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Sunday, July 31, 2011 – Permalink –

PowerPoint Pundits

Connect with other PowerPoint users

Microsoft has put together a list of locations, forums, blogs, etc. that cover PowerPoint.

You'll probably find that your question has been answered at one of these spots.

Office.Microsoft.com

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Labels: PowerPoint

<Doug Klippert@ 3:24 AM

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Saturday, July 30, 2011 – Permalink –

Privacy is gone

Hide that search

We're not alone in the great world-wide internet.

"In 2006, AOL unwittingly divulged the personal lives of 650,000 customers by publishing their search histories as research data. Despite AOL's attempts to anonymize the info, the New York Times quickly outed a 62-year-old lady in Georgia whose searches revealed her dog was wetting the upholstery."

Slate.com

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Labels: Internet

<Doug Klippert@ 3:46 AM

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Friday, July 29, 2011 – Permalink –

More than Sudoku

Game with Excel

"IT may be the biggest tool in the Office, but Microsoft Excel can be cool too"

Here's an article on off-prescription Excel.

Play with Excel

Here are some of the games you can play for free:

Excel fun
3D Viewer
Battleship
Blackjack
Breakout
Golf Stats
Mastermind
Maze
Minesweeper
Reversi
Rubix
Slots
Sudoku Solver
Tetris
Video Poker

ExcelGames.org

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Labels: Excel

<Doug Klippert@ 3:26 AM

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Thursday, July 28, 2011 – Permalink –

25 Chickens and a Rooster

Small change(s)

Changing The Present is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit website offering gifts that make a difference.

Fund A Business: Loan for a woman

International Medical Corps.
Your gift of $200 can help IMC to give a deserving woman a loan to start her own business. Through a proven "community investment" model, women pay back their loans not to IMC, but to a community bank that consists of the pooled contributions of a group of women.
Expand A Business: Loan for a mother
Foundation for International Community Assistance.

Added income from a $50 loan can help a Tanzanian mother expand her business and feed her children more nutritious food.. And you're providing a self-employment loan, not a gift. Your donation will build discipline, responsibility, and self-confidence as women create their own business.
Rent A Market Stall: Loan for a woman
Foundation for International Community Assistance.

With a $100 loan, a Haitian woman can rent a market stall and increase her income two-fold. And you're providing a self-employment loan, not a gift. Your donation will build discipline, responsibility, and self-confidence as women create their own business.
Support Development: 25 chickens & rooster
Operation USA.

Give the gift of life – literally! Giving a loan to purchase and raise animals, such as cows, rabbits, sheep, chickens and roosters is the perfect gift for someone who cares deeply about providing opportunity and empowering a family to lift itself out of poverty.

ChangingthePresent.org

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Labels: Addendum

<Doug Klippert@ 3:25 AM

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Wednesday, July 27, 2011 – Permalink –

Meeting Methods

More than name tags

Outlook (the big guy, not Express) has tools to facilitate
Appointments, Meetings, and Events

Here are a few of the 31 suggestions:

Turn a message into a meeting request
Update a meeting request
Automatically process requests and responses
Counter-proposals for Meeting Times
Cancel meeting if you are an attendee
Troubleshoot meetings

One of the subjects is: Outlook meeting requests: Essential do's and don'ts
Here are a few of the items:

If you change it, update it:: After modifying one of your own meeting requests, remember to click Send Update to send the updated request to all recipients.
Don't move meeting requests:: Don't move a meeting request from your Inbox to a different folder before you accept or decline the request or before the meeting appears in your calendar. Soon after a meeting request arrives in your Inbox, a piece of Outlook code -- nicknamed the "sniffer" -- automatically adds the meeting to your calendar and marks it as tentative. This is a fail-safe to keep you from missing the meeting in case you don't see the request in your Inbox. However, the sniffer doesn't reply to the meeting organizer. You still need to do that by accepting, accepting as tentative, or declining the request. If you or a rule that you create moves an incoming meeting request from your Inbox before the sniffer can process the request, the meeting never appears in your calendar, and you might miss the meeting.
Get a fresh start:: If a meeting series requires several changes -- a new organizer, a different frequency or time slot, the addition or removal of attendees -- just cancel the series and create a new one. Don't try to modify the original meeting request.

Also:
Slipstick.com:
Scheduling Resources
Meeting Name tags

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Labels: Outlook

<Doug Klippert@ 3:41 AM

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Tuesday, July 26, 2011 – Permalink –

Viewer

Portable PowerPoint

If you have to show your presentation on a machine that does not have PowerPoint installed, you can use " Package for CD. "

Before 2003 it was named "Pack and Go."

Go to File> Package for CD ...
The Dialog box will walk you through the process and offer to include the PowerPoint Viewer.

The problem with the earlier versions of PowerPoint, through 2002, was that the viewer only handled the features available in PowerPoint 97.

The PowerPoint 2003 Viewer lets you view full-featured presentations created in PowerPoint 97 and later versions.

Here is the download location for the PowerPoint 2003 Viewer:

Microsoft 2003 PowerPoint Viewer

Here's the PowerPoint 2007 viewer:
PP 2007 Viewer

Microsoft:
What happened to Pack and Go?

How to package and copy a presentation to a CD in PowerPoint 2003

Leave a good impression; distribute a business presentation on CD

"Want to truly impress your customers with a multimedia presentation about your business? You can easily make your Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003 presentations more portable by burning them onto a CD. By including the new free PowerPoint 2003 presentation viewer on the CD, presentations can be distributed to and viewed by audiences who do not use Microsoft Office."

PP Tools:
Downloads and descriptions for other versions

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Labels: PowerPoint

<Doug Klippert@ 3:04 AM

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Monday, July 25, 2011 – Permalink –

Medical Untruths

They say it isn't so

For instance:

Everyone must drink at least eight glasses of water a day: This advice is thought to have originated in 1945 from the Nutrition Council in the US, which suggested people needed to consume 2.5 litres of water a day. But the water contained in food, particularly fruit and vegetables, as well as in milk, juice, coffee and soft drinks, also counts towards the total.
Reading in dim light ruins your eyesight: Generations of parents have warned their children not to read in poor light, telling them that it could somehow damage their sight. Though dim lighting can cause stress in the eye, the important thing to remember, say the researchers, is that the effects are not permanent. "Suboptimal lighting can create a sensation of having difficulty in focusing. It also decreases the rate of blinking and leads to discomfort from drying. The important counterpoint is that these effects do not persist."

And More:
The Guardian:
Medical Myths

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Labels: Addendum

<Doug Klippert@ 3:19 AM

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Sunday, July 24, 2011 – Permalink –

Resize Form

It's fitting

When you switch between Design and Form views, the size of the form is dictated by the size of the Design view window, not the size of the form sections.

You often need to expand the window to be able to see the rulers and scroll bars in addition to all of the sections. This means you're left with wasted space when viewing the form in Form view, assuming that you forget to shrink the window back down.

A solution to this annoyance is to use the Size To Fit Form feature.

Simply view the form in Form view and choose Window>Size To Fit Form from the menu bar. If your view of the form is maximized, the menu option will be unavailable and you'll need to click the Restore Window button on the form window to enable the choice.

Once Access has resized the form, you can save its current dimensions by clicking the Save button.

With Access 2007 go to the Office button, choose Access Options and click Overlapping Windows. The Size To Fit Form icon will appear on the Home tab.

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Labels: Access

<Doug Klippert@ 3:32 AM

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Saturday, July 23, 2011 – Permalink –

Page Breaks

Demo tutorial

You can control when Word decides to break for a new page.

Ctrl+Enter is the keyboard shortcut, but there are a number of variations.

This MS link has both Demos and text tutorials.
Page breaks

BTW, a merged document is made up of Section breaks, not Page breaks.

For ease of printing, Replace ^b with ^m

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Labels: Word

<Doug Klippert@ 3:21 AM

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Friday, July 22, 2011 – Permalink –

Change Info Box

Make up your own

When you press the Windows key + Break, you'll see the properties window with the standard manufactures data/ad.
The How to Geek shows how to change this. There is also a registry file that can be downloaded to make the basic entries.

Customize support info

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Labels: Windows

<Doug Klippert@ 3:26 AM

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Thursday, July 21, 2011 – Permalink –

Word News (Still)

Here's another good newsletter

Editorium

Jack M. Lyon, a book editor who got tired of working the hard way and started creating programs to automate editing tasks in Microsoft Word. He's been editing more than twenty years and started working on the computer in 1985.

(Unfortunately has not published recently, but still full of good information)
A few back issues of Editorium Update arranged chronologically:

Deleting Unused Styles
Pasting Tracked Revisions
Indexing with a Two-Column Concordance
Fancy Sorting
Editing by Concordance
Making a Concordance
Numbers by Chicago
Fixing Typos Automatically

And more.

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Labels: Word

<Doug Klippert@ 3:34 AM

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Wednesday, July 20, 2011 – Permalink –

Date Arithmetic

The drunken cousin

Working with dates has a few twists.

Excel believes that time began on January 1, 1900.

Each day since then is counted so that September 1, 2003 in Excel-speak would be → 37,865.
9/1/03 7:33 A.M. is a decimal → 37865.31458333333

When you subtract one date from another, for instance 9/1/2003 (A1)minus 7/4/2001 (A2),
Excel displays the odd answer of → 2/27/1902.

Excel formats the result of a formula with the same format as the source cells,
Right-click the formula cell (=A1-A2).
Select Format Cells ..., and then choose a Number format with zero decimals.

The correct number of days → 789 will now be displayed.

Another way is to use the rarely documented DATEDIF function. Chip Pearson calls it "the drunken cousin of the Function family."

=DATEDIF(EarliestDate,LatestDate,Interval)

=DATEDIF(A2,A1,"d")

Here's THE source for date math:
Chip Pearson:
All About Dates

Also:

John Walenbach:
Extended Date Functions Add-In

"Many users are surprised to discover that Excel cannot work with dates prior to the year 1900. The Extended Date Functions add-in (XDate) corrects this deficiency, and allows you to work with dates in the years 0100 through 9999."

MS Knowledge Base:
How To Use Dates and Times in Excel

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Labels: Excel

<Doug Klippert@ 3:12 AM

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Tuesday, July 19, 2011 – Permalink –

HTML Preview

HTML Tester

There you are, out in the wilderness of PCdom without a copy of FrontPage around. How do you find out what HTML tags looks like?
(fire up notepad, save the file, open with a browser)

HTML Preview
Preview HTML in a new window by entering it into the form. This script allows you to pass anything to a new window.
Instructions help you create a preview on your own web page.

Such as:
HTML TEST BED

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Labels: Expression Web, HTML, Internet

<Doug Klippert@ 3:55 AM

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Monday, July 18, 2011 – Permalink –

Snowflake Patterns

Cut your own

You can create your own cutout snowflakes and the down load the patterns.

Snowflakes.LookandFeel.com

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Labels: Addendum

<Doug Klippert@ 3:54 AM

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Sunday, July 17, 2011 – Permalink –

Quickly Query Table Names

Change by code

If you've ever developed a dozen or more complex queries, then had to change one of the table names, you know how frustrating it can be to all but rebuild the queries in the Query Design view grid by changing the table name in each cell.

One quick alternative is to choose View >SQL View while the query is open and then cut and paste all the SQL code into Word.

Next, do a Find and Replace, changing all the instances of the old table name to the new table name.

Finally, copy and paste the SQL statements back into the SQL view of your Access queries.

When you go back to the QBE, the new table will replace the old one.

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Labels: Access

<Doug Klippert@ 3:43 AM

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Saturday, July 16, 2011 – Permalink –

Bad Words

Not the best features

Katherine Murray from TechRepublic, lists ten word features that can be replaced with the new tools.

#1: The Font dialog box
(She says use Themes, I prefer to control individual components)

#2: Mark As Final
(I agree, it's not that Final)

#3: Save As Word XML
(I agree. "Today’s Word is completely built on Office OpenXML, so now all the files you create and save in Word 2007 are actually saved in XML". )

#4: Mail Merge Wizard
( I agree. Mail merge is not that hard. It is only made more difficult with the Wizard)

#5 Drawing Canvas
(Down with the Canvas!)

#6: Signature Line

#7: Web Tools

#8: Document Map

#9: Microsoft Clip Organizer

#10 Document Properties

10 features you can skip

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Labels: Word

<Doug Klippert@ 3:09 AM

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Friday, July 15, 2011 – Permalink –

Reset Shortcut Menu

Context menu redo

For some reason (to be determined later) my shortcut menu started to accumulate a string of "Edit Formula" and "Delete Formula" entries.

They didn't cause a problem, but were distracting.

This little VBA code puts it back to the original settings until I can find a cause.

Sub ResetShortcutMenu()
Application.CommandBars("Cell").Reset
End Sub

Macros that Customize and Control Shortcut Menus

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Labels: Excel

<Doug Klippert@ 3:26 AM

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Thursday, July 14, 2011 – Permalink –

Office VBA Tricks

Video + Free code

"Learn tips and use sample code for several Office applications. These tips can help you to be more productive and can also be a starting point for developing your own tools, utilities and techniques."

Update Word Document Statistics in the Title Bar
Create Outlook Rules Programmatically
Delete Repeated Text Throughout a Word Document
Run Macros Based on the Value of One or More Excel Spreadsheet Cells
Disable Related Controls on a PowerPoint Slide After a User Clicks an Input Control
Display Reminder Information When a User Opens an Office Document
Synchronize an Access Main Form to a Subform and Vice Versa
Log Worksheet Changes to an XML File
Merge Body Text from Multiple Outlook E-mail Messages to a Word Document
Use the Office Assistant as an Alternative to Displaying and Retrieving User Input

Ten Tips for Office VBA Developers

VBA Tips & Tricks

Getting Started with VBA in Office 2010

(VBA is VBA and is, in most cases, usable in all versions of Office)

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Labels: Excel, PowerPoint, Windows, Word

<Doug Klippert@ 3:48 AM

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Wednesday, July 13, 2011 – Permalink –

Background Templates

Fresh material

After seeing a few PowerPoint presentations, all of the backgrounds and graphics included with Office, start to look alike.

Luckily, there are generous folk who supply fresh material.

Sonia Coleman is one of the best.

She presents over 200 templates for download.

Free PowerPoint Templates

Explore the rest of her site including the Gallery section

Also see:

PoweredTemplates.com

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Labels: PowerPoint

<Doug Klippert@ 3:31 AM

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Tuesday, July 12, 2011 – Permalink –

Goog 411

Ease of use

Say you're walking down the street in a strange town, and you'd like to find a Starbucks.
(OK the question might be how not to find a Starbucks.)

Dial (1-800) GOOG-411, on your obnoxious cell phone. Speak your location and what you are looking for and you'll be connected to the harassed barista of your choice. There is no charge for the service.

It also works from a real phone. It also finds other businesses than just coffee pushers.

Goog411

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Labels: Addendum, Internet

<Doug Klippert@ 3:30 AM

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Monday, July 11, 2011 – Permalink –

Info on the Desktop

Free gadget

If you use the Windows Live sidebar, this might come in handy.

Outlook Info shows information from MS Outlook; Number of emails, upcoming appointments, and tasks.

You can choose one of the build-in skins or create your own skin!

Possible to choose a folder to monitor.

Outlook Info

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Labels: Outlook

<Doug Klippert@ 3:31 AM

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Sunday, July 10, 2011 – Permalink –

Tesla's Birthday

July 10, 1856

There has been an attempt to make July 10, the birth date of Nikola Tesla,
Global Energy Independence Day.

The purpose is to promote emerging energy technologies that move us away from oil dependence.

Happy Birthday Tesla

Tesla - The Lost Wizard

Tesla Coil

Tesla cage of death

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Labels: Addendum

<Doug Klippert@ 3:09 AM

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Saturday, July 09, 2011 – Permalink –

Add Objects to the Query Grid

Easy additions

If you need to add a table or query to a query you're building in Design view, you most likely click the Show Table button, drag the appropriate objects from the resulting dialog box, and then close the dialog box.

However, there's a much easier way to do this.

Simply drag the table or query object's icon directly to the gray background of the query design grid. This same technique also works with Access's Relationships window.

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Labels: Access

<Doug Klippert@ 3:14 AM

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Friday, July 08, 2011 – Permalink –

Chiropractics for Excel

Knead and pound numbers

Chad Rothschiller, a program manager on the Excel team, discusses using formulas to 'clean up' data in Excel.

Excel is a great tool to use when you need to take data in one format, manipulate it into another format, and push the results along to another process, e.g. a database. In this context, Excel is a great landing pad or middle man, serving as a data transformation tool to move data from one system to another.

This example considers a sample data set and walks through the steps to clean up the data and perform various transformations on the data set to massage it into a more desirable format.

I'm sure you've been faced with at least one of theses problems:

Import the data and don't accidentally drop the leading zeros!
Formatting SSN
Inserting hyphens
Fixing up names
Lower case E-Mail Address
Format Home Phone
Inserting parenthesis & hyphens
Trim extra spaces from Address
Add City values to the new table
Make all State value upper case
Fill in Postal Code
Finalize the values

Manipulate and massage

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Labels: Excel

<Doug Klippert@ 3:14 AM

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Thursday, July 07, 2011 – Permalink –

Image Sources

No cost

After awhile the graphics in Office Clipart or even the ones found on Microsoft's Office online appear the same.

Here is a list of 100 locations for royalty free stock images.

Free stock images

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Labels: Addendum

<Doug Klippert@ 3:07 AM

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Wednesday, July 06, 2011 – Permalink –

Resetting the Body Clock

So very SAD

SAD

A wistful feeling comes over us in late autumn, as the last remaining leaves drop, morning frosts cover the ground, and the sun sets earlier each day. Hot cider and the warmth of a favorite old coat may be all you need to face the coming winter with good cheer, but for many people, fall melancholy deepens to winter depression.

Winter depression is still a mystery to scientists who study it. Many things, including brain chemicals, ions in the air, and genetics seem to be involved. But researchers agree that people who suffer from winter depression -- also known as "seasonal affective disorder," a term that produces the cute acronym SAD -- have one thing in common. They're particularly sensitive to light, or the lack of it.

"Research shows that bright light visual stimulation (light which enters the eyes), can change the timing of the body clock and its timing of sleep or awakening signals to the body. Thus, bright light therapy has been used to treat the range of disorders caused by a mis-timed body clock including shift work, jet lag, sleep onset and early morning insomnia mentioned above as well as winter depression (Seasonal Affective Disorder, SAD)."

"Probably the greatest use of bright light therapy is for the treatment of winter depression, especially in very northern countries which have little sunlight in the winter months. These sufferers appear to have delayed body clocks and benefit most from morning light therapy.

At present, the blue LED glasses are still experimental devices. They are not yet commercially available. The Flinders University owns the intellectual property rights and a provisional patent. A commercial partner to manufacture and market the devices under license is still being sought."

Winter Depression
Flinders University Adelaide Australia

Seasonal Affective Disorder

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Labels: Addendum

<Doug Klippert@ 3:16 AM

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Tuesday, July 05, 2011 – Permalink –

Drawing Canvas

More than I want

The Draw layer has been around since about Word 97, but it has not been as intrusive as it is in Word 2002+.

Try to place an AutoShape on a page and the Drawing Canvas pops up by default.

To turn off this feature, go to:
Tools>Options.
On the General tab, remove the check mark from
"Automatically create drawing canvas when inserting AutoShapes"

To just dismiss it each time, choose your AutoShape and then touch the Delete or Esc key before drawing the object.

Here's some more information.

Knowledge Base
General Information About Floating Objects
(a discussion of Word's floating objects and layers)

As I understand it, the Drawing canvas is not really a new layer. The following illustration shows the classic layers. It is from the Knowledge base article:
How to Place Text over a Graphic

___________________
/                   /
/   <SURFACE OF     /
/       PAPER>      /
/                   /  /
Front drawing layer  -------------------  /
MAIN TEXT LAYER  =================== / /
Back drawing layer  -------------------/ / /
/ /
Front drawing layer  -------------------/ /
(Header/footer) BOTTOM TEXT LAYER  =================== /
Back drawing layer  -------------------/

You can dump the layer in 2007 in the Office button Word Option equivalent of Tools>Options:

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Labels: Word

<Doug Klippert@ 3:49 AM

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Monday, July 04, 2011 – Permalink –

Free Contact Templates

Free electronic business cards

Microsoft has 41 business card templates that can be used in Outlook.

Just download the file and edit the information.

Contact Cards

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Labels: Outlook

<Doug Klippert@ 3:48 AM

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Sunday, July 03, 2011 – Permalink –

Keyboard All Codes

Quick inserts

Here is a collection of Alt codes. There is also a free download that you can post near your computer.

Alt Codes for Letters with Accents for Languages
Alt Codes for Bullets, Symbols and Other Special Characters
Alt Codes for Mathematical Symbols - Symbols used in Mathematics
Alt Codes for Currency Symbols
Alt Codes for Drawing
Alt Codes for Characters from the Greek Alphabet
Alt Codes for "Additional" Letters particularly for Nordic / Scandanavian Languages
Alt Codes for Spanish
Intellectual Property Right symbols.
Alt Codes for Arrows
Alt Codes for Punctuation and Editing
Alt Codes in Computer Programming

Alt Codes

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Labels: Word

<Doug Klippert@ 3:59 AM

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Saturday, July 02, 2011 – Permalink –

Internet Connectivity

Free tool from MS

"The Internet Connectivity Evaluation Tool checks your Internet router to see if it supports certain technologies. You can use this tool on a PC running either the Windows Vista or Windows XP operating system.
If you're planning to run Windows Vista, this tool can verify whether your existing Internet router supports advanced features, such as improved download speeds and face-to-face collaboration using Windows Meeting Space.

The tool is intended to be run from a home network behind a home Internet (NAT) router. Running this tool from behind a corporate firewall or on operating systems other than those specified above won't produce accurate results. This tool requires administrator privileges to run.

Basic Internet Connectivity Test
Network Address Translator Type
Traffic Congestion Test
TCP High Performance Test
UPnP Support Test
Multiple Simultaneous Connection States Test

Internet Connectivity Evaluation Tool

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Labels: Internet

<Doug Klippert@ 3:51 AM

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Friday, July 01, 2011 – Permalink –

Shuffle Music

Like those fruity machines

Microsoft Media player can do more things than just play the odd sound file. You can set it up to go through a play list is random order; playing music all day long.

Shuffle Sort

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Labels: Addendum

<Doug Klippert@ 3:42 AM

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