The Tribe of Adminsa home for wayward admins

Someone asked how to hide certain data in a Word table. Unfortunately, a Word table isn’t like Excel; you can’t choose “hide column” and be done with it. There are some workarounds, however.

1) Create your data in Excel and import it into your Word doc one of two ways:

A) Choose “Insert,” then choose “Object.” When the window comes up, scroll down to “Microsoft Excel Worksheet.” Click “OK.” This will open Excel. Anything that you do in Excel will show up in the Word doc, hidden columns and rows and all.

B) Create the worksheet in Excel, save it, the follow the steps above, but choose “From file” and choose your file. This will embed your worksheet in your Word document. When you want to hide columns or rows, double clicking will take you into Excel to make the changes, which will be reflected in the Word doc.

Don’t want to use Excel? There are other options:

2) You can format text as hidden. If you choose to hide the text in a column, the column will remain, but will be blank. If you do it on a row, the row will actually be hidden. How to do this:
Select the column or row. Select “Format” then “Text” (or the appropriate panes in 2007 or later). In the window that comes up you’ll see several checkboxes. The last one is “hidden.” Check it and click “OK.”

Keep in mind that unless you protect your document, there’s nothing to stop the person at the other end from unhiding that text, but the same is true of the Excel document.

3) You can make your font white (or whatever the background color is) and protect the document.

4) You can buy a redaction plug-in or use the highlighter tool set to black and pretend you’re a censor.

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• Changing the Page Number Style in Word
• How to Tab within a Cell in Word Tables
• Aligning Bullet Indents in Word and PowerPoint
• Picture Doesn’t Show in Word
• Can I Create a PDF without Adobe Acrobat?
• Lots of New Stuff
• Who Loves Office 2007?
• Wikiing Up to Word
• Can’t Remove Gray Border in Word Table
• Editing PDF Files That Won’t Be Edited

When you create a large document, you are likely to have a table of contents. Traditionally, this is numbered in Roman numerals and the rest of your document is numbered in Arabic numerals. You probably see where to change the style, but it doesn’t work properly. You need to make separate sections, and the trick with Word and sections is to do everything in the right order.

Click here to view a little movie of how to do it. This is a flash movie (meaning you have to have Flash installed), so in case you can’t see it, here are the instructions via the “slow boat”:

You probably already formatted your page numbers, like this:

This window came up, and you clicked on “Format”:

You chose the lower case Roman numerals…

then “Start at ‘i’” and clicked “OK”:

Good so far? Good. Now your whole document has lower case Roman numeral page numbers in the bottom right corner, including the first page. But wait!!! You only want the Roman numerals for the index…starting on the third page you’re out of the index and into the document proper and you want Arabic numerals. No prob!

Put your cursor at the bottom of Page ii. On the page below, for example, I would insert it after the colon after “steps.”

Choose the “Insert” menu item again, then choose “Break” and “Section Break (Next Page):

This will not only make the section break, it will move your cursor to the next page (surprise!). Now that you’re there, just insert page numbers again:

and format again:

Only this time, you’ll format this new section to show up in Arabic numerals, starting at “1″:

Shazaam! Your index page numbers are now formatted in lower case Roman numerals and the rest of your document has Arabic numerals for the page numbers. You’re brilliant!

Related Posts:

• Hiding Data in a Word Table
• How to Tab within a Cell in Word Tables
• Aligning Bullet Indents in Word and PowerPoint
• Picture Doesn’t Show in Word
• Can I Create a PDF without Adobe Acrobat?
• Lots of New Stuff
• Who Loves Office 2007?
• Can’t Remove Gray Border in Word Table
• Editing PDF Files That Won’t Be Edited
• Wikiing Up to Word

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.

Related Posts:

• 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

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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• Randomizing a List of Words or Names
• LauraJ’s Weblog : Excel tip: Split first name and last name into separate cells
• New Excel Wiki and Counting Check Marks
• Counting Multiple Variables in Excel
• 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?

You’ve done everything right – you’ve chosen “Insert” from the menu bar or the picture icon from a tool bar or pane, you’ve chosen “picture from file,” and you’ve said OK. A nice box appears but no picture! You try different formats, you try this, you try that. You print the picture out of another program and it’s fine! What gives?? What gives is that Word thinks your picture is behind some text, even if you have none. What can I tell you? Word is occasionally delusional.

Get to “Format Picture” by your preferred method – I right click on the picture.

Now choose “Layout” from the list of choices. In the Mac 2008 version it looks like this – yours may differ, but the same choices will be there:

Now click on “In front of text,” which shows the dog in front of the lines:

Your picture appears like a rabbit in freshly planted lettuce patch.

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2012

Related Posts:

• Can I Create a PDF without Adobe Acrobat?
• Lots of New Stuff
• Hiding Data in a Word Table
• Changing the Page Number Style in Word
• Aligning Bullet Indents in Word and PowerPoint
• Who Loves Office 2007?
• Editing PDF Files That Won’t Be Edited
• How to Tab within a Cell in Word Tables
• Sometimes You Can Over Think It
• Changing the Format of a Picture

Large companies tend to be charry of handing out Acrobat Pro to just anyone, and you’re not one of the chosen. Or you work from home and can’t afford a copy…can you create a PDF? Yes! See item 6 in the Acrobat FAQ.

For more information about PDFs, check out the Adobe Acrobat 9 PDF Bible at Amazon.

Related Posts:

• Lots of New Stuff
• How to Print Webpages Properly
• Picture Doesn’t Show in Word
• Editing PDF Files That Won’t Be Edited
• Hiding Data in a Word Table
• Changing the Page Number Style in Word
• Who Loves Office 2007?
• How to Tab within a Cell in Word Tables
• Sometimes You Can Over Think It
• Changing the Format of a Picture

The site has updated with lots of new information. An Adobe Acrobat Faux Wiki has been added with a couple of supporting pages to address some of those nagging PDF issues and open the floor to questions and tips.

There’s a new page on how to get rid of that annoying markup that remains when you print Word documents after tracking changes here.

Ever paste a table into Excel, only to have it all show up in one cell? Here’s a solution that’s just been moved into the Word Faux Wiki.

There’s a page on The Wonder of Snag-it, a big problem solver for admins.

Finally, there’s a new post right below this one on how to count multiple variables in Excel that will eventually become part of an Excel section.

You might notice a few more little ads at the bottom of the pages. I remain committed to keeping it to a minimum, but I could use a little help supporting site, so if you want any of the software or books you see here, click through!

If you want to be notified of the updates on this site, click on RSS or on “RSS” down at the very bottom of the page. Once you’re there, choose “subscribe in mail” near the bottom of the right hand sidebar.

Cheers!

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Related Posts:

• Can I Create a PDF without Adobe Acrobat?
• How to Print Webpages Properly
• Picture Doesn’t Show in Word
• Hiding Data in a Word Table
• Changing the Page Number Style in Word
• Who Loves Office 2007?
• Editing PDF Files That Won’t Be Edited
• How to Tab within a Cell in Word Tables
• Sometimes You Can Over Think It
• Excel Window is Too Big

Don’t all respond at once – your silence is deafening me.

2007 is a shock to the system. If you haven’t seen it yet, here’s what you need to be prepared for: Microsoft has taken the “language” we’ve known since the mid-eighties and changed it. They’ve moved from a single menu system to tabs (which they call “panes.” I call them “pains.”) The menu bar is a list of the pane choices. Once you choose a pane, you see the tool bar appropriate to that pane.

Below you see the “Home” pane in Word.
 

If you were to click on the “Insert” pane, you would see this:

Get it?

When I tested it, it seemed familiar enough that I thought I would adjust pretty easily, but it’s been a chore. I encourage you to spend some time attempting complex tasks before you have a 42-page PowerPoint due in an hour.

The things that really flummoxed me were things like finding borders for a table in PowerPoint. They’re taken formatting backwards a couple of decades. You have to choose a pen color, choose a pen size, then drop-down to each side you want a border on, one at a time. No more just opening a window and clicking the borders you want. Oy! The real stopper was finding where the heck the borders were (Table/Design pane).

The truth is, new things stink. They aren’t the old things, therefore they’re wrong. Forget how much you yelled at the old thing, this new thing stinks. In a year, this will be the old thing and the only right way to do it, but it in the meantime, it stinks!

While you’re waiting for it to become the old thing, I have a few tips for saving yourself in an emergency. First of all, the answer is, it’s under that picture on the top left. When you’re losing you’re mind, look there. Basically, it’s the old “File” menu. It tends to flash in some programs, which makes me block it out – I don’t even see it as something to work with.

The next important thing is right next to it: see that little group of icons on the top left? There’s a pull-down arrow next to them. Pull down to “More Commands.” On the left side, highlight “Customize.” You’ll see a pull-down box, probably saying “Popular Commands.” Pull down to “All Commands.”  All available commands will be listed in alphabetical order. Choose the ones you expect to use often and click the arrow to put them into the pane on the right. You can highlight them and use up and down arrows to arrange them. When you finish, click OK and all those icons will be at the top left, next to the big round (possibly flashing) icon. You may not want them there forever, but at least you’ll be able to find things.

And when all else fails, “Help” is that teeny, tiny blue question mark that blends right in located in right corner of the toolbar, er, pain.

While you’re swearing, think about this: the Mac version of Word 2008 is much, much worse. There are no tabs – you have to pull down every single palette, one at a time from “View” one the toolbar. A pallet pops up and floats around, in the way. You have to keep minimizing and maximizing it. New things stink.

Related Posts:

• 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
• 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
• eMail Program Double Spaced My Paste!

Whatever software you want to use, that picture is in the wrong format. Word to the rescue!

If, for example, you just removed the pink highlights from the boss’ receipts in Photoshop so they wouldn’t appear blacked-out when you fax them with his expense reports (are you a star, or what?), but now you need to insert them into something that only accepts JPG (okay, I can’t come up with a reason why you would need to do that…just go with it), you can solve it with Word.

Insert your PDF into Word (Insert…Picture from file)

Right click and choose “Save as Picture…”

In the “Format” drop down box, choose “JPG”

Voilà!

Related Posts:

• Picture Doesn’t Show in Word
• Can I Create a PDF without Adobe Acrobat?
• Editing PDF Files That Won’t Be Edited
• Hiding Data in a Word Table
• Changing the Page Number Style in Word
• How to Count the Number of Days between Two Dates
• Lots of New Stuff
• Who Loves Office 2007?
• How to Print Webpages Properly
• How to Convert a Scanned File to a Word Doc.

We tend to think of PDF files as carved in stone, but if you have Acrobat Pro, you have a chisel. It’s not always easy, but there are some tools for touching up text that often work quite well. Today was not one of those days for me.

I had a document that merely needed a change to the signature block. Piece of cake. Open it in Pro, use the the “Touch Up Text” tool and change it. Do you hear the gong? If the document has been created in a font that your system doesn’t have, you can’t edit the text. Nope. Not at all. No cheating, no tricks, not gonna happen. Deep breath: there’s a workaround.

See that little camera? It’s called the snapshot tool. Click on the camera, then drag around the whole document except the signature block. As soon as you let go, it’s on your clipboard. Paste it into Word and drag your margins out to the edges. You should now have the same page you saw in the PDF with room at the bottom. Add in your signature block and you’re finished. Have a footer? Do the same thing with the footer; just paste it after the signature block.

OK, it’s not perfect because – DUH! -you don’t have the font. It’s better than not having the document, though, and you can do the signature in a similar font and disguise it with italics or bold, or insert it in a harmonious font.

Another workaround: scan the document and follow the directions here to turn it into a Word document. Make your changes and, if you want, save it as a PDF.

And that was my day.

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Related Posts:

• Can I Create a PDF without Adobe Acrobat?
• Picture Doesn’t Show in Word
• Lots of New Stuff
• Hiding Data in a Word Table
• Changing the Page Number Style in Word
• Who Loves Office 2007?
• Changing the Format of a Picture
• How to Print Webpages Properly
• How to Tab within a Cell in Word Tables
• Can’t Remove Gray Border in Word Table