Office

This past weekend, I spent time setting up four new laptops for one of my business clients. Out of habit, one of the things I do when I get to the point of setting up e-mail is send test messages. I didn’t have any reason to believe that e-mail wouldn’t work, but I’m glad I […]

Honestly, I can’t tell you how tired of the typical, average, mundane, same-old PowerPoint presentation I have become. 99 percent of the time, as soon as any given PowerPoint presentation starts, I can feel the bile and boredom start to slosh and boil in my gut - in part because I sit through so darn […]

Chris Pratley (Microsoft’s Group Program Manager for Office Authoring Services) mentions it’s now possible to blog directly from OneNote via a connection with Word 2007, which has some late-addition features that let you use it to create blog posts directly. Gone is the messy Office markup/HTML gobbledy-gook, as the code if cleaned up and made […]

I must admit that lately, I have been a huge fan of ThinkFree’s office suite. And in some cases, have still been known to jump into a copy of Office 2002 when the need arises.

PowerPoint is a great application to use to make your presentations more memorable. PPT presentations can help to get all the important points across… if you use it properly. I have seen several instances where a speaker’s PPT slides actually made their presentation worse. So if you use PowerPoint for your presentations, be sure to […]

One of the most common questions I hear when doing Office training is “How do I import data from Excel into my Word document?” Well there are a few different ways in which you can import data from Excel. The method you use will depend on whether or not you want the Excel data to […]

When you open a new document, Word applies the font style, views, and so on found in the Normal.dot template. If you do not care for the formatting and other options configured in the template, they can be changed. However, before you can do this, you need to know how to find the Normal.dot template.
If […]

VoxProxy, created and sold by RightSeat Software, is a great way to
bring an additional level of interaction to your PPT presentations. Using Microsoft Agent technology and animated avatars, VoxProxy allows you to add characters that interact with you, with each other, and with your presentation.
The characters delivered with VoxProxy include humans, aliens, wizards, robots, […]

Executive Software announced the release of new Undelete 5.0 which not only simplifies and speeds up retrieval of lost or deleted data, but now adds automatic file versioning for Microsoft Office files. Users with the least protection, such as students and home office users now have a powerful and easy to use data protection solution. […]

A question I am often asked is how to troubleshoot database problems from the desktop. A connection to a database can go wrong in several places, but I have found that by creating a test connection, the problem can usually be found fairly easily. For the purpose of this article, we will assume […]

It’s that time of year when everyone is trying to think of the best possible gift to give. One of the gifts I am giving this year is a series of family picture presentations. Each presentation is going to a family member or friend and shares the pictures, memories, and fun we have had over […]

Even with the best intentions and backup schemes in place, users can still lose data. They might lose messages by exceeding the 2-GB limit for PSTs in Outlook 2002 and earlier, experience a loss of data because of a power outage or hardware glitch, or forget a password for an infrequently used PST.
If you’re looking […]

In October, I attended PPT Live, a conference for the PowerPoint user. I was there to present, to exhibit and to help answer questions. The following piece grew out of one of the more unusual questions I was asked at the conference.
You have a presentation where navigation is completely done via buttons. Each button that […]

From the questions I see in the newsgroup and in my inbox, I know that a large percentage of the presentations created are not created from scratch. Instead, they are built by taking slides from different presentation files and putting them together into a single file. Sometimes you want to keep the original formatting when […]

Do you need to have slides in your presentation that have different backgrounds, buttons, animations, or fonts? You need to learn how to use PowerPoint’s Multiple Masters features.

Problem
Microsoft Word has long had the built-in ability to create a table of contents (index, table of figures, and table of authorities are also part of the feature). This utility, found under the Insert | References menu, works well if you follow the default Word styles for headings, subheadings, figures, footnotes, etc.

Does this scenario sound familiar? You are asked to put together a 15-minute presentation for a meeting on the project you are doing. The people in the meeting don’t know anything about your project, but need to come away understanding what it is all about.

Are you a linear thinker? I’m not. While I can keep myself linear enough to write articles and books, I always have other ideas that need to be processed. When I create a presentation, the same thing happens. I start with a nicely-organized outline and find I need to add content that doesn’t flow in […]

I’ve been sending samples of the bullet-less presentation right and left. Seems quite a few of the Lockergnome readers really want to know how to do a better job with their presentations, but don’t know where to start.

When you are giving a presentation, there are times when you need to jump to information on another slide, in another presentation, in another file, or on the Web. Just in case you don’t know how to set up these links, this primer will run through the hyperlinking process.