Tips For Everyday

8/13/13

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 .

8/9/13

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.

8/5/13

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.

7/25/13

Tip #108 - Microsoft Office's Quick Access Toolbar

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

Tip #108 - Microsoft Office's Quick Access Toolbar

When the 2007 version of Microsoft Office came out there was a lot of user frustration. Everything was moved off the menu area that people had come to know and love, or at least know if not love. The menus were gone, replaced by tabs and ribbons. As users became more familiar with the new interface they realized that familiar actions took a few more clicks than they used to but accepted, grudgingly, the new reality. But there is hope!

Microsoft left one customizable area in the Office suite, the Quick Access Toolbar. The Quick Access Toolbar is located along the upper left side in all of the Microsoft Office programs. This handy toolbar is very easy to customize and it is a place I head to when setting up client's computers. The first item I add to the Quick Access Toolbar is "Quick Print". Adding Quick Print enables the user to send the current document to the default printer to print one copy...all without seeing the print dialog box! Yea. You want two copies, click the button twice. This is the same "Print" button we had on the toolbar for years before the big change.

Other options I like to add are "New" to create a new document with one click, "Open" to bring up the Open dialog box and, my all-time favorite, "E-mail" which will attach the open document to an email, even if the document has not been saved! I really love the E-mail button. It will work on most computers but not if you're using a public computer such as at a library.

Depending on how the client uses specific programs I will often add the "Sort" buttons in Excel and the "Format Painter" in Word. The picture below is of my Quick Access Toolbar, see how I've added my favorite icons.

Adding items to the toolbar couldn't be easier. Move your mouse on the down triangle on the right side of the Quick Access Toolbar and click. A menu of the most popular tools will appear. Click as many of these tools as you would like. The tools will be displayed in the order that you click them so give that some thought. You might uncheck some and then recheck them to change the order on the toolbar. If you don't see your favorite tool listed then click on the "More Commands" option. Every single command is listed here.

When adding icons to the Quick Access Toolbar, you might consider adding options even though they are currently available on a tab. Keep in mind that the Quick Access Toolbar is visible no matter what your current tab might be so rather than changing to a specific tab just so that you can click on an option, add it to the Quick Access Toolbar and you don't have to change tabs.

I hope customizing the Quick Access Toolbar makes it easier and quicker for you to use the Microsoft Office programs.

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.

7/23/13

7/17/13

Tip #107 - Excel Pivot Tables

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

Tip #107 - Excel Pivot Tables

Pivot tables are one of the most powerful features in the Excel program. They make it child's play to summarize and analyze large spreadsheets of related information. You can select which columns of information should be included in the analysis. Generally the pivot table is displayed on a separate worksheet in the document for easy reference.

The information in your worksheet should be continuous with no blank columns or rows. Blank columns and rows indicate to Excel that information on one side of the blank area is not related to information on the other side. I am going to be working with over 1,000 rows of sales information that is includes the product, customer, salesperson, region, quarter and amount. Creating related tables to analyze this type of information used to be time consuming and tedious. With just a few clicks this will be accomplished very easily. To see a video of how to create pivot tables in Excel scroll to the end of the page.

The data on the left pivots into the report on the right using the Pivot Table feature

To Create a Pivot Table:

1. Open the file that has the data you would like to analyze. Click any cell that has data in it so that Excel will know which area of the worksheet the data is to come from.

2. From the Insert Tab select Pivot Table. The Pivot Table dialog box will appear. You should not have to make any adjustments because Excel should have automatically identified the cell range and you would like the pivot table to appear on a new sheet.

3. Click OK. The pivot table appears on a new sheet. The new sheet has been inserted to the left of the previously selected sheet.

4. Drag the fields from the pivot table list on the right side of your screen down to the report filter/column/row/values boxes below the list. Do not use the check boxes. If you do use the check boxes Microsoft will just put the items where it thinks you would like them...not necessarily where you want them.

Drag fields down to the Report Filter, Column Labels, Row Labels and
Values fields to create the Pivot Table Report

If you don't like the order that the information in the pivot table is being grouped you might consider switching the order of the fields around. If you have more than one field in the column or row box, drag one field above or below the other to change the order.

One thing to note, there are no formulas in pivot tables. As a result, if you change the data that the pivot table is based on you must use the refresh button on the Pivot Table Tab.

That's it! You now have a Pivot Table. Move the fields around until you get the report you need.

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.

7/12/13

Tip #106 - Facebook Graph Search Feature

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

Tip #106 - Facebook Graph Search Feature

Mark Zuckerberg (Credit: AP/Jeff Chiu)

Facebook Graph Search is a feature of Facebook that rolled out earlier this week (July 8, 2013). It uses information that you have added to your to your Facebook profile to create easy searches. It uses the "Search for people, places and things" box to allow you to search for friends who "Live in Connecticut and like to cycle" or "Friends who like to eat sushi".

After each search you are presented with a page full of profile pictures, many of whom are people you have never seen before because Graph Search looks through your "friends of friends" network, which is vastly larger than just your friends network. After you've done a few searches you might be surprised about which of your friends fall into different categories. Beware this search tool becomes a little addictive after a while.

Keep in mind that it's not just profile information but pictures, music, movies, games, etc. that Facebook has put into a giant database to make the information searchable. Of course one of the first questions I'm sure you have is, "Can I control any of this?" and the answer is a big maybe. There are some privacy settings you need to check on, including limiting visibility to old posts.

Past Posts

To limit the visibility of your old posts with one click you can go into your privacy settings (use the cog icon in the upper right side of the Facebook page) and click on "Limit Past Posts". Here you should be able to make everything that was once public limited to only your friends.

Present Posts

Go through your Profile (click Edit Profile just under your profile picture in the upper left side of the screen) and check the audience selectors in the various sections. You can limit what information is public and included in strangers' Graph Searches. Pay particular attention to the interests sections (movies, music, books, games, etc.) since this is where much of the searchable information comes from. Setting all of these to Friends, Friends Except Acquaintances or Only Me would be good choices.

Future Posts

Each time you post on Facebook you have an opportunity to choose the audience. Remember that the default setting for this is Public so you should have changed this by now. If you haven't, go back to the Privacy Settings area and make this change to friends as the default. You can also create lists that can be selected so that a specific post is only visible to a limited group of people you specify. Directions for this can be found in Tip #44. Friend Lists in Facebook.

I know change is difficult for most of us and Graph Search seems like we've made one giant step forward (backward!) in the Big Brother society but if you make the changes that need to be made as to what is included in other people's searches for your information, you might feel a little better.

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 .