Microsoft Office tips

The Web's best desktop-app replacements

Microsoft Office has been and will continue to be the most popular productivity software in the world. That's not likely to change with the release of Office 2010.

But the fact is, much of the work we do in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other Office apps can be accomplished perfectly well using the basic features available in the Web-based equivalents to these and other desktop apps. Here's a quick look at three such services, all of which offer both free and paid versions. I'll also describe a bunch of specialty sites that can help smooth out your … Read more

Little-known keyboard shortcuts boost Word productivity

Whenever two or more people work on the same Microsoft Word document, there are bound to be formatting conflicts. This is especially true in organizations attempting to apply singular style conventions. Most of us rely on a mouse to make format changes in Word, but we can reformat Word docs just as easily using some of the program's more obscure keyboard shortcuts.

Back in 2008, I described how to copy and paste only a paragraph's formatting, not its text. Allen Wyatt's WordTips site provides a great list of keyboard shortcuts for altering a paragraph's spacing (Ctrl+… Read more

Add alternative text and other Section 508 features to PDFs

Not everybody views the Web the same way. In fact, lots of people don't "view" the Web at all, but they spend as much time online as anyone else. It's just that they're listening rather than reading or watching.

Using the alt attribute of HTML image tags to add a text description of a picture is second nature to anyone who posts many images or other graphics online. It's almost as easy to provide alternative text for graphics in Microsoft Word and other Office applications. Making sure the alternative text persists when Office files … Read more

NCAA Basketball Tournament brackets you can share

The U.S. will likely experience a slight dip in productivity over the next three weeks as the attention of many workers turns to the climax of the college basketball season: the NCAA Basketball Tournament. For many people, the annual NCAA basketball pool is as much an office tradition as the summer picnic and holiday party.

Google Docs makes it simple to create a tournament-bracket spreadsheet with a form that uses drop-down lists and text boxes to record people's game picks. (You can also print the spreadsheet for making your game selections the old-fashioned way.) All picks are displayed … Read more

Change Word 2007's default paste-formatting option

I spent several hours last week cleaning up the errant formatting in a complicated, 30-page Word document that was loaded with custom styles. It seems the author pasted material into the file from several different applications. Unfortunately, the formatting of the source documents made the trip as well. The resulting file was a formatting disaster that bore little resemblance to the template the document was allegedly based on.

One of the best features Microsoft added to Word 2007 is the ability to change the program's default paste setting so added material adopts the formatting of the destination document. To … Read more

A fix for Outlook 2007's failure to link to Exchange Server 2003

Few PC glitches are more frustrating and more difficult to troubleshoot than your e-mail program failing to connect to a mail server. Recently, a family member told me about the enervating problems he experienced trying to figure out why his new Vista notebook wouldn't link to his office's mail server.

"I have Office 2007. Our firm uses Exchange Server 2003. I was having the damnedest time getting Outlook on my new laptop to sync with the server away from the office. I was at this for hours and hours reading through a bunch of 'fixes' until I … Read more

Customize Outlook's archive settings

You never know when you're going to need an Outlook message that was archived long ago. In a comment on a previous post about moving Outlook mail to local folders, Cliff Brandt asked how to move a file from the archive to one of his main Outlook folders.

Doing so is a breeze, but keep in mind, an archive relocates only Outlook data of a specific age and is intended primarily to keep your Outlook.pst file a manageable size. A backup copies all your Outlook data and allows you to restore all your messages, contacts, tasks, and calendar … Read more

Time to update the software user's bill of rights

We don't really buy software, we rent it. And like lessees, we don't call all the shots when it comes to how--and how long--we use the programs we "buy."

Exhibit A: Microsoft cut off free support for Windows XP and Office 2003 last April. I don't recall the programs coming with expiration dates.

We don't even control when Windows and some of our applications update. More than a decade ago, IBM researcher Clare-Marie Karat published a Computer User's Bill of Rights. (Read more about it in a 1998 BusinessWeek article and on researcher … Read more

Troubleshoot Microsoft Word printer problems

A colleague contacted me the other day with an odd problem: Microsoft Word 2003's default paper size was stuck on A4. Every time he changed the paper-size default back to Letter, it reverted to A4 with the next print job.

My first thought was that his printer driver needed an update. But driver updates often spell trouble, so I recommended that he look for the fix first in Word itself, then check Windows' print settings, and install a new printer driver only after the first two options come up empty.

Try a new normal.dot template One potential cure-all … Read more