Author Archives: Lance Whitney
How to Work with Microsoft Office on an iPad with iOS 11
The latest version of Apple’s mobile OS offers some benefits for Office users who own an iPad. Apple’s iOS 11 brings several enhancements to the iPad. And those of you who use Microsoft Office on certain model iPads can take advantage of them. iOS 9 introduced a couple of features that can display two apps on the screen at the same time. So for example, you can see both Word and Excel together side by side. Now, with iOS 11, you can drag and drop text, hyperlinks, and images from one app to another. Further, Office users who use OneDrive for backing up and syncing their documents can rev up Apple’s new Files app. The Files app helps you connect to and access files stored on OneDrive as well as other online storage sites. Let’s check it all out. For this article, I’ll assume you run Microsoft Office on your iPad. In my article on How to Choose and Use the Mobile Version of Microsoft Office, I explain how Office Mobile operates on a phone or tablet, and under what conditions you can use the suite for free. Update to iOS 11 First, make sure you’ve updated your iPad to iOS … Read More
How to Benefit from Windows’ Ease of Access Features
You’ll find a host of features that can help more easily see, hear, and use Windows. Do you have trouble seeing small fonts or using a mouse or keyboard? Maybe you have issues with your vision or perhaps you’re suffering from carpal tunnel syndrome or another problem that makes it difficult to type or control your mouse? Or perhaps you’d just like to make Windows easier to see and use. Whatever the reason, you can take advantage of the Ease of Access options in any version of Windows from 7 to 10. Through Ease of Access, you can do any or all of the following: Trigger a narrator to read your screen if you have trouble reading it yourself. Enable a magnifier to zoom into parts of the screen so you can better read text and see other elements. Change the contrast to more easily detect specific parts of the screen. Customize your keyboard and mouse so they’re easier to use. And you’ll find other options to turn Windows into a friendlier and more accommodating environment. This article is part of our premium content. Join Now.Already a paid subscriber? Click here to login.
How to Use Multiple Worksheets in a Microsoft Excel Workbook
Working with multiple worksheets in the same workbook offers distinct advantages. Do most of your Excel workbooks contain only a single worksheet? If so, you’re missing out on the power and flexibility of using multiple sheets within a single workbook. By storing multiple sheets in the same book, you can tie them all together to save time and effort. You can perform the same data and formatting changes on all your worksheets in one fell swoop. You can create formulas in one worksheet that reference data in another sheet. And if any data changes in one sheet, it also changes in any linked sheets. For this article, I’m using Excel 2016, but the process for working with multiple worksheets is the same for the prior few versions of Excel. To illustrate the benefits of using multiple worksheets, I’ll be using a workbook that tracks product sales in four regions of the country – North, South, East, and West. This article is part of our premium content. Join Now.Already a paid subscriber? Click here to login.
Use Templates to Enhance Your Excel Spreadsheets
Templates can give your spreadsheets a healthy head start. Do you often struggle to create and customize certain Excel spreadsheets a specific way? Maybe you’re attempting to set up a budget or record expenses or put together a schedule. And you’re trying to format your spreadsheet piece by piece but it’s not quite working. Well, struggle no more. Instead let Excel do the hard work for you. How? Through templates. A template can give your spreadsheet the right look and layout right from the start so you’re not spending hours trying to format it manually. Excel comes with a variety of templates, and you can download more from Microsoft. This article is part of our premium content. Join Now.Already a paid subscriber? Click here to login.
Avoid Copy and Paste Problems in Microsoft Excel
You can master the intricate and sometimes slippery art of copying and pasting in Excel. Here’s how. Copying and pasting in Microsoft Excel can be tricky. You may want to simply copy the contents of one cell to another. Or you may want to be selective about what you copy, choosing to copy the entire cell, just the data, just the formula, just the formatting, or a combination of items. But for whatever reason, the copy and paste isn’t working the way you want, and you keep having to redo it until you get it right. The good news is that you can avoid many copy and paste problems in Excel. What’s the secret? Let’s check it out. For our purposes, I’m using Excel 2016 through my Office 365 subscription. But copy and paste works the same no matter which version of Excel you use. Let’s walk through how to copy blocks of information as needed. Launch Excel and create a spreadsheet called Household Expenses. In the first row, type the following headers, one in each cell: Groceries, Electricity, Phone, Cable, Credit Card. In the second, third, and fourth rows, place numbers with decimal points in each cell to represent … Read More
How to Create a Form in Microsoft Word
Building an electronic form isn’t difficult, if you follow the right steps. You need to create an electronic form that’s easy for people to fill out but that can’t be modified by anyone but yourself. No problem. Microsoft Word can handle that challenge. You can create a form in Word complete with the necessary fields, graphics, and other content. You can create a form from scratch but you’ll find it easier to start with a built-in template for a form. From there, you customize the form if necessary. You can control or limit the type of content people can add to a specific field. And you can protect your form so people can’t alter it beyond filling in the fields. Let’s look at how to create a form in Word. This article is part of our premium content. Join Now.Already a paid subscriber? Click here to login.
Master the Find and Replace Feature in Microsoft Word
Word’s Find and Replace has a lot of tricks up its sleeve. Here’s how to take advantage of them. You’ve probably used Find and Replace in Microsoft Word to look for misspelled words and other mistakes and replace them with their corrected versions. But there’s more to Find and Replace than just replacing text. You can enable certain options, such as matching the case and looking for whole words. You can find and replace special characters, such as paragraph marks, dashes, and page breaks. You can replace special formatting, including fonts and paragraphs. And you can combine many of these options in one single search. For this article, I’m using Word 2016 as always, but Find and Replace works the same over the past few versions of Word. To start, launch Word and open or create a long document with multiple paragraphs and pages of text. Ideally, the document should contain graphics and special formatting. But if you don’t have such a document, you can still follow along with me. This article is part of our premium content. Join Now.Already a paid subscriber? Click here to login.
How to Protect Your Microsoft Word Documents
You can protect your Word documents from prying eyes and itchy fingers. You’ve created a critical Word document, one that you wish to keep private or that you want to share with only certain people. But perhaps you don’t want others to be able to edit the document, and you certainly don’t want it to fall into the wrong hands. How can you protect your document? Word offers a few options: You can finalize the document to alert people not to edit it. You can encrypt the document with a password so only people who know the password can access it. You can restrict the type of editing others can perform on the document. You can add a digital signature to the document to ensure that no one can tamper with it. And you can employ more than one of these tactics to truly secure your document. Let’s look at the many ways you can protect your Word documents. As always, I’m using Word 2016 here, but the options for protecting a document are the same for the prior couple of versions of Word. This article is part of our premium content. Join Now.Already a paid subscriber? Click here to … Read More
How to Protect and Secure Your Data in Microsoft Excel
You can safeguard any data in Excel from a single cell to an entire workbook. Here’s how. You’ve created a spreadsheet in Excel that you plan to share with other people. But you may not want everyone to be able to view, edit, or reformat all the data. No problem. Here’s a list of what you can do: You can protect anything from a lone cell to a full workbook. You can hide a cell, a row, or a column so no one can see it. You can lock a cell so no one can edit it. You can protect the entire worksheet to put your security into effect. You can hide a specific worksheet. And you can protect an entire workbook by marking it as final, encrypting it with a password, or adding a digital signature. As usual, I’m using Excel 2016 via my Office 365 subscription. But the options for protecting your data should apply equally to the prior couple of versions of Excel. To start, open or create a spreadsheet with enough data to stretch several columns and rows. Make a copy of that worksheet so you have more than one sheet. Change some of the data … Read More
How to Use Mail Merge in Microsoft Word
Mail merge can save you plenty of time when you need to address multiple envelopes or labels. You have envelopes or labels that you want to address to many people. You can do that individually, or you can do it much quicker through a mail merge in Word. The mail merge feature lets you create an envelope or a series of labels and then merge that file with dozens, hundreds, or thousands of names and addresses. Using a list or table of names, you populate your envelope or labels with fields to insert each name and address. But Word’s mail merge can be tricky. How can you use it simply and effectively? Let’s check it out. I’m using Word 2016 here, but mail merge is available in any version of Word and works the same over the past few versions of the program. You can merge different types of files, including email messages, documents, and directories. But envelopes and labels are the most common formats for a mail merge, so we’ll focus on those. If you want to try out a mail merge on your end, you’ll need a list of names and addresses stored in a Word table, an … Read More