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"Clippy"

You know the little paper clip in Word that pops up in the corner -
usually the right hand side - to "help" you? Well, many people do not
find him all that helpful
while other do. If you are one who does
not, you can "hide" clippy so you need not deal with "him" (it?) anymore.
To do so, you can turn "clippy" off in a couple ways. If you have Word
open, and he is already there waiting for you to seek his help, click
"options" under clippy - not on the Word menu. Next, clear the
box that says, "Use the Office Assistant". That will send him back to
his hiding place. Alternatively, you can click the "help" menu on the top
of Microsoft Word and click "Hide the Office Assistant". You should now
be "clippy" free.
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Add Web Events to Your Outlook Calendar

We can manually add information to our Outlook Calendars, but
that is a very time consuming job. There are easier ways. If you
are visiting a web page and you see a notice you wish to remember;
for example, a chat session you would love to join in on. What you
can do is, when you see the event, highlight the text on the web
page by holding down your left mouse button and dragging across it.
Then copy by RIGHT clicking somewhere within the selected text.
Next, choose "Copy" or you can use "control + c" on your keyboard.
Next, go to the date of your event in your Outlook calendar and click
inside the date's box and paste with "control + v" on your keyboard.
You should see the new "appointment" come up in a dialog box with
the text you just added. Next, you only need add a subject line and
set, or adjust, the start and end times if necessary. Then, put a check
in the box that says "Reminder". This will enact Outlook to remind you
of the event before it happens! This is great if you're scatterbrained
sometimes like - well, like someone I know! Okay, when you have
completed all the above steps, click "Save and Close". You are all set
and do not have to remember a thing! Outlook will have it covered.
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Using Bulleted Lists in Word
Do those little generic black dots you have when working with
bulleted lists tire you? Want to zip things up a bit? Word has
come through for you - there are several options offered.
Here are a few:
1. Turn on the bullet button on your toolbar. Type a word after
the first bullet and hit your Enter key. Repeat procedure until
you have five bullets. Next, highlight all the text, keeping in
mind the bullets will not highlight. Go to the "Format" menu,
choose "Bullets and Numbering". At this point, you want to
be sure you are on the Bulleted tab. You should see the
generic black dots selected. All you do now is click on one
of the boxes to choose a different one. If you'd like a larger
selection, click on the "Picture" button. This will bring up
many choices of ClipArt bullets in all sizes, shapes and colors.
If you do not care for what you see there, you can customize
your selection. Just click on the "customize" button, click on
the Bullet button. You will see all of the characters available to
you in the "Symbol" font. Choose any one of them by double
clicking on your choice, or you can choose another font from the
dropdown box and choose any one of the characters available.
Hint: Wingdings and Webdings have many fun choices for you.
After you double click on the character of your choice, you will
return to the box where you clicked on the Bullet button. This time,
click on the Font button beside it and in here you can change the
size of your selected character and even make it bold or italicized
for a different effect. You can also choose a font color for your
bullet. In addition, you can select an underline style and underline
the bullet in a different color.
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Using AutoCorrect
If you have certain things you type over and over in Word documents
you can speed up your work with the AutoCorrect feature. Give this a try
Go to your Tools menu and select AutoCorrect. At the top of this box,
you will see four tabs. Be sure you are on the one that says AutoCorrect.
Look at the list in the white box at the bottom. This list consists of all
the words and phrases Word will automatically correct for you. You can
add anything you frequently use to this list. You should see a box that
says, "Replace". Let's say your phrase is "God Bless America". Type
"gba" (no quotation marks). In the box that says,
"With", type God
Bless America. Click on the "Add" button and you should see it added to
the list. You also want to check to be sure there is a check in the box
above this that says, "Replace text as you type". If there is no check
there, this will not work. Finally, click on "OK". Now, go to a document
and type "gba" (no quotes) and God Bless America should be typed out.
If you go back into the AutoCorrect box, look at some of the other items
in that list. You should find explanations for other strange things that
can crop up in Word while you are typing a document. For example, if
you want to put the letter "C" in parentheses, Word is programmed to
turn that into the copyright symbol. You have two choices to change this.
You can remove the auto-correction feature completely by clicking on it in
the list, then clicking on the delete button. If you prefer to turn it off for one
document in particular, remove the check from "Replace text as you type".
When you want that back later, simply recheck it and your auto-correction
will work again.
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Create a "Private" Word Document - Make it "Read Only
Or, Password Protect it Entirely

If you have a document on your computer you do not want anyone making
changes to or you do not want them reading it at all, you can make the
document "read only" or create a password for it so no one will have access
to it without your password. When you finish writing your document, go to the
File Menu and select "Save As". In the "Save As" dialog box, click on the
"Tools" button, select "General Options". If you do not mind if someone reads
it, but do not want anyone making changes to it, put a password in the
"Password to modify" box. If you don't want anyone else who has access
to your computer to even be able to view this document, put a password
in the "Password to open" box. In addition,be sure you put a check in the
"Read-only recommended" box. You should be all set!
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Cleaning up Unused Files

Perhaps you are already aware of this, but for those who are not,
in any Office programs, you will find that at the bottom of your File
menu you have a list of the most recently used files. If you wish, you
can control how many are placed there. Go into the Tools menu in any
of the programs and select "Options". In the Options dialog box, click
on the tab at the top that says "General". In there you will see where
you can tell Word or Excel or PowerPoint how many of these recently
used files you want displayed, or, if you wish, you can uncheck it to
turn this feature off completely. You can also, if you wish, just remove
one entry from the list. With MS Word open, hold down your Control
and Alt keys. Press the hyphen key (above the "P" key, not the minus
sign). You should see your cursor showing as a minus sign. Click on
the file menu and click on the file you wish to remove.
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Find Any Data You Want Regarding a Specific Document

There is an easy way to find out everything you want to know about any
Word document. Open the document in Word and go to the File menu and
Select "Properties". In this box, click on the "Statistics" tab. In here you
can see how many lines are in the document, how many paragraphs, how
many pages, how many words, and even how many individual characters.
It also tells you who was the last person to work on it, how many times it
was revised, and the total amount of time that has been spent editing it.
If you just need to find out say, the number of words in a specific section
of a document, just doulbe-click on the first word in the section to select
it. Next, move to the end of the last word in the section and hold down the
shift key and click once. All of your section should be highlighted. Go the
the Tools menu, select "Word Count" and Word will give you the number of
words in that section!
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Envelope Addressing Made Simple

The basics most know regarding envelopes is that we go to the Tools menu
and select "Envelopes and Labels". Next, click on the Label tab and type
in the address, along with the return address. Word will create the envelope.
Most are aware we can also click on the Options button in this box and specify
what size envelope we want to use. This works well enough, but there is a
faster and easier way to enter this information. Head on back to Word's Tools
menu but this time, choose "Options". When the box comes up, click on the
tab at the top that says, "User Information". You should see a box in there that
says "Mailing Address". Put your own address in there to allow Word to
remember it for your envelopes. Open a document and write you letter. Be sure
you include the name and address at the top for the person you are writing to
as this trick will not work if you don't. When you have completed your letter,
highlight the person's name and address before you go to "Tools", "Envelopes
and Labels". When you are there, you should see their name and address
are already filled in to the Delivery Address box. In addition, your address
should be showing in the Return Address box. All you need to do is select
your envelope size and hit your "print" button/key.
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Access the Windows Calculator Quickly from Inside Excel

Yes, you can use the Excel program to do this, but there may be times you
will want to access your Window's computer while using Excel. This tip will
provide you with a shortcut to it by adding it to your toolbar inside Excel. It
is easy, too. Launch Excel and go to the Tools menu at the top of your screen.
Choose "Customize". In the Customize dialog box , click the "Commands"
tab. Now, under "Categories" click on Tools. Scroll down through the
"Commands" list and locate the icon that looks like a calculator (it's one of the
ones labeled "Custom"). Drag the icon up to your toolbar and release the
mouse button when you see the black line where you want to put it. Now,
all you do is click the new toolbar icon to open the calculator.
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Bookmarks and Hyperlinks in Word

Did you ever wish you could jump to another place in your Word documents
as easily and quickly as you can on many web pages? You can! And it is
so easy. Go to the place (point A) you wish to jump to and click your mouse
button at the spot you wish to jump to. Next, go to the Insert Menu, select
"Bookmark". In the box you will see at the top, give your bookmark a simple
name that you will easily remember. For example, we'll use the word "jump".
Next, move your mouse to the place you want people to jump FROM, (point B)
and click it there. Type something such as "jump from here" and run your
mouse over the words to highlight them. Go back to the Insert menu and choose
Hyperlink this time. Now you should see, in the top box, the words "jump from
here". Below that, where it says, "Type the file or Web Page name", type a
pound sing (#), followed by your bookmark's name - in this case we're using
the word "jump". Click on OK. You should now see the words "click here" are
now blue and underlined just like a link on a web page. If you click on them,
you will move to point A. If you want your jump to direct you to a different
document entirely or an Internet web site, you won't need the "bookmark"
feature. All you do in this case, is highlight the text and go to the above box
and click on the File button to choose the other document you wish to jump
to. Or if it is a web page you'd like to jump to, enter the URL, or web page
address. For example, www.mysite.com. Click OK. The hyperlink should
now take you to the document or web page with the click of a mouse!
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Workspaces in Excel

Do you often have a need to work on two Excel files at the same
time and you wind up opening both files every time? Well, you are
not alone, but there is a little trick to make this task much easier.
You can save the files as a "Workspace" and they will open together
every time you want to use them. Here's what you need to do:
Open Excel; open one file. With that file open, Open your second
file. Go to the Window menu and select "Arrange"; choose "Tile".
You should now see both of your spreadsheets open side by side.
This is convenient for dragging and dropping or copying and pasting
information from one to the other. It also aids in compare the data
from one to the other. Now we can do something fun with this.
Go to the File menu and choose "Save Workspace". You will see
the Save Workspace dialog box come up. You now want to name
your file but please note, you need to save it as an .xlw file. For
example: myfile.xlw, instead of the xls extension Excel usually uses.
Save it in the same location where the original two files are located.
From now on, whenever you want to work on these two files together,
you can just open up your .xlw file and open them side by side!
In addition, you still have the individual files so you can work on
them separately whenever you need/want to. The changes you
make in the individual files OR from within the workspace file,
will be made to both! Back to the top

Disclaimer: These tips are intended to help you work with your computer and learn a few tricks with it. Should anything go wrong while you are trying a tip, this site and it's owner holds no responsibilty! These tips, if followed properly, are harmless and fun. Not a one of them can hurt your computer in any manner. If you are doubtful or unsure, do not try one.