Tip #111 - Excel - 10 Time-savers

100 (or more) Computer Tips in 100 (or more) Days

Tip #111 - Excel - 10 Time-savers

Here's a list of some really little things that you can use in Excel that can add up to big savings in time at the end of the day.  They are in no particular order. Enjoy.

• Double-click in a cell to edit the contents - no need to go up to the Formula Bar to edit.
• Double-click a sheet tab to rename it then press the Enter key.
• Tap the F4 (function 4) key to create an absolute reference in a formula. Tapping it again will cycle through mixed references (where only one $ appears) and then back to relative reference (where no $ appear).
• Rearrange sheets by dragging the sheet tab left or right. A small triangle moves with your mouse showing the new position of the moved sheet.
• Change the color of a tab by right clicking (Ctrl click on Apple) and choosing your favorite color.
• Duplicate a sheet by holding down the Ctrl key and dragging the sheet tab to the left or right. This duplicates not only the contents but all of the print, orientation, margin, header & footer settings, infinitely superior to copy and paste.
• Use the group edit to make the same change to multiple sheet at the same time. To get into the group edit, click on one sheet, hold down the Ctrl key and click on additional sheets. To get out of the group edit click on any sheet tab that is not part of the group. This is a BIG time saver if you are adding an entry or a row/column to multiple sheets. BONUS: If you use the print command while in the group edit all of the sheets in the group will print.
• Double-click on the vertical line between the column letters at the top of the column to adjust the column width to "best fit", no need to drag and guess how wide the column should be.
• Press the Esc key to get rid of the marque (dancing ants) around copied cells. This also empties the computer's clipboard.
• When you use the filter command (on the Home tab, Editing group) you will not only be able to sort and filter the columns by alpha and numeric contents but you will have color as an option for sorting and filtering.  This assumes that you have formatted cells with color.

Write a comment and let me know which of these is your favorite time saver.

Happy Computing!

Diane

Don't forget to click the Subscribe to 100 Computer Tips in 100 Days via email link on the right side of the screen so you get email alerts when Diane adds a new post.

Want more tech news or interesting links? You'll get plenty of both if you keep up with Diane McKeever, the writer of 100 Computer Tips in 100 Days, by subscribing to her Facebook posts or visiting her web page, www.dianemckeever.com . 

Tip #110 - Special Characters on Apple

100 (or more) Computer Tips in 100 (or more) Days

Tip #110 - Special Characters on Apple

My Apple friends have been feeling neglected by my posts. Hopefully they will be happy to find out how to insert special characters (such as accented letters, copyright symbols, foreign language punctuation, etc) into their documents. Here is a printable list so that you can have it handy when you need to insert any of these characters.

You might find that if you just print this page the sheet will print too small. If that's the case you should right-click (Ctrl click) and choose "Save As" to save the picture to your hard drive and then print from there. If you have trouble doing this please send me an email (diane@dianemckeever.com) and I will send a full size version of this chart to you.

If you have an iPad or iPhone you don't need this list. Hold down your finger on any vowel and a list of accented characters will pop up! Brilliant!

Happy Computing

Diane

Don't forget to click the Subscribe to 100 Computer Tips in 100 Days via email link on the right side of the screen so you get email alerts when Diane adds a new post.

Want more tech news or interesting links? You'll get plenty of both if you keep up with Diane McKeever, the writer of 100 Computer Tips in 100 Days, by subscribing to her Facebook posts or visiting her web page, www.dianemckeever.com . 

Tip #109 - Gmail Changes

100 (or more) Computer Tips in 100 (or more) Days

Tip #109 - Gmail Changes

One of the things I love about the Google folks is that they are always trying to think up ways that they feel can improve your computer experience.  You may not agree that all of their "improvements/changes" are better but generally you have a choice of whether or not

you want to implement these changes. I was looking at my Gmail settings, something I recommend you do occasionally. When I clicked on the gear icon in the upper right of the Gmail screen I noticed "Configure Inbox" was a choice. I didn't remember seeing that before so I clicked on it.

The resulting dialog box was very interesting. It was offering me the opportunity to have tabs appear along the top of my Gmail inbox. I checked off a few of the choices and then clicked on the Save button. Lo and behold my inbox had tabs along the top and emails in each of the newly created tabs. Google initially determines which emails belongs in which tab. It seems to be based partly on who sent the email and partly on the content of the email. 

Primary	Messages from friends and family, as well as any other messages that don’t appear in other tabs.
Promotions	Your deals, offers, and other promotional emails.
Social	Messages from social networks, media-sharing sites, online dating services, gaming platforms, and other social websites.
Updates	Notifications such as confirmations, receipts, bills, and statements.
Forums	Messages from online groups, discussion boards, and mailing lists.

If a message appears in the wrong tab, you simply drag the email up to the correct tab. After you move a message to a different tab, a message above your inbox will ask if you want to undo that action or choose to always put messages from that sender in the tab you chose.

Conversation View

While you are looking at your Gmail settings, you might want to consider turning the conversations feature off. The conversations feature is on by default and it groups all of the emails that relate to the same conversation into a stack automatically for you, with the newest message at the top. A conversation will break off into a new thread if the subject is changed or there are more than 100 messages. Until you get used to it, and some people never seem to get used to it, you can feel that you are losing messages. It can get confusing if you have sent an email to a group and there has been a lot of back and forth messages. 

If you would like to turn the conversation view off, click on the gear icon in the upper right side of the Gmail screen and choose Settings. Scroll on down and click the circle to the left of "Conversation view off".  Whew, I can see many of you relaxing a little bit right now. 

As long as you're in the settings area, scroll on down and review some of the other choices. For those of you who like using keyboard shortcuts, there is a feature to turn them on/off. Clicking on the blue "Learn more" option will reveal a list of all of the keyboard shortcuts you can use in Gmail. There might be other things you can turn on/off to make your life easier. 

Happy Computing


Diane

Don't forget to click the Subscribe to 100 Computer Tips in 100 Days via email link on the right side of the screen so you get email alerts when Diane adds a new post.

Want more tech news or interesting links? You'll get plenty of both if you keep up with Diane McKeever, the writer of 100 Computer Tips in 100 Days, by subscribing to her Facebook posts or visiting her web page, www.dianemckeever.com .