PROBLEM:
How can you stop Office 2000 from showing those short menus and then
bouncing open the full ones?
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SOLUTION:
The abbreviated menus in Office 2000 are meant to help people by showing
only popular options. Unfortunately, not everyone appreciates having the
menus change between short and long versions. To show only full menus,
go to the Tools, Customize menu in any of the main Office 2000 programs
and uncheck the 'Menus show recently used commands first' option.
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PROBLEM:
You are trying to put together a credits block on a flyer, but 7-point
text is too small to read and 8-point text is too large for the available
space.
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SOLUTION:
Although you may not see fractional sizes listed in a drop-down font
list, most word processors and layout programs allow you to use fractional
point sizes. To see if your program supports these sizes, select the text
you want to change, bring up the font formatting dialog box (click on Format,
then click on Font), and try to type the fractional size — 7.5, for example
— in the appropriate box.
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PROBLEM:
You often hit the Caps Lock key by mistake when you are typing and
then have to fix all those CAPITAL LETTERS
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SOLUTION:
Microsoft Word 97 and 2000 have an option to automatically fix accidental
capital letters at Tools, AutoCorrect, AutoCorrect tab, Correct accidental
usage of caps lOCK key. Elsewhere in Windows, you can use the Accessibility
options in Control Panel. There is an option called ToggleKeys under the
Keyboard tab that will sound a tone whenever the Caps Lock, Num Lock, and
Scroll Lock keys are pressed.
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PROBLEM:
When you open a large text file, Windows tries to use NotePad first,
and then tells you the file is too big and offers to use WordPad instead.
How can you make it go straight to WordPad without asking?
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SOLUTION:
You will have to make WordPad the default program to open all text
files. In Explorer, choose View, Folder Options, File Types. Scroll down
the list, and click on Text Document. You will see that it is set to open
with NotePad. Click on the Edit button, then on the Action: open (it's
probably labeled in bold text), and then on the Edit button. Now you can
change the application used to perform the action. Right now, it probably
says c:\windows\NOTEPAD.EXE (or whatever your Windows system path); change
that to c:\windows\WRITE.EXE. Keep the same path, just change the program
name.
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PROBLEM:
You would like to use Microsoft Word's AutoCorrect to change an acronym
like FBI into Federal Bureau of Investigation automatically, but you also
want to use the acronym itself sometimes. How can you stop Word from making
the change in every case?
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SOLUTION:
For most situations, add an additional letter to the AutoCorrect sequence
(Tools, AutoCorrect). Instead of FBI becoming Federal Bureau of Investigation,
make the trigger FBIf. (Here the ending letter "f" stands for "full,"
but any character will work.) The result is that FBI will be left alone,
while FBIf will be spelled out.
Also, remember that AutoCorrect changes can be undone. If Word makes
an unwanted change, a click on the Undo button on the toolbar or pressing
Ctrl+Z will reverse the change.
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PROBLEM:
You have a presentation to give tomorrow and need a few images to jazz
it up. Where can you find some pictures fast?
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SOLUTION:
Assuming you've already looked in the Clip Art Gallery that comes with
various versions of Microsoft Office, there's an additional free library
of images on the Microsoft Web site at http://cgl.microsoft.com/clipgallerylive/
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PROBLEM:
Is there a way to select a vertical strip of text in a Word document?
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SOLUTION:
Word normally selects horizontal blocks of text, words, sentences,
paragraphs, and so on, but you can change this feature to work vertically
simply by holding down the Alt key while you select text. You can then
delete, copy, or format the selected text just like any other selection.
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PROBLEM:
When you copy text from a Web page into Microsoft Word, tables and
other unwanted items are also copied. How can you stop this from happening?
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SOLUTION:
Under the Edit menu in Word you will find Paste Special, which has
various options for pasting in the selection you have made. The Unformatted
Text option will insert only the text without any of the fonts or other
formatting.
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PROBLEM:
You just finished putting together a PowerPoint presentation, but now
you need to make a small adjustment to the common background of the slides.
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SOLUTION:
Make the change to the Slide Master (click on View, Master, Slide Master),
and all the slides in the presentation except the Title slide will be affected.
To change the Title slide, you can either edit it directly or use the Title
Master (click on View, Master, Title Master).
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PROBLEM:
You want to put a shortcut to launch Word on the Windows Quick Launch
Toolbar, the one directly to the right of the Start button.
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SOLUTION:
Go in to Windows Explorer (right-click on My Computer and pick Explore).
Navigate to the program you want to put on the Toolbar (in this case it's
probably at c:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\winword.exe). Right-click
on the filename (winword.exe), drag it onto the Quick Launch Toolbar, and
then drop it wherever you want.
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PROBLEM:
You like to use drop caps at the start of some paragraphs to spice
up your pages, but the Times New Roman drop caps leave something to be
desired.
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SOLUTION:
The best drop caps are found in decorative fonts. Office 2000 comes
with two fonts that are ideal for use as drop caps: Algerian and Old English
MT.
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PROBLEM:
You are looking for a comprehensive Office 2000 reference tool. Is
there anything available online for free?
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SOLUTION:
Every single word that is in the printed version of the Office 2000
Resource Kit is available on the Web at http://www.microsoft.com/office/ork/.
All the software in the companion CD is at that site, too. In fact, the
information on the Web is more accurate, more current--and, arguably, easier
to find.
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