The Tribe of Adminsa home for wayward admins

Formatting in Word and PowerPoint can be really frustrating. The number one cause of baldness in admins is Word. One of the most frenzy-inducing features is the bulleted list. The short answer is that the arrows on your ruler should look like this:

Not this:

If you can’t see the ruler, choose “View” in the menu bar or panel and “Show Ruler.”

For more a more in-depth coif-saving explanation of aligning bulleted lists in PowerPoint and Word, click here. You’ll see the full page explanation located in the Word Wiki.

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• Hiding Data in a Word Table
• Changing the Page Number Style in Word
• Picture Doesn’t Show in Word
• Can I Create a PDF without Adobe Acrobat?
• Lots of New Stuff
• Who Loves Office 2007?
• How to Tab within a Cell in Word Tables
• Editing PDF Files That Won’t Be Edited
• A Better Way to Organize Your Outlook Email
• Sometimes You Can Over Think It

A really annoying feature of  many email programs – notably Outlook and Apple Mail – is that when you paste text from another program – say, Word – it shows up double spaced. No amount of reformatting fixes it. Here’s the very easy, quick solution:

eMail programs have a choice of format: HTML (shows all formatting, including web items), Plain Text (looks like it came from a Blackberry) and Rich Text (shows all the formatting but isn’t written in the computer language used for web posting).

All you have to do is change the format from HTML or Rich Text to Plain Text. Now change it back. The double spacing will disappear, but your formatting will remain.

The format choices are available somewhere in almost every program. In Outlook 2007 and 2010, it’s in the “Options” Tab:

Outlook 2003 and before, it’s here:

In Apple Mail, look under the “Format” menu, at the bottom:

the choice changes:

Most programs have this option – if yours isn’t here, poke around…it’s there somewhere!

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You’ve set up a table in MS Word, right-clicked to choose “Borders and Shading,” choosen “None” and there’s still a pesky gray border! Here’s the easiest answer:

On the “Table” menu, pull down. You’ll see this:

Yes…there are border AND gridlines. Only Microsoft knows why. My theory is that it put there especially to annoy ME.

It’s still there? OK…go for the simple solution next: don’t fight it. Right click and choose “Borders and Shading” and make all your borders white. You can choose “All” and that should do it, but just make sure that all choices in orange below are highlighted (they won’t be orange in Word). You can also just click on them one by one:

If you’re still having trouble, well…you pasted that table in from somewhere else, didn’t you? In spite of what the Word documentation will tell you, this is almost always more trouble than it’s worth. It’s easier to just rebuild the darned table than to make it work. But say your table is huge or an Ole object and you just can’t. Try this:

I’ve borrowed a National Geographic picture to show you, since I don’t happen to have a table that’s having this problem. And the problem is that your table is acting like a picture, not a table. There’s an “invisible” frame around it that sometimes becomes visible.

Right click and see if you can get the “Format Picture…” menu option to come up. If so, that’s the problem. If you don’t want to build the table from scratch and you see this menu choice, click on it.

Next, fool around with the text wrapping choices and see if you can make it go away. This is trial and error…monkey business. (Yes, I’m easily amused):

Click on the “layout” choice and fool around with the wrapping style. The advanced button will give you more choices. If this sounds vaguely familiar, you may have read here about another problem caused by picture layout. Good luck!

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• Hiding Data in a Word Table
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• Lots of New Stuff
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• Editing PDF Files That Won’t Be Edited

You set up your PowerPoint show to run automatically…but how will your speaker know how long s/he can rattle on before the show leaves town without him? There are a couple of ways you can help:

1) When you choose “rehearse timing,” PowerPoint will ask you if you want to view timings in Slide Sorter view. Say yes. This is what you’ll see:

If I create your show, you’d better talk fast!

You can do a screen print or use your Snagit to provide an overview of the timing for the show.

2) As you set the timings, or using the above print out as your cheat sheet, enter the timings into the Notes View for each slide. Each slide will appear on a page, looking something like this:

In newer version of PowerPoint, you can split the presentation so that the speaker sees the notes version and the audience sees the notes version.

Really, though, I think clicking for each change is safer. Imbedded movies are the only time you should need to do this.

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Silly Excel trick:

I want to know how many days there are between 10/1/09 and 8/1/2010

I enter the following formula:

=(DAYS360(B1,C1,TRUE))

B1 is the name of a cell. You can put either date there- Excel has no sense of time and doesn’t care.

In cell C1, put the other date.

If you happen to enter your dates in some other cell, like Y2 and Z3, change the formula to match: =(DAYS360(Y2,Z3,TRUE))

That’s it! Hit enter and you’ll see your answer.

Here’s how it looks with the original formula:

Formulas are so terrifying! Now as to why you might want to count days…

Related Posts:

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• Excel Window is Too Big
• Randomizing a List of Words or Names
• LauraJ’s Weblog : Excel tip: Split first name and last name into separate cells
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• Counting Multiple Variables in Excel
• Hiding Data in a Word Table
• Changing the Page Number Style in Word
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• Can I Create a PDF without Adobe Acrobat?

Sometimes you open Excel to find that it’s bigger than your screen and you can’t move your document to correct the problem. Your scroll bars are missing, your menu is floating somewhere in the the stratosphere. Now what? Here are some solutions:

1)If you can see the expand/collapse buttons – on a Mac they are red, yellow and green dots in the upper left, and and in Windows, on the right: .

Click the middle button in Windows or the green one on Mac. This will – counterintuitively – shrink the window to fit inside a frame.

2) If that doesn’t work, try changing the screen resolution. You can do that by choose Start, Control Panel, then Display. (Mac: System Preferences under the apple, then Display). The higher the resolution, the smaller the Excel window. Close and reopen Excel.

3) If none of those work and you’re in Windows, try this tip from Seeing Excel’s Program Window (Microsoft Excel):

Reset the window size with command keys:

Press Alt+Spacebar. This displays the Control menu (even if you cannot see it).

Press the letter R; the Excel window is restored to its “in between” size.

Press Alt+Spacebar to again display the Control menu.

Press the letter X; the Excel window is maximized.

If you would rather use the mouse than the keyboard, you can follow these steps:

Right-click on Excel in the task bar

Choose Restore from the menu that pops up. The Excel window returns its “in between” size.

Again right-click on Excel in the task bar.

Choose Maximize from the menu that pops up

I’m afraid I have no idea how to do this on a Mac. If you know, write in here or enter a comment:

Related Posts:

• New Excel Wiki and Counting Check Marks
• Sometimes You Can Over Think It
• Randomizing a List of Words or Names
• LauraJ’s Weblog : Excel tip: Split first name and last name into separate cells
• How to Count the Number of Days between Two Dates
• Lots of New Stuff
• Counting Multiple Variables in Excel
• How to Tab within a Cell in Word Tables
• Hiding Data in a Word Table
• A Better Way to Organize Your Outlook Email

You want to have a drawing, or you’ve created a word list for a party and want to mix them up and don’t want to have to go through the process of pulling them out of someone’s greasy fedora. Here’s how to do it in about 15 seconds:

in Column A, list your names.
in Column B, enter the following: =RAND()*300
What that will do is enter a random number between 1-300 into Column B. If you choose 1000, it will enter a number between 1-1000. Go wild.

Drag to copy the formula down the whole column. You’ll see something like this:

See the random number in column B? Now sort by Column B. Be sure to choose “no header.” The results are confusing to look at, because Column B has an imperative to randomize and will do so again immediately, but now look at Column A:

Voila! Random!
You can throw away Column B – you don’t need it anymore.

Related Posts:

• Sometimes You Can Over Think It
• Excel Window is Too Big
• LauraJ’s Weblog : Excel tip: Split first name and last name into separate cells
• New Excel Wiki and Counting Check Marks
• How to Count the Number of Days between Two Dates
• Counting Multiple Variables in Excel
• How to Tab within a Cell in Word Tables
• Hiding Data in a Word Table
• A Better Way to Organize Your Outlook Email
• Changing the Page Number Style in Word

Sometimes someone else says it so well, there’s no point in repeating it. I stumbled across this tip in LauraJ’s Weblog the other day. It’s yet another tool to use in our unending quest to split up first and last names (or any text) in an Excel column. Here’s the link:  LauraJ’s Weblog

I’d quote her, but she uses pictures – bless her – and those wouldn’t carry over. Take a little side trip over to her site and then come on back for more about Excel. Thanks, LauraJ!

Related Posts:

• Sometimes You Can Over Think It
• Excel Window is Too Big
• Randomizing a List of Words or Names
• New Excel Wiki and Counting Check Marks
• How to Count the Number of Days between Two Dates
• Counting Multiple Variables in Excel
• How to Tab within a Cell in Word Tables
• Hiding Data in a Word Table
• A Better Way to Organize Your Outlook Email
• Changing the Page Number Style in Word

A lot of people are asking how do I decline a meeting without having the meeting notice disappear? I changed my mind later and the invitation was GONE! The answer is here:
Outlook FAQ Item 9…but I won’t make you click again!

If you have a newer version of Outlook, the invitation is in your Outlook trash folder and you can retrieve it. If you have an older version, however, it’s just gone. You’ll need to ask the host to send you a new copy of the invitation, or ask someone to forward* it to you. The way to avoid this in the future is to open the calendar, open or right click on the meeting, and decline from there. The invitation will remain in your inbox where you can accept it again, thereby putting it back into the calendar.

If you want to the invitation to remain on the calendar but not show as busy, you’ll need to “reply to” the originator saying that you won’t be able to attend, then change the “show time as” option to “free.” If you choose “decline” it will be removed from the calendar.

Tip: I like to make a personal folder for declined invitations so that I can quickly review what I’ve turned down if the conflict changes.

Related Posts:

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• eMail Program Double Spaced My Paste!
• Not Seeing Your Outlook Question? Try This!
• Drunken Time Zones in Outlook
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• Outlook FAQ Has Updated
• About that double-booked room…
• The Outlook FAQ
• Managing Time Zones in Outlook
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Aren’t admins busy enough?!?

The short answer is yes, you must.

Your boss may just be discovering social media – and you may be, too. You must get ahead of that curve! An old-school admin will soon find herself in a new-fangled unemployment line – online.

What happens when your manager wants you to maintain the website and tweet regularly? Are you ready? You may be in the position of advisor. If that happens, you need to figure out whether or not Twitter is an appropriate means for your business to promote itself. Tweeting about caulking every five minutes isn’t going to win your company love or dollars.

If you think Twitter is all there is to it, you need to put down the quill pen and start start surfing. You might check out JK Virtual Office Blog. She’s a VA who has specialized in social media and she has some useful insights to share. Another one is the My Twitter VA blog. She’s taken a certification in social media marketing. We might not all want to become marketers, but if you don’t know the basics and it doesn’t come easily to you, find a course, online or otherwise.

And what about that website? The theory is that “all” you have to do is post the updates. The words “all” and “website” should never be used in the same sentence. You’ll need to learn more about it, and what you need to learn depends on what kind of website your company has. Something that definitely falls in the “can’t hurt” category is learning a little HTML. I know….it sounds like “ewwwww…programming,” but it’s really more like pig Latin. Once you get the gist, you can navigate reasonably without being fluent. I found this free online tutorial at W3 Schools fun and illuminating.

Leave the “I don’t need to know that” mentality to those who can afford it – admins need to adaptive learners. That’s the long answer.

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