Microsoft Office Tips

This page features my favorite shortcuts, primarily for Microsoft Word, as writing is my business. These tips are for Office 2007, but may work in earlier or later versions. I've also included a few Windows and printing tips to enhance your life.

Microsoft Windows
Printing Tips
Word 2007 Tips
Excel 2007 Tips
PowerPoint 2007 Tips

Microsoft Windows

Delete a file or folder without sending it to the Recycle Bin
Highlight the file or folder and press Shift+Delete. This is ideal for backup hard drives.

Delete items from the Send To menu
In the Windows Explorer address bar, type "shell:sendto" (without the quote marks) and press Enter. When the shortcuts appear, zap the ones you'll never use.

Printer Tips

Print selected text
This may seem obvious, but my daughter taught it to me when she was in high school. Copy text that you want to print, choose the print command, and when the menu appears, choose "Selection." If the selection is on two different pages of a Word doc, it will ignore the page break.

Print two pages on a single sheet
Perfect for proofing a book or other long documents. Choose Print, then Pages per Sheet, then 2. Most printers should have this feature.

Word 2007 Tips

Quick Access Toolbar is your friend
Invest 20 minutes adding icons to the Quick Access Toolbar and you will save several hours of time. Click the Office button at the top left, then Word Options on the bottom. At left, click Customize. You'll see two columns of icons. In the left column, highlight the commands you use the most (one at a time), then click the Add button between the two columns. Press OK when you've added them all. I like the Quick Access Toolbar to be shown below the Ribbon, so I checked that box. Tip: Click the drop-down arrow and change Popular Commands to All Commands.

AutoCorrect
Tired of typing the name of a company or product over and over? You can assign any sequence of keys to enter the complete name. Instantly turn "jjj" into "Johnson Controls." You'll have to press the space bar after jjj. Click the Office button on the top left, then Word Options on the bottom, then Proofing. Click AutoCorrect Options on top and got nuts!

Go to a particular page in your document
Ctrl + G (short for Go), then type in the page number and click Next.

Find and Replace
Ctrl + H. You can change text, formatting or codes. For example, when I copy hunks of PDF text, I replace Paragraph Mark with a space (except at the end of a paragraph). To do this, click More, then Special. Spend some time with Find and Replace, for it will pay dividends when you're in a rush.

Other Control key time-savers
Cut (Ctrl + X)
Copy (Ctril + C)
Paste (Ctril + V)
Undo (Ctril + Z)
Print (Ctril + P)

Paste Special
Ctril + Alt + V. This is very useful when pasting text without the formatting. As a test, copy the tip above, with bold, purple and regular text. In Word, press Ctril + Alt + V, choose Unformatted Text, and it will paste in the same format as your Word doc.

Upper Case, Lower Case & Initial Caps
Let's say you wanted to change the heading above to all lower case letters. Select the text, then press Shift+F3 twice. Pressing it once give you ALL CAPS. Have fun!

Flip between two Word docs
Alt + Tab. Big time saver. Actually, this flips between the last two documents or programs that you have open. If you have one Excel file and one Word file open, you can easily switch between the two. If you have two Word docs open, this will only work if you don't t open another program (like Windows Explorer) before going back to Word. Experiment a bit and you'll overcome the quirks.

Insert PDF into Word
Insert > Object (to the far right) > Object (again).
Highlight Adobe Acrobat Document > press Okay. You may need to have Adobe Acrobat, not just Adobe Reader.
Find the document on your hard drive, highlight it, then press Open or double-click on the filename. Sometimes this drops the PDF directly into Word, and sometimes Acrobat will open with the file. If the latter, go into your Word doc and it will be there.
If the PDF has lines through it, right-click anywhere in the inserted PDF and choose Adobe Acrobat Document > Convert.
Only the first page of a PDF will be added. If the PDF has more than one page, you'll have to create a PDF file for each page (by using the Save As feature in Acrobat).

Excel 2007 Tips

Freeze panes to lock rows or columns (or both)
This allows you to see the header row no matter how far down you scroll, or the first column no matter how far right you scroll.
Select row below (or column to the right) of the one you want to lock. Then go to View > Freeze Panes > Freeze top row or Freeze first column. To lock the first row and first column, place cursor in Cell B2, then View > Freeze Panes > Freeze Panes. To unfreeze a row, column or both, go to View > Freeze Panes > Unfreeze Panes.

Copy cells into a Word portrait page
Select the text and click the Page Layout tab.
In the Page Setup group, choose Print Area > Set Print Area.
In the Scale to Fit group, click the bottom right arrow.
Fit to: 1 page wide by 1 page tall. (Or 2+ pages tall if you're copying several rows.)
Place cursor in the selected text, right-click > Copy.
In Word, choose Paste Special > Bitmap.
The more columns you choose in Excel, the smaller the print will be in Word.

PowerPoint 2007 Tips

Paste a PowerPoint slide in Word
Choose Slide Sorter view, then right-click and copy the slide. In Word, Paste Special > Picture (Windows Metafile).