's your Word for Windows 2.0 toolbar. Even if you never used Word for Windows 2.0, you might like to check out the toolbar. It's a good, no-frills toolbar and a good start to building a customized one of your own.

The first time you run Help in a Microsoft Office 95 program, you'll probably notice that it takes a long time for the Help application to find information. That's because the first time you run Help, the program has to set up the Help file. If you try to find a topic before the setup finishes, then you slow things down even more. Don't worry, this only happens the first time. And it isn't a bug.

A reader points out that there's no cents sign on the keyboard and wants to know if there's a way to make the cents sign in Word.

Yes, there is. All you have to do is press Ctrl-/ (slash) then press C. The most likely reason for the lack of a cents sign on standard keyboards is that stating amounts in cents has never been accepted in formal financial dealings. To express 10 cents, one would write $0.10. Plus, it's getting harder and harder to find something that costs less than a buck these days anyway.

To create a series of dates in Excel, enter the starting date in the first cell. Select all the contiguous cells in which you want a date to appear then choose Edit|Fill. Choose the Series submenu to open the Series dialog box. Here, choose "Date under Type" and the type of date you want to use. Click OK.

To make a series of dates in Excel type the first date into a cell, then make sure to select that cell. Choose Edit|Fill|Series. (For a column of dates, select Series in Columns. For a row of dates, select Series in Rows.) Make sure that Date is selected under Type. Enter the unit you want to use (Day, Weekday, etc.). Enter the date you want the series to end on and click OK.

There are times when you can make good use of Excel's IF function in your worksheets. Let's say you have a sales sheet that you use to determine who might qualify for a bonus. You'd have a list of names in the first column (say column B) and the monthly sales amounts for each one in column C.

So, in our proposed example, you can use the IF function in column D to indicate qualification. Let's assume that the minimum for bonus qualification is $10,000. If your names are in B2, B3, B4, and B5, and your sales totals in C2, C3, C4, and C5, type into cell D2 the following formula:

You should get your result for cell C2 now. Select cell D2 and then grab the little handle and drag down to D5. This copies the formula to the remaining cells.

Here's the first thing to remember about printing: Don't set the document margins smaller than what the printer can handle. Check your printer's documentation for the minimum margins allowed and don't exceed those in your programs.

In Word, choose File, Page Setup and click the Margins tab. Most printers will handle margins of 0.25 inch. If your margins are set to less, you'll have problems. In most cases, the Word margins are set to one inch or greater. This should pose no problem for any printer.

Many Office users have a problem when they try to squeeze every last millimeter of page space out of Excel. Just keep that printer spec in mind when you set margins. If the printer calls for 0.25 inch, set your margins a bit larger just to be safe. We've used 0.30 successfully on a LaserJet.

We recently said that you can use Ctrl-/-C to insert the cents symbol into a Word document. A helpful subscriber cautions that this won't work if Caps Lock is on. This is true if you hold down all three keys simultaneously (as we described in the tip). However, if you press the keys sequentially (press Ctrl-/ and then release / and press C), you'll get the cents symbol regardless of the Caps Lock state--on most keyboards. If this doesn't work for you, turn Caps Lock off before you try to make cents.

If you make a pie chart in Excel (or any other Office program) you end up with one slice that is thin to the point of invisibility. To make it more noticeable, click on the slice in question. (If it's extremely small, you may have to try this a few times before you hit it.) Once the slice is selected (you'll see the handles) use the mouse to drag the slice away from the pie chart a little. Don't worry about the slice getting out of line-you can only move it straight out and straight in.

Just in case you'd like to change the case of a sentence quickly, try this: Select the sentence and press Shift-F3. The first time you press Shift-F3, the sentence turns to all caps. The next time you press the combination, the sentence turns to all lowercase. When you press Shift-F3 once more, the sentence will display standard capitalization (begins with a cap--all others lowercase).

When you're working with a complex formula, troubleshooting can prove to be a problem. Here's a tip that many long-time Excel users don't even know about: You can have Excel calculate only a portion of the formula.

To see how this works, type 1 through 5 into cells A1 through A5, respectively. Now, move to cell C1 and enter

Now, still pretending that we're dealing with a complex formula, let's get the sum for cells A1 and A2 only. Double-click the formula cell (C1) and then highlight the term A1+A2 and press F9. See what happens? The cell now displays

The 3 is the sum of cells A1 and A2. Press Esc to return to normal. Double-click C1 again and highlight A3+A4. Press F9 and C1 will display

You'll find this technique handy when you need to debug a long formula. The only requirement is that you highlight a meaningful portion of the formula. For example, if you were to use the formula

Sure 'nuff is (as we say down here in the South). Let's say your name is Clarence Worthington-Smythe. All you would have to do is type in the name up to the hyphen and then press Ctrl-Shift - (hyphen) and type the second part of the name. You can use this technique even if your name is Clarence Worthington-Smythe-Rhys-Collins-Jones. Just use Ctrl-Shift - (hyphen) to enter the hyphens.

Note: When you press Ctrl-Shift - (hyphen), the hyphen will look like an em dash. Don't worry--it will print just fine.

When you turn on background pagination, Word will repaginate the current document while the program is idle. This keeps the page numbers current. Unfortunately, in some cases, background pagination can slow down other operations. If you have a problem with slowdowns, turn off background pagination. To do this, choose View|Normal (background repagination doesn't work in Page Layout view). Now choose Tools|Options and when the Options dialog box opens click the General tab. Now you can select or deselect the Background Repagination check box. Click OK to save your changes and close the dialog box.

In Excel, you must adhere to a 218-character path name (even though it's technically 256 characters) when you save or open a file or create a link. In Excel, when you use an excessively long name, you'll get the message

This is normal. Excel bases the total file name length on allowing up to 31 characters in a sheet name, including the apostrophes and brackets that you use to denote the workbook name. There's also an exclamation point and a cell reference. A typical path may be something like

So, if the full path name plus the 31 characters exceeds 256 characters, you get the error message.

There you are working in Word (or Excel or PowerPoint or whatever) and you'd like to get to the Windows 95 Start button. Of course, you can move the mouse to the Start button and click. Or, you can simply press Ctrl-Esc to open the Start menu. When it pops up, you can use your keyboard's arrow keys to navigate the Start menu.

If you want to quickly navigate to the very top of a Word document, press Ctrl-Home. To get to the end of the document, press Ctrl-End. And, just in case you don't already know, Ctrl-A will select the entire document, Ctrl-C will copy the selected text (or graphics), Ctrl-X will cut selected text (or graphics), Ctrl-V will paste data from the Clipboard, and Ctrl-Z will undo the last operation.

When you're presenting a PowerPoint slide show, any help you can get is to your advantage. In the last tip, we mentioned that you can turn the screen black by pressing B, and that you get a white screen if you press W. Here are some other shortcut keys that you can use during a slide show. To show or hide the pointer, press S. To go to the next slide (if the slide is hidden), press H. And you can end the slide show by pressing Esc.

Here's a trick that you might find useful: When you're at the last slide, and ready to end the show, press B to turn the screen black. Let the screen remain black until the audience is gone. Then press Esc to stop the slide show.

Whether you're writing a brochure, a newsletter, a report, or a memo, you'll find that even a tiny bit of difference in the line spacing can make your document easier to read. Why not experiment with this a bit? Print two or three versions of a document, each with a different line spacing and then ask several people for an opinion. You'll probably find that there's a line spacing that people prefer.

Let's try this. Let's make three documents all with the same text, but with different line spacing. For the original document, use the standard spacing. Choose File, Save to save the original document. Next, choose File, Save As and give the document a new name. In the new document, click in the body of the text and then choose Format, Paragraph. When the Paragraph dialog box opens, locate the two boxes labeled Line Spacing and At. In the At spin box, type

Now, choose File, Save As again and provide the document with a third name. Click in the body of the text and choose Format, Paragraph. This time, set the spacing to 1.1 and click OK. Save the new document (choose File, Save).

Now print all three documents (or a portion thereof) and pass them out for comments. You'll probably find that people don't like the more closely spaced lines--even if they fail to actually notice the line spacing. Most people make little distinction between the 1.1-line spacing and the standard single spacing--although a few people may comment that the wider-spaced document seems easier to read.

If you're a high-speed typist, you can type several sentences without ever looking at the screen. That's great unless you accidentally turned the Caps Lock key on. In that, um, case all the characters are in the opposite case. Don't delete them and start all over again. Instead, select the text, then choose Format, Change Case. When the Change Case dialog box opens, select the radio button labeled tOGGLE cASE and click OK. Your text will now appear in the correct case.

You're creating the annual stockholders report in your word processor. The pages are laid out beautifully, you've found just the right font, and your prose is witty and upbeat. But you need something else: the FY96 Market Share chart from the Budget worksheet, inserted right into the middle of your text. You could simply cut and paste the information from one program to another, but then your document will be out-of-date the next time someone changes the worksheet.

The trick is to link your worksheet to your document. A link is like a window into your word processing file created by another program.

There's a common misconception that linking files in PowerPoint saves disk space. The truth is, when you link a picture to one of your presentations, the file size will be the same as if you had embedded the picture. PowerPoint maintains a metafile copy of the picture. It's this copy that is displayed. If the linked picture changes, the saved picture changes. If the picture is deleted or moved, PowerPoint will still display the last stored version.

A reader points out that you can add talking notes to Excel cells. If you have a microphone attached to your computer, all you have to do is click the cell to which you want to add the note and then choose Insert, Note. When the Cell Note dialog box opens, have your microphone ready and click Record to open the Record dialog box (the recorder controls). When ready to record, click Record and speak into the microphone. When you finish your talking note, click Stop and then click OK.

Back in the Cell Note dialog box, you can click Play to see how your note sounds. If you're happy with it, click Add and then click OK to close the dialog box.

With the sound note in place, move the mouse cursor over the cell and the sound will start playing. When you move the mouse away from the cell, the sound will stop.

The procedure described in this tip assumes you have a working sound system installed in your computer. We can't cover all the possible setup configurations that may cause you problems, but getting no sound in from the microphone is the most common problem. If this happens to you, open the Volume Control (it's in the taskbar--its icon resembles a small speaker). Make sure the Microphone input isn't muted and the volume isn't set to zero. If you don't have a microphone input, choose Options, Properties and select the check box labeled Microphone. Click OK and now you can set the microphone volume and make sure it isn't muted.

You may find that when you use Save As the first time you save a file, the file ends up in the wrong folder. Also, when using Open, you may find yourself looking at the wrong folder.

This occurs when you click the down arrow in the Save In list of the Save As dialog box or the Look In list of the Open dialog box. When you move the mouse over the list and then click the down arrow again, the application selects the folder last highlighted. To prevent this, select the folder you want before you do anything to remove the focus
from the pull-down list.

A reader points out that it's easy to add a watermark in Word 97, but asks if you can you add one in Word 95 or Word 6. A watermark is text or a picture you place beneath the text on your page. You might want to use a watermark to label a page "confidential" or "urgent." To add a watermark, first decide what you want the watermark to be. If you want to play along, you can use ClipArt for the example.

You'll need the Drawing toolbar; so if it isn't visible, choose View, Toolbars, select Drawing and click OK. Now, choose View, Header and Footer. When the Header and Footer window opens, click the Text box button in the Drawing toolbar. Use the mouse to draw a frame for your watermark.

Now, choose Insert, Object, Microsoft ClipArt Gallery. Select a picture and click OK. Use the mouse to size and locate your watermark. Select the picture and then click the Send Behind Text button in the Drawing toolbar (the icon is a circle behind a page of text). Now, double-click in the document to close Header and Footer.

To view your watermark, switch to Page Layout view (View, Page layout) or choose File, Print Preview. Although Word will dim the watermark, we suggest that you avoid dark or very busy pictures for your watermarks.

You may find that Start menu items added by Office are larger than the other icons. What happens is that Office Setup adds the New Office Document and Open Office Document icons to the top of the Start menu. These icons are larger than the standard icons. If you want to make all the icons the same size, right-click the taskbar to open the menu. Choose Properties from this menu to open the Properties dialog box. Next, select the Show small icons in Start menu check box. Click OK and all your icons will be the same size.

You probably know you can use WordArt to create a logo. You can save the logo by saving the document in which the WordArt appears. However, if you'd like to use the logo again, you might want to consider saving the art in a separate .BMP (bitmap) file. To do this, right-click on the WordArt and choose Copy from the resulting menu. Now open Paint (Start, Programs, Accessories, Paint) and choose File, Paste. Once the WordArt object is pasted into Paint, you can size it and save it as a .BMP file. Now you can use it wherever you want. You can even use it as wallpaper if you like.

It isn't as difficult as you might think to get all the logos in the same spot on each slide. Insert and place the logo on your first slide. Now, select the logo and press Ctrl-C to copy it to the Clipboard. Move to the next slide and press Ctrl-V. PowerPoint will paste the logo in the same spot on the second slide. Move to the next slide and press Ctrl-V. Continue this until you have pasted the logo on to all your slides.

Now, let's say that you need to make the logo smaller on slide 3. Just click the logo to select it and then hold down Ctrl while you use the mouse to resize the logo. Holding down Ctrl will preserve the logo's center point. This will prevent the sudden change of position that you see when the logo shifts horizontally or vertically.

Many Word users need to generate documents in more than one language. And others, including a reader, need to work with more than one version of English. She writes documents that are circulated in the United States and England. She needs to use two styles to do this, and she sent us information on how she handles both versions of English.

Yes, there is a limit, but the limit is 253 characters, which is plenty to let you give meaningful names to your styles. Let's take a look at how you would create and name a new style.

Suppose you need a style that you use for a major portion of your everyday work. To create the style, choose Format, Style. When the Style dialog box opens, click New. You'll now be prompted for a name. Let's say you enter

Then select the check box labeled Add To Template, and click OK to record the style name. At this point, you can select your new style and click Modify to set the style as you want it. When you're finished, click Apply to apply the new style and to close the dialog box.

If you choose File|New and don't get a list of templates from which to choose, they probably didn't get loaded. This problem only occurs with the integrated Office 4.3 and Bookshelf '94 package. What happens is that the Setup program sets the User Templates file locations incorrectly.

If you work with .RTF files in Word 6 or Word 7, you'll find that always having to tell Word to look for .RTF files in the Open dialog box is a bit of a pain in the CPU. A simple macro will take care of the problem for you. Actually, you don't even have to add a macro--all you have to do is modify an existing one. Choose Tools, Macro. When the Macro dialog box opens, type into the Macro Name text box FileOpen

Now click Create and the FileOpen macro will appear. Modify it to match the macro shown here.

The easiest way to get the file name from Word is to use the WindowName$() function. Let's create a simple macro to show how this works. To create the macro, choose Tools, Macro. When the Macro dialog box opens, type in a name ("Test" will do for this example macro). Now, click Create and then enter the macro as shown here.

Note that the lines Sub Main and End Sub are furnished by Word--don't re-enter them.

Now save the macro (Ctrl-S) and close it (Alt, F, S). Next, load a file and choose Tools, Macro. When the Macro dialog box opens, click the new macro to select it and then click Run. The macro will open a small window displaying the file name.

Making text bold (or underlining it, or turning it into italics) isn't a problem in Word for Windows. To make all following text appear in bold, press Ctrl-B and start typing. For underlined text, press Ctrl-U. And, to set the text to italics, press Ctrl-I. If you need to change existing text, select it and then choose the appropriate command to change its formatting.

If you'd like to insert the date into the formula bar, press Ctrl-; (semicolon). To insert the current time into the formula bar, use Ctrl-: (colon). The colon is a shifted character, so you actually press Ctrl-Shift-;.

We always want our documents to look good. And there are times when we want them to look a little dressy. One fairly common way to dress up a document is to add a vertical line to the left side of the page.

To insert a vertical line before you start typing, choose Format, Paragraph. When the Paragraph dialog box opens, set the Left Indentation to -0.5 and click OK. Now, choose Format, Borders and Shading. In the Paragraph Borders and Shading dialog box, click at the left side of the preview under Borders to tell Word that you want a single left border. Now, click OK to close the dialog box.

As you type, a vertical line will appear at the left side of the text. Note that we chose an Indent of -0.5 to keep the line from interfering with the text. You can experiment around with this value to get your vertical line to appear just as you want it.

One of PowerPoint's most impressive features is its gradient fill. You can add (or modify) the gradient fill to your slide show at any point. Choose Format|Custom Background to open the Custom Background dialog box. Click the arrow at the right side of the list box as shown and choose Shaded.

PowerPoint opens the Shaded Fill dialog box from which you can choose the type of fill you want, along with its colors and variants. When you're finished, click OK, which takes you back to the Custom Background dialog box. Click Apply to apply your selections to the current slide, or Apply to All to apply your changes to all the slides in your show.

By default, Word 95 replaces all straight quotes (the plain ones) with Smart quotes (often called curly quotes). Apparently someone has turned off this option in your installation. To bring them back, go to the Tools menu and select Options. When the Options dialog box opens, click the AutoFormat tab. First, make sure the radio button labeled AutoFormat As You Type is selected. Now, select the check box labeled Straight Quotes With Smart Quotes and then click OK to apply your selection and close the dialog box. Type in some quotation marks to make sure all is working. You should now always get curly quotes.

Note that this change applies to all quotation marks typed in after you make the selection--straight quotes that are already in the document are not get converted to curly quotes.

When you choose to use bullets or numbering in a Word document, a new number or bullet appears when you press Enter. But what if you want to insert a blank line between one bulleted line and another? The first reaction is to simply press Enter to stop the numbering. This is unnecessary--all you have to do is press Shift + Enter. This inserts the blank. Now, to get to the next bulleted line, press Enter. This procedure produces the effect shown here:

Word 6.0 keeps a list of the most recently used files at the bottom of the File menu (if you choose the option). Previous versions of Word warn you when a file on that list has been deleted and remove the file from the list. Word 6.0 does not remove a deleted file from the list but leaves the file on the list because of the more widespread use of networks, where the file may not be deleted simply because it isn't available.

We've run several tips describing how to paste pictures and other graphics into Excel bar charts. But, as reader Sean F. would like us to discuss, you can also add graphics to the points in a line chart. This is an interesting and effective way to improve the impact of your charts.

into cells A1 through A5. Now, select the cells and choose Insert, Chart, On This Page. Draw the chart area with the mouse and then click Finish. Double-click the chart to select it. Next, right-click the chart and choose Chart Type. When the Chart Type dialog box opens, click Line and then click OK.

Now let's find a graphic to use. Choose Insert, Object and locate Microsoft Clip Gallery. Select it and click OK. Choose a graphic from the Gallery that fits your chart topic and click Insert. You'll need to drastically reduce the size of your ClipArt graphic in order to use it as a point in a line chart. So, resize the graphic and then choose Copy from the menu that opens when you right-click the graphic.

Double-click the chart to select it and then click the line. Press Ctrl-V to paste in the graphic. And there you are--a more informative and attractive line chart.

If you have Microsoft Office with Bookshelf, you've probably already experimented some with Bookshelf and its powerful and fast information search tools. You can open Bookshelf by inserting the disc (Disc 2) into your CD-ROM drive. Next, click Start and select Programs|Microsoft Reference|Microsoft Bookshelf.

When you apply the emboss effect to PowerPoint 7.0 and 97 text you'll find that the effect varies, depending on the type of fill you decide to use. Here's what you can expect

It seems most likely that D. P. has the printer margins set incorrectly. Most printers require a fixed minimum margin. The amount of margin is specific to the printer. This requirement is due to the fact that the entire sheet isn't available for printing. The printer's paper handling mechanisms require some space to work with.

Choose File, Page Setup and click the Margins tab. Now, check your margins. Note that Word will try to protect you from this problem. To see what happens, make the bottom margin 0 (zero) and click OK. Word opens a dialog box telling you that your selection is outside the printer's range. If you click Fix, Word will set the bottom margin to the printer's requirement. If you click Ignore, Word will use your zero setting.

Although Word will select the minimum requirement for you if you click Fix, you should add a bit to that. If Word selects 0.2 as the minimum, you should go for at least 0.3.

A reader comments that we have discussed using Excel's Median function but have not explained what the function actually does. So, here's the explanation:

Median is simply the middle unit in a group of units. Let's use days of the week. If we start the week with Sunday, the median day is Wednesday. You have Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday before Wednesday. Then, after Wednesday, you have Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.

Let's open a blank Excel worksheet and look at some numbers. Excel's Median function returns the number that is in the center of a group of numbers. That is, half the numbers in the series are lower than the median and half are higher than the median. Enter the following numbers in cells A1 through A5, respectively

and Excel will report that the median number is 3. Let's try something a little less obvious. In cells A1 through A5 enter

Excel will display 13 as the median. Half the numbers (12 and 12) are lower than 13 and half (23, 76) are higher.

Many users confuse median with average. Just remember that the average is the result when you sum a list of numbers and divide them by the number of digits added.

If you click the Open A Document button on the Office toolbar, select a file, and then use the Copy or Cut command on the shortcut menu, you'll find that the Paste command isn't available on the dialog box's shortcut menu. The Copy and Cut commands won't work in this dialog box even though they are on the shortcut menu when you select a file.

This happens because Windows 95 doesn't support Cut, Copy, and Paste unless the applications you're using have loaded all the OLE files. You can get around the problem (and it is a problem) by using the Cut, Copy, and Paste commands from Windows Explorer, My Computer, or any MS Office program.

When you run a macro that attempts to set a built-in menu command or a submenu command's Enabled property, you'll get the message

This is not a bug: Excel doesn't allow you to change built-in menu and sub menu commands.

If you choose Tools|Macro and then select a Word command, the Create button is grayed out. This may cause you to incorrectly assume that you can't modify a Word command in Word 6. Here's how to do it. Choose Tools|Macro and type the name of the macro you want to modify.

Now choose where you want to save your macro (Normal.dot for example) and then click Create. This will open the macro in an editing window where you can modify it as desired.

If you rename a file that's pointed to in the Microsoft Office Manager (MOM), you can no longer use that button to move to a running instance of the application. For example, if you rename EXCEL.EXE to EXCEL5.EXE, clicking the button will not take you to a running instance of Excel. Instead, it will run a new instance of the program. That's because MOM looks for the original filename to see if a program is running. If you'd like to switch to an application with a renamed EXE, use a custom button, rather than the one supplied on the toolbar.

We mentioned in a recent tip that you can enter a date into an Excel cell and then drag that cell to enter sequential dates. W.T.C and P.M.K. point out that you can do the same for sequential weeks (or any time period). That is, if you'd like a list of Mondays, you can enter the date for the first Monday in one cell, then the date for the following Monday in an adjacent cell. Now highlight both cells and drag. Excel will create a sequence of Mondays (or whatever day you want--use Friday if it will make you feel better).

Highlight both cells, grab the little handle and drag down three cells. Excel will now display

When you choose View, Header and Footer, and insert the date using the Date button on the floating toolbar, Word accepts the date as a field. So the next time you open the document, Word updates the date to the current date. To enter a fixed date, choose View, Header and Footer. Choose Insert, Date and Time, and when the Date and Time dialog box opens, uncheck(if necessary) the box labeled Update Automatically (Insert as Field). Then select the date format you want to use and click OK. The date will no longer be changed when you load the document.

A reader dislikes the way Excel handles cut and paste. He dislikes it so much that he wrote a macro to handle the job. To use the macro, you simply select the cell (or range of cells) that you want to move and press Ctrl-M. A dialog box opens asking you to enter the new location.

To enter this macro into Personal.xls, choose Window, Unhide. When Personal.xls opens, type in the macro exactly as shown, below:

Now choose Tools, Macro. When the Macro dialog box opens, select the check box labeled Shortcut Key. Type in

to set the shortcut key to Ctrl-M. Click OK to close the dialog box, and when you get back to the Macros dialog box, click OK again. Choose File, Save to save your new macro. Next, choose Window, Hide to hide Personal.xls.

A reader says we've talked about copying Excel cells using the mouse, but not about moving cells with the mouse. As Rich points out, all you have to do to move the contents of a cell to a new location is select the cell and then move the mouse over the edge of the cell until the cursor turns to a pointer. Now, use the mouse to grab the cell by one of the edges and hold down the mouse button while you move the data or formula to a new location. When you reach the new location, release the mouse button.

In Windows 95, you can create different Word shortcuts for several specific jobs, using, say, use different Word switches for each shortcut. For example, you could have a shortcut called Word Letters and use the /t switch with that shortcut to open your form letter. You could have another shortcut using only the /n switch to make Word open without a document, and yet another using no switches at all.

The limit to Word style names is 253 characters. So, you can pretty much name a style anything you like. Let's take a look at how to create and name a new Word style.

Let's suppose that you need a style for use with a major portion of your everyday work. To create the style, choose Format, Style. When the Style dialog box opens, click New. You'll now be prompted for a name. Type in, as an example,

and then select the check box labeled Add To Template. Now, click OK to record the style name. At this point, you can select your new style and click Modify to set the style as you want it. When finished, click Apply to apply the new style and close the Style dialog box.

Probably the most direct way to extract the file name in a macro is to use the WindowName$() function. We can create a very simple one-line macro to demonstrate how this function works.

To create the macro, choose Tools, Macro. When the Macro dialog box opens, type in a name (something such as GetName will do), then click Create and enter your new macro as shown here.

Since the lines Sub MAIN and End Sub are furnished by Word, you don't enter anything but the MsgBox line. To save the new macro, press Ctrl-S. You will be asked if you want to save the template--you do. Now you can close the macro window (choose File, Close). Finally, load any file you want to use for testing and choose Tools, Macro. When the Macro dialog box opens, double-click the new macro to run it. A message box will open to display the current file name.

We recently suggested that you shade cells to warn another user not to enter data in those cells. A reader suggests that you use Excel's protection features instead.

To do this, select the cells you want to use for data entry. If the cells you need to select are not contiguous, then select the first group and hold down the Ctrl key while you select the remaining cells or group of cells.

Now, select Format, Cells. When the Format Cells dialog box opens, click the Protection tab. Deselect the check box labeled Locked, and click OK to close the dialog box and save your selection. Next, choose Tools, Protection, Protect Sheet. When the Protect Sheet dialog box opens, you can enter a password if needed or you can leave the password blank and click OK. If you don't use a password, anyone can unprotect the worksheet. If you want to prevent others from unprotecting the sheet, use a password. But, make sure you don't forget it--there's no way to unprotect the sheet without the password. Once you've made your choice in the Protect Sheet dialog box, click OK to close the dialog box and record your changes.

The protected worksheet will now allow entries in only the cells that you chose to unlock. When a user attempts to enter data into a protected cell, he or she will get a dialog box explaining that no entries can be made in protected cells.

Since most of us make changes to the Normal.dot file as we work, it's a very good idea to keep a backup of that file just in case a problem arises. If you have a backup, you don't have to worry even if you're forced to completely reinstall your Office system.

In Office 4.x, you find Normal.dot in the \Winword\Template folder. To back it up, put a formatted floppy disk into drive A, open Windows Explorer, and click on your MSOffice folder. Now expand that folder and locate \Template. In \Template, locate Normal.dot and drag its icon to the floppy disk to copy it.

In Office 95, you'll find the file in \MSOffice\Templates. Drag the file's icon to drive A to copy it to the floppy disk. Now, if you have problems, you can always copy Normal.dot back into its proper folder and continue your work.

If you have other templates that you've modified, copy them to the floppy disk along with Normal.dot.

If you paste a PowerPoint 7.0 slide with a shaded background into a Word document, the color resolution appears to be lost. When you're running at 256 colors PowerPoint handles shaded fill displays in a different manner than Word does. Your printout should be OK, even if the picture doesn't look so good on screen.

It sounds like Excel is probably doing its job. It's simply a matter of how you look at True and False. For example, enter

because 2 is equal to 2. And, if 2 is equal to 2, then it is definitely not NOT equal to 2. Follow?

Here's a useful technique you can employ during your PowerPoint slide-show rehearsals.

When you rehearse a slide show before an audience, it's a good idea to make notes of the audience's comments. An easy way to do this is to use Meeting Minder. To use this utility during a slide show, right-click the current slide and choose Meeting Minder. Click the Notes Pages tab and enter your notes. Click OK to close the dialog box.

After the slide show, go to the slide for which you want to view notes and choose Tools, Meeting Minder. Click the Notes Pages tab and read your notes for that slide.

A reader would like to print the PowerPoint notes and handouts differently; she would like to print the notes in portrait format and the handouts in landscape. This is no great problem for PowerPoint, although it won't do the job automatically. Before you print the notes, choose File, Slide Setup. In the Notes, Handouts & Outlines section of the Slide Setup dialog box, select Portrait and click OK. Now print your notes. When you're ready to print the handouts, choose File, Slide Setup again. This time, select landscape and click OK. Now you can print the handouts.

Yes, there is a way. If you print speaker's notes from PowerPoint, you get a slide at the top of the page and the notes at the bottom of the same page. To do this, choose File, Print. When the Print dialog box opens, click the arrow at the right side of the list box labeled Print What to expand the list. From the list, select Notes Pages and then click OK to begin printing.

To prevent Word from automatically numbering a paragraph that begins with a first name initial, choose AutoFormat from the Format menu. This will open a small dialog box that offers to perform the AutoFormat for you. Click the Options button, which will open the Option dialog box.

Select the radio button labeled AutoFormat As You Type. Now deselect the check box labeled Automatic Bulleted Lists. Click OK, and when you get back to the first dialog box, click cancel.

When you need to enter numbers as text in an Excel worksheet, you can type an apostrophe before the number. For example,

will be considered text by Excel. This is fine when you want to enter numbers in only a few cells. But if you need to enter many numbers as text, the safest way is to set the cells you intend to use to text format. When you do, you won't have to worry about forgetting the apostrophe.

To set the cells format to text, select the cells and choose Format, Cells. When the Format Cells dialog box opens, select Text and click OK.

When you decide to use columns in a Word document, you can choose the number of columns if you choose Format, Columns. When the Columns dialog box opens, you can select from one, two, or three columns. You'll notice that you can also choose a small column at the left or a small column at the right.

If you like, you can set the column size yourself. All you have to do is deselect Equal Column Width and then set the size of each of your columns. After you finish setting up the columns, click OK to close the dialog box and save your changes.

Parting is such sweet sorrow: If you want to keep Office 95 when you install Office 97, you'll find that the Office 95 Start menu will contain the startup items for Office 97. The old Office 95 start items will be overwritten. This is because Office 95 and Office 97 create program items with the same name. To get around this, move the Microsoft Office 95 menu items to a new folder in the Programs folder.

Well, maybe not really free, because you paid for them when you bought Microsoft Office 95. To see the photos, insert the installation CD in the CD-ROM drive. Open the disc, or use Windows Explorer, to read the contents. Open Valupack, then locate the Photos folder. When you open Photos, you'll see that there's quite a collection of folders from which to choose. Check them out and then copy the ones you like to your hard disk.

If you're worried about what will happen to your Microsoft programs when the year 2000 arrives, stop. All Microsoft applications will handle the new millennium just fine. If you need something to worry about, worry about your bank's computer.

If you're thinking about installing Office 97, you should know that it comes in two versions-a retail version that installs on any computer and an upgrade version that only installs if you have a qualifying product. To help you make your decision, the qualifying products are listed below.

Offhand, you wouldn't think adding a second hard disk drive to your computer would have any effect on your Microsoft Office installation. Here's a potential problem though: Suppose you decide to add some Office components after you install the new disk drive. In this case, you probably installed Office from a CD in drive D. Now the CD-ROM drive is drive E.

Office knows from whence it came, so when you attempt to modify your installation, Office will tell you that it can't find the requested files on drive D. The solution is to use the Setup on the CD rather than the one in your Office folder. When you do this, Setup will completely reinstall Office. Choose Custom to make sure you get all the components you had originally. From now on, Office will look for its files on drive E.

If you're finished testing Office 97 against a previous version of Office, and you're ready to get rid of the older version, use the Microsoft Office Upgrade Wizard to remove the older components.

Using Microsoft Office Manager in Office 4.x, you can hold down the Alt key and click an active program's icon to close that program. Note that this doesn't close Run or Find File because they are not programs with distinct executable files.

The text does flow into the right column when you select the two-column format. The problem is that you can't see it unless you choose View, Page Layout.

We suspect the reason for some confusion about this is that many readers now use both Word 97 and Word 95. If you use Word 97 at work and Word 95 at home (or vice versa), you'll probably be convinced that Word 97 automatically flows the text properly and Word 95 doesn't. However, the only difference in the way they handle multi-column text is that Word 97 automatically switches to Page Layout view when you select a multi-column format. If you use Word 95, just choose View, Page Layout, and you'll see those columns as they'll look when printed.

We recently published a tip describing how to make a pair of opening slides to simulate a flashing neon sign. Reader Bob B. asks how to continue a slide show from the flashing neon sign slides.

The trick is you have to set the two slides that create the animation so they will continually run. So, what do you do to view the remainder of the show?

First, let's quickly run through the animation. Let's say you place a dark red WordArt object on a slide. Copy that object and press Ctrl-M to create a new slide. Press Ctrl-V to paste the object. Now, set the newly pasted WordArt object to bright red. These two slides will handle the animation.

OK, so you have slides 1 and 2 that you will use for the animation, and you intend to use slides 3 through 10 for the remainder of the show. Choose View, Slide Sorter. Right-click Slide 1 and choose Slide Transition. When the Slide Transition dialog box opens, select the radio button labeled Automatically After and enter 1 second. Click OK to close the dialog box and record your selection.

Now, click Slide 2 and repeat the procedure. Next, choose View, Slide Show. When the Slide Show dialog box opens, select the From radio button and enter slides 1 to 2. Select the Loop Continuously Until Esc check box and then click Show to start the slide show.

The show will begin cycling constantly between slides 1 and 2 to create the blinking effect. When you're ready to begin the rest of the show, right-click the screen and choose Go To, Slide Navigator. In Slide Navigator, double-click Slide 3, and the rest of the show will begin. Note that we set the show to run until someone presses Esc. So, when you finish the last slide of the show, you'll go back to Slide 1, and the animated sign will start all over again.

Want to add a blank sheet to your workbook? Click on the worksheet tab before which you want to insert the new sheet, then choose the Worksheet command from the Insert menu. (The keyboard shortcut is Alt+I+W).

In the last tip, we discussed how to create a master document. We mentioned that you can open each of the subdocuments individually for editing. When you elect to do this, DO NOT rename the file. If you do, you'll destroy the link between the subdocument and the master document. If you need to rename a subdocument, open it in the master document and then choose File, Save As, give it a new name, and click

Yes, it is practical. You can use Word's AutoExec macro to open a Notepad document. You'll need a text file for your Notepad document, so let's create one named Scratch.txt. To do this, run Notepad and choose File, Save As. Type

and then locate a folder for the file (we used c:\Data). Click Save to save the document and close the dialog box.

Now that you have a document to work with, let's write the macro. To do this, run Word and choose Tools, Macro. When the Macro dialog box opens, type

between Sub MAIN and End Sub (supplied by Word) and press Ctrl-S to save the macro. (Don't forget to substitute your folder for \Data). Now, close Word (choose File, Exit). The next time you run Word, Scratch.txt will open in Notepad.

To open Word without a blank document, you need to modify the shortcut you use when you open Word. Since we have no way of knowing for sure how you start Word on your computer, we'll assume that you click Start, Programs, Microsoft Word.

To get to the Word shortcut, right-click Start and choose Open. Now, double-click the Programs folder to open it. Next, right-click the Microsoft Word icon and choose Properties. When the Properties dialog box opens, click the Shortcut tab and then click in the Target entry box. Move to the end of the existing command and type a space followed by /n.

Finally, click OK to apply your new setting and close the dialog box. The next time you start Word (using this shortcut), you won't see a blank document.

A few months ago, we ran a tip on how to place a vertical line in a Word document. A reader sends this tip on a better way to add a vertical line.

If you try to insert page numbers using Insert, Page Numbers, and find the command grayed out and unavailable, check your view. The current view is always bulleted on the View menu, so click on the menu to see which one is selected. You can insert page numbers only when you're in Page Layout or Normal view. If you need to insert a page number, choose one of these two.

In Microsoft Word for Windows, when you want to insert a page break in your Word document in order to start a new page at a specific point, press Ctrl-Enter.

Word has a nifty highlight feature that works like those highlighting markers you use to emphasize text on a printed page. To use it, click the Highlight button; it's probably next to the Underline button unless you've moved it. (Don't have one? Go to Tools, Customize, click the Toolbars tab and click on Tools in the Categories box. The button looks like a highlighting marker with a small yellow square beneath it; just drag it up to your toolbar.) Word's default highlight color is yellow. If you'd rather use some other color, click on the down arrow at the right side of the highlight button. This will expand your color list. You can choose no color (None), green, cyan, or magenta, blue, red, or dark blue.

While it is possible to paste third-party icons into Word toolbar buttons, the biggest problem for most people is finding a way to copy the icons in the first place. So, let's look at how you can do the job using the tools provided with Windows 95/98.

Suppose there's an icon on your desktop that you'd like to use in a Word toolbar button. Press Print Screen and then click Start, Programs, Accessories, Paint. When Paint opens, press Ctrl-V to paste the screen capture from the Clipboard.

With the screen in Paint, click the Select tool (its icon looks like a rectangle drawn with a broken line). Now, use the mouse to carefully select the icon you want. With the icon selected, choose Edit, Copy (or Cut). Now, open Word and choose View, Toolbars. When the Toolbars dialog box opens, click Customize. Next, right-click the button into which you want to paste your new icon and choose Paste Button Image.

Of course, if you have a program that allows you to edit icons, you can copy an icon image from that program and then paste it into the toolbar button.

You may find that when you paste a bitmap file from Word to PowerPoint, the picture is distorted. The reason for this is that Word assumes that the system palette remains constant. So Word places palette information for a Device Dependent Bitmap (DDB) and a Device Independent Bitmap on the Clipboard. The default pasting uses DDB. The way around the problem is to use Paste Special and always choose Device Independent Bitmap when pasting from Word into PowerPoint.

One of our readers asks if there's a way to paste Excel charts into a PowerPoint slide without getting the entire worksheet. Yes, there is. To do this, you right-click the chart and then choose Copy. Now move to the PowerPoint slide and press Ctrl-V (or choose Edit, Paste.) This will get the chart into PowerPoint without dragging the whole worksheet along with it.

To use this suggestion, all you have to do is open the slide and then press Ctrl-P. This activates PowerPoint's pen tool. You can now use the pen to draw circles around the objects under discussion.

After you finish with your discussion on a particular object, press E to erase the circle. Now, you can draw a new circle around the next object of interest.

Well, maybe not really free because you paid for them when you bought Microsoft Office 95. To see the photos, insert the installation CD in the CD-ROM drive. Open the disc or use Windows Explorer to read the contents. Open Valupack, then locate the Photos folder. When you open Photos, you'll see that there's quite a collection of folders from which to choose. Check them out and copy any you like to your hard disk.

Want to put a frame around an imported picture? Right-click the picture and then choose Frame Picture from the resulting menu. Couldn't be easier.

No problem. All you have to do is choose the Text tool (the button's icon is a large "A") and draw your text outline. Type in the text and then click away from the text. Now, click on the text. When the outline appears, grab the edge with the mouse, and move the text over your picture.

If the picture is dark, you may want to change the text color so it will show up over the picture. To do this, select the text and choose Format, Font. When the Font dialog box appears, click the arrow at the right side of the Color list box and choose a new color. Click OK to close the dialog box and save your changes.

Do you commonly insert the same picture into Word documents? Perhaps you have a company logo that you insert regularly into some of your Word documents. It's not much trouble--all you have to do is choose Insert, Picture, locate the picture file, select it, and click OK. Even so, it would be better to be able to insert your logo with a single click.

To do this, click to establish an insertion point, then choose Tools, Macro. When the Macro dialog box opens, click Record. Name your new macro (we used Logo) and click OK. Now, choose Insert, Picture and locate the logo. Select it and click OK. Click the Stop button on the Macro Recorder panel to stop the recording. You can delete the logo from the current document at this point.

To place a Logo button in the toolbar, choose View, Toolbars and then click Customize. In the Customize dialog box, click the Toolbars tab. Locate Macros in the list and select it. Your new macro (Logo) should appear in the right pane. Use the mouse to drag it to the toolbar. When you reach the spot on the toolbar you want to use, release the mouse button. Click Assign to name the button Logo (or type in a new name if you wish) and then click Close to close the dialog box.

All you have to do to insert the company logo is click at an insertion point and click your new Logo button.

It sure is, but first you have to put the picture into a frame. That way you can place it anywhere you want. To frame an existing picture, click the picture to select it and then choose Insert, Frame. Now, grab the frame with the mouse and move it. The picture and its frame will work just fine right across the two newsletter columns.

Want to add some text inside a picture in a Word document? Here's one way to do the job--frame the picture. To do this, right-click the picture. When the menu opens, choose Frame Picture.

Now for the text. Choose Insert, Frame. The cursor will turn into a cross hair. Use the cross hair to draw a new frame. Now add text to your new frame. At this point, since both the picture and text are in frames, you can place them both wherever you want, and placing the text frame over the picture frame is no problem at all.

You're right, a symbol is treated just like text. In fact, a symbol is simply a typeface just like all the other text. But, this doesn't mean that you can't place it inside other text. Let's run through an example.

Open a blank Word document and add some text--anything will do. When you're finished, press Enter a few times and then choose Insert, Symbol. When the Symbol dialog box opens, double-click the symbol you want to use and then click Close to dismiss the dialog box.

Select your newly added symbol and choose Format, Font. When the Font dialog box opens, type in

as the font size (for this example) and click OK. Now, with the symbol selected, choose Insert, Frame. Use the mouse to size the frame and to place it in your text.

By placing a frame around the symbol we have, in effect, turned the symbol into a picture that we can place anywhere in the document.

To see what he is talking about, let's make a callout. Open a blank Word document and then see if your Drawing toolbar is visible. If it isn't, choose View, Toolbars. When the Toolbars dialog box opens, select the check box labeled Drawing and click OK to record your selection and close the dialog box.

With the Drawing toolbar available, click the Callout button (its icon looks like a comic-book-type text balloon). Draw the callout and type in some text. With the callout selected, click the Format Callout button in the Drawing toolbar. When the Format Callout dialog box opens, you can select the type of callout you want to use. Click OK to close the dialog box and save your selections.

To turn the line into an arrow, select the callout and choose Format, Drawing Object. When the Drawing Object dialog box opens, click the Line tab. Under Arrowhead, click the arrow at the right side of the Style list box. From the expanded list, select the arrow style you need. After you've made all the necessary selections, click OK to close the dialog box and save your changes.

Note that in the Drawing Object dialog box, you can also change the width of the arrowheads as well as fill color and type, and size and position. All you have to do is click the appropriate tab.

The point size of a font refers to that font's height, and there are 72 points to an inch. Therefore, a 72-point font will be 1 inch high, and a 36-point font will be one-half inch high. Although most TrueType fonts show 72 points as the maximum size, most will look OK even larger. If you need a 2-inch tall headline, select the text you want to set to 144 points and choose Format, Font. When the Font dialog box opens, double-click in the Size entry box to select the current contents and then type in 144. Click OK, and your selected text will appear in all its 144-point glory.

This works because TrueType fonts are vector drawings rather than bitmaps. This allows Word to expand the size while retaining the same resolution you have at smaller sizes. If you try this, you'll find that 144-point fonts will print quite nicely.

Note: Bitmapped fonts will look jagged when expanded. The TrueType fonts have TT before the name for easy identification.

You can add shadows to almost anything in PowerPoint. To do so, select the object and click the Shadow button in the Drawing toolbar. You'll find that some Clip Art objects don't look especially good with shadowing. If you feel you really need shadowing, you might be able to ungroup the object in question, then remove some of the background. With the background out of the way, select all the components you want to use and choose Draw, Group. Now you can select the picture and try the Shadow button again. You may also find that shadowing some portions of an ungrouped picture is effective. If so, add the shadowing before you group the picture.

When you have a group of objects on a PowerPoint slide, you may want to align all of them so that they fall into the general categories of left, center, or right.

Let's say you have three pictures on a slide. You'd like to have them all appear to be standing on the same floor. Click one of the figures and then press and hold the Shift key while you click the other two figures to select them. Choose Draw, Align and then select Bottoms. Now all the figures will be aligned across the bottom.

If you're developing a new slide show and want to use some charts, you can use them very easily by selecting the correct slide type up front. When you create a new slide, PowerPoint opens the New Slide dialog box, from which you can select the type of slide you want. There are 24 slide layouts available, and three of them include chart placeholders. The three that use charts are (counting from left to right in the dialog box) slides five, six, and eight. After you select one of these three slide formats, you can insert a slide by simply double-clicking inside the chart graphic.

To add a shape to a PowerPoint slide, you use the AutoShapes button. You know you can add text to a shape, so why not add symbols as well?

Say you want to place on a slide a drawing of a star with an eight ball in the center. Choose the AutoShape button and draw your star. Now open Character Map and choose the Wingdings font. Select the eight ball and copy it. At this point, the eight-ball symbol is on the Clipboard, so go back to your text box, select it, and press Ctrl-V to paste the eight ball. Now you can select the eight ball and set its size.

When you're working on PowerPoint slide shows, you might find it handy to start those shows from your desktop. Run Windows Explorer and locate your slide show data file. Use the right mouse button to drag the file's icon to the desktop. Release the mouse button and, when the menu opens, choose Create Shortcut(s) Here.

To run the slide show, right-click your new shortcut and choose Show. PowerPoint will open, display your show, and then close.

When you need to print slides for handouts, chances are you'll print them in black and white on a laser printer. You can print quality slides on a laser printer, but usually not by good fortune alone. To see how those PowerPoint slides will look in black and white, click the B&W View button in the toolbar. It's the button that has blue, green, and red on the top-left diagonal corner, and white, gray, and black in the bottom-left diagonal. (Note: If you don't have the button on your toolbar, you can add it manually by using Tools, Customize Toolbars.)

When you click the B&W View button, all your slides will display as gray scale. You'll probably notice that many of them look too dark to print well. To correct the situation, right-click the slide and choose Black And White/Light Grayscale from the menu. This is usually a good choice for black-and-white printing.

When you're finished, click the B&W View button to toggle back to color. Selections that you made from the Black And White menu have no effect on the color version of the slides.

A reader asks this question about compatibility between PowerPoint 97 and PowerPoint 95:

Compatibility between Office 95 and Office 97 is a rather mixed bag--some things seem to run okay and others have a problem. We have one computer with Office 95 installed, and another with Office 97, so we checked to see what might happen when we start mixing those files.

First, we created a single slide presentation in PowerPoint 95 and saved it as Test95. We then transferred the file to the other computer and opened the file with PowerPoint 97. We saw no problem going in this direction.

Next, we created a slide in PowerPoint 97 and saved it as Test97. Then we attempted to open it using PowerPoint 97. This doesn't work. However, if we create a slide in PowerPoint 97 and save it as a 95 or 97 file, it will work.

Let's suppose you create a slide in PowerPoint 97 that you know will need to run in PowerPoint 95. You can choose File, Save As. When the Save As dialog box opens, click the arrow at the right side of the Save as Type list box to expand the list. Select PowerPoint 95 & 97 Presentation (*.ppt). Now, name your file and locate a folder for it. Click Save to close the dialog box and save your new file. You can now open the file using PowerPoint versions 95 and 97.

If you decide to use this approach, keep in mind that some slides produced in PowerPoint 97 may not work as expected when run in version 95.

When you apply the emboss effect to PowerPoint text, you'll find that the effect varies depending on the type of fill you decide to use. Here's what you can expect:

Often when you size artwork in PowerPoint, you need to size it so that several elements retain the same size relationship to each other. The best way to accomplish this is to size all those elements at the same time. Let's suppose you have three pictures that need sizing and must retain their size relationship. Click on the first picture, then hold down the Shift key and click the other two pictures. Now use the mouse to drag the pictures to their new size.

When you create a PowerPoint slide show, you may not want to show all the slides to all audiences. To hide a slide, choose View, Slide Sorter. Click the slide you want to hide and then choose Tools, Hide Slide. Now when you run the slide show, PowerPoint will skip the hidden slide.

As sure as you hide a slide, someone in the audience will ask for information on the hidden topic. If this happens, you can show the hidden slide with a minimum of fluster. When a hidden slide is next in line, a large asterisk appears in the slide window near the lower-right corner. When you click on the asterisk, PowerPoint will move to the hidden slide and display it. Note: You may have to move the mouse slightly to make the asterisk appear.

When you choose File, Print in PowerPoint, note that you have several options. If you click on the down arrow at the right of the Print What list box to expand the list, you'll see these options. You can select Slides (the default), Handouts (2 Slides Per Page, 3 Slides Per Page, 6 Slides Per Page), Notes Pages, or Outline View. Make your choice and click OK to continue.

Suppose you have a PowerPoint slide with a picture that you've spent quite a bit of time getting to look just right. Perhaps you've added some shading or made some other style changes.

Now let's suppose you'd like to use the same style with other pictures. You don't have to go through all the steps with the remaining pictures--all you have to do is click your picture to select it. Next, choose Format, Pick Up Object Style. Now click the picture to which you'd like to apply the style and choose Format, Apply Object Style. That's it--your perfect style will be applied to your new picture.

In our last tip, we told you that you can copy a PowerPoint object's style by selecting the object and then choosing Format, Pick Up Object Style. Next, you select a target object and choose Format, Apply Object Style.

Here's another way to transfer a style. Select the picture and then click the Format Painter button in the PowerPoint toolbar (the Format Painter button looks like a paintbrush). Now move to the object you want to apply the style to, and click once.

(Note: If the Format Painter button does not appear on your toolbar, add it manually: Go to Tools, Customize; find All Commands; locate Format Painter and drag it to the toolbar; click Close.)

Suppose you'd like to add a slide that reads "Don't get behind the eight ball." You could replace the words "eight ball" with a Wingdings eight-ball symbol. To do this, open Character Map and select the Wingdings font. Now locate the eight ball and click it. Next, click Select, then Copy, and Close.

Now open your PowerPoint slide and select an insertion point. Choose Edit, Paste, and the eight ball will appear on the slide. Since the eight ball is a character, you can't resize it with the mouse as you would a picture. You'll have to select a new font size. An advantage to using symbols in a TrueType font (which Wingdings is) is that the resolution remains the same even when you make the symbol very large.

When working with PowerPoint, you may want to use AutoShapes to draw rectangles, arrows, or circles. To put text into a shape, simply double-click the shape and start typing.

To set the font, font size, and font color, right-click the shape and choose Font. When the Font dialog box opens, select the font, size, and color and then click OK. This will change the parameters of existing text as well as any new text you enter.

Many designers use PowerPoint's existing templates when designing a slide presentation. It's easy to add text when all you have to do is click once in the right spot and type away.

If you'd like to add additional text to a slide, you can click in one of the text areas again and type more text. If the location doesn't suit you, you can use the Text tool to add text anywhere on the slide. Just click on the Text button in the Drawing toolbar (it's the big A icon) and then use the mouse to locate and size your text entry.

To set the font and font size, choose Format, Font and make your selections from the Font dialog box. Now type in your text.

When we discuss resizing inserted pictures (such as clip art), we ordinarily tell you how to do it without distorting the picture. There are times, though, when you might want to distort a picture to enhance its appearance. For example, suppose you're creating a document (Word or PowerPoint) for a weight-loss program. Perhaps you'd like to show a before-and-after cartoon. To do something like this, you could import one of the ClipArt images of a cartoon person. There are several available. You may want to do this in PowerPoint rather than in Word, because PowerPoint offers more options for working with ClipArt. If you need to use the pictures in Word, you can import them later.

Now insert one of the pictures. If there are extraneous objects in the picture you want to use (such as a briefcase) select the object and choose Draw, Ungroup. Click away from the drawing and then click the extraneous object. Move it away from the main drawing and press Delete.

When you have a clean drawing, press Ctrl-A to select everything and then choose Draw, Group to put the object back together again. Select the picture and choose Edit, Copy. Next, choose Edit, Paste. Position the two copies as you want. Then click the picture on the left and use the mouse to stretch it horizontally. Now that you have a genuinely overweight person, you can either leave the original version alone or use the mouse to make that person even thinner.

Since you may want to import the pictures into a Word document, press Ctrl-A to select both and then choose Draw, Group. From now on, they'll stay together. You can click the picture and choose Edit, Copy to copy it to the Clipboard. Then you can move to Word and choose Edit, Paste to paste the picture into your Word document.

Slides may not show up in Word when you use PowerPoint's Write-Up. The notes will look OK, but instead of slide images, you'll get an empty box with resize handles. This happens when you've enabled the picture placeholders in Word. To disable the holders, choose Tools, Options and click the View tab. Deselect the check box labeled Picture Placeholders.

If you write your PowerPoint outlines in Word, here's a tip you can use: Open Windows Explorer and locate the PowerPoint.exe file (its location depends on where you put it during installation). Next, open the Windows folder in Explorer's left pane and scroll down so you can see the SendTo folder. Now use the right mouse button to drag the PowerPoint.exe icon to the SendTo folder. When the icon is over the folder, release the button and then choose Create Shortcut(s) Here.

Now, to quickly get your Word outline into PowerPoint, just right-click the file in Explorer and then choose Send To, PowerPoint.

You can size boxes to almost any practical size in Word. But before you get started drawing a box, you'll need to make sure the Drawing tools are available. If they aren't, choose View, Toolbars and select Drawing. Click OK to close the Toolbars dialog box.

Now that the Drawing toolbar is available, click the Rectangle button and draw a box. Click the box to select it and choose Format, Drawing Object. When the Drawing Object dialog box opens, click the Size and Position tab. Now, use the Width and Height spin boxes to set the dimensions you need. After you've set the size, click OK to record your changes and close the dialog box.

Many Excel users like to add some kind of background to those special worksheets--the ones they show to the boss. Here's how to do it:

Let's say you have a picture, or perhaps a company logo, that you'd like to use as a background for a particular worksheet. Open the worksheet and choose Format, Sheet, Background. When the Sheet Background dialog box opens, locate your picture file and double-click it to insert the background and close the dialog box. Note that all files other than BMP will open a dialog box offering to convert the file. Click OK to continue. Excel tiles the background to cover the entire worksheet.

Since it's possible that you will later want to remove the background, all you have to do is choose Format, Sheet, Background. When the Sheet Background dialog box opens, click None.

Word displays the pictures by default when you choose Insert, Picture. However, if you change the way the Insert Picture dialog box displays files, then the new selection becomes the default.

What most likely happened is that the display type in the dialog box was changed. To get the preview back, choose Insert, Picture. When the dialog box opens, look for a cluster of buttons on the right side of the dialog box. The rightmost button is Preview. Click this button and you'll see the picture previews once again. Click Cancel to close the dialog box, unless you want to insert the currently selected picture--then you'd click OK. In either case, your new selection will become the default.

Most of us like to use background printing so we can keep working while we print a document. The problem is that some PowerPoint print operations can be very slow due to a large number of graphics. In this case, you might want to suspend background printing. To do this in Version 4, choose Tools, Options, then click the General tab in the Options dialog box that will open. Now deselect Print In Background and click OK. In Version 95, click the Print tab, then deselect Background Printing. Reverse the operation to return to background printing.

If you have an Excel worksheet that occupies less than a page, Excel will by default print it in the upper-left corner of your paper. You can make it look better by forcing Excel to print it in the center of the page.

Choose File, Page Setup and when the dialog box opens, click the Margins tab. Now select the two check boxes (Horizontally and Vertically) under Center On Page. If you think your worksheet looks better when centered only horizontally, select the Horizontally check box and leave Vertically deselected. (Or vice versa.) Click OK and run to the printer.

To set the print area (and assign titles) for your Excel worksheets, choose File, Page Setup. Click the Sheet tab in the Page Setup dialog box. Type in the Print Area box the reference of the cells you want to use as the print area. For example, you might use $A$1:$G$10. Next, go to Print Titles and enter the reference to the row you want to use as the title. Go to the Columns To Repeat At Left box and type the reference to the column you want to use as the title. Click OK.

Let's say you've placed a printer shortcut in your Office 95 Shortcut Bar. You click it and the button seems to activate, but nothing happens. The Shortcut Bar can't start printer queue programs directly. To get around the problem, right-click the printer shortcut button, then click Open to open the printer queue.

When you run a macro that attempts to set a built-in menu command or a submenu command's Enabled property, you'll get the message:

This is not a bug. Excel doesn't allow you to change built-in menu and submenu commands.

When you finish an important Word document, you probably run the spelling checker, then perhaps you run the grammar checker, and finally you save the corrected version. To make sure you don't forget any of these steps, you can write a simple macro to perform all these tasks for you.

To generate the macro, choose Tools, Macro. When the Macro dialog box opens, type

and then click Create. Now, enter the macro as shown here. Note that Sub Main and End Sub are supplied by Word. You supply the remainder.

After you enter the macro, choose File, Save to save it to Normal.dot. To make your macro more useful, you need to assign it to a toolbar button. So, choose View, Toolbars and click Customize. When the Customize dialog box opens, click the Toolbars tab. Locate Macros and select it. Now your new macro should appear in the right pane of the dialog box. Use the mouse to drag it to the toolbar. When you reach the location where you want the button to appear, release the mouse button. In the next dialog box, click Assign to assign the macro name to the button and close the dialog box. Back in Customize, click Close to close the dialog box and save your changes.

There's a common misconception that linking files in PowerPoint saves disk space. The truth is that when you link a picture to one of your presentations, the file size will be the same as if you had embedded the picture. What happens is that PowerPoint maintains a metafile copy of the picture. It's this copy that gets displayed. If the linked picture changes, then the saved picture changes. If the picture gets deleted or moved, PowerPoint will still display the last stored version.

To help with your learning curve, Microsoft PowerPoint can read Word files, allowing you to turn them into effective presentations in just a few steps. The trick is to set up your document using Word's outline-based heading styles (Heading 1, Heading 2, and so forth).

If your document isn't already using these styles, load it into Word and select View, Outline. Scroll through your document, using + and - to assign outline levels to the paragraphs you consider important enough to include in your slides. When you're satisfied with the outline, close and save your file.

When your document is ready--but isn't open in Word--enter PowerPoint. Ignore any wizards that pop up to help you create a document; you don't need them.

Select File, Open. In the resulting dialog box's Files Of Type list, select Outlines (in Office 7.0, it's All Outlines). Choose the document you want to convert, then click OK.

Unfortunately, PowerPoint won't bring in any pictures, worksheet tables, or other objects from your Word document. You will have to go through your document and copy these items over one by one, using Edit, Copy In Word and Edit, Paste In PowerPoint.

To view your presentation in a more graphical way, select View, Slide Sorter. Use the various options on the Format menu to select a layout, a color scheme, and other elements to give the presentation the look you want. To edit an individual slide, double-click it.

You want to share your PowerPoint slide show with your pals who don't have PowerPoint. What to do? One way to handle this problem is to import an entire slide show into a Word document. Once the slide show is in Word, you can print it and send it to people who need to view it. This is especially effective if you have access to a color printer.

To put an entire slideshow into a Word document, choose Tools, Write-Up. When the Write-Up dialog box appears, select the type of layout you want to use and click OK. Once the slide show is in a Word document, you can add whatever text and formatting you wish.

Picture this: The boss is downtown on the 48th floor, but you're out in the burbs. You very much want the boss to see your presentation. If your system is attached to a network, you can present your slide show over the network.

All you have to do is get the boss, or (more likely) one of the IS employees, to set up the computer and coordinate the show with you. At the boss' end, the IS person will have to run PowerPoint, choose a blank presentation, and choose Tools, Presentation Conference. When the Presentation Conference Wizard opens, the IS person needs to select Audience and click Next, then click Finish and wait for you to connect.

At your end, you need to choose Tools, Presentation Conference. When the Wizard opens, select Presenter and click Next. Now, select the tools you want to use and click Next (make sure you select Slide Navigator). Type in the computer name (we assume you already know this--the IS person in the boss' office will know) and click Add. Click Next and then click Finish.

When the connection is made, you'll see on your screen a slide show window, and all the necessary navigation tools. The boss, at the other end, will see only the slide show. When you finish the show, click End Show and then click OK.

This feature offers other useful possibilities. Let's say that you have a laptop that you can connect to the network. You could then connect to a desktop computer that's driving a large screen monitor and control the whole show from a corner of the room.

When you need to use an Excel worksheet in a presentation, you want that worksheet to look as good as it possibly can. It must be functional but beautiful. Excel 95 offers a feature that you might want to consider using for those special worksheets: adding a background.

Let's say you have a logo that you'd like to use as a background. Choose Format, Sheet, Background. When the Sheet Background dialog box opens, locate your picture file and select it. Click OK to insert the background and close the dialog box. Unless the picture is a BMP file, you'll get a dialog box that offers to convert the file. Click OK to continue. Excel will tile the logo to cover the entire worksheet.

There are a few caveats that we need to mention. If you use a dark (or busy) picture, you'll have trouble seeing your data entries. The best background would be a very pale picture. A watermark type of picture would be best.

To remove the background, choose Format, Sheet, Background. When the Sheet Background dialog box opens, click None.

When you're printing a group of long documents, you may find that you're not happy with the print order. If you decide that you'd like to change the order in which your documents print, click Start and choose Settings, Printers. When the Printers folder opens, double-click the printer to which you sent the documents. Let's suppose that the document you need right now is at the bottom of the printer's list. No problem--simply grab the file's icon with the mouse and drag it to the top of the list.

When you want to use Print Preview to see how your Word document will look on paper, choose File, Print Preview. If you want to see multiple pages simultaneously, click the Multiple Pages button in the Print Preview toolbar. It's the button that has four tiny pages on it.

Here's how the dialog box is laid out. The top row provides pages 1 through 3. The bottom row provides two to the maximum, placing the pages both vertically and horizontally. You can adjust the number of pages in view by changing the zoom factor.

If you use preprinted stationery, you probably want to use that paper for only the first page of a multipage document. Word makes it easy to use a different sheet for the first page.

Choose File, Page Setup and click the Paper Source tab. You'll notice that you can choose the feed source for the first page and the other pages separately. This is so you can use that preprinted letterhead paper. If you select Manual Feed for the first page and the default tray for the other pages, Word will pause for you to insert that specially printed paper to print the first page. After that page finishes, the document will continue to print on the standard paper in the default bin.

In Word 7, you may find that a callout or text box using a color fill that you placed on top of another image gets printed without the fill. This problem usually occurs when you use an HP LaserJet 4 printer driver version 3.78 with the Windows 95 Universal printer driver Version 4.00. (The problem doesn't occur, however, when you place the text box on top of a Windows Metafile [.WMF] graphic.)

To get around this, try using the PostScript version of the HP LaserJet 4si/MX driver. Alternatively, you can change the graphics mode to Raster. To do this, choose File|Print. Click the Properties button, click the Graphics tab, select Use Raster Graphics, then click Apply, followed by OK. Then click OK in the Print dialog box to continue with your print session.

To set the print area (and assign titles) for your Excel worksheets, choose File|Page Setup. Now, click the Sheet tab in the Page Setup dialog box. Type into the Print Area box the reference of the cells you want to use as the print area. For example, you might use $A$1:$G$10. Next, go to Print Titles and enter the reference to the row you want to use as the title. Go to the Columns To Repeat At Left box and type in the reference to the column you want to use as the title. Click OK.

Most of us like to use background printing so we can keep working while we print a document. But the problem is some PowerPoint print operations can be slow due to a large number of graphics. In this case, you might want to temporarily suspend background printing. To do this in Version 4, choose Tools, Options, then click the General tab in the Options dialog box that will open. Now deselect Print In Background and click OK. In Version 95, click the Print tab, then deselect Background Printing. Reverse the operation to return to background printing.

Let's say that cell A1 contains the word Sally and cell A2 contains Sally's sales total for the month. You can go to cell C3 and type

=CONCATENATE("Salesperson ",$A$1, " is this month's leader with $", $A$2, " in sales.")

You can use the Customize dialog box to display or hide toolbars and buttons. You can also use Customize to turn ToolTips on or off, and to choose whether to animate the toolbars. But you can't use Customize to change a button's image.

We can do that. When you want to place a border around a Word paragraph, click in the paragraph and choose Format, Borders and Shading. When the Paragraph Borders and Shading dialog box opens, click the Borders tab. Now, select the type of border you want to use (Box, Shadow, and so on) and the style (from very thin to very thick lines). Then click OK to close the dialog box and save your changes.

If you'd like to add some shading to your bordered paragraph, click in the paragraph and choose Format, Borders and Shading. This time, click the Shading tab. Click the level of shading you want to use and click OK.

Note that you can apply shading to a paragraph without adding a border. If this is what you need, just forget the part about the border and follow the described procedure for applying shading. Click OK to close the dialog box and save your changes. This time, the paragraph will be shaded per your selection, but there will be no border.

If you need to type a lot of text into a single cell, you can control the width of your text by typing Alt-Enter to insert a carriage return. When you need to use a Tab, press Ctrl-Alt-Tab. You'll get a cell similar to the one shown here.

If you commonly work on large Word documents, leaving off in the evening and then picking up where you left off next morning, you might find it useful to have your document automatically scroll to where you left off. Here's a very simple macro that will do the job for you:

To enter the macro, choose Tools, Macro. When the Macro dialog box opens, type in the name of your new macro. Because you want this macro to run automatically, you have to name it "AutoOpen." After you enter the name, click on the arrow at the right side of the Macros Available In list box and choose Normal.dot (Global Template) to make it always available. Next, click Create. Now enter

between Sub Main and End Sub. Press Ctrl-S to save the macro. You'll be asked if you want to save the document. Click Yes.

Now, when you open a document, Word will automatically scroll to the bottom of the document.

A reader writes, "I use Microsoft Bookshelf often, but it's a pain to have to remember to put the CD into the drive each time. When I first purchased Office 95, I had no choice but to use the CD. Now, I have a new computer with more disk space than I had ever imagined possible. Since there's now room on the hard disk for Bookshelf, I wonder if there's any reason not to copy all the files to the hard disk?"

As long as you have the disk space, Bookshelf will run just fine from the hard disk. Here's how to make it work. Run Windows Explorer and create a new folder named Bookshelf. Put the Bookshelf CD into the CD-ROM drive and navigate to the Office CD. Press Ctrl-A to select all the files in the folder. Now, use the mouse to drag the files to your new Bookshelf folder. The copy process will require several minutes (it took seven on our computer).

The next time you attempt to run Bookshelf, you'll get a dialog box prompting you to put the CD into the CD-ROM drive, or enter a new location. Type in the new location (c:\Bookshelf in our example) and Bookshelf will open. From this point on, you won't see the prompt again because the new path is now known to the system.

When you make a list in a Word document, you have the option of sorting that list. Just use the mouse to select your list, and then choose Table, Sort Text. When the Sort Text dialog box opens, use the defaults and click OK. This will sort your text in ascending order.

You can choose to sort the text in descending order if that is what you need. Just select the Descending radio button in the Sort Text dialog box, and then click OK to continue.

We have mentioned in the past that you can use the Replace dialog box to count occurrences of a style by clicking in the Find What text entry box, clicking on Format, and choosing Style. Then you select the format you want to count and click on OK. Click in the Replace With entry box and repeat. You'll be replacing a style with the same style when you click on Replace All, and Replace will tell you how many replacements were made.

For those of you who would like to get started with some WordBasic programming, here's a short program to do the count for you. Substitute any style you want to count for Heading 1.

To enter the program, choose Tools|Macro. When the dialog box opens, enter Count in the Macro Name entry box and then click on Create. This will take you to a screen on which you'll see

Enter the program shown above between Sub MAIN and End Sub. The program is incomplete without Sub MAIN and End Sub.

To run Count, save it and then choose File|Close to close the file. Open a document with a style trait you want to count and choose Tools|Macro|Count|Run.

A reader sends us two Word macros designed to set your document margins. To create Lou's first macro, choose Tools, Macro. When the Macro dialog box opens, type in

and click Create. Type the macro as shown below (note that Sub MAIN and End Sub are supplied by Word). You need to type in only the single line shown between Sub MAIN and End Sub. Once you've typed in the macro, press Ctrl-S to save it.

Follow the procedure described for the first macro to enter the second macro. Name this one StandardMargin and click Create.

There are so many keyboard shortcuts in Word (and all the other Office programs) that there's no chance of remembering them all. But most of us tend to remember a few that help us work better. Here are the ones we like to use.

If you want to save a file under a new name, rather than choose File, Save As, why not press F11 to do the same thing? If you want to repeat the last operation, press F4 (this is one you'll like once you become accustomed to using it).

You can activate the menu bar and then use the arrow keys to navigate it if you either press F10 or the Alt key--either one will work. We use F6 to move to the next pane.

If you use some AutoText entries, type the keyword and press F3 to insert your text. For example, if you choose Edit, AutoText and name the entry mso for Microsoft Office, all you have to do is type

When you chose File, Open in PowerPoint, the File Open dialog box appears. This dialog box is set to Preview by default. But, since you no longer get the preview, your File Open dialog box must have been accidentally set to some other view.

To reset your File Open dialog box to preview, select a PowerPoint file and then click the Preview button (it's the second button from the right in the File Open dialog box). Your slide preview should now appear.

Once you've selected preview mode, your selection will remain in effect until you decide to change it.

As we mentioned in the previous tip, the Rank function ranks data in your Excel worksheets. If you need to use the Rank function with data that's presented horizontally, you need to enter each cell address. For example, you might enter

As we've discussed in the past, you can insert ClipArt pictures into PowerPoint slides and then recolor the pictures. Under some circumstances, you can inadvertently mess up colors in subsequent ClipArt pictures. Let's give this a try.

Open a blank PowerPoint slide and choose Insert, ClipArt. Select a picture with a lot of solid color--we used the U.S. Flag. Right-click the object and choose Recolor. When the Recolor Picture dialog box opens, select your picture's predominant color (we chose red) and then click the arrow at the right side of the New Color list. Choose a new color (such as green or light blue) and click OK.

Now we have a green, white, and blue flag. Let's say we now decide to use the Canadian Flag instead of the U.S. Flag. So, we double-click the picture to open the Clip Gallery. We find the Canadian Flag and double-click it to insert it into the slide in place of the U.S. Flag. The Canadian Flag is now green and white, rather than red and white.

The recolor operation is carried over when you insert a new picture this way. To insert a new picture without the format change, simply choose Insert, ClipArt and select the new picture. This new picture will carry its original formatting.

This question comes from a reader: "I know I have inserted ClipArt into slides and then recolored the picture. I'm working on a slide show now, and I've inserted some ClipArt. My problem is that I can't recolor it. To fill you in on what happened, I inserted a picture of a girl at a desk. Then I ungrouped the picture and removed the girl, leaving only the desk. Now, I'd like to change the desk's colors, but I can't find the Recolor command. Can you help?"

Unfortunately, when you ungroup a ClipArt picture, you can no longer recolor it. Let's say you insert a picture, then select it, and choose Draw, Ungroup. When you do this, you get a dialog box warning you that you are converting the object to a PowerPoint drawing. Once the object is converted to a PowerPoint object, you can't use the Recolor command.

The trick here is to recolor the picture before you delete the unwanted portions. If you want to recolor an object, insert the picture and then right-click it and choose Recolor. Recolor the picture and then select it and choose Draw, Ungroup. Now, you can delete what you don't need.

A reader submitted this Excel tip in hopes that she could help others avoid a macro recording problem:

Today, we continue our series of tips from Microsoft's John Palmer. Those of you who don't have Word 95 might still want to check out these tips. Many of them apply to Word 6.0 as well as Word 95.

Wizard can do a lot to help you use Word and the other Office programs because it gives you an answer based on what you type in. Here are some tips on how to get better responses from the Answer Wizard. (Look under the Help menu to find the Answer Wizard command.)

It's better to use at least two words to describe what you're looking for. For example, if you enter "tabs," you'll get different results than you will if you enter "tabs in tables."

Eliminate noise words. These are words that are present in many topics but only serve to confuse the Wizard. This includes words such as "put," "make," "get," and "start."

A reader wants to know if there's an easy way to relocate the toolbar buttons. There sure is. All you have to do is hold down the Alt key and use the mouse to drag a button to a new location. You can also use this method to get rid of those buttons that you never use. Hold down the Alt key and drag the unwanted button onto the document window.

This method works in Word and PowerPoint but not in Excel or Access. In Excel and Access, choose View, Toolbars, Customize. While the Customize dialog box is open, you can use the Alt key plus the mouse to drag buttons to new locations. To delete buttons, drag them to the document window--Alt key not needed.

If you have an older version of Office and decide to install Office 97, you will probably see an alert dialog box that says:

If you click Yes, Setup will delete the old components. (Note: You will not lose any data.) If you want to keep your old version of Office for a testing period, click No.

When you turn on background pagination, Word will repaginate the current document while the program is idle. This keeps the page numbers current. Unfortunately, in some cases, background pagination can slow down other operations. If you have a problem with slowdowns, turn off background pagination. To do this, choose View, Normal (background repagination doesn't work in Page Layout view). Now choose Tools, Options and, when the Options dialog box opens, click the General tab. Now you can select or deselect the Background Repagination check box. Click OK to save your changes and close the dialog box.

When you want to replace one style with another, the second style must be available to your document. Let's say you want to replace Heading 1 with Heading 2. Press Ctrl-H to open the Replace dialog box. Click in the Find What entry box and then click Format and choose Style. In the Find Style dialog box, select Heading 1 and click OK. Now, click in the Replace With entry box, click Format and choose Style. When the Find Style dialog box opens, select Heading 2 and click OK. Now, you can click Replace All to replace Heading 1 with Heading 2--if Heading 2 is available.

If Heading 2 isn't available, click the first occurrence of Heading 1 and then choose Format, Style. When the Style dialog box opens, click the arrow at the right side of the List box and select All Styles. Select Heading 2 (it should be just below Heading 1 in the Styles list) and click Apply.

Now, you can press Ctrl-H again to open the Replace dialog box. Use the procedure described above, and Heading 2 will now appear in the Find Style dialog box.

Versions 5.0 and 7 of Microsoft Excel use Rich Cell Editing. This means you can edit data in the cell without moving up to the formula bar. To use this feature, double-click the cell and begin working at the insertion point.

Many of you subscribe to both our Office tips and our Office 97 tips. That makes sense because many offices have both versions installed. Likewise, some people use one version at home and another version at work. It's important to note, however, that these tips are not necessarily interchangeable. Although some tips will work in all three versions of Office that we cover (versions 4.X, 95, and 97), many of the topics we discuss in our Office 97 Tip of the Day have no counterpart in Office 95. Also, based on the e-mail we receive, many readers attempt to use Office 95 macros in Office 97 and Office 97 macros in Office 95. These macros are not mutually compatible. Office 97 macros will not run in Office 95, and Office 95 macros will not run in Office 97.

If you think your grammar checker is too tough on you, you might like to change the way it applies rules. Betcha wish you could have made such a change when you were in school, eh?

Choose Tools, Options. When the Options dialog box opens, click the Grammar tab. As you can see, there are three built-in choices--Strictly (all rules), For Business Writing, and For Casual Writing. Strictly is a bad choice for most of us because it often leads to rather stilted, overly formal documents. So, depending on what you're doing, you'll probably find that Business or Casual Writing will work best.

If you want something a little more personal, click Custom 1 and then click Customize Settings. This will open the Customize Grammar Settings dialog box. At this point, select the rules you want to apply and click OK. You may need to experiment with the settings to get exactly what you want for your custom grammar checker.

Back in the Options dialog box, click OK again to record your new settings and close the dialog box.

A reader asks us to point out that you can't tell anything about page numbering in the Print dialog box. If you need to check your page numbering, you need to do it before you choose File, Print.

To check page numbering, choose File, Print Preview. The preview will display page numbers along with all the rest of the text that will appear on your printed output. Once you've checked the page numbers, you can press Ctrl-P to open the Print dialog box (just like choosing File, Print). If you want to print without opening the Print dialog box, click the Print button in the Print Preview toolbar to print your document with no further ado.

A reader asks us to pass along this tip on an easy way to deal with bullets in Word:

When working with bulleted lists in Word, many people tend to forget about using the right mouse button. Let's say you start a list in your Word document. At this point, you have only one item in the list, but you want to start bulleting with the current line. Right-click the line. This opens a menu that contains the Bullets and Numbering command. Select this item to open the Bullets and Numbering dialog box. Click the Bullets tab and you can now select the type of bullet you want to use. After you make your selection, click OK to save it and close the dialog box.

When you press Enter at the end of the line to which you just added a bullet, Word will automatically create a new bullet on the following line--ready for you to type some text. So, as you continue adding text, Word will continue to apply bullets. If you want to stop adding bullets, right-click the line where you want to stop and choose Stop Numbering.

You can stop adding bullets even more easily if you simply press Enter twice after the last line you want bulleted. However, this does leave an extra blank line in the document. When you right-click and choose Stop Numbering, Word doesn't generate an extra line. It's simply a matter of which method seems more efficient to you.

One of our readers is in the fresh fruit business. He sent some sample slides from one of his presentations that he thinks other readers might like to adapt for their own presentations. Let's take a look at the techniques that he uses to make fruit ripen right before your eyes.

For our example, let's use the bunch of bananas that you'll find in the ClipArt Gallery (if you don't have the bananas, choose another appropriate ClipArt picture. What you need is a picture with few shades of color--the banana colors are made up of three shades of yellow).

Open a blank slide in PowerPoint and choose Insert, ClipArt. Locate the picture you want to use and click Insert. Size the picture and place it as you wish on the slide. If the picture isn't selected, click once to do so. Press Ctrl-C to copy the picture. Press Ctrl-M to create a new blank slide and then press Ctrl-V to paste the copied picture into the new slide.

We need to keep the original slide with the yellow ClipArt bananas. So, on the second slide, right-click the ClipArt object and choose Recolor. When the Recolor Picture dialog box opens, set the three shades of yellow to three shades of green. After you make all the color changes, click OK.

Select the picture and press Ctrl-C to copy it. Next, press Ctrl-M to open a new blank slide. Press Ctrl-V to paste the copied green bananas to the new slide. Right-click the picture and choose Recolor. Now, change the three shades slightly toward yellow. When you're happy with the colors, use Ctrl-C to copy the slide. Create a new slide (Ctrl-M) and paste the picture (Ctrl-V). Make the bananas slightly more yellow this time. Repeat the entire procedure until you're almost back to the original yellow.

Now, choose View, Slide Sorter and move the original ClipArt picture to the last slide position. Now, you can run the show. In each successive slide, the bananas will become a bit more yellow until they finally reach the original yellow color of the ClipArt picture.

When you're working on PowerPoint slide shows, you might find it handy to start those shows from your desktop. Run Windows Explorer and locate your slide show data file. Use the right-mouse button to drag the file's icon to the desktop. Release the mouse button and, when the menu opens, choose Create Shortcut(s) Here.

To run the slide show, right-click your new shortcut, and choose Show. PowerPoint will open, display your show, and then close.

In Windows 95, you can assign keystrokes to program shortcuts. For example, suppose you'd like to launch Word by simply pressing Ctrl+Alt+W. Start by using the mouse to drag a Word shortcut icon to the Start button. (Run Windows Explorer and locate your Microsoft Office folder; you'll find a shortcut in there.) When you release the mouse button, a copy of the shortcut will be placed in the Start menu.

Now, right-click the Start button and choose Open from the resulting menu. Right-click the Word icon in the Start menu, then choose Properties from the menu. When the dialog box opens, click the Shortcut tab. Click the text box labeled Shortcut key and type W. Click OK and you're all set. All you have to do to run Word now is press Ctrl+Alt+W.

You can use the same procedure to assign keys to other MS Office programs. Just don't assign keys that you're already using for other programs.

When you create a new document in a Microsoft Office program, you don't have to choose Save As from the File menu. All you have to do is click the Save button in the toolbar. For the first save, all the Office programs automatically default to Save As. When you click the Save button, you get the standard dialog box. Just type in a name for your file and click OK.

You can use a macro to ask for the name whenever you open a new document. To enter the macro, choose Tools, Macro and type in

Now click the arrow at the right side of the Macros Available In list box and select Normal.dot (Global template). Click Create and type in the macro exactly as shown here (your best bet is to copy and paste directly from this tip):

Now, when you open a new document, Word will prompt you for a name. Enter a name without the extension. Word will append the extension .DOC to your file name.

When you start a new document in Word, it's a good idea to name and save it as soon as you begin working. Since you're going to have to choose File, Save As and give the file a name anyway, why not let Word prompt you for a name? Here's a macro that you can use to ask for a name whenever you open a new document. To enter the macro, choose Tools, Macro and type in

Now click the arrow at the right side of the Macros Available In list box and select Normal.dot (Global template). Click Create and type in the macro exactly as shown here. Don't forget that Sub MAIN and End Sub are supplied by Word so you don't need to enter them.

With this macro in place, when you open a new document, Word will open a dialog box that prompts you for a name. You should enter the name without an extension, since Word will append the DOC extension for you.

A reader asks if Excel has an AutoSave feature like Word's. The answer is: yes and no. The feature exists, but you may have to do a bit of work to get to it.

Excel's AutoSave is part of the Add-Ins--goodies that come along with Office but that aren't necessarily installed. To see if it's available, choose Tools, Add-Ins. If you see AutoSave in the list, select it by clicking the check box and then click OK.

If AutoSave isn't in the Add-Ins list, put the Office 95 CD into the CD-ROM drive and click Start, Settings, Control Panel. In Control Panel, double-click the Add/Remove Programs icon to open the utility. Locate Microsoft Office (this line will vary depending on your version) and select it. Now click Add/Remove. When Office Setup opens, select Excel and click Change Options. Now select Add-Ins and click OK. Follow through with the Setup wizard to install the Add-Ins.

In the last tip, we discussed how to combine Word commands into a macro. We mentioned that you can modify existing Word macros to make them suit your needs. This time, let's look at how to modify one of those commands.

Let's consider the FileClose command. When you choose File, Close, Word will ask if you want to save the file. But a safer way to handle a file closing might be to always save the file. If you do this, you'll never have to work at recovering an unsaved document. So why not modify the command?

To modify the FileClose command, choose Tools, Macro. When the Macro dialog box opens, type in

and click Create. You'll find that the macro (shown below) consists of only one command.

To make the macro always save a file before closing it, modify the macro as shown here.

Choose File, Save to save the modified macro. Then choose File, Close to close the macro. From now on, when you choose File, Close, Word will first save the document and then close it. If the document has no name, Word will prompt you for one. Of course, if you commonly create a lot of test documents you don't plan to save, this is not the macro for you.

If you use any of the Office 95 Version 7.0 applications in Windows NT, you may find that the screen won't redraw correctly. However, this problem does not occur when you run the applications in Windows 95-only in Windows NT. The bug was corrected in Office for Windows 95 Version 7.0a.

Thanks for the tip. You can also scroll through the slides using the Page Up and Page Down keys, which some users may find easier.

A helpful reader wants us to point out that you can scroll through all the slides in a show by using PowerPoint's vertical scroll bar. All you have to do is grab the bar with the mouse and drag down or up.

We'd like to mention that you can also scroll through all the slides in a show with the Page Up and Page Down keys. Press Page Down to move to the next slide and Page Up to move to the previous slide. We use the scroll bar only to move through a large number of slides quickly because the Page Up and Page Down method is a bit more convenient for moving one slide at a time.

Here's another handy application for Replace. Suppose you've got some styles that are set to No Proofing. Those styles won't get checked by the spell checker or grammar checker. If you'd like to set all your styles so they'll be checked without having to modify each style one at a time, open Replace and click on the Find What text box. Click Format and choose Language. This opens the Find Language dialog box. Select No Proofing and click OK. Next, click on the Replace With text box, then click Format and choose Language again. This time select your language from the list. In most cases, this will be English (US). Click Replace All, and you won't have to worry about those styles not getting the spell check treatment they so deserve.

As you say, you can apply any formatting to any document without creating a new section. However, if you want to modify the page numbering, or add a page that uses the landscape printer orientation rather than portrait, you need to create a section.

Also, adding a section to a Word document doesn't cause anyone to work significantly harder. To create sections, all you have to do is choose Insert, Break and take your pick under Section breaks in the dialog box.

If you want to quickly set the format of a single cell in Excel, select the cell and then right-click it. When the pop-up menu opens, select Format Cells. This opens the Format Cells dialog box. Once in the dialog box, you can click the Number tab to set up the cell's format. While you're at it, you can also set Alignment, Font, Border, Patterns, or Protection. Make your selections and click OK to record your choices and close the dialog box.

When you install Microsoft Office 95, you'll probably get this message from the Setup dialog box:

This message isn't quite true--you may not be able to change the folder later. If you elect the Typical setup or choose Run From CD, you can't change the destination folder later during the setup. It's no big deal, but if you know about it you might save yourself some headaches.

Let's step through an example of his tip to see how you can use this animation method. Open a blank slide and click AutoShapes in the Drawing toolbar. Select one of the shapes and use the mouse to draw it. Now, click the Shadow On/Off button in the Drawing toolbar to turn on the shadow. With the object still selected, press Ctrl-C to send a copy to the Clipboard. Now, press Ctrl-Shift-M to create a new slide. In the new slide, press Ctrl-V to paste the object to the new slide.

Now, select the object on the second slide and choose Format, Shadow. When the Shadow dialog box opens, select a new shadow location or shadow color. After you make your selections, click OK to close the dialog box and save your changes.

You can run the slide show now to see how your selections look during a show. Choose View, Slide Show. When the Slide Show dialog box opens, select the radio button labeled All. Next, select the check box labeled Loop Continuously Until Esc. Click Show to continue viewing the show. As you move from slide 1 to slide 2, the shadow will shift, providing some animation.

Yes, there is. Let's suppose you have a PowerPoint slide to which you'd like to add some ClipArt. After you insert the ClipArt, you want to add some shadows to it. To insert the ClipArt, choose Insert, ClipArt and double-click a picture to insert it onto the slide. Now that the picture is on the slide, select it (if necessary) and then click the Shadow button (its icon is a rectangle with a shadow) in the Drawing toolbar. The shadow will appear.

A reader says we've talked about using fill colors in PowerPoint drawings, but have neglected to mention that you can also use shaded fill colors in drawing objects. It seems like we must have covered almost everything by now, so if this is repeat, think of it as a refresher course.

Run PowerPoint and then open a blank slide. Now, click the Rectangle tool and draw a rectangle. With the rectangle still selected, click the Fill Color button in the Drawing toolbar. When the Fill Color menu opens, choose Shaded. In the Shaded Fill dialog box, select the radio button labeled Two Color. Next, click the arrow at the right side of the Color 1 list box and then select Other Color. When the Colors dialog box opens, select your first color and click OK to save your choice and close the dialog box.

Now, click the arrow at the right side of the Color 2 list box and use the same procedure to select a second color. Again, click OK to close the dialog box and record your selection. Back in Shaded Fill, click OK to close the dialog box and apply your shading selections to the rectangle.

The tools are set to make only one drawing after each click so that you can more easily switch between figures. For example, if you need to draw a circle, and then draw a line, all you need to do with PowerPoint's default arrangement is finish the circle and then click the Line tool.

However, when you need to make multiple drawings of the same type, just double-click the tool. Let's say you need to draw four or five rectangles. Double-click the Rectangle tool and draw as many rectangles as you like. When you're finished drawing rectangles, click the tool once to turn it off. You can also double-click a blank spot on your slide to turn off the drawing tool.

As a reader points out, if your computer is attached to a network, you can send Office documents to your coworkers very easily--right from within your Office applications. All you have to do is choose File, Send. Assuming all is set up correctly in your network, your mail software will open and allow you to choose a recipient from the address book. Just type a short message to inform the recipient of the contents and click Send. You can send a copy to yourself to make sure the message was sent properly.

Here's another way to cut and paste inside a Word document. Highlight the text you want to move and then press Shift+Delete. Now move the insertion point to where you want to place the text and press Shift+Insert. (Note: Some keyboards use Del and Ins rather than Insert and Delete.)

When you develop a slide presentation that's based on numerical data, you need a means to display that data upon request. The best approach is to be prepared. Set up your slide show so that all you have to do is make a few mouse clicks, and there's the original Excel data for all to see.

To do this, go to the slide that contains the data. Now, choose Insert, Object. When the Object dialog box opens, select the radio button labeled Create From File and then select Microsoft Excel Worksheet from the Object Type list. Next, select the check boxes labeled Display As Icon and Link. Now, click Browse and locate the worksheet file you want to use. Select the file and click OK to accept the file and close the dialog box.

You can locate the worksheet icon near a bottom corner of the slide. If you like, you can drag the icon to a smaller size to make it less noticeable to the audience. If someone asks to see the original data, all you have to do is double-click the worksheet icon and the data will appear in the slide show.

We recently published a tip on how to display formulas rather than data in Excel cells. As a helpful subscriber points out, there is a very easy way to switch between displaying data and formulas--all you have to do is press Ctrl-~ (tilde). This combination acts as a toggle. The first time you press Ctrl-~ Excel displays formulas rather than data. Press the combination again, and Excel switches back to data.

To switch the Excel display, all you have to do is press Ctrl-Tilde (~). This key combination acts as a toggle. The first time you press the keys, Excel will turn on formula display. When you press the keys again, Excel turns data display back on.

A reader asks if there's an easy way to add vertical text to an Excel worksheet.

Vertical text is a matter of alignment. When you enter data into an Excel cell, it takes on the format and alignment assigned to the cell. The default for text is left-aligned and horizontally oriented. To make text vertical, click the cell and choose Format, Cells. When the Format Cells dialog box opens, click the Alignment tab. Now, click one of the examples under Orientation. Click OK to record your selection and close the dialog box.

We recently ran a PowerPoint tip suggesting that you press Ctrl-M to insert a new slide. Several subscribers commented that Ctrl-M doesn't immediately create a new slide--instead Ctrl-M opens the New Slide dialog box from which you can choose the slide layout that you would prefer to use.

To open a new slide using the same layout as your current slide, press Ctrl-M and then press Enter as soon as the New Slide dialog box opens.

If you would prefer to skip the New Slide dialog box entirely, you can. However, when you do, PowerPoint will insert new slides in the current layout. To eliminate the New Slide dialog box, choose Tools, Options. When the Options dialog box opens, click the General tab. Now, deselect the check box labeled Show New Slide Dialog and then click OK to close the dialog box and save your selection.

Yes. You can do this one of two ways: By changing the picture size or changing the slide size. Let's say your PowerPoint slide show is set to match 35-MM slide proportions (11.2 x 7.5 inches). This means that a scanned picture with the aspect ratio of a 35-MM slide will fit the PowerPoint slide perfectly (more or less). If you need to insert an 8 x 10 scanned photo, set the slide size to 8 x 10.

If you're stuck with a specific slide size, you can try cropping a picture to make it fit. Be careful about simply resizing a scanned photo because you can easily spoil the aspect ratio. This would distort the picture.

To set the slide layout, choose File, Slide Setup. When the Slide Setup dialog box opens, choose from one of the standard sizes, or choose your own by modifying the width and height. Note: Slide sizes can vary widely if you're presenting the show on a computer. If you use transparencies, or 35-MM slides, you don't have many size options.

By default, Word uses AutoFormat to automatically replace straight quotes with smart (curved) quotes. If you don't want this to happen, you'll need to tell AutoFormat what you do and don't want automatically replaced.

To modify AutoFormat, choose Tools, Options. When the Options dialog box opens, click the AutoFormat tab. Now, select the radio button labeled AutoFormat As You Type. Next, make your choices by selecting and deselecting the appropriate check boxes. For example, to stop Word from replacing straight quotes with smart quotes, deselect the check box labeled Straight Quotes With Smart Quotes. After you make all your selections, click OK to close the dialog box and record your changes.

Many Word users need to print the first page of a document on paper with a preprinted letterhead, and the remainder on standard paper. If your printer has more than one bin, you can put all the letterhead paper into one bin and the remainder of the paper into another bin. Now, choose File, Page Setup. When the Page Setup dialog box opens, click the Paper Source tab. In the First Page list box, select the tray that holds the preprinted letterhead paper and in the Other Pages list box, select the tray that holds the blank paper. Click OK to close the dialog box and save your changes.

If your printer doesn't have more than one tray, but does allow manual feed, you can choose Manual Feed for the first page.

In a previous tip, we described how to set the format of a group of selected cells. Here's a tip from a reader to help you remember what type of data goes into which cells.

Let's say that you need to enter text, or numbers as text, in a group of cells. Select the cells and choose Format, Cells. Select Text and then click the Patterns tab. Select a color for the text cells (a pale color is best--dark colors might obscure the text entries). Now click OK to close the dialog box and record your changes.

You can use the same trick to display where other formats apply. This can make entering data into a worksheet much less confusing--especially for those less-experienced users who need to enter data in worksheets that you design.

One way to enhance the appearance of your Excel worksheets is to use borders. Let's take a look.

Use the mouse (or Shift-the arrow keys) to select the part of the sheet around which you want a border. With the cells selected, choose Format, Cells. When the Format Cells dialog box opens, click the Border tab. On the left side of the dialog box, under Border, click each border that you want to display. If you select Outline, the border will surround your selected block of cells. Click OK to continue.

After you see how the border looks in your worksheet, you may want to experiment with different types of borders to get the most suitable one for your worksheet. All you have to do is select the cells and choose Format, Cells to get back to the Format Cells dialog box. Make your changes and click OK.

She is correct. Note that when you double-click a word to select it, the trailing space is automatically included. If you use the arrow keys and the Shift key to select a word, you'll have to make sure you add the space.

A reader asks if you can conveniently change the spacing in one of the PowerPoint pre-existing layouts. The trick to changing a layout lies in the Line Spacing dialog box.

Let's illustrate how to do this using a sample slide. Run PowerPoint and select a blank presentation, then click OK. Choose the 2 Column Text layout (in PowerPoint 95, it's third from the left in the top row) and click OK.

Now click the first column and add some text. Add three or four lines so you'll have something to work with when you change the spacing. Use the mouse to select all the text that you want to subject to a spacing change. With the text selected, choose Format, Line Spacing. When the Line Spacing dialog box opens, use the Line Spacing spin box to set a new value. In general, you'd want to increase the line spacing. If you need to decrease the spacing, be careful that you don't decrease it so much that the text looks cramped.

After you make your line spacing selections, click OK to record your selections and close the dialog box.

Word's spelling checker will run faster if you don't ask it for suggestions. The theory is that when Word tags a word as incorrectly spelled, we'll recognize that it's right and know how to correct the spelling. We just need to watch a little closer when no words are suggested. If you'd like to try this out, choose Tools|Options and click the Spelling tab when the Options dialog box opens. Deselect the Always Suggest check box, then click OK. Now when you run the spelling checker, Word will tag misspellings but won't make any suggestions.

Want to select an entire paragraph? Click on any part of the paragraph three times. Or, go to the far left of the text and click twice. How about a single line? Go to the left of the text and click once. To select a single sentence, hold down Ctrl and click anywhere in the sentence.

If you have a sentence that includes repeated words (such as Walla Walla), the Word 6.x spelling checker will fail to locate the repeat if the cursor is to the left of the second instance of the repeated word. The best way to avoid this type of error is to always place the cursor at the beginning of the document before you start the spelling checker. (This error does not occur in Word 7.0.)

By default, Word opens with a blank document. But, if you prefer that Word open with no document, all you have to do is apply the proper switch when you run Word.

Let's assume that when you open Word, you click Start, Programs, Microsoft Word. To add a switch to the command that opens Word, right-click Start and choose Open. Next, double-click the Programs folder to open it. With the Programs folder open, right-click the Microsoft Word icon and choose Properties. Click the Shortcut tab and then click in the Target entry box to select it. Move to the end of the existing command and type a space. Add

Choose Properties from this menu to open the Properties dialog box. Next, select the Show Small Icons In Start Menu check box. Click OK, and all your icons will be the same size.

Two Readers wanted to know if you can run Word without getting the blank document. The answer is that you can do this quite easily.

We've discussed this procedure before, but here's a quick revisit: We can't be sure how you start Word on your computer, so we'll have to work with the assumption that you click Start, Programs, Microsoft Word. Right-click Start and choose Open. Now double-click the Programs folder to open it. Next, right-click the Microsoft Word icon and choose Properties. Click the Shortcut tab and then click in the Target entry box. Move to the end of the existing command and type a space. Now add

to the end of the line. Click OK to record the change and close the dialog box. The next time you start Word, it will open without any document at all.

Note that we assumed a location for the icon you use to run Word. The procedure we described will work no matter where the icon is located. All you have to do is find your icon and right-click it. Then choose Properties and proceed as we described.

If you don't want Word to automatically replace straight quotes with curly quotes, or stick symbols into your documents, you'll need to tell AutoFormat what you want and don't want.

To modify AutoFormat, choose Tools, Options and click the AutoFormat tab. This is where Word 95 is a little tricky. Before you make your new selections, make sure the radio button labeled AutoFormat As You Type is selected. Now make your choices by selecting and deselecting the appropriate check boxes. When you're finished, click OK.

As you noted, you can draw straight vertical and horizontal lines in PowerPoint by holding down Shift while you draw the line. The same technique works for lines at a 45-degree angle. Give this a quick try: Click the Line button in the PowerPoint Drawing toolbar and press Shift. Now, draw a line at approximately a 45-degree angle. You'll find that PowerPoint will draw a perfectly straight line at exactly 45 degrees.

A reader has added numerous styles to Normal.dot over the years. Now, she'd like to know if there's an easy way to get rid of those extra styles without messing up Normal.dot.

To delete a Word style, choose Format, Style. When the Style dialog box opens, locate and click on the style you'd like to delete. When you click on a style name, the Delete button will activate. To delete the selected file, click Delete. Now you can click Close to close the dialog box.

Normal.dot protects itself by keeping the Delete button inactive when you select a style that Word needs. In other words, you can only delete the styles that you created.

When you want to select a new style in Word, you can move up to the toolbar, click on the down arrow next to the Style list box and select the new style. You can do the same using the keyboard. Press Ctrl-Shift-S. This highlights the Style list box. Use the arrow key to move through the list. When the style you want is highlighted, press Enter.

A reader says it's a pain to enter formulas in a table cell in Word. The trick is to use Word's Table, Formula command.

To see how it works, create a simple table. To do this, open a blank document and choose Table, Insert Table. When the Insert Table dialog box opens, click OK to accept the default table. Now, let's say you want to add a formula to the bottom cell in the first column. Click the cell to select it and then choose Table, Formula. This opens the Formula dialog box. The most commonly used formula is SUM, so the Formula dialog box opens with the default formula:

If this is what you want, click OK to continue. If you want to use a different formula, click the arrow at the right side of the Paste Function list box to expand the list. Select your new formula and perform any necessary editing. Click OK to continue.

A reader needs to switch frequently between Word's Normal and Page Layout views. So, she decided to write a macro to do the job. And, she would like to share her macro with other readers.

You know that you sometimes need to switch to Page Layout view to see how a document will look when printed. But, if you like to work in Normal view most of the time, you may find yourself switching back and forth between the two views just as Ann was. So, you might like to use Ann's macro to make your job easier.

Her macro lets you place a view-switching button on your Word toolbar. All you have to do is click the button to switch views. If you're currently in Normal view, clicking the button will switch you to Page Layout view. And, if you're in Page Layout view, you can click the button to switch to Normal view.

To enter the macro, choose Tools, Macro. When the Macro dialog box opens, type in the new macro name (we used View) and then click Create. Type the macro shown below between the Word-generated lines Sub Main and End Sub.

Press Alt-S to save the macro. To assign a button to your new macro, choose View, Toolbars and click Customize. When the Customize dialog box opens, click the Toolbar tab. Now, locate and click Macros. Drag your new macro to the toolbar and then click Assign. Click Close to close the Customize dialog box and save your macro button.

Now all you have to do to switch between page views (Normal and Page Layout) is click the View button.

A number of readers pointed out that there is a much easier way--all you have to do is press Ctrl-Tilde (~) and Excel will toggle between data display and formula display.

By default, Word 95's AutoCorrect will replace the :-) emoticon with a smiley face symbol. This may not be the default in other versions, so if you like the smiley face and want to use it in another program, first open Character Map, then select the Wingdings font. Select the smiley face and click Select, Copy, Close. Now go to your document and choose Edit, Paste. Select the smiley face and choose Tools, AutoCorrect. Now type

in the Replace Text entry box. Press the Tab key once to move to the With Text entry box. Select the Formatted Text radio button. The smiley face will now appear in the entry box. Click Add, then OK. From now on, typing :-) will produce the happy face.

When you work with Word tables, you can size individual cells. This can lead to problems if you don't select the cell or cells before you establish a new size. Try this:

The moral is this: Select what you want to change. If you want to change only one cell, select the cell. But, if you really want to change the width of a column, make sure you select the column. One way to make sure the column is selected is to click a cell in the column and then choose Table, Select Column.

He is right--why repeat existing work? All you have to do is select the table in your Word document and press Ctrl-C to copy it. Next, move to the PowerPoint slide and press Ctrl-V to paste the table onto the slide. With the table pasted onto the slide, you can use the mouse to resize and locate it just as if you had created it in PowerPoint.

When you select text in your Word document and then insert a table, Word will convert the selected text to a table without displaying the Insert Table dialog box.

To check this out, select a section of text in any document. Now choose Table, Insert Table. The table will appear, and in the table, you'll find the text you selected. If this happens to you because you inadvertently left some text selected, just press Ctrl-Z (Undo) to remove the table.

Do you sometimes need to use leaders? Leaders are those little dots leading up to some text. Like this.

To set up leaders, choose Format, Tabs. When the dialog box opens, enter the tab position you want to use (in inches). Now look under Leader. Select the radio button associated with the type of leader you want (they don't have to always be little dots) and then click Set. Now click OK to record your selection and close the dialog box.

Now when you use the Tab key, the tab location you entered will display the leader.

If you add some graphics to your ClipArt gallery then change your mind (it's everyone's prerogative, you know), you can delete them easily in Office 95. Just open the ClipArt gallery and right-click on the picture in question. This opens a menu that includes a Delete command. Choose it and you'll be rid of that unwanted picture.

We recently published a tip suggesting that you set slide transitions to zero to produce animation. As reader Tom C. points out, when you set transitions to zero, they can be erratic because it leaves your timing at the mercy of the computer: The transitions occur when the computer has time to make them. If the computer is slow, the transitions will be slow. If the computer is busy with another job when the time comes for a transition, the transition has to wait.

As we suggested in the original tip, this method of animation doesn't work well on all computers. You should only set transitions to zero when it's absolutely necessary and when you can use a pretested computer.

The reason you might try zero to see how it works is that PowerPoint doesn't allow controlled transitions of less than one second. So you have no choices between zero and one. Therefore, if the transition you need to use doesn't work well at zero, you have no choice but to go with one second as a minimum.

Although you can change Excel's default file save location by entering a new folder in the Default File Location box on the General tab (choose Tool|Options), you can't start Excel with another working folder by using the Start In box in an Excel shortcut.

To start Excel with a different working folder, try using the /p startup switch in the Target box in an Excel shortcut. This will let you start in a location denoted by the shortcut, meaning you can have different shortcuts to run Excel in different folders. To set this up, right-click on the shortcut you want to use and choose Properties. Click the Shortcut tab and add to the command line in the Target box

where <folder> is the folder you want to be the working folder. If you want to use a folder named MyFolder, you'd enter

If your system shut down abnormally, you may find that you have a lot of temp files that won't go away. Since some of these files might cause problems somewhere down the line, why not get rid of them?

If you're finished testing Office 97 against a previous version of Office, and you're ready to get rid of the older version, use the Microsoft Office Upgrade Wizard to remove the older components.

Word also lets you copy selected text using the drag-and-drop method. All you have to do is select the text and then hold down Ctrl while you drag the text to a new location.

There are several methods you can use to copy freshly entered text to a new location. You can, of course, select the text and then press Ctrl-C to copy any text, new or old. Then you click on the new insertion point and press Ctrl-V.

Here's another way to copy freshly entered text: Type the text, then click on a new insertion point and press F4. Your new text will be entered automatically at your selected point.

If you enter text and then make a minor error, you can press Ctrl-Z to undo the typing. But if you haven't saved lately, all your recent text may disappear. If this happens, don't panic! Just press Ctrl-Y to undo the action and get your text back. To remember these commands, think Z for "zap" and Y for "yank it back."

You can certainly add a border almost any time. Click the text box (not the text itself) to select it. Now, choose Format, Colors And Lines. When the Colors And Lines dialog box opens, click the arrow at the right side of the Color list box. When the list expands, select a color for the line. To make a wide border, click the arrow at the right side of the Style list box and choose one of the wide lines. Click OK to close the dialog box and save your settings.

You will have no problem placing text over pictures of any kind in PowerPoint slides. All you have to do is choose the Text tool (the button's icon is a large A) and draw your text outline. Type in the text and then click away from the text. Now, click the text. When the outline appears, grab the edge with the mouse and move the text over your picture.

You can add text to PowerPoint shapes as you draw the shapes or after the shape is already drawn and in place. To see how this works, open a blank slide and select the Rectangle tool. Draw a rectangle and then, while the rectangle is still selected, type

Click somewhere away from the drawing to deselect the shape. Now, click the shape to select it and then click the Rotate tool in the Drawing toolbar (its icon shows a point with a circular arrow). Use the mouse to rotate the rectangle approximately 45 degrees. You'll find that the text is rotated along with the shape. You can move, resize, or rotate the shape, and the text will remain anchored to the shape.

To answer your second question: No, you can't rotate the shape and text in a Word document. However, you can create a shape with text and rotate it in PowerPoint and then copy it into a Word document. To do this, click your PowerPoint shape to select it and choose Edit, Copy. Next, move to your Word document and click where you want to insert the shape. Now, press Ctrl-V to paste the rotated shape into your Word document.

Want to select an entire paragraph? Click on any part of the paragraph three times. Or, double-click in the left margin, beside the text. How about a single line? Click once in the left margin, next to the line you wish to select. To select a single sentence, hold down Ctrl and click anywhere in the sentence.

A reader asks if we can describe how to create numbered tickets in Word. It's amazing how many people use Word (or want to use Word) to make tickets for things like raffles or entry to events. Let's look at a simple example of ticket making using Word.

Let's shoot for ten tickets per sheet. Choose Tools, Envelopes and Labels. When the Envelopes and Labels dialog box opens, click the Labels tab. Now, click Options, select Avery 5163 from the Product Number list, and click OK. Finally, click New Document.

On the new document page, choose Format, Font and select the font and font size you want to use. Click OK to close the dialog box and save your font selections. The only limit here is that you need to keep the font size small enough to fit all the text inside the labels. Once you've selected a font and font size, type your text into the first label.

With the text entered into the first label, it's time to enter the numbering. Click where you want the number to appear and then choose Insert, Field. When the Field dialog box opens, double-click in the Field Codes entry box, type

and press Enter. Now, you can select all the text in the first ticket and press Ctrl-C to copy it. Move to each of the other blank labels, click where you want the text to begin, and press Ctrl-V to paste in the text. At this point, each label will display Ticket number 1. Press Ctrl-A to select the entire sheet of labels. Now, press F9, and all your numbers will appear in sequence.

You don't need to do anything--Excel will ignore those blank cells by default. As long as a cell is blank (or contains text), it won't be included in calculations. If you're having a problem with this, you may be using a macro that enters zero in those blank cells.

When you need a special style for a certain category of Word documents, it's not difficult to create your own. When you assign formatting to styles, you can quickly and easily apply that formatting to other paragraphs or entire documents. To create a style, choose Format, Style. When the Style dialog box opens, click New. Give your new style a name. A style name can be up to 253 characters in length, as long as you don't use backslashes, semicolons, or brackets. Select Add to Template and then click Format, Font. Choose the font and font size and click OK. Now, you can click Format again and this time choose Paragraph. Set up the paragraph the way you want and click OK. You can click the Format button and choose any of the selections that might want to apply to your new style. When you get back to the Style dialog box after having made all your selections, click Apply.

To increase the font size of selected text or the word your cursor rests on in Word 7, you can press Ctrl-Shift->. To decrease the font size press Ctrl-Shift-<. (This makes sense to all mathematicians and those who remember their greater- and less-than symbols.) Only want to increase the font size by only one point? Ctrl-] will do the job. To decrease the size by one point press Ctrl-[.

If you'd like to see what styles you have available in a Word document, you can choose Format, Style. When the Style dialog box opens, click the style you'd like to examine. The dialog box will now display data on the selected style. If you'd like some hard copy, choose File, Print. When the Print dialog box opens, click the arrow at the right of the Print What list box to expand the list. Select Styles from the list and then click OK. Word will print all the information on all the current styles.

Need to number a Word document's lines? This is a helpful technique for those who need to generate long, complex documents. To apply line numbering, choose File|Page Setup. Click the Layout tab when the dialog box opens. Now click Line Numbers. In the next dialog box, select the Add Line Numbering check box. Now click on all the OKs necessary to get you back to the document. The line numbers won't appear in your document as shown on the screen, although they will appear in your printed document. To see the numbers on screen, choose File|Print Preview.

The shadow color in the shadow color scheme in PowerPoint 4.0 and 7.0 has no effect on the text shadow color. For example, if the slide background or text box fill color is anything but white and the text color is anything but black, the text shadow color will be black. We suggest that instead of using the text shadow effect from the Format|Font dialog box or the Text Shadow toolbar button you follow this procedure: Choose the text object, then Format|Shadow. In the Color box, select the shadow color. As a starting point, set the Offset to 3, whether up or down.

Try this: Enter a few numbers into column A and select the cells. Choose Insert, Chart, On This Sheet and use the mouse to draw the chart area. When the ChartWizard opens, click Next. In this wizard page, click the Line Chart and then click Next. At this point, select a format and then click Finish.

Click the chart to select it and then double-click the line to open the Format Data Series dialog box. When the dialog box opens, click the Patterns tab. Under Line, select the radio button labeled Custom. Next, click the arrow at the right side of the Weight list box and select a thicker line. Click OK to save your changes and close the dialog box.

Note that you can also change the line color if you like. While in the Patterns pane of the Format Data Series dialog box, click the arrow at the right side of the Color list box. Choose a new color and then click OK to close the dialog box and record your selection.

When you need to put an object on every slide in a slide show, don't waste time trying to make sure all of the objects are perfectly aligned on each slide--use the Slide Master instead.

Let's say you want your company logo on the same place on each slide. Open a new slide and choose View, Master, Slide Master. Now, you can place the logo. Let's assume the logo exists in the form of a GIF file. In this case, you'd choose Insert, Picture and locate your picture. Click the picture to select it and then click OK to insert the picture.

To get back to your slide show, choose View, Slides. At this point, you'll see the logo just where you placed it. Press Ctrl-M to insert a new slide, and there you'll also see the logo. If you need to resize or relocate the logo, just choose View, Master, Slide Master again and make the changes.

Although some Word users tend to work with form letters, most of us do it one letter at a time. And, in each of those letters, we have a recipient's name and address and a return address. Even on a one-at-a-time basis, you can get Word to automatically (well, almost automatically) put the addresses onto an envelope.

Let's say you're writing a letter. You have the recipient's address in the letter and you have your own return address in the letter. To add both to the envelope, first select the recipient's name and address and then choose Edit, Bookmark. When the Bookmark dialog box appears, type in

and click Add. Now, select your return address and choose Edit, Bookmark. This time, type in

When you're ready to print the envelope, choose Tools, Envelopes and Labels. When the dialog box opens, click the Envelopes tab. The delivery address and your return address will automatically be in place. All you have to do is click Print and insert the envelope into the printer.

If you work primarily in Word, but occasionally need to make slides using PowerPoint, why not take advantage of that hard work you've done in Word? When you need to create a table in PowerPoint that you've already created (and edited) in Word, just select the table, press Ctrl-C to copy it, and then open the PowerPoint slide and press Ctrl-V to paste it. Although you can create tables from scratch in PowerPoint, why bother with redoing something you've already done using Word? Once you've pasted a Word table into a slide, you can use the mouse to resize and locate the table.

If you want the PowerPoint table to reflect changes made to the Word table, follow the same procedure (select the table, press Ctrl-C); but when you get to the PowerPoint slide, choose Edit, Paste Special. When the Paste Special dialog box opens, select Paste Link and click OK. Now, any changes you make to the Word table will appear in the PowerPoint slide.

As a reader points out, there's no real way to tell how long it might take to print out a group of PowerPoint slides. The printing time is dependent on the printer, the computer, and the number of graphics objects on the slides. If you need to print slides before your presentation, it's better to start the printing well ahead of time. Be warned that five minutes before the presentation begins is not the time to start printing. We speak from experience on this subject.

In Excel, Word, and PowerPoint in Office 97, you'll find that a tooltip may not be displayed even though the mouse pointer is over the button. This happens when you press Esc and click a toolbar button. For example, if you were to click the Font box on the Formatting toolbar and then press Esc, you'd find that no tooltips will be displayed. This happens because the toolbar still has the focus. This is not a bug; it's just different from the way previous versions worked.

To activate the Tip Wizard in Word, choose Tools, Options. When the Options dialog box opens, click the General tab. Now, select the TipWizard Active check box and then click OK to record your selection and close the dialog box. Finally, choose View, Toolbars. When the Toolbars dialog box opens, select the check box labeled Tip Wizard and click OK to close the dialog box and record your selection. The Tip Wizard should now appear in your Word window.

If you want to eliminate the Tip Wizard during a Word session, choose View, Toolbars, deselect the Tip Wizard check box, and click OK. However, this works for only one session. When you close Word and open it again, the Tip Wizard will reappear.

To get rid of the Tip Wizard completely, choose Tools, Options and click on General. Deselect the Tip Wizard Active check box and click OK.

To add room for titles at the top of the worksheet, click on the first row, and choose Insert, Rows. This will insert a new row and move the entire worksheet down one row.

To add a column to the left side of the worksheet, click the column and choose Insert, Columns. This inserts a column at the left and moves the worksheet data to the right.

If you have an older version of Office and decide to install Office 97, you will probably see an alert dialog box that says

If you click Yes, Setup will delete the old components. (Note: You will not lose any data.) If you want to keep your old version of Office for a testing period, click No.

If you attempt to use SendKeys to toggle the Num Lock key, you won't get an error message, but the key doesn't toggle. The word Num will appear in Excel's status bar, but the key remains untouched. You can get around this problem by using the code

When you run this procedure, Num Lock will be turned off (if it is on) but the keyboard light will not change. The text will be entered in the worksheet and the Num Lock key will return to its original state.

If you try to save an Excel worksheet in a folder that contains more than 702 subfolders, you'll probably get an Out of Memory error message. You can either delete some subfolders or save your worksheet in a different folder. (Note: This problem was corrected in the Windows 95 version of Excel.)

Most people increase their use of the toolbar as they gain experience with Word and other Microsoft Office programs. If you find that you like using the toolbar, but miss some of the menu commands, you might like to add a button for the command you're missing.

Let's say you'd like to have a Close button on the toolbar. Choose Tools, Customize to open the Customize dialog box. Click the Toolbars tab, then select File under Categories. Now look on the right side of the dialog box to locate the Close folder (top row, fourth from the left), and use the mouse to drag it to an empty space on the toolbar.

We suggest dragging it to the area between the Save button (a floppy disk icon) and the Print button. When the Close icon is in place, release the mouse button, then click Close. With the Close button, all you have to do to close a document is click your new button.

In the last tip, we showed you how to add a button to the toolbar (select Tools, Customize, Toolbars, File). What if you have a bunch of buttons on the toolbar that you never use? To get rid of unused buttons, choose Tools, Customize. When the dialog box opens, click the Toolbars tab. Now you can use the mouse to drag unwanted buttons to the dialog box; this removes them from the toolbar. When you're finished, click Close.

You can move a toolbar button by holding down the Alt key and dragging the button to a new location on the toolbar. When you release the mouse button, the toolbar button will appear in its new location. To delete a toolbar button, hold down the Alt key and drag the button down over the document. When you release the mouse button, the toolbar button will disappear.

You can use the Customize dialog box to display or hide toolbars and buttons. You can also use Customize to turn ToolTips on or off and to choose whether to animate the toolbars. But you can't use Customize to change a button's image.

To change the image of a button on a toolbar that you created, open Windows Explorer, locate your Microsoft Office folder, and double-click it. Locate the folder that you used for your toolbar, and open it. Right-click on the shortcut for the button that you want to change. When the menu opens, choose Properties. In the Properties dialog box, click the Shortcut tab. Click Change Icon, and select a new icon. When you are finished, click OK.

If you have fond memories of the Word for Windows 2.0 toolbar, you can still use it in Word 6 or 7. Choose View, Toolbars to open the Toolbars dialog box. Select the Word for Windows 2.0 check box and click OK. There's your Word for Windows 2.0 toolbar. Even if you never used Word for Windows 2.0, you might like to check out the toolbar. It's a good, no-frills toolbar and a good start to building a customized one of your own.

To select toolbars on the fly in any program, locate a blank spot on any toolbar and right-click it. A pop-up menu will appear. From the menu, choose which toolbar you'd like to view, or which toolbar you'd like to stop viewing. You can also get to the Customize Toolbars command using the same technique. Right-click a blank spot on a toolbar and choose Customize.

When you open a Word 2.x template in Word 6.0, you'll find that Word won't customize the standard toolbar. Word will instead define a separate Word 2.0 toolbar, and to display it, you have to choose View, Toolbars and select it.

Office's floating toolbars can be handy at times. At other times, you'd rather have them docked. To quickly dock a floating toolbar, double-click its title bar. To turn a docked toolbar into a floater, grab it with the mouse (someplace between buttons) and drag it into the document window. To change a floating toolbar's position, grab the toolbar with the mouse and release the mouse button when you reach the desired position.

If you're missing one or more of your toolbars, you probably accidentally right-clicked on a button and deselected the toolbar. But no matter how the toolbar got lost, it's lost and you want to get it back. To restore that missing toolbar, choose View, Toolbars and then select the missing toolbar from the menu. Or, assuming you're not missing all the toolbars, you can right-click an existing toolbar to open the toolbar menu.

Having your toolbars at the top of the window is usually OK. But there are times, especially in Excel or PowerPoint, when you'd like to have a toolbar in a different location to make it easier to access.

If you need to temporarily (or permanently) move a toolbar, use the mouse to grab it someplace where there's no button, and then drag the toolbar out into the window. Now you've turned the toolbar into a floating toolbar, and you can move it around the window.

If you'd like to anchor a toolbar in a new position, use the mouse to drag it toward one side of the screen or down to the bottom. When you drag it to an allowed anchor spot, the toolbar icon will elongate.

Find the position you want and release the mouse button. If the toolbar icon doesn't elongate, the toolbar can't anchor there.

Several readers have asked about using WordArt in Excel worksheets. WordArt offers an easy way to jazz up those Excel worksheets.

When you're working on a worksheet that you want to show off, why not use WordArt to enhance the titles? To do this, choose Insert, Object, Microsoft WordArt (the version will vary depending on which version of Office you have). When the WordArt dialog box opens, type in your title and click Update Display. Next, click the worksheet somewhere away from WordArt to close the dialog box and record your entry. Now, use the mouse to size and place your WordArt title.

One way to make Word work more efficiently for you is to customize some of the commands. For example, Word includes a macro named FileSave. You could modify this macro to make FileSave save the current file, close it, and open a new blank document. However, if you simply modify the existing FileSave command, this will happen every time you use FileSave. So let's create a new macro that takes advantage of the existing FileSave command.

and click Create. Now, enter the macro exactly as shown (Word supplies the Sub Main and End Sub statements).

Now choose File, Save to save the macro. To assign your new macro to a toolbar button, choose View, Toolbars and click Customize. When the Customize dialog box opens, scroll down through the Categories list and locate Macros. Select Macros, and your new macro will appear in the Macros list. Use the mouse to drag the macro to the toolbar.

Now you can click your new button to save the current document, close it, and open a new blank document, all with one button click.

If you ever import text from some other program into Excel, you may need the Trim function. Trim gets rid of all the extraneous spaces in a text string.

into an Excel worksheet. Chances are, you don't want all those spaces. Let's say the imported text is in cell A1. Go to cell F1 and enter

If a Word file is getting a little too big, eliminate the Fast Save option. To do so, open the Tools menu and select Options. When the Options dialog box opens, click the Save tab and deselect the Allow Fast Saves check box.

A reader asks "I saw a tip some time back that showed how to eliminate spaces from text imported into Excel. If this was one of your tips, could you cover this topic again?"

What you probably need is the Trim function. Trim gets rid of all the extraneous spaces in an Excel text string. Let's say you import into cell A1 a string with extra spaces in it. Go to cell F1 and enter

Although we addressed this PowerPoint feature fairly recently, we've received many requests for more information. A reader gives us this tip:

Need to undo something that you did three or four steps ago? Rather than choose Edit, Undo so many times, click the down arrow next to the toolbar's Undo button. This opens a menu from which you can choose the action you want to undo. All actions from the selection forward will be undone.

If you've modified a Word command and would like to revert to the macro's original function, simply delete or rename your replacement macro.

There are two ways to deal with the date in an Office program: The first is to choose Insert, Date and Time, then choose the format you want to use and click OK. This inserts the current date, and it's this date that will remain in your document. The second way involves the Update feature. If you'd like to make sure that the date always reflects the one on which you last printed the document, select the Update Automatically check box before you click OK. The check box will remain selected until you deselect it. So when you want the current date to stick, deselect the Update Automatically check box.

A reader asks us to mention that AutoText entries are not case-sensitive. If you use J as the AutoText entry for your name, you can enter either J or j. To see how AutoText operates, enter a test sentence.

should do just fine. Now, select the sentence and choose Edit, AutoText. When the AutoText dialog box opens, type

into the Name entry box and then click Add to enter the new name and close the dialog box. To check your AutoText entry, type

and press F3. To make sure AutoText works the same way with lowercase letters, type

Several readers have asked about changing styles in Word. If you want to change a style in the Normal.dot template, you can click on an occurrence of the style you want to change and then choose Format, Style. When the Style dialog box opens, click Modify and click Format. Select the type of change you want to make (Font, Paragraph, and so on) and then make your changes. When you're finished, click OK.

Back in the Modify Style dialog box, select Add to Template to make sure you add the change to your Normal.dot (or the current) template. Click OK again. Back in the Style dialog box, click Apply.

When you modify styles in the Normal.dot template, you need to be aware of the fact that some styles are dependent on other styles. For example, many of the standard styles are based on the Normal style. So, if you change the Normal style, you'll change all the others as well.

If you use images (clip art, photos, drawings, and so forth) in your Office 95 documents, there's an image tool available that you just might have overlooked--Imager. Insert the Microsoft Office CD and locate the Valupack folder. Double-click the folder to open it, and then double-click the Imager folder.

In the Imager folder, double-click Setup to install the program. Note: We encountered some problems using the default installation folder. We suggest that you change the folder name to c:\Imager.

Imager will open almost any type of graphics file (GIF, JPEG, and so on) and allow you to crop, resize, and otherwise adjust the pictures. You can also use it to scan and manipulate images if you have a scanner attached to your computer.

If you attempt to use SendKeys to toggle the Num Lock key, you won't get an error message, but the key won't toggle. The word Num will appear in Excel's status bar, but the key will remain untouched. You can get around this problem by using the code

When you run this procedure, Num Lock will be turned off (if it is on), but the keyboard light will not change. The text will be entered in the worksheet and the Num Lock key will return to its original state.

Let's say you're in the middle of your show and you need to pause to add some comments, but you don't want to leave the current slide on the screen--and you're not ready for the next slide. Perhaps you'd like to display nothing but a blank, black screen while you make your comments. All you have to do is press B. That's it, just press the letter B and the screen will turn black. Note that the screen will not change while the slide is active. That is, if some animation is in progress, the slide won't turn black until the animation finishes.

If you want to turn off the gridlines in Excel, you choose Tools, Options, click the View tab and then deselect the Gridlines check box and click OK. To turn the gridlines back on, you repeat the process and select the Gridlines check box.

If this is something you need to do very often, why not write some simple macros to do the job for you? We'll show you two macros--one to turn off the gridlines and one to turn them on.

To create the two macros, choose Window, UnHide, select Personal.xls, and click OK. When Personal.xls opens, there may already be a macro in the window. If so, click the Insert Module button (it's the top-left button in the Visual Basic floating toolbar). Now type in your macro. When you're finished, press Ctrl-S to save the new macro and then click the Insert Module button. Now enter the other macro and press Ctrl-S when finished. Answer "Yes" to any questions about saving your macros.

Let's assign some toolbar buttons to the new macros now. Choose View, Toolbars and click Customize. When the Customize dialog box opens, select Custom. Now drag the icon of your choice to the Excel toolbar. When prompted for a macro name, click the GridLinesOn macro. Repeat the procedure for the GridLinesOff macro.

All you have to do now is click the Off button to turn off the gridlines and click the On button to turn them on again.

Word offers a number of ways to paste data from the clipboard to an open document. There's the usual way--choose Edit, Paste. Or use its keyboard shortcuts: Alt, E, P or Ctrl-V. Here's another method that you may not know about: You can press Shift-Ins to paste that clipboard data.

In Word 6 it's possible to get into a situation where you can't delete a document file. Suppose you close a Word file, then run File Manager to delete the file. Instead of a nice clean deletion, you get the error message:

What happened is that prior to closing the file in Word, you copied a portion of the document to the Clipboard. When you do this, Word places a pointer to the original document in the Clipboard rather than an actual copy. So this pointer keeps the file open to provide access. When you try to delete the file, Windows tells you that you can't delete an open file. You can get around the problem by exiting Word, launching it again and deleting your file.

When you want to use numbered headers in a Word document, you'll find that you have quite a variety of choices. To see how this works, let's assume that you want to use the Heading 1 style for each of the chapters in your new book. Open a blank document and choose Format, Heading Numbering. When the Heading Numbering dialog box opens, click the Chapter style that you want to use and then click OK to close the dialog box and save your changes.

To check out your selection, click where you want the heading to appear in your document and then select the Heading 1 style. Let's say you chose the Chapter 1 style. When you apply Heading 1, the words Chapter 1 will appear. If you apply Heading 1 to another line, Chapter 2 will appear in that line.

If you import a worksheet from another program, you can use Excel's N function to gather information about a cell's contents. The N function returns a pure number--sans formatting. It's included for compatibility with other spreadsheet programs. However, you don't have to import another worksheet to see how the N function operates.

Select cell B1 and press Ctrl-C to copy it. Click cell B2 to select it and then press Ctrl-V to paste the data copied from cell B1. Cell B2 will now display 35961, the serial date for 6/15/98.

We've said in the past that you can name those Excel sheets anything that suits you. Well, you can--but there is a caveat or two. Let's assume that you've named one of your sheets something along the lines of "My 1997 Sales Data."

Will this work? You bet. The only thing is that you have to be careful when you make a reference to the newly named sheet. Suppose you have data in cell A1 on the worksheet named "My 1997 Sales Data." You'd like to place this data into cell A1 of Sheet1. You need to enclose the new sheet name in single quotes. For example,

If you want to use Schedule+ on a network, select Group-Enabled Mode from the dialog box that opens the first time you run the program. If you select Don't Ask Me This Question Again, you'll have to reinstall Schedule+ to change the mode.

When you're running in Group-Enabled mode, you can use the Planner to check the blocks of time that other users have scheduled.

When you use Word's Fast Save option, you may have a problem with some external software (such as Grammatik) that reads your document file. To disable Fast Save, choose Tools|Options and click the Save tab. Deselect the check box labeled Fast Saves and click OK.

When you work with long documents, it can be frustrating to open with the cursor at the beginning of the document. Unfortunately, there isn't an Options setting that will do the job. However, you can create a very simple macro that will automatically scroll to the bottom of any document you open. Since this is where most people usually begin working, this will do what you want most of the time.

for the name (you want it to run automatically). Click the arrow at the right side of the Macros Available In list box and select Normal.dot (Global Template) to make it available to all documents. Now, click Create and enter the macro as shown. Note that Sub Main and End Sub are supplied by Word, so you type only EndOfDocument.

Press Ctrl-S to save the macro. You'll be asked if you want to save the document. Click Yes. Now when you open an existing document, Word will automatically scroll to the bottom.

In the last tip we showed you how to add talking notes to your Excel worksheets. This time, let's assume that you have already added notes (both written and sound notes) in a number of cells. In fact, you're not quite sure where all the notes are now. Press Ctrl-Shift-? (question mark), and Excel will select all the cells that contain notes.

A short time ago, we described how to install Excel's AutoSave Add-in. AutoSave automatically saves your worksheet at preset intervals. Several readers followed the instructions and got AutoSave installed, but now they can't find it to make use of it. "Where is it?" they ask.

Let's start at the beginning. If you don't have AutoSave installed, choose Tools, Add-Ins. When the Add-Ins dialog box opens, click the check box to the left of AutoSave and click OK.

So, where is AutoSave? It's in the Tools menu. Choose Tools, AutoSave. When the AutoSave dialog box opens, make your selections and click OK. You could add AutoSave to the toolbar, but this seems rather pointless since this is the kind of thing you set and then ignore.

A reader reports that after using Find and Replace, the entire document was turned to nothing but gibberish. We can't say exactly what happened to that particular document, but we can speculate on what might have happened. Try this on a document that you don't need. You could copy a document under a new name and use that.

Open Find and Replace (Ctrl-H) and click the Find What entry box. Choose Format, Style. Now choose the predominate style of your document (perhaps Normal). Don't enter any text in the entry box. Click now on the Replace With entry box and type a few spaces. Click Replace All and then click OK. Now click Close. You have just destroyed your document by replacing all the Normal style text with spaces.

If something like this should happen to you, don't panic. Panic is what causes permanent data loss. In this case, all you have to do is press Ctrl-Z and, thanks to Word's terrific Undo command, your document will magically reappear.

The moral is, be careful with Replace All. Always check to make sure you don't have spaces in Replace With unless you're sure this is what you want. And never forget that wonderful Undo command.

You may, on occasion, need to determine when a group of cells contains numbers or text. Let's imagine that you need to find out how many cells in a column contain text. Enter in cells A1 through A5

This tells you how many cells in the specified column contain something (5). Now, move to cell A9 and enter

to find out how many cells contain numbers (4). To find the number of cells containing text only, subtract the difference:

In Windows 95, you can assign keystrokes to program shortcuts. For example, suppose you'd like to launch Word by simply pressing Ctrl-Alt-W. Start by using the mouse to drag a Word shortcut icon to the Start button. (Run Windows Explorer and locate your Microsoft Office folder; you'll find a shortcut in there.) When you release the mouse button, a copy of the shortcut will be placed in the Start menu.

Now, right-click the Start button and choose Open from the resulting menu. Right-click the Word icon in the Start menu, then choose Properties from the menu. When the dialog box opens, click the Shortcut tab. Click the text box labeled Shortcut Key and type W. Click OK and you're all set. To run Word now, all you have to do is press Ctrl-Alt-W.

You can use the same procedure to assign keys to other Office programs. Just don't assign keys that you're already using for other programs.

If you like to use AutoCorrect, but don't have time to sit around trying to decide what to add to it, you can add words and phrases while you check your documents' spelling. When you do a spelling check, watch the Spelling And Grammar dialog box closely. When the spelling checker finds a misspelled word for which it has a correction, the AutoCorrect button becomes active (most of the time it's inactive and grayed out). If the mistake is one you commonly make, click AutoCorrect and the misspelled word and its correction will be entered.

The word isn't "resume" when you're talking about a document supplied to a potential employer or client. In that case, you need special characters.

You don't have to do anything especially difficult to get the word right in Word for Windows 95. All you have to do is type the letter "r," then press Ctrl-' (Ctrl key plus the apostrophe) and type the letter "e." Now you can type in "sum" as usual. When you come to the last "e," once again you press Ctrl-' and type "e." (Or you could just avoid the whole issue and call it your "curriculum vitae," CV for short.)

Even when you have Smart Quotes turned on, Word doesn't generate a real apostrophe if you add the mark to an existing line. Check it out. Say you want to enter a date as '00. The apostrophe is backwards. To make a real apostrophe, make sure the Numlock key is active and hold down Alt while you enter 0146 using the number pad. This produces a true apostrophe--even if Smart Quotes is turned off.

There's another way to create a true apostrophe: Hold down Ctrl and press the apostrophe key. Now release Ctrl and press the apostrophe key again.

You know that you can place a series of characters into Word's AutoCorrect and let that feature add the text for you. Did you know that you can ask AutoCorrect to add formatting, too?

Suppose, for example, that you have a line of bold, italic text followed by a line of text in the Heading 1 style. Type in your text and then press Enter. Now select the Heading 1 style and then select both lines. Choose Tools, AutoCorrect and select the Formatted radio button. Next, add the characters you want AutoCorrect to respond to, and click OK. When you type in the selected sequence, AutoCorrect will add the line, the carriage return, and the style change for you.

If you don't want Word to automatically replace straight quotes with curly quotes, or stick symbols into your documents, you'll need to tell AutoFormat.

To retrieve a backed-up file, choose File, Open. When the dialog box opens, click on the arrow at the right side of the Files Of Type list box to expand the list. Select All Files (*.*) and look for files with your document's name but with a .wbk extension. Load the .wbk file.

If you'd like to make a booklet, all you need is Word and some standard 8.5- by 11-inch paper. The trick is setting up the printer and visualizing where the pages will appear.

To make a four-page booklet, you'll fold the paper in half. Give this a try now, before you even think about writing and printing the booklet. Fold the paper and then place it on the desk with the inside of the fold upward. You're looking at page two and page three. The back of page two is page one, and the back of page three is page four.

Now you can create a document. Choose File, Page Setup. When the dialog box opens, click the Paper Size tab and select Landscape. Click OK to exit the dialog box and record the change. Next, choose Format, Columns. When the Columns dialog box opens, click Two columns and then click OK. Choose View, Page Layout so you can see what's going on in both columns. Now write your document, remembering that pages one and four will appear on one Word page, and pages two and three will appear on another Word page.

Let's assume that booklet pages one and four are on Word page one. To print your booklet, choose File, Print. When the dialog box opens, select Pages and type in

Click OK to print. Now remove the printed page from the printer and insert it in the paper tray with the printed side up (in most printers). Choose File, Print and select Pages. Type in

and click OK to print the other side of the paper. With both sides of the page printed, you can now fold the paper to make your booklet.

Note: Not all printers feed the paper the same way. You need to determine how your printer works.

Now choose Edit, Bookmark, give your bookmark a name, and click Add. To return to the bookmark later, choose Edit, Bookmark, select the name, and click Go To. The cursor will jump to the marked location. When you're finished with the Bookmark dialog box, click Close.

If you have a long document that contains several bookmarks, you probably want to see where the bookmarks are located. To make the bookmarks visible, choose Tools, Options and click the View tab. Select the Bookmarks check box and click OK. Your bookmarks will now appear as large I-beam symbols.

Have you ever wanted to apply a border to only one side of a block of Word text? Perhaps you'd like to have a border at the left side of a paragraph to set it off without having to place the whole thing inside a rectangular border.

To apply a border to the left side of a paragraph, click the paragraph to select it. Now choose Format, Borders And Shading; when the dialog box opens, click the Borders tab. Next, click Custom. Choose your line (Solid is the default), then look at the Preview section of the dialog box. There are four buttons here. The top one places the border at the top of the selected paragraph; the next one places the border at the bottom of the paragraph. The two buttons below the preview pane give you the option of a border at the left (the button on the left) or right side of the paragraph.

Note that you can click on one or all of the buttons. So if you want a border at the top and bottom of the paragraph, just click the top and bottom buttons. After you make your selection, click OK.

Borders can really spruce up your Word documents. Suppose you have some text you'd like to set apart from the rest of a document. Go ahead and type in the paragraph, and with the cursor set somewhere in (or at the end of) the paragraph, choose Format, Borders And Shading.

When the dialog box opens, click on the Borders tab and then click on either Box or Shadow. Click OK, and a border will appear around your paragraph.

If you decide you don't want the border after all, click inside the bordered paragraph, choose Format, Borders And Shading, and again click the Borders tab. This time select None and click OK.

Bulleted lists are a nice, clean organizational touch to a document, but did you know that you can make them look even better by using special bullets? Try this: Select a bulleted list, then right-click the selection. This opens a menu from which you choose the Bullets and Numbering command. When the Bullets and Numbering dialog box opens, click Modify.

This opens another dialog box called Modify Bulleted List. In this dialog box, click Bullet to open the Symbol Character Map. In the Character Map, select a new bullet symbol and click OK. Back in the Modify Bulleted List dialog box, you can change the color, size, and so on. When you've finished making your changes, click OK twice, and your new selection will appear in the document.

If the Word toolbar contains a button image that you'd like to use for a custom button, you can make a copy of the button and use its icon in your custom button. To do this, choose View, Toolbars and click Customize. Now click on the Toolbars tab. At this point, you can click (once) on the toolbar button you'd like to copy. Then choose Edit, Copy Button Image.

Now you're ready to copy the image to a custom button. Create the new button by dragging a command to the toolbar (this could be a macro or a command). Click Assign and then choose Edit, Paste Button Image. Click Close to close the Customize dialog box.

By the way, since the button image is on the Clipboard, you can paste it into your Word document if you like. Simply choose Edit, Paste.

If you'd like to use some of the toolbar button icons as icons for other programs, you can copy them as we described in the last tip. You choose View, Toolbars, Customize. Then, on the toolbar, click on the button you want to copy and choose Edit, Copy Button Image.

If you want to make your icon larger, you can change the icon size before you make the copy. Choose View, Toolbars and select the Large Buttons check box. Click OK to save the change and close the dialog box. Now choose View, Toolbars again. This time, click Customize and then the Toolbars tab. Select the toolbar button to copy by clicking on it, and then choose Edit, Copy Button Image. Click Close to close the dialog box. If you want your icon to return to normal, open the Customize dialog box again, deselect the Large Buttons check box, and click OK.

Now that the icon is on the Clipboard, you can open Microsoft Paint and choose Image, Attributes. Set Width and Height to 10. Then choose Edit, Paste to paste in the copied icon. Next, choose File, Save As and give the icon a name. Since Windows 95 will let you use .BMP files as icons, your new icon is ready to go.

If you create Word 6 toolbar buttons with the Large Button option selected, the buttons created will look lousy if you then switch to the Small Button option. Also, if you create buttons with Small Button selected and then switch to Large Button mode, you'll find that the buttons are still small.

To make your Word 6 toolbar buttons look their best in Small Button mode, create all your buttons in Small Button mode and run Word with the Large Button mode turned off. If you want to run in Large Button mode, create all your buttons in that mode. If you want to switch back and forth between small and large, create two sets of buttons--one for each mode.

When you click the New button on the Word toolbar (or press Ctrl-N), the program opens a new document based on the Normal template. Fair enough, but many of us work with additional templates on a daily basis. If this is true of you, perhaps you'd prefer to have the toolbar New button open the New dialog box, so you can choose a template.

Choose Tools, Customize and then click the Toolbars tab. Scroll down through Categories and select All Commands. In Commands, locate FileNew and use the mouse to drag it to the toolbar. Now assign it a name or an icon (or edit an icon if you like) and click Close.

Clicking on your new New button will open the New dialog box, from which you can choose a template. To open a new blank document, use the old New button.

If you need to create a document that includes a number of pictures or drawings, you might want to use Word's AutoCaption feature.

Let's suppose your document will contain pictures and drawings that will always be labeled Figure x, in which x is a sequential number. Choose Insert, Caption and then click AutoCaption. Now select the check box that describes the type of document for which you want to insert a caption. In this case, you can select Microsoft ClipArt Gallery and click OK. Now when you insert a ClipArt image, Word will automatically add the label.

In the last tip, we showed you how to automatically caption figures in a Word document. This time, let's consider adding captions when you intend to frame your pictures.

If you insert the picture, then insert a frame around it, the caption will appear outside the frame. If you want to use AutoCaption and frames (with the caption inside the frame), create the frame first, then insert the picture. Now the caption will appear inside the frame along with the picture.

If you're a high-speed typist, you can type several sentences without ever looking at the screen. That's great unless you've accidentally turned on the Caps Lock key. In that, um, case, all the characters are in the opposite case. Don't delete them and start over again. Instead, select the text, then choose Format, Change Case. When the Change Case dialog box opens, select the Toggle Case radio button and click OK. Your text will appear in the correct case.

Let's say you'd like to create a drawing in Word that requires closely aligned parts--say, an archery target. Rather than try to place all your circles in exactly the correct position as you draw them, draw all the circles in any location. Now select all the circles. To do this, click one circle and then hold down the Shift key while you click on the remaining circles. With all the circles selected, click the Align Drawing Objects button in the Drawing toolbar. When the dialog box opens, select the two Center radio buttons and select the radio button labeled Each Other. Click OK, and the circles will all line up concentrically.

You know that you can paste Clipboard contents into Word by choosing Edit, Paste. You can also press Ctrl-V. And, although it seems to have been largely forgotten, you can press Shift-Insert.

Word will even allow you to paste with only the Insert (or Ins) key. To see if you might like this arrangement, choose Tools, Options and click the Edit tab. Select the check box labeled Use The INS Key For Paste, and then click OK to save your changes and get rid of the dialog box.

Now copy some text and then click on a blank spot in your document. Press Insert, and the copied text will appear.

If you've been appointed to produce a newsletter for your organization, club, or church, you can use columns to make the newsletter look more professional. Columns are much easier to deal with than most people imagine.

Let's say you decide to create a two-column newsletter. This isn't a problem at all. Simply choose Format, Columns. Click Two and click OK. To view the document properly in two columns, choose View, Page Layout.

People sometimes run into problems when they want to use a full-width banner headline over a two-column page. But you can do this fairly easily. Go to the very top of the document and choose Insert, Break. When the dialog box opens, select Continuous and click OK.

This inserts a section break. Now click above the section break line and choose Format, Columns. Click One and click OK. Type in your headline and make it long enough to cover the entire width of the page, if that's what you want. In any case, you can center it on the page by clicking the Center Text button in the Word toolbar.

Another problem people encounter is trying to place graphics or pictures in the columns. We'll discuss that in the next tip.

When you decide to use columns in a Word document, you can set the number of columns if you choose Format, Columns. When the Columns dialog box opens, you can select from one, two, or three columns. You'll notice that you can also choose a small column at the left or a small column at the right.

If you like, you can set the column size yourself. Just deselect Equal Column Width and then set the size of each of your columns. After you finish setting up the columns, click OK to close the dialog box and save your changes.

If you need to use a lot of words with strange capitalization, such as AutoCorrect, AutoFormat, and ClipArt, here's a tip that may save you some time and energy. When you run a spelling check, a word such as AutoCorrect will be tagged as incorrect if it appears as Autocorrect or AUTOCORRECT, because of the way the capitalization appears in the Custom dictionary. However, if such words are in the Custom dictionary in lowercase only, the case differences won't get tagged.

So, if you have a long list of oddly capitalized words in your Custom.dic file, you can save yourself some time if you make them all lowercase. To do this, choose Tools, Options and click the Spelling tab. Now click Custom Dictionaries. With CUSTOM.DIC selected, click Edit. With your list of words available, you can either go through the list and make the necessary case changes, or you can make all the words lowercase. Just press Ctrl-A to select all the words and then choose Format, Change Case. When the Change Case dialog box opens, select Lowercase and click OK.

Now choose File, Close to close the dictionary file. Select Yes in all the questions about saving. If asked about format, you want Text Only.

As we work with Word, we have a tendency to add words to the custom dictionary. Sometimes we add words that are useful at the time but aren't needed later.

If you'd like to check your dictionary and possibly eliminate some words that you no longer need, choose Tools, Options and click the Spelling tab. Deselect the Automatic Spell Checking check box, then click Custom Dictionaries. When that dialog box opens, Custom.dic should be selected. Click Edit to open the dictionary.

After you make all the changes, choose File, Save to save the dictionary, then choose File, Close to close the custom dictionary window. Do not choose Save As from the File menu. This will lead you to saving custom.txt if you're not careful.

When you're finished with the dictionary, turn automatic spell checking back on. Choose Tools, Options, Spelling, select the Automatic Spell Checking check box, then click OK.

There are several ways to add the current date to a Word document. If you press Alt-Shift-D, Word will insert the date as a field. However, you have no control over the date format; it will be in the form MM/DD/YY. If you want to control the date format, choose Insert, Date And Time. When the dialog box opens, choose the format you prefer, then click OK. You can also control the format if you insert the date in a field. Choose Insert, Field, and when the dialog box opens, select Date under Field Names and click Options. Now click General Switches and select the date format you want. Click Add To Field and click OK twice. Word will insert the date in the selected format.

When you have a file linked to a Word document, the time may come when you want to break the link. For example, once you're sure the linked file will no longer change, there's not much point in maintaining the link. To break the link, choose Edit, Links. When the dialog box opens, click on Break Link. Word will ask if you're sure. Choose Yes. The object will remain in your Word document, but it will no longer be linked to its source file. Any changes you make to the object's file will not appear in the Word document.

Word offers a number of ways to paste data from the Clipboard to an open document. There's the usual way--choose Edit, Paste. Or, you can use its keyboard shortcuts: Ctrl-V or Alt, E, P. Here's another method that you may not know about: You can press Shift-Insert to paste that Clipboard data.

You can use a macro to ask for the name whenever you open a new document. To enter the macro, choose Tools, Macro and type in

Now click the arrow at the right side of the Macros Available In list box and select Normal.dot (Global Template). Click Create and type in the macro exactly as shown here (your best bet is to copy and paste directly from this tip):

Now when you open a new document, Word will prompt you for a name. Enter a name without the extension. Word will append the extension .DOC to your filename.

This is another one of those tips that's of questionable usefulness but fun to relate. As you know, there are a number of ways to select an entire Word document:

In a previous tip, we mentioned that you can shrink text in Word's Print Preview mode. For example, if you have only one or two sentences on the next page of a document, you can use Shrink To Fit to make all the text fit on the same page.

Several readers have asked about unshrinking a document. Well, here's the bad news--if you've already saved the document, there really isn't any good way to unshrink it. What you can do is open the document and press Ctrl-A to select all the text. Next, choose Format, Font and set the font size back to the original size. This will remove the shrink, but not automatically. You'll still have to go through the entire document and reformat any headings (or other elements) that you used in the original document. Of course, if you just shrunk the document, and have now decided that you'd rather not, just press Ctrl-Z to undo the shrink.

You can avoid this dilemma altogether by saving a backup copy of your file. Before shrinking the document, use the File, Save As command.

One of the easiest ways to dress up an otherwise dull-looking Word document is to use drop caps. To do this, select the character you want to drop. This is usually the first character in the first sentence of the first paragraph, but there's nothing wrong with a bit of eccentricity. After you select the character, choose Format, Drop Cap. When the dialog box opens, decide how you want your drop cap to look. Select the type of drop cap you want and the number of lines you want to drop (try the default first), then click OK. If you're not in Page Layout view, Word will ask if you want to switch. Tell it Yes. Now your drop cap will appear in the text just as it will print.

You can remove a drop cap by double-clicking the character to select it and then choosing Format, Drop Cap again. This time, select None and click OK.

We've shown you how to use the mouse to copy and move text. You can also use the mouse to copy a format. Here's how: First, use the mouse to select text with the format you want to copy. Now click the Format Painter button in the toolbar (it's the button with the paintbrush icon). The mouse pointer will change to a brush icon. Move the pointer to the location where you want to copy the format, and click. If you want to apply the format to a large area, simply hold down the mouse button while you drag the pointer over the area. Note: The format specifications are contained in the paragraph mark. When you select the format, it's possible to select only the paragraph mark associated with the style you want to copy.

Word keeps a list of the most recently used files at the bottom of the File menu (unless you tell it not to). Previous versions of Word warn you when a file on that list has been deleted, and remove the file from the list. Nowadays, Word does not remove a deleted file from the list because of the more widespread use of networks.

Choose Tools, Macro. When the Macro dialog box opens, type into the Macro Name text box

Now click Create, and the FileOpen macro will appear. Modify it to match the macro shown here:

You don't have to keep opening Find (Ctrl-F) to repeat a search. All you have to do is press Shift-F4, and Word will perform a search using the keyword (or phrase) most recently entered in Find.

To check this out, press Ctrl-F to open Find. Enter a common word or phrase. Click Find Next to find the first occurrence, and then click Close. Now press Shift-F4, and Word will locate the next occurrence of your word or phrase.

If you need to interrupt a Word Find or Find and Replace operation before you're finished, you can resume the Find by pressing F4. To try this, start a Find and Replace and then click Close. Now press F4 to continue with the operation. Word will pick up in the same spot where you stopped, unless you moved your cursor.

This tip isn't exactly earthshaking, but it can save you a bit of time. Before you run a spelling check, press Ctrl-Home to move to the beginning of the document. This way, you won't get the dialog box asking if you want to continue checking the document from the top. And since you're trying to save some time, use the keyboard shortcut to run the spelling checker. Press Ctrl-Home and then press F7.

Word has a nifty highlight feature that works like those highlighting markers you use to emphasize text on a printed page. To use it, just click the Highlight button; it's probably next to the Underline button unless you've moved it. (Don't have one? Go to Tools, Customize and click the Toolbars tab, then click on Tools in the Categories box. The button looks like a highlighting marker with a small yellow square beneath it; just drag it up to your toolbar.)

Word's default highlight color is yellow. If you'd rather use some other color, click on the down arrow at the right side of the highlight button to expand your color list. You can choose no color (None), green, cyan, magenta, blue, red, or dark blue (keep scrolling down the menu to see all the colors).

After you complete and look over a Word document, you may decide that it would look tidier with some hyphenation. To hyphenate an existing document, choose Tools, Hyphenation. When the dialog box opens, select the Automatically Hyphenate Document check box and click OK. Word will completely hyphenate the document.

If you want to clear the list of most recently used files in Word (located on the File menu), choose Tools, Options, and when the Options dialog box appears, click the General tab. Deselect the Recently Used File List option and then click OK. To reactivate the list, repeat the steps, this time selecting the Recently Used File List check box. Now the list is cleared but activated, so newly used files will appear on the list.

If you open a Word 6 file from File Manager or Windows Explorer and then close that file without saving it, the file will not appear on Word's most recently used file list (located on the File menu). If you want a file to show up on the list, you must save it before you close it.

In many Windows 95 applications, you can type a filename in quotation marks to give it the extension of your choice. However, various versions of Word respond differently to this trick.

and tell Word that you want to save the file as Text Only, Word won't recognize what you're trying to do and will give you an error message. Word 6 doesn't recognize the quotes as valid. To save the file with a new extension in Word 6, simply type

In Word 7, the extension will change to TXT once you indicate that you want to save the file as text--whether or not you type the filename in quotes. Word 97 will accept the new extension, and your file will be named TEST.ABC. However, you can ALWAYS save the file with the extension of your choice if you first select Text Only and then type the filename in quotes.

Here's a cool trick that many Word for Windows users overlook--format pasting. If there's a format in your document that you'd like to apply in some other part of the document, don't bother with a lot of fancy manipulations. All you have to do is click on a line that contains the format you want to use and then click the Format Painter button (it looks like a paintbrush) in the toolbar. Clicking the Format Painter button will change the icon to a brush. Move to the text to which you want to apply the format, and use the mouse to "paint" over the text. That's all you have to do. Word will reformat your text.

After you insert a frame in a Word document, you might need to do a little formatting on the frame. Select the frame and choose Format, Frame or simply right-click the frame. This opens a menu from which you choose Format Frame.

If you'd like to use hanging indents for several paragraphs in a Word document, select the paragraphs you want to modify, then choose Format, Paragraph. When the Paragraph dialog box opens, click the Indents and Spacing tab. In the list box labeled Special, click the down arrow to expand the list and choose Hanging. Click OK to close the dialog box and record your changes.

Do you sometimes need to generate a document that has a repetitive style? Perhaps you need a header, followed by text, then another header, and so on. If so, this is a perfect time to use AutoFormat. Try this: Type in a header. Now press Enter twice--rapidly. The sentence should magically appear in Heading 1 style.

If this doesn't happen, choose Tools, Options and click on AutoFormat. Select the radio button labeled AutoFormat As You Type. Now, under Apply As You Type, make sure Headings is selected. Click OK. Now type your header again and press Enter two times in rapid succession. You have to develop a touch for this.

Note that the header style won't be applied to a sentence that includes punctuation at the end. If you type

If you use highlighting a lot, you probably like to change Word's highlight colors when you highlight more than one topic. But first, for those of you unfamiliar with highlighting, let's do a little refresher.

Highlighting letters, words, sentences, or entire passages in Word is easy. You simply click the Highlight button in the Word toolbar. It's the button with an icon showing a marking pen over a small square. When you click the button, the cursor changes to a marker pen icon and you highlight text by dragging the cursor over it. To turn off highlighting, click the button again.

Now let's say you have a document in which you'd like to use two highlight colors--one for each main topic, perhaps. First, do the highlighting using the Word default (yellow). After you've highlighted all you need for now, click on the down arrow at the right side of the Highlight button and choose a new color from the drop-down menu. Now mark the items that should be highlighted with the new color. Note: This is a separate button and doesn't affect the state of the Highlight button.

There are four colors available for highlighting. As soon as you make a choice, the drop-down menu will disappear, and Word will apply your selection color.

When you click the Highlight button to highlight Word text, the cursor turns into a marker. You then highlight text by dragging the marker over it. However, you can make things a bit easier for yourself if you use some of Word's standard editing procedures.

For example, with Highlight active, you can double-click a word to highlight it. To highlight a paragraph, triple-click it.

Automatic hyphenation may not always hyphenate the way you would if you had a choice. You do have a choice, though, since you can manually hyphenate a document. To do this, choose Tools, Hyphenation. When the dialog box opens, click Manual. Now Word will open another dialog box in which each hyphenation will be suggested. You can choose to accept it or reject it. This way, you can help Word help you with hyphenation.

Here's something we ran across accidentally and for which we have no real explanation.

If you need to insert a symbol into a Word document, you can choose Insert, Symbol. When the dialog box opens, you can choose a font and then double-click the desired symbol to place it into the document. This is fine, but then we'd like the dialog box to close after we double-click the symbol; but it doesn't--it stays open.

We decided to take a look at the InsertSymbol routine to see if we could change the way it responds to the double-click. There's no obvious solution in the routine. However, we found that simply opening the routine and then saving it with a remark makes it work the way we want.

To check this out, choose Tools, Macro. When the dialog box opens, click the Macro Name input box and type in

Below End Sub, type REM. Now press Alt-F-S to save the routine. You'll be asked if you want to save the changes. Click Yes. That's all we did, and InsertSymbol now closes after the double-click.

Adding REM seems to constitute a change that makes InsertSymbol available in your macro list. Why this makes it work differently, we don't know. But if you decide you don't want the Insert Symbol dialog box to close after a double-click, just choose Tools, Macro, select InsertSymbol, and click Delete. Word will ask if you want to delete it. Click Yes and then click Close. Your Insert Symbol dialog box will work as it did in the beginning.

If you want to know what keys are assigned to a particular function in Word, choose Tools, Customize, and then click the Keyboard tab. Now you can select the function you're interested in, and Word will show you what its key assignment is (if there is one).

If you'd like to know what Word key assignments you've made, you can choose File, Print, and then click the arrow at the right of the Print What list box to expand the list. Select Key Assignments and click OK. Doing so will print all the global key assignments you've added to your Word installation.

In the last tip, we showed you how to enter an apostrophe using two methods: Hold down Ctrl, press the apostrophe key, release Ctrl, and press the apostrophe key again; or, with the Numlock key active, hold down Alt while you enter 0146 using the number pad. This time, let's look at how you can assign keystrokes to make the job even easier.

Choose Insert, Symbol and click the Special Characters tab. Now locate Single Closing Quote and select it. Click Shortcut Key and then click in the Press New Shortcut Key text box. Press Ctrl-Alt-' (apostrophe), click Assign, and click Close. Click Close again in the Symbol dialog box. From now on, you can insert the apostrophe by pressing Ctrl-Alt-'.

When you want to select a new style in Word, you can move up to the toolbar, click on the down arrow next to the Style list box, and select the new style. You can do the same using the keyboard. Press Ctrl-Shift-S. This highlights the Style list box. Use the arrow key to move through the list. When the style you want is highlighted, press Enter.

You know that you can insert images into a Word document. You can also insert images into the header and footer. But how about a mailing label? Why not put an image in a mailing label, too? You can do this, but the method isn't quite as obvious as the method for inserting pictures into documents and headers and footers. Here's what to do.

Locate a BMP file that you'd like to use in your labels. Now choose Tools, Envelopes And Labels. When the dialog box opens, click Labels. Now click in the Address box. Press Ctrl-F9 to create a field. Enter into the field

where the picture is in the Windows folder and MyOwn.bmp is the filename. Make sure you use the double slashes (c:\\) as shown for every subdirectory when you enter the filename. Now, while the cursor is still in the field, press F9. The picture will load and appear in the label. If the picture is too large, use the mouse to size it. This insertion technique works best with small, simple figures. For example, inserting a small company logo should work well.

Try to size the picture before you insert it into the label. If the picture doesn't look good at a reduced size, then it certainly won't look good in the label. If you use a black-and-white printer, you need to make sure the picture you intend to insert into the label will print well on your printer.

Do you sometimes need to use leaders? Leaders are those little dots leading up to some text, like this:

To set up leaders, choose Format, Tabs. When the dialog box opens, enter the tab position you want to use (in inches). Next, look under Leader. Select the radio button associated with the type of leader you want (they don't always have to be little dots) and then click Set. Click OK to record your selection and close the dialog box. Now when you use the Tab key, the tab location you entered will display the leader.

If you want to let Word handle numbered lists for you, here's how to stay in control of what types of lists you get.

followed by a period, a space, and the text. When you press Enter, the next Roman numeral will appear. It should look like this:

You can also automatically create bulleted lists. Let's say you want to use a round bullet. Type

followed by a space or tab, then your text. When you press Enter, the bullet for the next item in the list will appear.

When you choose to use bullets or numbering in a Word document, a new bullet or number appears when you press Enter. But what if you want to insert a blank line between two bulleted or numbered lines? The first reaction is to simply press Enter to stop the bullets or numbering. This is unnecessary--all you have to do is press Shift-Enter. This inserts the blank. Now, to get to the next bulleted or numbered line, press Enter.

To quickly copy text in Word using the mouse, highlight the text to select it. Click the right mouse button and choose Copy. Next, move the mouse to the location where you want the copied text to appear, click the right mouse button, and choose Paste.

In the last tip, we showed you how to copy text quickly using the mouse. What do you do if you want to move the text rather than copy it? You select the text with the mouse and then use the mouse to drag the text to a new location. Dragging the text may take a bit of practice, but here's how it works: After you select the text, move the mouse pointer to any location in the highlighted text. Now click on it, hold down the mouse button, and drag the text to the new location.

You've generated a rather long numbered list, and now you see that you'd like to organize the list a bit differently. So you select the text in one of the entries and then use the mouse to drag it to a new location. It doesn't work. How come?

When you want to move selected text from a numbered list, you need to select the paragraph mark and drag it to the new location along with the text.

If the paragraph marks don't show up in your document, choose Tools, Options and click on View. Select the Paragraph Mark check box and then click OK.

You probably know that you can select a single word in a Word document by double-clicking the word. You should also know that if you triple-click anywhere in a paragraph, Word selects the entire paragraph.

If you've just finished a long Word document and decide that you really need a cover page, you don't need to jump through a lot of hoops. All you have to do is go to the top of your document and press Enter. Now choose Insert, Break and select the radio button labeled Page Break. Click OK to close the dialog box and record your request. This process inserts a blank page before your document, and you can type whatever you want on this new page.

In the last tip, we suggested that you select the paragraph mark along with the numbered list item before making a drag-and-drop text move. This technique applies to many drag-and-move operations that have nothing to do with numbered lists. The paragraph mark contains the formatting information for the text. So anytime you want to make a move and retain the formatting, include the paragraph mark in the selection.

An easy way to select the paragraph mark along with a single paragraph sentence is to hold down the Ctrl key and double-click the sentence to select it. Then, with the sentence still selected, release the Ctrl key and press the Shift key. While holding down the Shift key, press the right arrow once. This will move the selection one place to the right and will select the paragraph mark.

This technique won't work with sentences in the middle of a paragraph because there's no paragraph mark there.

Sometimes you need only part of a picture in Word. If this is the case, you don't have to crop the picture before you insert it into Word; you can do the cropping in your Word document.

Insert a Clip Art picture (Insert, Picture, Clip Art), size it, and then hold down the Shift key while you drag the edge of the picture to crop it. When you do this, Word doesn't delete any part of the picture; it simply hides it from view. So, if you need to change the cropping later, just repeat the process.

In the last tip, we talked about setting up columns in Word and using section breaks as a way to place large headlines over a two-column layout. This time, let's look at how we can add pictures to a two-column newsletter.

Let's say you'd like to place a picture right in the center of a two-column page. To begin, choose View, Page Layout so you can view your two-column document in the form in which it will print. Next, add the picture by choosing Insert, Picture and then locating and selecting the picture you want to include. After you select the picture file, click OK.

Once the picture is in the document, don't worry about its placement just yet. Right-click the picture and choose Frame Picture. With the picture framed, you can drag it anywhere in the document--even between the two columns. You can also size the picture now.

The text should flow around the frame. If it doesn't, right-click the picture and choose Format Frame. Make sure you select Around and click OK. You can also use this dialog box to set the distance between the text and the frame. The default is 0.13 inch. Reduce that number to place the text closer to the frame. After you enter the new number, click OK.

Want to add some text inside a picture in a Word document? Here's one way to do the job--frame the picture. To do this, right-click the picture. When the menu opens, choose Frame Picture.

Now for the text. Choose Insert, Frame. The cursor will turn into a crosshair. Use the crosshair to draw a new frame. Now add text to your new frame. At this point, since both the picture and text are in frames, you can place them both wherever you want, and placing the text frame over the picture frame is no problem at all.

You can use AutoText to insert pictures and other graphics into Word. Let's look at an example.

Run Word and choose Insert, Object. When the Object dialog box opens, select Microsoft ClipArt (or Clip Gallery) from the list and click OK. Select a picture and click OK. Now that the picture is in place in Word, size it the way you want and then select it. Choose Edit, AutoText. The picture should appear in the Preview pane. Assign a name and click Add.

To insert the picture, type in the name and then choose Edit, AutoText. Select the name and click Insert.

A reader reports that after using Find and Replace, the entire document was turned into nothing but gibberish. We can only speculate about what might have happened to that document, but we can warn you about the dangers of using Find and Replace carelessly. Try this object lesson on a document you don't need. (Copy a document under a new name and use that.)

Open Find and Replace (Ctrl-H) and click the Find What entry box. Choose Format, Style. Now choose the predominate style of your document (perhaps Normal). Don't enter any text in the entry box. Click on the Replace With entry box and type a few spaces. Click Replace All and then click OK. Now click Close. You've just destroyed your document by replacing all the Normal style text with spaces.

If something like this happens to you, don't panic. Panicking can lead to permanent data loss. In this case, all you have to do is press Ctrl-Z and, thanks to Word's terrific Undo command, your document will magically reappear.

The moral is, be careful with Replace All. Always check to make sure you don't have spaces in Replace With unless you're sure this is what you want. And never forget that wonderful Undo command.

A reader points out that you can extend Extend even further. If you double-click EXT, open Find (Ctrl-F), and type in a word you want to search for, all the text between the current cursor position and the word located by Find will be selected.

If you'd like to stop all those grammar errors that get tagged as you write, why not just change the rules? If you're getting grammar errors where you think there should be none, your grammar checker may well be set to follow more stringent rules than necessary. For example, if it tags contractions, such as "we're" and "they're," you can make some simple setup changes to put a stop to those tags.

Choose Tools, Options, and when the Options dialog box opens, click the Grammar tab. In the Writing Style box, choose For Casual Writing. Now click Customize Settings and select those items that you want the grammar checker to tag. Click OK to save your changes, and when you get back to the Options dialog box, click OK to close it.

We're not suggesting that you use Print Preview mode for editing, but we do advise you to be careful when you're in Print Preview mode. You could lose something.

When it comes to saving Word documents, you can choose between fast and safe. If you want to be safe, choose Tools, Options. Click the Save tab and then select the check box labeled Always Create Backup Copy. Click OK to save your choice and close the Options dialog box. If you'd like to use fast saves, choose Tools, Options, click Save, and select the Allow Fast Saves check box. You'll notice that this automatically turns off Always Create Backup Copy. You have to choose between the two. After you make up your mind, click OK to get back to work.

If you'd like to change the case of a sentence quickly, try this: Select the sentence and press Shift-F3. The first time you press Shift-F3, the sentence will turn to all caps. The next time you press the combination, the sentence will turn to all lowercase. When you press Shift-F3 once more, the sentence will display standard capitalization (it begins with a cap and other letters are in lowercase).

As you create a Word document, you may encounter two- or three-word phrases that you'd rather not have split between lines. For example, you may prefer to keep the phrase "The Supreme Court" on a single line. You can use Ctrl-Shift-Space to add non-breaking spaces within this phrase. So, you'd type

When typed this way, the phrase will stay together as though it were a single word.

Have you ever finished a Word document only to find that the last few sentences land on a separate page? If so, you might like to try to eliminate that last page for cosmetic effect. Don't start deleting words; all you have to do is choose File, Print Preview. In the Print Preview toolbar, click the Shrink To Fit button, which is located below the Tools menu. This will reduce your document by one page.

Make sure you double-check your reduced document before you print it; the font size may have changed and the document may not suit your tastes.

If you want to quickly check the spelling of a single word, double-click the word to select it and press F7. If the word is spelled correctly, a dialog box will open offering to check the remainder of the document. Click No to continue working. If the word is spelled incorrectly, you'll get a dialog box showing alternate spellings from which you can select a correction (or the dialog box may tell you that it can't find any alternate spellings). In any case, after you make your correction and click Change, you'll get the dialog box offering to check the rest of the document for you. Tell it No.

Suppose you're working in Word and you don't like the way you've placed a picture. In fact, you believe the best approach would be to finish all the text entry before you insert the picture. If you cut the picture, it gets put on the Clipboard. If you then cut something else, your picture is gone.

This is no problem if you use the Spike. Select the picture and press Ctrl-F3. Now the picture will remain on the Spike until you need it again.

To paste the picture and remove it from the Spike, click where you want the picture to appear and press Ctrl-Shift-F3. Doing so will completely clear the Spike and paste all its contents into the document.

One way to save a note is to stick it onto a corkboard with a thumbtack. Word has an electronic thumbtack (called the Spike) that you can use to paste notes in a document.

Suppose you're working in Word and need to type a note to yourself. Just type the note, select the text, then press Ctrl-F3. This cuts the text and places it on the Spike. To paste the text back into the document and remove it from the Spike, press Ctrl-Shift-F3.

To paste the Spike's contents without removing the contents from the Spike, type

and click the Insert AutoText button on the toolbar. The word "spike" will disappear and be replaced by your Spike text.

and choose Edit, AutoText. When the AutoText dialog box opens, select Spike and click Insert.

You can keep adding notes to the Spike, but keep in mind that when you eventually type "spike" and click Insert AutoText, the Spike will paste all the data you entered.

We can't be sure how you start Word on your computer; we'll assume that you click Start, Programs, Microsoft Word. To run Word without opening a blank document, begin by right-clicking Start and choosing Open. Now double-click the Programs folder to open it. Next, right-click the Microsoft Word icon and choose Properties. Click the Shortcut tab and then click in the Target entry box. Move to the end of the existing command and type a space. Now add

to the end of the line. Click OK to record the change and close the dialog box. The next time you start Word, it will open without any document at all.

If you want to quickly navigate to the very top of a Word document, press Ctrl-Home. To get to the end of the document, press Ctrl-End. And, just in case you don't already know, Ctrl-A will select the entire document; Ctrl-C will copy the selected text (or graphics); Ctrl-X will cut selected text (or graphics); Ctrl-V will paste data from the Clipboard; and Ctrl-Z will undo the last operation.

If you'd like to see what styles you have available in a Word document, you can choose Format, Style. When the Style dialog box opens, click on the style you'd like to examine. The dialog box will display data on the selected style. If you'd like some hard copy, choose File, Print. When the Print dialog box opens, click the arrow at the right of the Print What list box to expand the list. Select Styles from the list and then click OK. Word will print all the information on the current styles.

Let's take a look at an anomaly you might like to know about. When you want to insert a symbol into a Word document, you choose Insert, Symbol and choose a font and a symbol. Since Wingdings has a bunch of useful symbols, let's consider that font. We chose the "neither happy nor unhappy" face from Wingdings. After you insert the symbol, press Enter a few times and type

Now select the K and choose Format, Font. Locate and select the Wingdings font, and the K will turn into this "who cares?" face. Select the first "who cares?" face and press Ctrl-C to copy it.

When you create a table in Word, the table will appear in the document with gridlines. However, the gridlines won't appear on the printed sheet. If you'd prefer to work without the gridlines, you can choose Table, Gridlines. This is a toggle--so to turn the gridlines back on, choose the same command. If you want the gridlines to appear in the printed document, select the table and choose Format, Borders And Shading. When the dialog box opens, click Grid and then click OK. The gridlines will appear both in your document and in the printout.

If you frequently insert a specific size and type of table into your Word documents, here's a macro that can do the job for you. Of course, the table we're creating with AddTable might not be the one you need, so you'll have to edit the macro a little.

Macros just don't get any simpler than this. To get the macro into Word, choose Tools, Macro. In the Macro Name text box, type

and click Create. Now type in the macro as shown above. Choose File, Save to save the new macro.

To change the table parameters, change NumRows and NumColumns. To choose a different table format, change the Format value. The number corresponds to a table format listed in the AutoFormat dialog box. To get there, choose Table, Insert Table and click on AutoFormat. Unfortunately, you're forced to count down the list to figure out which number goes with which table format--the first format, (None), is zero; Simple 1 is number one; Classic 1 is number four; and so on. Our number 7 corresponds to the Classic 4 format. After you finish looking over the table formats, click Cancel and then click Cancel again.

To use the new macro, choose Tools, Macro. Click AddTable to select it and then click Run.

Some subscribers have asked about using callouts in text. Is there a way to make the primary text wrap around callout text? Yes, there is--well, sort of. What you can do is insert a frame (Insert, Frame) and then draw a callout inside the frame.

Before you insert the callout, place the frame where you want it to appear when finished (at least as close as possible). If you don't see the Drawing toolbar, choose View, Toolbars and select Drawing. Once the toolbar is visible, click the Callout button (it looks like one of the speech bubbles you see in a comic strip) and draw the callout inside the frame.

Now you can right-click the frame and choose Format Frame. In the Frame dialog box, choose to have text wrap around the frame, then click OK. At this point, you can enter your callout text. If you need to change the placement of your callout, move the frame and then move the callout back inside it.

Although Word 6 and Word 7 won't let you create a circular frame, you can place text so it will fit a circular picture. Choose Insert, Frame and use the mouse to draw the frame. Now click inside the frame and insert the picture you want to use. Size the picture and then right-click on the frame and choose Format Frame. Set Width and Height to Exactly and then use the spin boxes to make the frame as small as possible, while still large enough for the picture. Set Distance From Text to zero and click OK. You may have to repeat the sizing several times to get exactly the right settings.

Now choose View, Toolbars, select Drawing, and click OK. From the Drawing toolbar, click the Oval button and draw a circle around the framed picture. (This is to provide you with a guide; you can make it disappear later.)

Using the circle as a guide, place spaces in the text to make it fit the circle as closely as possible. Once all your text is in place, right-click on the circle and choose Format Drawing Object. Click on the Lines tab, select the None radio button, and click OK. This will make the circle invisible without making any other changes.

Making text bold (or underlining or italicizing it) isn't a problem in Word. To make all subsequent text appear in bold, press Ctrl-B and start typing. For underlined text, press Ctrl-U. And, to set the text in italics, press Ctrl-I. You can toggle off all of these commands by repeating them.

If you need to change the format of existing text, select the text and then choose the appropriate command to change its formatting.

One way to get your reader's attention is to expand a word (or several words) across a wider area. Select the word or words and then choose Format, Font. When the Font dialog box opens, click on the Character Spacing tab. Set Spacing to Normal and use the By spin box to increase the spacing. As you increase the spacing, watch the Preview box to see what effect your changes have on the selected word or words. When finished, click OK to record your changes and close the dialog box.

How do you select a block of text in a document? That is, select a block of text without regard to individual sentences, paragraphs, or page breaks? Hold down the Alt key while using the mouse to select a portion of the document.

If you want to really make your bordered text stand out, you can add some shading. Let's say you already have some bordered text. Click inside the border and choose Format, Borders And Shading. When the dialog box opens, click on the Shading tab. Now you can select the type of shading you want to use. After you finish your selection, click on OK.

Note that you can also use the Shading dialog box to set the colors. If you use a color printer, you may want to try some colors to see how the printout looks. If you do decide to use colors, you'll soon find that Foreground doesn't refer to the text color; Foreground and Background refer to the colors that appear in your shading selection.

In the last tip, we showed you a macro that you can use to create a table. This time, we'll show you how to make a toolbar button for the new macro (or any macro).

Choose View, Toolbars and click Customize. When the Customize dialog box opens, click the Toolbars tab. Now scroll down until you locate Macros. Click it once to select it, and the macro list will appear on the right side of the dialog box. Use the mouse to drag your new macro to the toolbar. When you reach the macro's chosen location, release the mouse button.

When the Custom Button dialog box opens, select a button or just use the suggested text name and click Assign. Now click Close and your new toolbar button should work just fine.

Here's another little Word curiosity for you: If you move the toolbar (hold down Alt and drag the toolbar) to a vertical position, the Undo and Redo buttons no longer have a multilevel function. To check this, drag the toolbar to the left side of your screen. When the outline switches to vertical, release the mouse button. Now look at the Undo and Redo buttons. You'll notice that the down arrows are no longer there. If you type in some text, delete it, and then do an Undo, you'll find it works only at the first level. This happens only when the toolbar is vertical. If you drag the toolbar out onto your document, the down arrows will reappear. Weird, eh?

Suppose you'd like to locate a specific word in a Word document. Let's say you'd like to locate the next occurrence of the word "this." You open Find and start a search. The search finds nothing. Now, you know you've used the word "this," so what's wrong?

If you encounter this problem, open Find and see if there's a formatting style attached to the word for which you're searching. If so, click No Formatting and then continue your search.

If you choose Tools, Macro and then select a Word command, the Create button will be grayed out. This may cause you to incorrectly assume that you can't modify a Word command in Word 6. Here's how to do it. Choose Tools, Macro and type the name of the macro you want to modify. Select the command you want to modify. Now choose where you want to save your macro (Normal.dot, for example) and then click Create. This will open the macro in an editing window, where you can modify it as desired.

If you encounter this problem, open Find and see if there's a formatting style attached to the word for which you're searching. If so, click No Formatting and then continue your search.

In the last tip, we told you how to change your bullet symbol (Bullets and Numbering, Modify, Bullet). This time, let's look at even more bullet-symbol options. Go through all the steps we discussed in the last tip, but when you get to the Character Map, go to the Symbols From list box and click the down arrow at the right side of the box to expand the list. Select Wingdings. Now you can choose a new bullet from the rich symbol source that the Wingdings font offers. Once again, click OK after you make your choice, then you can change its color and size. Click OK twice to get back to your document.

If you click Word's magnifying glass pointer in Print Preview, and the zoom is already set to 100 percent, the zoom won't increase even though the pointer displays the plus sign. This is not a bug. The control is set to 100 percent.

If you've modified a Word command and would like to revert to the macro's original function, simply delete your replacement macro. Go to Tools, Macro. Click the macro name to select it and click Delete. Click OK to confirm your choice, and click Close to close the Macros dialog.

Remember the term "boilerplate"? If so, you've probably been word processing for a quite awhile. Boilerplate is a term you don't hear often anymore. Boilerplates are simply collections of text that you use frequently. For example, if you often mail company documents that include the same opening paragraph, you can save that text as a boilerplate. In effect, this is what you do with AutoText.

Let's suppose you always (or nearly always) use a specific opening paragraph for the letters you mail to customers. To make this task a little easier, type in that paragraph, spell check it, and make sure all is well, then make it an AutoText entry. To do this, select the paragraph and choose Edit, AutoText. When the AutoText dialog box opens, type in a name, such as opening1, and click Add.

Now that the opening paragraph is saved in AutoText, all you have to do to start your standard letter is type

and press F3. Like magic that already tried-and-tested text appears in your document.

Of course, if there's another opening that you sometimes use, you can type it in, select it, choose Edit AutoText and name the new entry opening2. You can now use either opening by simply typing in its name and pressing F3.

Run Word and open any document. Use the mouse to select the desired text, then choose Format Borders And Shadings. When the Borders And Shadings dialog box opens, click the Borders tab. Under Setting, click Custom. Under Style, click the dotted line to select it. Now click on the bottom and top in the preview diagram. This creates the dotted line top and bottom borders you need. Next, click the double line under Style, then click the left and right sides in the preview diagram.

Finally, click the arrow at the right side of the Apply To list box and select Paragraph. Click OK to close the dialog box and apply your new borders.

If you use Tools, Word Count to see how many words there are in a document, you should know that it can fail to report the correct number. Here's what happens: In Word 6 (and all prior versions), the largest number of words that Word can count is 65,536. So when a document contains more than 65,536 words, the first time you choose the Update button, Word restarts the counter at 1. This problem was eliminated in Word 7.

Here's another little Word curiosity for you: If you move the toolbar (hold down Alt and drag the toolbar) to a vertical position, the Undo and Redo buttons no longer have a multilevel function. To check this, drag the toolbar to the left side of your screen. When the outline switches to vertical, release the mouse button. Now look at the Undo and Redo buttons. You'll notice that the down arrows are no longer there. If you type in some text and then delete it and do an Undo, you'll find that it only works at the first level. This only happens when the toolbar is vertical. If you drag it out onto your document, the down arrows will reappear. Weird, eh?

If you're drawing in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, you click the drawing tool you want to use and then draw away. To make another drawing of the same type, you must click the tool button again. However, if you know you're going to create a series of drawings of the same type, you can initially double-click the tool button to keep that drawing tool in effect until you click the button again to turn it off.

This technique does not work in Word if you're holding down Shift-Ctrl to make perfect circles or squares. However, it does work in Excel and PowerPoint with the Shift-Ctrl key input.

Can you make anything perfect? Sure you can--you can make a perfect square or a perfect circle in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Hold down Shift while you draw an ellipse or a rectangle. To draw a perfect circle or square from the center out, hold down Shift-Ctrl as you create the figure.

The difference between linked and embedded pictures is a frequent source of questions. If you imbed the picture, the picture information is stored as part of the Word document file. This is by far the best approach to use when sending a document via e-mail.

To imbed the picture, click in the document where you want the picture to appear and choose Insert, Picture. When the Insert Picture dialog box appears, locate your picture file and double-click its icon. The dialog box will close, and Word will insert the picture.

The advantage to drawing a table is that you can construct almost any kind of table you might need. Let's look at an example.

Open a blank Word document and choose Table, Draw Table. Now use the pencil pointer to draw a single rectangular table. Suppose that you need to create a small header for your table. Go to the left side of the table, drop down about a half-inch, and draw a line across the table's width.

Next, go to the top of the rectangle and draw a line down to the bottom line. You can also draw a vertical line from the bottom of the rectangle to the horizontal line you added.

Experimentation will demonstrate that you can very quickly produce a custom table using the drawing tool.

When you insert a WordArt object into a Word document, you don't automatically get a frame. Your text won't do the old wraparound trick until you insert a frame. Just right-click the WordArt and choose Frame Picture. Now right-click the framed WordArt and choose Format Frame. Make your wrapping choices and click OK.

In the past, we've mentioned that you can use the Replace dialog box to count occurrences of a style by clicking in the Find What text entry box, clicking Format, and choosing Style. Then you select the style you want to count and click OK. Click in the Replace With entry box and repeat. When you click Replace All, you'll replace a style with the same style, and Replace will tell you how many replacements were made.

For those of you who would like to get started with some WordBasic programming, here's a short program to do the count for you. Substitute any style you want to count for Heading 1.

in the Macro Name entry box and then click Create. This will take you to a screen on which you'll see

Enter the program shown above between Sub MAIN and End Sub. (The program is incomplete without Sub MAIN and End Sub.)

To run Count, save it and then choose File, Close to close the file. Open a document with a style trait you want to count, and choose Tools, Macro, Count, Run.

In your work, you may have run across a few reserved System words, such as the ones listed below. You can't use these words as filenames. If you attempt to do so, Word--or any Microsoft Office program--will inform you that you can't do it. You may as well not even try to use:

There are several ways to get Excel worksheet data into a Word document. In all cases, you begin by selecting the cells you want to put into the Word document. So select the cells and then press Ctrl-C to copy your selection to the Clipboard.

Now let's look at our first method. Switch to your Word document and choose Edit, Paste (or press Ctrl-V). This will paste the worksheet selection into Word as a table. Note that this method does not provide a link to the Excel document. Changes made in Excel will not appear in Word.

To insert the worksheet selection as a linked file, copy the selection (Ctrl-C) and then switch to Word. Now choose Edit, Paste Special. When the Paste Special dialog box opens, select Formatted Text (RTF) and Paste as Link. Now click OK, and the worksheet selection will appear as a linked table in your Word document.

You can also insert a linked table by copying the worksheet data (Ctrl-C) and then choosing Edit, Paste Special. This time select Microsoft Excel Worksheet Object and Paste as Link, and the data will appear as just numbers--no table.

In both cases, the data is linked to the Excel worksheet, so any changes you make in Excel will also appear in the Word document.

If you use Edit, Paste Special and choose Formatted Text (RTF) and Paste as Link, the data will appear in table form. You can select the table and then choose Table, AutoFormat to format the table to suit you. This is also the case when you simply copy the worksheet data and then switch to Word and press Ctrl-V. You can format the table as you wish.

If you paste the data using Edit, Paste Special and choose Microsoft Excel Worksheet Object and Paste as Link, the data will not appear in table form. Therefore you can't apply table formatting.

When you select text in your Word document and then insert a table, Word will convert the selected text into a table without displaying the Insert Table dialog box.

A reader asks that we pass along information on how to remove words from Word's custom dictionary. You may want to remove a word if you tend to mistype and add misspelled words to the custom dictionary. To get rid of or modify words in the custom dictionary, choose File, Open and then click the arrow at the right side of the Files of Type list box to expand the list. Select All Files (*.*). Now, locate \Windows\MSApps\Proof. In the \Proof sub folder, you'll find Custom.dic. Double-click its icon to open the file.

You can now delete or edit words in the custom dictionary. You can even add words if you like, especially if you often use industry-specific words. After you're finished working with the file, choose File, Save and then choose File, Close. Word will open a dialog box informing you that you are about to save a file in a non-Word format. Click Yes. When the next dialog box appears, click Text Only.

If you choose File, New and you don't get a list of templates from which to choose, it probably means the templates didn't get loaded. This problem occurs with the integrated Office 4.3 and Bookshelf 94 package. What happens is that the Setup program sets the User Templates file locations incorrectly.

If you don't get a template selection when you choose File, New, then you should choose Tools, Options. When the dialog box opens, click the File Locations tab. Next, select User Templates, then click Modify. Now double-click the directory that contains your templates (...\Winword\Templates). Click OK, then Close.

If you need to correct your ClipArt setting while you're at it, open the Tools, Options dialog box again and this time select ClipArt pictures, then click Modify. Double-click \Winword\ClipArt. Click OK, then Close.

You probably know you can use WordArt to create a logo. You can save all your hard work and keep the logo simply by saving the document in which the WordArt appears. However, if you'd like to use the logo again, you might want to consider saving the art as a separate .BMP (bitmap) file. To do this, right-click on the WordArt and choose Copy from the resulting menu. Now open Paint (Start, Programs, Accessories, Paint) and choose File, Paste. Once the WordArt object is pasted into Paint, you can size it and save it as a .BMP file. Now you can use it wherever you want. You can even use it as wallpaper if you like.

If you type a long text string into an Excel cell, the text will overflow into adjacent cells. If you'd like to keep all the text in a single cell, select the cell, pull down the Format menu, and choose the Cells command. When the Format Cells dialog box opens, click the Alignment tab. Select the Wrap text check box and click OK. When you reach the end of a line in your cell, press Alt+Enter to start a new line.

The primary purpose of a master document is to make it easier to deal with subdocuments. Let's say that you're writing a book. By the time you're halfway through the book, the Word document is getting rather large. So why not split the document into separate chapters? Well, then you have to load each chapter separately. But if you create a master document, you can split up the book and still have it all together.

To create a master document, click the New button on the Word toolbar (its icon resembles a blank page). Next, choose View, Master Document. Generate your outline, and then select the heading that will represent your first subdocument. Click the Create Subdocument button in the Master Document toolbar (its icon looks like a blank page with a small rectangle in the center). Now you can start typing in your subdocument. You'll notice that Word places a box around the subdocument as you type.

When you save your master document, Word automatically saves the subdocuments. It name these files using the headings you choose for the subdocuments. With the subdocuments saved, you can open them individually for editing, or you can open them in the master document.

There's no specific command for making the text vertical in a PowerPoint slide. However, you can produce vertical text quite easily. To see how this works, open a blank slide, click the Text button (its icon is an A), and draw a text box. Click in the text box and choose Format, Alignment, Center. Next, enter some text.

Select the text box and use the mouse to move the right side of the box in toward the left. As the text box becomes too narrow to hold the text horizontally, the text will wrap until it becomes vertical. Now, you can move the text into the cube or other shape.

Once it's in the shape, select both the shape and the text and choose Draw, Group. This will tie the two together so that when you reorient the shape, the text will move with it. For example, if you put vertical text in a square and then group the square and the text, rotating the square will cause the text to remain parallel with respect to the sides of the square.

When you work with a Word document, the title bar displays the current file's name but it doesn't show you the file's location. You can write a macro that will put the current file's name and complete path into the Word status bar.

and click Create. Now enter the macro as shown here. Note that Sub Main and Sub End are supplied by Word.

This macro won't work in the toolbar. So, to use it, you need to put the command on one of the menus. Choose View, Toolbars and Click Customize. When the Customize dialog box opens, click the Menus tab.

Let's put the new command on the View menu. To do this, click the arrow at the right of the Change What Menu list box to expand the list. Select &View. Now, click the arrow at the right side of the Position on Menu list box. Choose Bottom to place the command at the bottom of the menu.

Now that you know where the new command will go, you have to locate the new command. Scroll down in the Categories list box and select Macro. Your new macro (GetPath) should appear under Commands. Select it and click Add. Click Close to close the dialog box and save your changes.

With the new command in place, choose View, GetPath. The current file's full path and name will appear in the left side of the status bar at the bottom of the Word window.

If you'd like to stop all those grammar errors that get tagged as your write, why not just change the rules? If you're getting grammar errors where you think there should be none, your grammar checker may well be set to follow more stringent rules than necessary. For example, if it tags contractions such as "we're," "they're," etc., you can make some simple setup changes to put a stop to those tags.

Choose Tools, Options, and when the Options dialog box opens, click the Grammar tab. If the Writing Style box is set to Strictly or Business Writing, choose For Casual Writing instead.

Now click Customize Settings and select those items that you want the grammar checker to tag. Click OK to save your changes, and when you get back to the Options dialog box, click OK to close it.

When working with an Excel worksheet, many users like to take advantage of the Zoom to Selection feature. When you want to make absolutely sure of a cell entry, you can click the cell and choose View, Zoom. When the Zoom dialog box opens, select the radio button labeled Fit Selection and click OK to record your selection and close the dialog box. Excel will zoom up to 400 percent on the selected area so you can examine those cell entries very closely indeed.

Using this macro, you can click a button on the Excel toolbar to zoom to your selected area. To enter the macro, open a blank worksheet and choose Window, Unhide to unhide Personal.xls. When the Unhide dialog box opens, you should see Personal.xls (if not, see the note at the end of this tip). Select this entry and click OK. Now, type the following lines exactly as shown:

Press Ctrl-S to save the Zoom macro. Now, choose Window, Hide to hide Personal.xls again.

To add a Zoom button to the toolbar, choose View, Toolbars. When the Toolbars dialog box opens, click Customize. In the Customize dialog box, select Custom from the Categories list and then drag the button of your choice to the toolbar. The Assign Macro dialog box will now appear. Click your new macro's name to select it, and then click OK to close the dialog box and assign your macro to the new button. Back in the Custom dialog box, click Close.

To use the new button and macro, click a cell in the area you want to enlarge and click the new Zoom button. After you finish examining the cells you're interested in, click the Zoom button again to go back to the normal view.

Note: If you don't have a Personal.xls worksheet, open a blank worksheet and choose File, Save As. Name the sheet Personal.xls and save it in the XLStart folder. Choose Window, Hide to hide the worksheet. This worksheet will now open each time you start Excel. But the sheet won't display unless you choose Window, Unhide.

When you want to get a quick idea of the look and feel of a document--see how its layout looks--choose File, Print Preview and then click the arrow at the right side of the Zoom list box to expand the list. Select 25%. You won't be able to read the text, but you'll get a very good idea of the overall appearance of your page layout.