June 5, 2007

Cool Tech Tips:Outlook, Office and Other Apps

Outlook

• Color-code your e-mails– Tools → Organize

– Select “Using Colors” on the left

– Click “Apply Color”

Outlook

• Don’t want to color-code? Use flags!– Tools → Rules and Alerts

– New Rule

– Select “Flag messages from someone with a colored flag”

Outlook

• Recover deleted e-mails (even hard-deleted ones!)

– Run this update

– Close and reopen Outlook

– Tools → Recover Deleted Items…

– You will see a list of all emails you have deleted in the last seven days. Click the Recover icon to restore a message.

Outlook

• Color-code your calendar– Use “Label” to select a category for each

calendar item. Once categorized, the items will be colored for easy identification.

E-mail Etiquette

• “Reply to All” – Stop and think before you “Reply to All.”

Does everyone need to see your response? Sometimes yes, sometimes no…you need to make a judgment call.

– If you are responding with a personal note, triple-check that you are NOT using “Reply to All.”

E-mail Etiquette

• “Out of Office” Autoreplies – It’s becoming normal practice to

configure an autoreply when you will be away from your e-mail for a lengthy period of time.

– Outlook 2003 is smart enough to autoreply only once to each sender.

– Tools → Out of Office Assistant…

E-mail Etiquette

• Use the subject line to summarize your message– If you want someone to respond quickly,

make it easy for them!

– Examples:• Newsletter

vs

• Newsletter going @2pm, ok?

• Meetingvs

• 2pm meeting cancelled, will resched

Excel

• Quickly sum a column– Highlight the cells you want to sum

– Sum appears in bottom status bar

– Right click to change the calculation

Excel

• Change default number of worksheets– By default, new spreadsheets have three

worksheets. To change this:• Tools → Options

• General tab

• Change “Sheets in new workbook” value

Excel

• Close all spreadsheets at once– Hold down the SHIFT key

– Click on the File menu

– “Close” is now “Close All”

PowerPoint

• Shrink your presentation– If your presentation has a lot of pictures

or screenshots, make sure you compress the photos before you distribute the file.

– View → Toolbars → Picture

PowerPoint

• Use Grayscale view – If your presentation will be printed, make

sure it looks good in black and white.

– View → Color/Grayscale → Grayscale

PowerPoint

• Use “Package for CD”– If you need to send your presentation to

someone, use File → “Package for CD” to ensure that links and fonts will travel with the file.

– Click the “Options…” button to embed the fonts or set a password.

– You can either burn the packaged presentation to a CD or save it to a folder which you can zip and e-mail to the recipient.

PowerPoint

• Useful keyboard shortcuts– F5 = starts the slide show from the beginning

– During a slide show:• F1 = lists popular keyboard shortcuts

• ESC = ends a slide show

• B = black screen

• W = white screen

– To quickly switch between two open presentations:

• ESC (at the end of the first slide show)

• Ctrl + F6 (to switch presentations)

• F5 (to start the second presentation)

Word

• Use “Paste Special” – When pasting into a Word document, use

Edit→Paste Special and select “Unformatted Text” to retain the words but not the formatting.

– If you forget and select Paste, Word gives you a second chance with the clipboard icon. If you click it, you can choose to “Keep Text Only”

Word

• Use “Track Changes” views– If multiple people are editing a document with

“Track Changes” turned on, it can get really difficult to follow.

– Change the view to “Final” to see the document as it would appear with all changes applied.

– Make sure to “Accept All Changes” before sending the document out…you don’t want anyone to see the incremental revisions!

Word

• Use the new “Versions” feature– If a file is going through many revisions,

you can now save file versions during the editing process. Once you have multiple saved versions, you can compare them side-by-side and/or revert back to an older version.

– File → Versions

Web browsers

• Browser Wars: which browser is better?

• Keyboard shortcuts– CTRL+ENTER = www.site.com– SHIFT+ENTER = www.site.net (FF only)

– SHIFT+CTRL+ENTER = www.site.org (FF only)

• Mouse shortcuts

Internet Explorer

• Open a new window every time you click a link– Tools → Internet Options

– Advanced tab

– Browsing section

– Uncheck “Reuse windows for launching shortcuts”

Internet Explorer

• Built-in Zoom feature

Internet Explorer

• Reset IE to be the default browser– Tools → Internet Options

– Programs tab

– Browsing section

– Click the “Make Default” button

Firefox

• Open source

• Many useful add-ons are available– Adblock Plus

– Forecastfox

– FoxyTunes

– MouseGestures

– PageZoom

Without Adblock

With Adblock

Firefox

Forecastfox

FoxyTunes

Firefox

Firefox

• Live Demo– MouseGestures

– PageZoom

Windows

• Use the “Show Desktop” icon– If you have a bunch of windows open

and need to quickly minimize everything, use the “Show Desktop” icon.

Windows

• Free up screen space – hide the Taskbar (aka Start bar)– You can make the taskbar disappear

until you mouse to the bottom of the screen

– Right click on the taskbar

– Select Properties

– Check “Auto-hide the taskbar”

Windows

• Use Shortcut Icons– You can easily create desktop shortcuts

from your Start menu• Hold down your mouse’s right button AND

drag the program from your Start menu onto your desktop

• Select “Copy here”

– Change the icon• Right click on the shortcut

• Select Properties

• Click the “Change Icon” button

Windows

• Create Keyboard Shortcuts for Start Menu items– Find a program on your Start Menu

– Right click on it and select Properties

– In the “Shortcut key” box, hit a letter

– Click OK

• Now you can hit CTRL-ALT-thatletter to open the application

Windows

• Selecting Sounds– Start → Control Panel → Sounds and

Audio Devices

– Sounds tab

– You can make your own sound scheme by changing the sounds associated with actions and then saving the scheme.

Thinkpad

• Controlling your laptop’s temperature– Double click on the battery icon – Select a power scheme with less green

bars next to performance• Maximum Battery Life• Timers off

– Rule of thumb: Higher performance = hotter laptop. Your laptop will get very hot if you are doing something that is heavily processor-intensive like working with large images or playing a game with lots of graphics.

Thinkpad

• Battery won’t fully charge– If your battery won’t recharge to 100%,

reset the counter• Wait to do this until you don’t need to use

your computer for a couple of hours

• Double click on the battery icon

• Battery Information tab

• Click the “Battery Maintenance…” button

• Click the “Perform Reset…” button

• Follow the directions

Thinkpad (T-series only)

• Turn off TrackPoint or TouchPad– Start → Control Panel → Mouse

– UltraNav tab

– Uncheck “Enable TrackPoint” or “Enable TouchPad” (but not both!)

Last but definitely not least

When in doubt,

REBOOT

Questions?

Bring it!

Movie Time!