Google Shows

Presentation alternative

Google Docs now has a presentation element.

You can create documents, spreadsheets and presentations online.

They're a bit restricted and simplex at this point, but you can also import files and convert them for sharing or publication.

Google Docs

Review of Google presentation



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And then there was Word

Remember the past

As one writer put it:

"Before the development of personal computers and word processing software, documents were produced on typewriters."

Chris Pratley, a Microsoft Program Manager, started with the Excel team in 1994 and then worked with the Word team. He has written about the early days:
Let's talk about Word


Also see:
WordStar Resource Site
(Includes a WordStar emulator for Word)


And:
In Search of Stupidity



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How to Start a Blog

Step-by-step tutorials

"If you’re like most people, you may not know where to get started. Starting a blog can be intimidating if you don’t have the required technological skills. Not to mention that the number of options available for starting a blog can be just plain confusing. The good news is that the free step-by-step guide on this site removes any confusion from the process, and requires only the most basic computer skills. So whether you’re 8 or 88, you can have your blog ready to go in less than 20 minutes."

Theblogstarter.com

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Horrific Stories

What did your Grandparents do?

"Unsuspecting visitors in crime-infested Port Townsend, victims of shanghaiing, are sold to the highest bidder
Bunco Kelly, Spider Johnson and fourteen dead men on the deck of the Flying Price.
Urban East Hicks surrounded by Indians in 1886.
Earthquakes, riots, robberies, murders and a host of other terrifying events which created panic in the streets of communities throughout the Pacific Northwest.

Selected from the Clippings File of the Tacoma Public Library's Northwest Room /Special Collections, these true-life tales chillingly capture the dark side of our state's history."

Unsettling Events!



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IE Spells

Missing feature found

For years, I've filled out forms on the net and then had to copy and paste into Word to check doubtful spelling.

Now there is a tool that should have been included in the first place.

"ieSpell is a free Internet Explorer browser extension that spell checks text input boxes on a webpage. It should come in particularly handy for users who do a lot of web-based text entry (e.g. web mails, forums, blogs, diaries).

Even if your web application already includes spell checking functionality, you might still want to install this utility because it is definitely much faster than a server-side solution. Plus you get to store and use your personal word list across all your applications, instead of maintaining separate ones on each application."

ieSpell



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Access Tutorials

Learning Sites

Microsoft has created a web site for Office. Part of the site is devoted to tutorials touching on:

Word, Access, Publisher , Outlook, PowerPoint, InfoPath , Excel, Visio, OneNote, Expression, and Project.

The Access lessons are located here:

2013 Access Tutorials

Here's another site:

FunctionX Access tutorials




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Put IE Back on the Desktop

Regedit ahead

1. Click Start, Run.
   
   
2. Type "regedit.exe" (Without quotes).
   
   
3. Navigate to the following registry key
   

   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\HideDesktopIcons\NewStartPanel

   
   
4. In the right hand pane, double-click {871C5380-42A0-1069-A2EA-08002B30309D} key.
   
   
5. Enter dword value as 0 to enable the Internet Explorer icon on the Desktop.

Internet Explorer Desktop icon missing



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Wrist Time

Ding dong bling

Face it, you're never going to wear these watches. Some of them are just concepts, others are just too.

They are fun to look at.

Wrist Fashion is a Weblog that publishes the latest news, trends and products from the Wristwatch Industry in bite size morsels.

Brand: Venexx
Movement: Swiss Ronda Calibre 1063.1.90 quartz movement
Perfume: Approximately 60 sprays
Water Resistant: 30 metres

Perfume Watch

WristFashion.com



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Flag Access Controls

Tag Property

The TAG property allows you to associate up to 2,084 characters of text with any form, report, section, or control. This is especially helpful when you want to single out a specific subset of controls.

For instance, say that you want to hide certain controls on a form when a user clicks a button.
You can flag which controls will be hidden by entering the word "Hide" (or any other consistent word) in each control's Tag property. Then, attach the following code to the command button's Click event procedure:

Dim ctl As Control
For Each ctl In Me.Controls
If ctl.Tag = "Hide" Then
ctl.Visible = False
End If
Next

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Convert Anything

Four pecks to a bushel

Convert

"Convert is an easy to use unit conversion program that will convert the most popular units of distance, temperature, volume, time, speed, mass, power, density, pressure, energy and many others, including the ability to create custom conversions!"

OnlineConversion.com does more conversions online.
(A Hogshead is 63 Gallons)


Also:
Convert between bits/bytes/kilobits/kilobytes/megabits/megabytes/gigabits/gigabytes



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Vidler Video Storage

Player and free video storage

"You can upload many videos at once, and in various formats, too.(mov .avi .wmv .mpeg).

You also won't have to worry about file size - just keep any video you upload under 500 Mb.

Timed Tags

Moments on the timeline of your video are taggable, so you can classify and share instances in time. Timed tags are searchable, too - a great way to explore the content on viddler.com

Timed Comments

Your position in the timeline of a video determines where your comment will be posted to, which brings the discussion to a whole new level!

Use Your Webcam

Got a web camera? You can use Viddler to record footage directly from the camera to the website. There's no third-party software

"Viddler is very different from other video-delivery based websites, because we stream our videos instead of having the user download it.

That means you get to watch videos without having to wait for the entire video to load.

This is especially useful when you want to view the last few minutes of a very long video.

It's a secure system and prevents other people from watching the video (in ways they're not supposed to) or ripping the video off the site.

Video that you host with Viddler cannot be stolen, or used in any fashion, unless you set your sharing options to allow it."

Vidler.com



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Great Collection

Examples and ideas

The experts show you how they have developed some pretty spectacular animations and designs using PowerPoint out of the box.

"PowerPoint Heaven is a website providing PowerPoint showcase, artworks, PowerPoint games, animation templates, PowerPoint animations and tutorials on animating Microsoft PowerPoint."

PPTHeaven.mvps.org



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Google Search Tips

Drill down to the answer

20 search tips to be used with Google.

Here are a few:

• Either/or. Google normally searches for pages that contain all the words you type in the search box, but if you want pages that have one term or another (or both), use the OR operator -- or use the "" symbol (pipe symbol) to save you a keystroke.
  
  
  
• Quotes. If you want to search for an exact phrase, use quotes.
  
  
  
• Not. If you don't want a term or phrase, use the "-" symbol.
  
  
  
• Similar terms. Use the "~" symbol to return similar terms.

• Definitions. Use the "define:" operator to get a quick definition.

• Vertical search. Instead of searching for a term across all pages on the web, search within a specialized field. Google has a number of specific searches, allowing you to search within blogs, news, books, and much more

20 Google Tips



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Auto Number

Don't be smart

There should not be any "intelligence" in an AutoNumber field. It is meant as an index field and not anything else.

If the need should arise to reset the field, if your table does NOT contain any records, simply compacting the database again will set the Autonumber field back to 1.

Another way would be to delete the AutoNumber field and re-insert it in the table.

Here's a long way to start at a specific number.

1. Create your table with an AutoNumber type field, but don't enter any records.
   
2. Create another table with only a single Long Integer Number type field.
   
3. This field must have same name as the AutoNumber field in the first table.
   
4. Enter one record in the second table that is a number one less than the required start of the AutoNumber for the first table.
   
5. Now create an append query to append the record in the second table to the first table and run the query.

You can now delete the second table and begin entering your data into the first table.
Also: Access AutoNumber Reset

"This is some sample code that shows how to programmatically reset all AutoNumber fields in an Access Database to a correct value (whether it be 0 or the max value + 1). In addition, it contains code for Compacting and Repairing an MS Access Database. This is perfect for people who are working with a complicated Access Database and have experienced AutoNumber bugs!

And: Creating an AutoNumber field from code  



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Countdown Slide

3-2-1

It can be useful to let your audience know when the show is going to begin. Here's a description about how to do it:

Create Countdown Slide Without VBA
(There is also a sample PowerPoint file with all the hard work done for you!)


The MVPS.org site also has a way to do it with VBA:
Simulate a countdown timer using Sleep API

Indezine.com has a tutorial:
Countdown Timer

Tushar-Mehta.com offers a free download:
PowerPoint Timer add-in
The add-in provides a variety of capabilities missing from PowerPoint itself. During a slideshow, it can:

• Show the current time
  
• Show the elapsed time of the presentation
  
• Count down the time remaining for the presentation.
  
• Optionally, it includes the ability to terminate the presentation at the end of a separately configurable grace period!

Also a tutorial on auto scheduling a PowerPoint show



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Create Hyperlinks in Access Tables

Simply

When you populate a hyperlink field in a table, you probably cut and paste the URL from your browser into the Insert Hyperlink dialog box.
There's an even easier way to do this using Internet Explorer.

1. First, open the Access table you're updating and Internet Explorer.
   
   
2. Select the hyperlink field you want to create the link in and choose Insert >Hyperlink from the menu bar.
   
   
3. Press Alt+Tab or use your mouse to select the browser window.
   
   
4. Browse to the page you want to link to and then switch back to Access.

You'll find that the URL is automatically inserted in the dialog box.



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Where'da go?

Sent mail vanishes

Trying to find out why an email message does not arrive at its intended location can be difficult.

This tip is from Office-Watch.com. Look into their weekly newsletter.

Here are some suggestions:

Where could that message be?



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5 Tips

A few useful ideas

"If you use Word in your daily work, a few simple tips will help you save an hour of your time per week, maybe more. Best of all, these tips are so easy to use that you can put them to work immediately upon finishing this article. Yes, they are that easy to use!"

• Let Word type names and other words and phrases for you
  
  
• Let Word insert your favorite text or graphics
  
  
• Let Word type information about your documents
  
  
• Let Word alphabetize lists for you
  
  
• Change the way Word works

5 Time-Saving Tips



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Data Validation

Control input

Mark Rowlinson provides a discussion by Kid Van Ouytsel that does an excellent job explaining data validation. He has also constructs a sample workbook that you can download and play with.

Data Validation

"Data validation is a tool that can help you control the input/changes someone can make in a spreadsheet. It can help you or your users to make choices, guide them to make relevant input/changes, or restrict input to a specific type of data or structure. It can help you or your users to save time and to keep formulae working properly."

Also:

Contextures:
Excel -- Data Validation

Ozgrid:
Data Validation and Conditional Formatting

Microsoft Office Online:
Overview and samples of data validation



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Keyboard Shortcuts

Extra pilcrows?

Here is a list of keyboard shortcuts I once or never knew.

The one that struck me was:

Ctrl Alt K — Remove extraneous paragraph marks.

This removes doubled pilcrows (¶¶).

Word-Tips

• Alt F6 — Swap open documents
  
• Alt Shift D — Insert date
  
• Alt Shift Up/Down — Move table rows or paragraphs up or down
  
• Shift F5 — Go back to last position
  
• Shift F3 — Change case
  
• Ctrl Space — Remove direct formatting
  
• Ctrl Q — Remove paragraph formatting
  
• Ctrl Shift N — Apply Normal style
  
• Ctrl Y — Repeat action
  
• Ctrl ] — increase font size by 1pt
  
• Ctrl [ — decrease font size by 1pt
  
• Ctrl Shift > — Increase font to next size up
  
• Ctrl Shift < — Decrease font to next size down

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Split Access Database

Separate tables

You don't need to keep all of your data in one file. You can split your MDB file into data and application files.

"Even if all your data is in Access itself, consider using linked tables. Store all the data tables in one MDB file - the data file - and the remaining objects (queries, forms, reports, macros, and modules) in a second MDB - the application file.
In multi-user situations, each user receives a local copy of the application file, linked to the tables in the single remote data file."

• Maintenance: To update the program, just replace the application file.
  Since the data is in a separate file, no data is overwritten.
  
  
• Network Traffic: Loading the entire application (forms, controls, code, etc)across the network increases traffic making your interface slower.
  

In some cases you will link additional files:

• Static look-up data such as postal codes might be kept in its own file.
  
• Linked temporary tables might avoid the need to compact the application file.
  

From Allen Brown's tips for Access users
Access has a tool to do the splitting for you, go to: Tools>Database Utilities Database Splitter
In Access 2007+:

1. On the Database Tools tab, in the Move Data group, click Access Database.
   
2. In the Database Splitter dialog box, click Split Database.
   
3. Type a name for the back-end database, and then click Split.

Also:
Knowledgebase:
How to manually split a Microsoft Access database

MSDN:
About sharing an Access database on a network  



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Backgrounds for you

A large number of designer slides

PP'ers are always on the lookout for colorful, useful backgrounds.

Camtasia Studio, a maker of video capture software has a lot of PowerPoint backgrounds that are yours for the downloading.

"Based on the popularity of our MenuMaker background templates, we've created background templates for use with Microsoft PowerPoint. These free templates are designed for use with PowerPoint presentations recorded with TechSmith's Camtasia Studio. However, they are standard templates and can be used for any PowerPoint presentation."

Camtasia Backqrounds



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Open to Contacts

Your choice

To create a shortcut for your Outlook Contacts folder on the desktop

1. Right click on an open area of the desktop
   
   
2. Select New / Shortcut
   
   
3. Enter in the path to your outlook program followed by outlook:contacts. Note the quotes are necessary:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\OUTLOOK.EXE outlook:contacts

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Runtime for Access

Free Download !

Access is not included in the basic Office 2007+ suites. If you want to distribute your database projects to others in the office, you'll need this download.

The Access 2003 Developer Extensions cost about $500. The 2007-10 downloads are free!

"Microsoft Office Access 2007 provides a rich platform for developing database management solutions with easy-to-use customization tools.

If no end-user customization is required (including report modifications), you can choose to distribute those Access 2007 solutions so that they run without requiring a full installation of Access 2007.

To do so, you must package and distribute your application with the Access Runtime.

The Access Runtime is similar to previous runtimes in that all design-related UI is either removed or disabled.

You do not need to buy any special SKU in order to redistribute the Access Runtime. You can freely redistribute it or point users to this download."

Access 2007 Runtime

Access 2010 Runtime

Access 2013 Runtime



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Move a Column

No Cut, No Paste

With a little practice you can quickly move columns or rows.

1. Select the entire column or row you want to move
   The move will effect whatever is selected; cells, or columns, or rows
   
   
2. Move your mouse pointer to the edge of the selection until it changes from a normal pointer cross to an arrow (four headed arrow in 2007+).
   (Put the pointer on the selected cells, not the Row or Column indicators.)
   
   
3. Hold down the shift key and click the left mouse button and drag the column/row to the new position.
   
   
4. Release the mouse button before releasing the shift key

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DOCTYPE

Customize

At the top of an HTML file source, you may see some code that indicates the version of HTML that is going to be used.

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN">

The O'Reilly Net.com has a discussion:
DOCTYPE Explained.

"There are three variants on HTML 4.01, for example:

• HTML 4.01 Strict, which describes the structural portions of HTML 4.01 and does not provide any frame-related markup.
  
• HTML 4.01 Transitional, which includes the presentational markup such as >B< and >FONT<, but does not include frame-related markup.
  
• HTML 4.01 Frameset, which is the same as HTML 4.01 Transitional except that it adds a description of frame-related markup."

Also:
Fix Your Site With the Right DOCTYPE!
Choosing a DOCTYPE  
The global structure of an HTML document  



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Fuzzy Prewview

Fix the resolution

If the preview image is not clear, this Knowledgebase article may help:

Because of changes in how the preview image is saved in Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007, in Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003, and in Microsoft PowerPoint 2002, the preview image File Open dialog box is more difficult to read than in PowerPoint 2000 and earlier versions.

In PowerPoint 2007

1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
   
   
2. Locate and then click the following key in the registry:
   
   

   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\PowerPoint\Options

   
   
3. On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWORD value.
   
   
4. Type Preview Picture Precision, and then press ENTER.
   
   
5. On the Edit menu, click Modify.
   
   
6. Click Decimal in the Base area.
   
   
7. Type 320, and then click OK.
   
   
8. Exit Registry Editor.

Support.Microsoft.com:
Preview image is fuzzy



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Attention Grabber

For Print Screen or lost spectacles

Those Apple type people have a gadget called "Mouseposé". You might have seen it in videos demonstrating applications. It darkens the screen and puts a spotlight on the point of interest.

Those of us who use real machines have a similar add-in.



It's not from Boinx.
It's the magnifier or "Dragnifier" from Ed Halley.



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Indent Code

Realign a bunch

Indenting blocks of VBA code, such as statements within loops or If...Then statements, makes reading a procedure much easier.

You probably indent a code statement using the [Tab] key, and outdent by using [Shift][Tab].

However, you may not be aware that the [Tab] and [Shift][Tab] techniques also work when multiple code lines are selected.

The Visual Basic Editor also provides Indent and Outdent buttons on the Edit toolbar that allow you to easily reposition blocks of code.



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Convert List Numbers to Text

Pesky lists

Applying the list numbering style to paragraphs is easy. The problem is that if the style is removed, the numbers disappear as well.

The same thing is true with bullets.

The following macro will change the list numbers and LISTNUM fields to text and the bullets to a symbol font.

Sub NoAutoNum()
ActiveDocument.ConvertNumbersToText
End Sub

You can now do such things as individually format numbers and bullets.
The action is not reversible, so either use Undo right away, or use it on a copy of the original.

ConvertNumbersToText



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