Get Toasted

It's a recommended practice

"Let's face facts. The whole low-carb craze is playing itself out. The USDA recommends that every day we eat 6 to 11 servings of bread, cereal, rice, pasta, and other foods containing grains, especially whole grains. Bread is not the enemy of a healthy body, if you select the right bread.

The American Dietetic Association recommends a minimum of three servings of whole grains per day and goes so far as to recommend whole-wheat toast with peanut butter as a quick and healthy breakfast option."

366 Ways To Enjoy Toast
By Mr Breakfast

Also:
Roller Toaster



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Send Pictures

Email Photos

If you have a photo on your computer, from a digital camera or something that has been scanned to produce a JPG, GIF, or PNG file.

Here are two choices for doing that:

1. Send the photo as an attachment to an email. It'll show up as an icon at the top of the email for the receiver to click and open in their picture viewer. This is the most common option.
   
2. Embed the photo into an HTML formatted message so it appears in the text of the message just like a photo in a newspaper article. This looks nicer for people who want to read the message and not necessarily work with the photo file. But there are compatibility issues to keep in mind.

Whichever way you choose, you need to keep an eye on the overall size of the message. With higher resolution cameras available it's easy to go over the recipient's limit for incoming messages.

There is a little more to it. Here is a link to a great newsletter that comes in handy again and again:
 Office-Watch.com



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Spell Check On

Spell check off

You can run Spelling and Grammar checking in Word by clicking on the ABC icon on the Standard toolbar (it's on the Review ribbon in Word 2007), going to Tools> Spelling and Grammar, or just hitting the F7 key.

As you go through the document, you may find areas that you would like to correct. You don't have to close the Spell checker, just click into the document, make the changes and click Resume in the Spell checker dialog box.

You can also flip focus to the document with Ctrl+Tab.
Then go back to checking with Resume.



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Psst - Cheap Gas

Drive to Save

"GasBuddy.com is the portal site to more than 170 web sites that help consumers find cheap gas prices. All web sites are operated by the non-profit organization known as GasBuddy Organization Inc.

Since gasoline prices change frequently and may vary by as much as 20 percent within only a few blocks it is important to be able locate the service station with the lowest priced fuel. GasBuddy Organization web sites allow consumers to both share information about low priced fuel with others as well as target the lowest priced stations to save at the pumps!"

Also:
Gas Price Watch.com

Autos.MSN.com



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More Free Templates

Three dozen more

Sometimes it takes someone else's example of a PowerPoint show to stir your own imagination.

Graphicsland is offering a collection of 36 templates for PowerPoint. The templates are saved as .pot files & are compatible with all versions of PowerPoint. The collection is free of charge & is available now for downloading.
To see a printable preview & to go to the download area:

Free Templates



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History is Something to Play with

Games for kids (and you)

History can be boring when the only reward is a scribbled "Acceptable" on a test paper.

But what if part of the game is to build a trebuchet to fling the teacher?

"Welcome to the SchoolHistory.co.uk downloadable resources centre. This has been updated to allow quick, easy access to our resources kindly contributed by other teachers. There are now over 1,400 pages of resources available."

Interactive History Games



Also see Build a Trebuchet in your Backyard



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Download All Outlook Pictures

The Good and the Evil

By default, Outlook 2003 blocks all HTML content that is referenced by an external location. Many junk e-mail senders put an image URL in the e-mail message. The image URL notifies the junk e-mail senders' Web server when you read or preview the e-mail message. This type of image URL is also known as a "Web beacon." An example of a Web beacon image URL is:

<img src="http://myserver/cgi-bin/program?e=your-e-mail-address-here" />

If you preview or open an e-mail message with this type of an image reference, this action may make you a target to receive more junk e-mail messages.

To prevent this type of Web beacon, where an HTML e-mail message contains references such as links and banners to an external URL, the Outlook 2003 HTML viewer does not automatically render the external content. Instead, when you view the e-mail message, areas in the e-mail message that should have a picture appear as a red X placeholder.

Also, you receive the following InfoBar message that indicates that the HTML content has been blocked:

Click here to download pictures.
To help protect your privacy, Outlook prevented automatic download
of some pictures in this message. 

With all that warning, if you still want to do it:

1. Open Outlook
   
2. Click Tools menu
   
3. Select Options
   
4. Click the Security tab
   
5. Click Change Automatic Download Settings button
   
6. Select when you want pictures downloaded
   
7. Click OK OK

Download pictures automatically in Outlook

In Outlook 2007 go to Tools>Trust Center Automatic Download

 



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Control Access Text Alignment

Distribute Text Evenly Within Controls

When you add form or report controls, the Text Align property defaults to General setting: characters align to the left while numbers and dates align to the right.

When you set up controls to act as headings or titles, you can achieve interesting visual results by changing the Text Align setting to Distribute (This is called Justify in Word).

This setting distributes characters within the control evenly to span its entire width.

If you apply this setting to a textbox control, the alignment switches to Left alignment when you click inside the control to allow for easy data entry.

General (Default)

The text aligns to the left; numbers and dates align to the right.

Left

The text, numbers, and dates align to the left.

Center

The text, numbers, and dates are centered.

Right

The text, numbers, and dates align to the right.

Distribute

The text, numbers, and dates are evenly distributed.

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Type with One Hand

Does 85 WPM impress you?

The common short cuts are: Ctrl+X for Cut, Ctrl+C for Copy, and Ctrl+V for Paste.

These are optimized for use on the left side of the keyboard.

There's another set of shortcuts that use keys on the right-hand side the keyboard:

Cut: Shift + Delete
Copy: Ctrl + Insert
Paste: Shift + Insert

Also see:
One Hand Typing

"Computer Keyboard Shortcuts for one hand typists. Resources for vocational, occupational, rehabilitation therapists, and their clients, who have lost full, or partial use of one hand, with a special emphasis on learning to type with a standard keyboard."

"This video clip is of me, Lilly Walters. Note how I use my less able hand to do the SHIFT key. I am typing on a normal keyboard. I really do up to 85 words per minute - with enough caffeine and sleep. The keyboard shown here is a NORMAL keyboard you will find in any office, school or home. No alternative keyboard layouts. Just what all of my peers use. By the way, I type faster than most of my peers! All because I learned to type with one hand."

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Office Bling Bling

For your real desktop

C.A.Daniels & Company offers some decadent, fun, office bric-a-brac.


Hippo stapler


Hare Brush and Mirror


Hippo Clock/Paperweight


Trout Razor



Also:
Too much Bling

"A couple of months ago I bought a 17" LCD monitor (PolyView V17E). However, when I first powered it on, the thing that struck me was just how bright the blue power LED was! This power LED is just next to the power switch, immediately below the screen itself. The LED was bright enough to be very distracting, to the extent where it was just too bright to be able to look at the bottom part of the monitor without needing sunglasses.

Luckily, the LED was shining through a small plastic diffuser, mounted in the case, which had a flat surface on it. A couple of coats with a permanent marker dulled the brightness sufficiently to allow me to use the monitor without being blinded."

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Color News

A multidiscipline subject

Here is a study about how color effects a reader's choice of concentration.

It was intended for newspaper publishers, but the same knowledge can be used in Web design, PowerPoint, or any other reporting application. Word and Excel will also benefit.

Color, Contrast, and Dimension in News Design

Color Project

The Poynter Institute is a school for journalists, future journalists, and teachers of journalists.
Poynter.org



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When Will You Die

Let the government help you find out

Stadium High school in Tacoma, WA, recently celebrated 100 years.



There have been 38,797 graduates since 1906 and 24,176 could still be alive.

This report presents period life tables for the United States based on age-specific death rates in 2003.

Presented are complete life tables by age, race, and sex. In 2003, the overall expectation of life at birth was 77.5 years, representing an increase of 0.2 years from life expectancy in 2002.

Between 2002 and 2003, life expectancy increased for males and females and for both the white and black populations.

Life expectancy increased by 0.3 years (from 77.7 to 78.0) for the white population and by 0.4 years (from 72.3 to 72.7) for the black population.

The greatest increase was experienced by black females with an increase of 0.5 years (from 75.6 to 76.1). Life expectancy increased by 0.2 years for black males (from 68.8 to 69.0), white males (from 75.1 to 75.3), and for white females (from 80.3 to 80.5).

Life expectancy at birth



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Link to Office Documents from Access

Click to Word, PowerPoint, Excel

You can create hyperlinks in Access that jump to other Office documents. The process of specifying the document and the bookmark you want to jump to can be cumbersome.

There's an easy way to specify where in a Word, Excel or PowerPoint document that a hyperlink should jump to, without even having to open the Insert Hyperlink dialog box.

1. Open the target document and the Access table that contains a hyperlink field.
   
   
2. Select some of the text at the beginning where you want the hyperlink to jump.
   
   
3. Hold down the Ctrl key, drag the selection to the Access hyperlink field you want to set up.
   
   
4. When you release the mouse button, the previously selected text is used as the hyperlink text and the link becomes active.

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Switch Controls

Startup flags

Microsoft supplies switches or flags that can be used following a Command-Line start of an application
After the Executable allow a space and the enter the Switch.

The Microsoft Outlook Help file contains an entry that lists command-line switches, which you can use to start Outlook in a specific mode or with a specific form.
This article lists additional command-line switches that are not included in the Outlook Help file.

Search for "Switches".

Here's a good one:

/sniff

Starts Outlook, forces a detection of new meeting requests in the Inbox, and then adds them to the calendar

HowTo-Outlook



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Cheap Certification

Bargain deal

Becoming certified can be expensive and time consuming.
Here's a way to be certified as an HTML Developer, or ASP Developer.

• Study and train for your certificates at no cost
  
• Study and train for your certificates when it is convenient
  
• Study and train for your certificates from your own computer
  
• Complete your studies in a few weeks
  
• Take your exams over the Internet

W3 Schools

Even if you don't take the test, the tutorials are free!



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Movie Mechanics

How to make it work

Here are four ways to do it:

Method 1:

Insert a movie from a file

To insert a movie into a PowerPoint presentation, use the Movie from File option on the Insert menu. If the presentation is located anywhere in the file path at which the movie file is located, PowerPoint stores the movie file as a relative path in the presentation. If the presentation is not located at the path at which the movie file is stored, PowerPoint stores the movie file as an absolute path in the presentation

Method 2:

Insert a movie file as an object

When you insert a movie as an object, PowerPoint is not involved in the process. The process occurs in Microsoft Windows Media Player. Windows Media Player has a set of APIs that PowerPoint 2003 uses primarily for movie playback. Windows Media Player keeps its own set of codecs. And, it uses the Windows registry file types to determine which format and codec to use. Windows Media Player looks for a codec signature in the file and then matches the codec that it finds. If Windows Media Player cannot find an appropriate codec, it searches the Web for a valid codec.

Method 3:

Use the Wmp.ppa add-in

By default, when you use the Wmp.ppa add-in to insert a movie file into a PowerPoint presentation, PowerPoint stores the movie file as an absolute path in the presentation. If the movie file is not in the absolute path, the movie does not play. The add-in also contains an option that you can use to copy the movie file into the same folder as the presentation. When you use this option, PowerPoint stores the movie file as a relative path in the presentation. When you play the movie file in the presentation, PowerPoint looks for the presentation in the folder that is defined when the presentation is created. If the movie file is not in that folder, the movie will not play.

We do not recommend that you use this add-in if you are using PowerPoint 2003. PowerPoint 2003 uses Windows Media Player to play most movies.

Method 4:

Insert the movie as a package

You can insert a movie file as a package in a PowerPoint presentation. To do this, follow these steps:

1. On the Insert menu, click Object.
2. Click Create new, and then click Package under Object type.

When you insert a movie as a package in a PowerPoint presentation, the movie file is kept inside a package that is embedded in the presentation. If you move the presentation to another location, the package is also moved to this location.

You'll find all the details at:

Support.microsoft.com
Insert a Movie in PowerPoint



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Wipe it clean

Works, but dangerous

"Cipher.exe is a command-line tool. Microsoft has developed an improved version of the Cipher.exe tool that provides the ability to permanently overwrite (or "wipe") all of the deleted data on a hard disk.
This feature improves security by ensuring that even an attacker who gained complete physical control of a Windows computer would be unable to recover previously-deleted data."

Support.microsoft.com:
Cipher.exe Security Tool

Using cipher.exe

File Shredder

Permanently delete data from your hard drive



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No Read Receipt

Shut them down

Email that includes a Read Receipt request can be a bother. You could click no when Outlook asks to send the reply, or you can set up a more permanent solution.

1. Go to Tools>Options.
   
   
2. In the Options dialog box, select the Preferences tab.
   
   
3. Click the E-Mail Options button.
   
   
4. In the E-Mail Options dialog box, click the Tracking Options button.
   
   
5. Choose the option Never send a response.
   
   
6. Click OK.

(In 2007+ click the Office button and go to Options>Mail)





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Go Back 23 Hours

Really save useful time

"Therefore, let us keep the fall ritual as it is. However, one Sunday each Spring, let us set our clocks not one hour forward, but TWENTY-THREE HOURS BACKWARD.

Think of all the advantages. We will not lose an hour of sleep; we will gain (almost) a day of rest. It will be Saturday all over again. You will never again miss Confession, or an airplane, or the Redskins game.

Naturally, if this were the whole plan, our calendars would fall behind one day in each year. However, the second part of the Revised DST Plan deals with this. Every four years, instead of adding a day, let us SUBTRACT THREE DAYS.

Furthermore, let these be Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, which according to recent polls are the least popular days.

Stop Daylight Saving Time

---

Daylight Saving Time

About Daylight Saving Time

Wikipedia Daylight Saving Time

Daylight Savings Google News

As a result of the U.S. passing the Energy Policy Act of 2005, Daylight Saving Time in the U.S. changed starting in 2007. DST will begin on the second Sunday of March and end the first Sunday of November.



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Journal

or not

When you are poking around in Outlook, you may click on the Journal icon.
A dialog box will appear asking if you want to turn Journal on:



Resist the temptation. Every Word/Excel/PowerPoint and Access file will be placed on a time line.

Every e-mail sent to a Contact will be indexed. This will slow down your machine. It is a massive overkill.

If you are involved in a project, you can use Journal to track specific documents.

Here is a Microsoft Knowledge Base article on how to Disable Journaling for All Users.

Here are some Journal Issues.

If you still want to use Journal, here are some references from Slipstick.com.



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Change Code to Comments

Fast solution

When you're testing procedures, you can temporarily convert a block of VBA code to comments that will be ignored during a trial run.

Doing so manually by inserting an apostrophe before each line of code can be a real chore.

To simplify this task,

1. Open any module in the Visual Basic Editor (VBE)
   
2. Choose View >Toolbars>Edit from the menu bar to display the Edit toolbar.
   
3. Select the lines of code that you want to turn into comments.
   
4. Click the Comment Block button on the Edit toolbar (it's the sixth button in from the right end of the toolbar).

Each line of the selected code is now preceded with an apostrophe. To convert the comments back to executable code, select the appropriate lines and click the Uncomment Block button, which is immediately to the right of the Comment Block button.



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Paste is special

Versatile functions

If the data you brought into Excel comes through as text rather than numbers, Paste Special can fix it.

1. Go to an empty cell.
   
2. Copy it
   
3. Select the "corrupted" data.
   
4. Go to Edit>Paste Special and choose Add.

This works better than multiplying by one. Empty cells remain empty


What's So Special About "Paste Special"?

Excel Paste Special function

Pasting Using Paste Special



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Emperor of Scent, The

By Chandler Burr

ISBN 0-375-50797-3
Random House 2002



About the Author
Has contributed to The Atlantic, New York Times Magazine, and the Washington
Post among others.

Book Description
A Story of Perfume, Obsession, and the Last Mystery of the Senses. Luca Turin proposes a new theory of smell. Vision is perceived by light vibrations; Sound as well. Turin proposes that the same is true of Smell.
The science gets a little deep, but the human story is compelling.
Whether he is right or not has not been universally decided. The fights between branches of science are like civet fights.

Quote
One scientist, Richard Doty, says

"You may have noticed that if you breath through your nose, you tend to breathe through only one side of it for a while, then for a while through the other. . . When you smell information on the right side, you send it to the left side of the brain and vice versa, and you find a statistically significant increase in verbal scores when you breathe through the left side of your nose."

October, 2004
"The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine this year goes to two Americans who have puzzled out the sense of smell. Richard Axel and Linda Buck will split $1.4 million for discovering how chemicals in the air trigger thousands of recognizably different odors."

National Public Radio
Also:

Olfaction


"Doty's comment is incorrect. Actually, it might be from Chandler Burr's book, that was unclear.
The olfactory receptor sites do not switch recognition to the opposite brain hemisphere. What is breathed in through the right nostril goes directly to the right side of the brain, the left to the left."

Anonymous



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Paper Art

Fold it all up

Caterpillar on a leaf


Here are a couple of sites that provide templates and instruction about Origami; paper folding:

Animated lesson

OrigamiHeaven.com
David Mitchell is internationally known for his ground-breaking origami designs and publications. He is a particular specialist in the field of modular origami but is also a prolific inventor of one-piece paperfolds, novelties, flexagons, puzzles, visual paradoxes and magical effects.

This site sells paper and provides templates:
Paper and More



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Hiding Duplicates in Query Results

Once is enough

It's easy to hide duplicate entries when you run a query, even though Access doesn't go out of its way to call attention to this ability.

• Set up a query as usual using the design grid.
  
  
• Choose View>Properties from the menu bar to display the Query Properties dialog box.
  
  
• Change the Unique Values property to Yes.

Access displays unique records based on each field returned by the query.



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Thumbnail Views

Little pages

The Thumbnail view can be used to see the layout of a page or to jump from one page to another.

With Word 2003 and 2007, Thumbnail views are available in Normal, Print Layout, Outline, and Reading Layout views. Go to View>Thumbnails to display the Thumbnail pane to the left of your document. In 2007+ go to View>Navigation tab>Show.

Thumbnail versions of your document will appear in a new pane to the left of your current document. Click on a thumbnail page and Word 2003/7 will automatically jump to the selected page.





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Hep Me

Help topic locations

This from Ron de Bruin:

"Using the Help Context IDs

To make use of this file(s), locate the help topic of interest and make a note of its context ID.

Then, write a VBA subroutine that displays the topic.

You can attach the subroutine to a button, or provide some other way for the user to execute the sub.

For example, if you'd like to display the help topic that show the Date/Time Functions List,
you'll find that the context ID for that particular topic is 5199659.

The following VBA procedure displays that help topic."

Sub ShowHelp()
Application.Help "XLMAIN" & Val(Application.Version) & ".CHM" ,5199659
End Sub

Help Context IDs for Excel



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PPT Secrets no More

Tutorials and downloads

Here's an exceptional collection of animation techniques as well as sample file you can use to emulate their brilliance.

• The Power Of "Ping"
  
  
• Let The Good Times Roll
  
  
• 4 Picture Animations
  
  
• Master Linking Presentation
  
  
• Formatting Best-Practices
  
  
• Stars Wars Style Credits
  
  
• Animation Sample
  
  
• Scrolling Credits
  
  
• Movie Across Slides
  
  
• "PPTLive" Animation Tutorial
  
  
• Motion Paths

TLC Creative Services:

PPT Resources



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Export Formatted Sheets

Access to Excel

Access provides an easy way to export data to Excel through the Office Links feature.

To use this feature, simply select a relevant database object and choose Tools>Office Links> Analyze It With Excel.

The worksheet Excel creates will include some minor formatting that are applied to the field headings in row 1.
Some formatting in your original Access database affects the worksheet cell formatting as well.
For example, if you're exporting from a datasheet, gridline and font attributes are carried over to Excel.
If you use the Office Links feature to export data behind a form, text box shading and font properties are applied.

The final result in Excel may not exactly match your Access data; however, you'll probably find that less work is required to get your Excel version of the data into an easily readable state.

In Office 2007-10+ it's External Data>Excel





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Wahat's in your Head(er)

See it all

There are ways to see an email header.

See:
Email Headers
Outlook-Tips.net shows a way to do it:

. . . you can view the header and source together in the options dialog, if you edit a registry key. This works on mail downloaded from Internet mail transports only, not Exchange server mailboxes. However, if you access the mailbox using an Internet transport, you'll see the full source.
Open the registry editor and navigate to:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\Options\Mail

Right click on the right pane and choose new DWORD:

Parameter: SaveAllMIMENotJustHeaders
Value: 1

Viewing Headers



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Calculation Tool in Word

Select and Add

In Excel an instant answer is displayed on the Status bar, when a series of numbers is selected.

If you would like to calculate lists or columns of numbers in Word, look at ToolsCalculate. It will display the answer AND let you paste the result in your document.

ToolsCalculate can be added to a menu or tool bar. Pre-2007, it is available through Tools>Customize.

1. On the Commands tab, select All Commands in the Category list, then scroll down the Commands list until you find ToolsCalculate.
   
   
2. Drag it to the menu bar and hover the mouse over "Tools" until the Tools menu drops down.
   
   
3. Drop Tools Calculate somewhere on the menu or drop it on a toolbar.
   
   
4. Close the Customize box.

For directions see:
MVPS.org FAQ

1. Type the numbers you want to calculate, along with the appropriate mathematical operators.
   
   Word can calculate numbers in a line, in a column or row in a table, or in a column separated from other columns with tabs. Word can also calculate numbers interspersed throughout the text in one or more paragraphs if you include a space on either side of each number.
   
   
2. Select the numbers and operators.
   
   
3. From the Tools menu, choose Calculate.
   
   Word calculates the result and displays it for a few seconds in the status bar. The result is stored on the Clipboard.
   
   
4. To insert the result into your document, position the insertion point and choose Paste from the Edit menu (CTRL+V) or click the Paste button on the Toolbar.

This is left over from the halcyon days of Word 2.0 when Woody Leonard and Ed Bott were but children.


In 2007-10+,

1. Click the Office logo
   
2. Go to Word Options on the bottom of the box.
   
3. Go to Customize.
   
4. Select All Commands and find Calculate.

The Calculate icon will now appear on the Quick Access toolbar.





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