Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Relative Font Sizes

What size are your relatives?



Relative font sizes make websites more accessible and easier to read - but they're not much help unless the person using the site can find a way to actually change text size.

Here's a simple solution for text resizing:

Power To The People: Relative Font Sizes
Article by Bojan Mihelac

Original link from Lockergnome



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Monday, May 30, 2016

BW to RGB

A Kansas trick


Have you seen The Wizard of Oz lately? The film starts out in black and white. Then when Dorothy opens the door in Oz, the movie suddenly switches to full color. Why not try the same effect in a presentation?

To see how this would work, run PowerPoint and open a blank slide. Choose Insert>Picture>ClipArt and insert any picture. Now, choose Insert>Duplicate Slide to copy the slide. Go back to the first slide now, and select the picture by clicking it. When the Picture toolbar opens, click the Image Control button (second from the left) and choose Grayscale.

Now, choose Slide Show>View Show. When the first slide appears, click the mouse to move to the second slide. The ClipArt picture remains in place, but suddenly appears in color.

Sue Whitehouse




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Sunday, May 29, 2016

Combine Pharmacokinetics and Bowling

Shape the Zeitgeist



I like to jump head first into subjects that I have no understanding of at all.
Here's a site that meets the criteria. A site that discusses the book:

"Agronomic Representation of Muddles in Linguistic Theory"
by Peter Cannings

The august journal Speculative Grammarian has a long, rich, and varied history, weaving an intricate and subtle tapestry from disparate strands of linguistics, philology, history, politics, science, technology, botany, pharmacokinetics, computer science, the mathematics of humor, basket weaving, archery, glass blowing, roller coaster design, and bowling, among numerous other, less obvious fields.

SpecGram, as it is known to devotees and sworn enemies alike, has for centuries sought to bring together the greatest yet least understood minds of the time, embedding itself firmly in the cultural and psychological matrix of the global society while simultaneously illuminating, reflecting, and shaping the universal Zeitgeist.

The Speculative Grammarian



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Saturday, May 28, 2016

Declaring Multiple Variables

Declare each one


When setting up a macro in VBA, if you want to declare multiple variables in one line of code, be sure to specify the type for each variable, even if the variables are the same type. Avoid code like the following:

Dim strFName, strLName, strMI As String

In such a case, only the last variable, strMI, is actually declared as a String type. The first two variables are designated by default as Variant data types.

To correctly declare the three variables, you would use the statement:

Dim strFName As String, strLName As String, strMI As String



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Friday, May 27, 2016

Trouble with Save

Also great notification service



You may experience issues when you try to save a Microsoft Excel file if one or more of the following conditions are true:
  • You save an Excel file to a network drive where you have restricted permissions.
  • You save an Excel file to a location that does not have sufficient drive space.
  • The connection to the Excel file has been lost.
  • There is a conflict with an antivirus software program.
  • You save an Excel file that is shared.
  • The 218-character path limitation has been exceeded when you save an Excel file.
  • The Transition Formula Evaluation feature is turned on in Excel.
  • The file was created from a template that contains embedded objects.

How to troubleshoot errors when you save Excel files.
KB 271513.
Receive Free Email Alerts every time Microsoft Publishes NEW Support or Knowledge Base Articles! kbAlertz.com is an e-mail notification system that scans the entire Microsoft Knowledge Base every night, and e-mails you when updates or additions are made to the technologies, you subscribe to.
kbAlertz



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Thursday, May 26, 2016

Delegate sends

Fill the managers Sent file


Here's a trick that your manager may find helpful. Instead of asking if a note was sent, they’ll be able to find it in their own Sent Items folder.

When messages and meeting requests are sent by a delegate, on behalf of a manager, a copy of each item is saved in the delegate's Sent Items folder; this behavior is by design.

To save sent items to the manager's Sent Items folder and not the delegate's Sent Items folder, the delegate must be logged on as the manager. This may not be acceptable because of privacy or security concerns. By design, items that are sent by a delegate cannot appear in someone else's Sent Items folder.

A solution is for the manager to grant permissions to their Sent Items folder to the delegate. The delegate can then move or copy the items from their own Sent Items folder to the manager's Sent Items folder after they open the manager's mailbox as an additional mailbox. To do this:

  1. In the Folder List, right-click the Sent Items folder, and then click Properties.
  2. On the Permissions tab, click Add.
  3. Click to select the delegate from the address list, click Add, and then click OK.
  4. Click to select the newly added name, and then click to select the appropriate permission level. Note that the Non Editing Author option is the minimum permission to set.
  5. Click Apply, and then click OK. Repeat the previous steps for the Outlook Today root level folder.
The delegate can now copy or move items to the manager's Sent Items folder.

Microsoft.com:
Save items to a manager's Sent Items folder



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Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Start Pics

Change your Welcome avatar



Windows allows you to choose the picture that is displayed on the logon screen and the Start Menu.

It is absurdly easy to change the picture.

Just double click the picture that appears on the menu (as opposed to the Classic menu) and follow the prompts to Browse to the location of the graphic you want to show.



Ed Bott:

Change your picture on the Welcome screen and Start menu



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Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Animated Animation

Some samples


The graphic designers at TLC Creative Services have compiled a set of animation demos that can be downloaded. Several quite sophisticated tricks.

The Power Of "Ping":

Create and use professional graphic images that have transparency
Let The Good Times Roll:

Learn how to make a round object literally roll onto the slide
4 Picture Animations:

Learn 4 unique animation techniques that think 'outside the box'
Master Linking Presentation:

Visual tutorial on one way to seamlessly link from one presentation to another
Formatting Best-Practices:

A sampling of the Best Practices employed here at TLC Creative Services for working efficiently and creating the highest level presentations.
Movie Across Slides:

Insert a movie and have it continue to play across multiple slides as the presentation continues. Visual step-by-step tutorial
And more -
TLCCreative.com:
PowerPoint Tutorials



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Monday, May 23, 2016

More Pi, please

Pick a piece


Is your Social Security number just part of Pi? How about your phone number?

"In 1996, Arthur Bebak of Netsurfer Digest jokingly suggested the idea. I put the site online, linked from the now-defunct Useless Web Pages Pages. The original suggestion was to find your birthday in Pi, but things got out of hand. The original pi searcher featured 1.25 million digits. It was upgraded in 1998 to 50 million, in 2001 to 100 million, and in 2005, to 200 million digits to keep up with the times. The Pi Searcher has proven both exceptionally useless (see the comments) and occasionally useful to math & early science classes.

The Pi Searcher lets you search for any string of digits (up to 120 of them) in the first 200 million digits of Pi. You can also show any substring of Pi"


Today's date:
The string 09062010 occurs at position 100,612,215 counting from the first digit after the decimal point.

The string and surrounding digits:

69799506351530413700 09062010 38508990326697425579

Dave Anderson at:
Angio.net:
PiQuery



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Sunday, May 22, 2016

HTML Tutorials

How to HTML



Expression Web/FrontPage can quickly create good looking web sites. If you want more versatility and the ability to edit the underlying HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language ), look at these sites:

HTML Code Tutorial (NCSA )

And others:

FrontPage Solutions



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Saturday, May 21, 2016

Place Marker

If it's broke, fix it


To return to your last edit point, press Shift+F5. For instance, if you have copied and want to return to where you were in order to paste.

Press Shift+F5 again to go to up to the last three edit points, or a fourth time to return to where you started.

In Word 97 you could use this when you first open a document, to go straight back to where you last edited.

There was a change with 2000+ that broke this. The \PrevSel1 bookmark is destroyed when the document is saved.

The Word MVP site has a fix and some other interesting suggestions:

GoBack (Shift+F5) doesn't work in some newly-opened documents

Here are some more bookmarks:
Predefined bookmarks



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Friday, May 20, 2016

Desktop E-mail Quicky

Click to create


If you need to send a note to someone on a regular basis, consider using a desktop shortcut.

Right click the Desktop and choose New>Shortcut.

Here is the command to enter in the "Type the location box".



mailto:doug@example.com,bill@example.com?subject=Centennial 
report&Body=This week's activities

EdBott.com:
Create instant e-mail messages

(I didn't find it necessary to add quotes to contain the spaces in the code.)



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Thursday, May 19, 2016

Dynamic Tabs

Change tab names automatically


Changing the names of tabs is easy, just double click the tab or right click and choose rename.

Allen Wyatt has a small piece of code that will automatically update the tab name based on the value of a cell in the spreadsheet.


Sub myTabName()
ActiveSheet.Name = ActiveSheet.Range("A1")
End Sub

Allen also has some error checking code on his site:

Dynamic Worksheet Tabs


Dick Kusleika suggests another way using a change event:

Naming a sheet based on a cell



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Wednesday, May 18, 2016

Print Folder

Get an inventory


Microsoft left out some useful features that you can add back in.
Here's one that might be handy.

This article describes how to add the Print Directory feature for folders in Microsoft Windows XP, Vista and 7. After you follow the steps that are listed in this article, you can right-click a folder, and then click Print Directory Listing to print a directory listing of the contents of a folder.


Support.microsoft.com:
How to add the Print Directory feature for folders



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Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Startup Looping

Go round the circle


The presentation doesn’t start for a few minutes or, maybe, a half an hour. As the audience wanders into the room, you can entertain them.

Set up a continuous loop show that will run without any intervention. You can show photos of the product or interesting small facts.

Display background information that you won’t have time to cover in your presentation.

Loop - What's the Scoop

Ellen Finkelstein gives you the details at:
Create and Run an Opening Loop

Awesome Backgrounds has a tutorial on how to loop part of your show:
PowerPoint Looping



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Monday, May 16, 2016

In Search of Stupidity

By Merrill R. Chapman


In Search of Stupidity: Over Twenty Years of High Tech Marketing Disasters


About the Author
Rick Chapman has worked for them all; from Ashton-Tate to Ziff-Davis.

Also see:
InSearchofStupidity.com

Book Description
"... how did Microsoft get that monopoly?

According to Rick Chapman, the answer is simpler: Microsoft was the only company on the list that never made a fatal, stupid mistake. Whether this was by dint of superior brainpower or just dumb luck, the biggest mistake Microsoft made was the dancing paperclip. And how bad was that, really? We ridiculed them, shut it off, and went back to using Word, Excel, Outlook, and Internet Explorer every minute of every day. But for every other software company that once had market leadership and saw it go down the drain, you can point to one or two giant blunders that steered the boat into an iceberg.

Micropro fiddled around rewriting the printer architecture instead of upgrading their flagship product, WordStar. Lotus wasted a year and a half shoehorning 123 to run on 640kb machines; by the time they were done Excel was shipping and 640kb machines were a dim memory. Digital Research wildly overcharged for CP/M-86 and lost a chance to be the de-facto standard for PC operating systems. VisiCorp sued themselves out of existence. Ashton-Tate never missed an opportunity to piss off dBase developers, poisoning the fragile ecology that is so vital to a platform vendor's success."


Quote: the following quote was added just for the neat statistic.
"In 1993, Microsoft Excel 5.0 took up about $36.00 worth of hard drive space. In 2000, Microsoft Excel 2000 takes up about $1.03 in hard drive space. All adjusted for inflation."




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Sunday, May 15, 2016

Parameter v Form

You have a choice



There are a couple of ways to limit the data that is displayed in a Query or in a report.
One is a Parameter Query
  1. Create a query to use as the RecordSource of your report.
  2. In query design view, in the Criteria row under your date field, enter:

    Between [StartDate] And [EndDate]
The other is to create a specific form. The unbound form has the following advantages:
  • Flexible: user does not have to limit report to from and to dates.
  • Better interface: allows defaults and other mechanisms for choosing dates.
  • Validation: can verify the date entries.
Allen Browne has supplied a clear explanation along with some typical code.

Also see FontStuff.com:
Using Parameter Queries



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Saturday, May 14, 2016

Link up in Outlook

Let's get hyper


There can be more to creating a link than just typing the address


Any Internet address that you type into an Outlook message or other item becomes a hotlink that other Outlook users can use to get quickly to that resource.

For messages sent to non-Outlook users, the recipients' e-mail software determines whether the links are hot or not. Most e-mail software today supports hotlinks.

Just typing an Internet e-mail address does not create a hotlink that Outlook users can click on; you need to use the fully qualified URL with the mailto: or http:// prefix.


Slipstick.com:
Outlook Links

Outlook folders and items can also be added as hyperlinks in messages and other items.

Support.microsoft.com:
Using Hyperlinks to Access Outlook Folders and Items



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Friday, May 13, 2016

Format Again by Keyboard

Shortcut to copy


This is one of those tips that you probable skimmed past some time ago.
Rather than using the Format Painter, here's a keyboard shortcut:
  1. Select the text with the formatting you want.
  2. Ctrl+Shift+C.
  3. Select the text to be formatted.
  4. Ctrl+Shift+V will paste the new formatting.
It's the Shift key that adds the functionality to our old friends Copy/Paste.



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Thursday, May 12, 2016

Charting Tools

Sample graphs


Ed Ferrero has a number of sample Excel charts and tools.

One he calls a Wind Rose:


How to build a wind rose. Converts compass directions to degrees and radians, and plots a nice-looking chart.


Ferrero Consulting Pty Ltd:
EdFerrero.com/Charting



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Wednesday, May 11, 2016

Find Someone's Email Address

Ether-like white pages


Finding a published landline phone number is pretty easy. Cell phones may be searchable in the future.

Here are directions on how to find an individual's email address.

There are some good hints, but remember that the first suggestion is to "Ask directly"


Finding List.

Email Lookup



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Tuesday, May 10, 2016

Custom Shows

Different Shows, Different Folks


All About Custom Shows


"Custom shows is all about creating a presentation within a presentation. Instead of creating multiple PowerPoint files, nearly identical presentations for different audiences, you can group together and name the slides that differ and then jump to these slides during your presentation. The slides in the show can be re-ordered to appear in a customized sequence.

For example - you might want to give a presentation to two groups that work at two different locations. The slide show includes slides 1 through 15, which are identical for both groups, and two custom shows, each specific to one of the locations. You can show the first 15 slides to both groups and then jump to a custom show named 'location 1' for the first group and to a custom show named 'location 2' for the second group."


Office Tips is an MVP site by Shyam Pillai.

Also:

Presentationsoft.About.com.



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Monday, May 09, 2016

Search Folder Magic

Store searches


Messages are not stored in Search Folders. Search Folders are virtual folders that contain views of all e-mail items matching specific search criteria.

Search Folders display the results of previously defined search queries. The e-mail messages shown remain stored in one or more Outlook folders.

In Mail, in the Navigation Pane, there are three default Search Folders
  • For Follow Up,

    Any e-mail item with a flag appears in the For Follow Up Search Folder.


  • Large Mail,

    E-mail items that are larger than 100 kilobytes (KB) appear in the Large Mail Search Folder.
  • Unread Mail.
  • All unread e-mail items appear in the Unread Mail Search Folder.
Right click the Search folder icon to create a new Search folder.

When you create a Search Folder, you have a number of options to choose from, such as "Mail with attachments" or "Mail from specific people."

You can also create your own custom Search Folders, defining specific search criteria that e-mail messages must meet to be displayed in the Search Folder. Each Search Folder is a saved search that is kept up-to-date, monitoring all of your folders for any item that matches the search criteria of the Search Folder. When you delete a Search Folder, the e-mail messages shown in the Search Folder are not deleted, because those items are never saved, only viewed, in a Search Folder. However, if you open or select one or more e-mail messages shown in a Search Folder and delete the e-mail messages, the messages will be deleted from the Outlook folder where they are stored.


Office.microsoft.com:
 Search Folders





Outlook's search folders retain the results and remain up-to-date by adding new messages to the search folder as they arrive, provided you view the contents at least once every 8 days. If you use the folder less often, Outlook will need to rerun the search. Because Outlook has a limit of 20 search folders, use Advanced Find for less used searches. When you save the Advanced Find search, it's almost as fast and convenient as Search Folders. Advanced Find allows you to save the searches as Office Saved Searches (*.oss). Choose File, Save Search.

Once saved to your hard drive, you can copy them to any folder within Outlook, or drop it on the Outlook bar for easy access. To run the search, just double click on it.


Also:
Slipstick.com



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Sunday, May 08, 2016

Tutorials-Sugestions

Good collection


Ellen Finkelstein works with AutoCad, Flash and PowerPoint.

Here is a collection of her PowerPoint Tips.

Including:

Writing & Organizing
Using Hyperlinks
Expanding One Slide into Two
Organizing Content


Designing & Graphics
Choosing the Most Readable Font
Backgrounds: Using Mid-Range Colors
Designing Chart Titles
Animating Charts
Using Web Page Backgrounds in PowerPoint
Creating a Grid for Perfect Layout


Delivering
Rotation tips
Synchronize animation with music
Text animation techniques
Choose fonts and colors for legibility
Rehearsing with Narration
Making Great Handouts
Create a Slide List




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Saturday, May 07, 2016

Change Keyboard Navigation

It's your choice


You, probably. take for granted how your direction arrow and Enter keys behave in Access.

When you press Enter the focus moves to the next field and the contents of the field are selected. Likewise, when you press the direction arrow keys, the focus moves to the next field in the appropriate direction. You aren't locked into these behaviors.

If you'd like, you can set up the arrow keys to move from one character to the next in the current field, rather than moving focus to the next field.

You can also configure the Enter key to move to the next record when it's pressed or configure it to do nothing at all.

When you do move focus to another field, you have the option to place the insertion point at the beginning or end of the field, rather than selecting the field's entire contents.

To modify these settings, choose Tools>Options from the menu bar and click on the Keyboard tab. Then, simply make the selections you want and click OK.



In 2007 it's under Access Options>Advanced when you click the Logo in the upper left corner.





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Friday, May 06, 2016

Recover Deleted E-Mail

Probably not


If you accidentally delete a piece of e-mail, or a folder, you can recover it in the Deleted items folder. If that folder has been emptied, you might have one more chance.

The following method works only on PSTs, when it works.

Things to remember:

This works under very limited circumstances
  • If the PST has begun compacting, it will likely fail
  • You're better off NOT emptying the deleted folder until you are sure you won't need the messages
  • Don't store messages in the folder unless you are sure the messages are trash
  • If, for some stupid reason you move items to the deleted folder and change your mind after emptying the Deleted Items folder, you may be able to recover the messages under very specific conditions.
Addintools.com
Recover Deleted Messages

Support.microsoft.com
How to recover items that have been hard deleted



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Thursday, May 05, 2016

Digital Signatures

How do I know it's real?


If you find a need to provide some sort of certification that your document has not been tampered with and is the real thing, you might consider a digital signature.

This Microsoft Support article discusses the process.
What is a digital certificate?

What is a digital signature?

What occurs when I use a digital signature?

What Word files can I sign?

How can I obtain a digital signature?
  • Method 1: Obtain a digital certificate from a certification authority
  • Method 2: Create your own digital certificate
    Description of digital signatures and code

    Here's information for Excel.

    Digital Signatures for Excel



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    Wednesday, May 04, 2016

    Scroll Restrictions

    Without Protection


    You can protect a spreadsheet so that data is shielded from inadvertent entries.
    There is another way to set up a scroll area that does not involve protection.
    Open the Control Toolbox (right-click any existing tool bar) and click on the Properties icon.

    In the Scroll Area text box, type the scroll area range, or type the defined Name for the range.
    To cancel the Scroll Area restricted range, clear the Scroll Area text box.



    If you are using Office 2007+, the Property icon is on the Developers tab.



    Multiple areas can be selected using Protection, but only one area is allowed using the Scroll Property.



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    Tuesday, May 03, 2016

    Animated GIFs

    For use on the Web or PowerPoint


    • Harry the cat.com

      3,000+ Royalty Free Copyrighted Animated Gifs for non-commercial use

    • Fg-a.com

      Free Gifs & Animations, also editors, guestbook's, etc.

    • Gifs.net

      1,500 FREE Animated Gifs and many other items (gifs, jpgs, letters, buttons, backgrounds, etc.)

    • Web Developer.com

      There are more than 300 of them from which to choose.
     




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    Monday, May 02, 2016

    Auto Logon

    Sole user


    If you are the only person using the computer, you can have it automatically log you on.

    Go to Start>Run ; type in:

    "control userpasswords2"

    (no quotes)

    Uncheck:

    "Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer"



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    Sunday, May 01, 2016

    Military Clipart

    Thousands of items


    If you find the need for Armed Forces photos and art, here is the place to look.
    Regardless of your opinion about their present mission, the military does present a spectacular visage.


    "06/17/06 - An F/A-18E Super Hornet aircraft sits at the ready as storm clouds pass overhead aboard the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76) in the Philippine Sea June 17, 2006.
    (U.S. Navy photo by Photographer's Mate 2nd Class Aaron Burden)

    All of these files are in the public domain unless otherwise indicated. However, we request you credit the photographer/videographer as indicated or simply "Department of Defense."


    Hood.Army.mil- Clipart



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