Tips, Tricks & Turning Tables

An educational blog for getting the most out of your office tools and expanding your skillset.  Tips and tricks posted weekly.

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Straight as an Arrow

AKA: How to get your lines perfectly horizontal and perfectly vertical. 

If you use a lot of connectors and lines in PowerPoint, you know the pain of trying to make them perfectly  horizontal and perfectly vertical. SOmetimes they’re off by just that liiiiiittle bit and getting them straight (and not snapping to other smart shapes) is enough to drive you up the wall...let alone doing more than one at a time. 

So, here’s a veeeery simple trick. 

Select your lines, navigate to the Format tab and go to the height box which will appear blank. Enter “0″ and hit enter. If you’re unable to enter “0″, enter “0.1″ first and then update again to 0. 

And voila, perfectly straight lines. 

The same trick can be applied to lines to make them all vertical. Simply enter the width formatting box and enter “0″. 

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The handy trick for delivering presentations

Ever had a presentation up and wanted to just quickly darken the screen or flip to a blank slide? Maybe you wanted to hide the slide while you answer a question or discuss a topic, or maybe you want to use the whiteboard you’re projecting the slides onto?

Instead of inserting blank slides or trying to turn off the projector...next time just hit “b” or “w” while in full screen mode (quotation marks not required).

Pressing b while in full screen mode will momentarily switch your screen to black. 

Pressing w while in full screen mode will switch it to white. 

How do you switch back? Just press b or w again to return to your presentation.  

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Setting Expectations

Put simply, setting expectations is a vital part of any relationship whether it is working relationship or personal. 

Setting expectations has two parts:

Expressing what you expect from others

Expressing what others can expect from you. 

Why bother setting expectations? Because it means that both of you know what is going to happen and you have a clear idea of “success”. Expectations and assumptions are part of every relationship, every conversation. But if we don’t clearly state them, two people can walk away from a conversation with two very different sets of takeaways. This can result in tasks that aren’t completed, duplication of effort, or work that is done too late / too early / in isolation. 

Expectation setting is a crucial part of being a good communicator. Luckily for you, the following is a quick and simple guide to what goes into a clear expectation and how you can learn to express it. 

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Obama’s Female Staffers Made Sure Their Voices Were Heard With a Genius Strategy

Shine theory in action.

“ Female staffers adopted a meeting strategy they called “amplification”: When a woman made a key point, other women would repeat it, giving credit to its author. This forced the men in the room to recognize the contribution — and denied them the chance to claim the idea as their own.”

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The 1 Thing You Don’t Know About Microsoft Search

First, you’ll need to open the Find and Replace window. TO do this, press CTRL+F or CTRL+H. 

Once the window has opened, select More in the bottom right. Here’s where things are about to get interesting. 

Click Format in the bottom left, a small drop down menu will appear. 

And here’s a whole world of option to choose from in order to help find and identify issues in large documents. Below are the three that I think are the most useful

Font (Font Color, Font Size, Font Formatting, strikethrough, superscript, subscript, etc.)

Paragraph

Language

I’ve elaborated on each option (and how to use them) below. Keep reading to find out how to make this shortcut work for you. 

Font

Especially when consolidating inputs from multiple people, sources, etc. it can be difficult to tell if the entire document is in the right fonrt, especially if you’re using a unique title font. So, instead of CTRL+A and just changing it all to the same font, try looking for culprits. Same goes for identifying font size, font color, etc. 

Paragraph

Especially when copying text from websites or or documents or even just consolidating two of your own documents, the spacing, indentation, etc can be all over the place. If you know some likely culprits and want to change them without risking it by CTRL+A and editing the entire document at once, search for them and spot fix!

Language

I often work with people who have their language set to English (United States) or French (Canada) which makes doing a proper spell check difficult. Search for the culprits!

There’s lots more but feel free to explore on your own. What’s your favorite search feature?

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How to Change Bullet Size in PowerPoint

Have you ever looked at a bullet point and discovered that it doesn’t match the others in the same list?

1. Select Text, navigate to Bullets and Numbering, and choose Bullets and Numbering from the bottom of the drop down

2. As you can see, this bullet is set to 150%, and red. We’re going to change these settings to black and 100% so it aligns to the others

3. Once you’ve reset the values, click OK.

4. And you’re done! Your bullets are now all the same size and color.

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Password Protection

Sometimes a client's content is highly confidential and highly sensitive. This is usually the case and there are many ways to protect information from getting out (e.g., double checking your recipient list, SharePoint, keeping a careful eye on all USB drives). But what happens when you're managing multiple parties with lots of documents and something gets sent to the wrong person? You can ask them to ignore the email, delete the attachment, etc. But you can't prevent access to the document itself.

Or can you?

In short, you can. 

You can require passwords for file sharing sites and USBs, and you can require passwords on documents. You can protect a document (or remove protections) at any time throughout a document's lifecycle.

I've broken it down in greater detail (and with screenshots) below.

And a handy gif just in case you want to see the whole process stitched together.

Password protecting a document

1. In the top menu, click File. 

2. Select Info at the top of the side menu that displays and click "Protect [document type]".

3. Select "Encrypt with password" from the dropdown.

4. Enter a password and click OK.

5. Reenter Password and Click OK. 

Congratulations, your document is now password protected. How can you tell?

Well, it’ll tell you. 

Removing a Password

1. Click File, choose Info from the left hand menu. 

2. Click “Protect Presentation” and choose “Encrype with Password” from the drop down menu

3. Delete password entered from the Password field and click OK. 

Voila! The password has been removed!

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The Format Painter Quick Trick

If you’re not familiar with the Format Painter, then I feel a little sad for you. It’s a great way to ensure that you’re being consistent in your formatting and minimizes the time it take to get consistent.

Basic Use

To use the tool, select a cell or object and select the Format Painter. You’ll find it under the Home Tab in the Clipboard section. Now, the next cell or shape you select will adopt the same formatting (e.g., color, border, text size, font, text color).  

But that’s not the shocking part.

The shocking part is that clicking the button once allows you to use the feature just once. To reformat a another object, you would need to once again select the first object, click Format Painter and then click on your new unformatted object.

BUT, there’s another way.

Better Use

If you hover over the Format Painter button, you’ll find a handy set of instruction and then you’ll see right at the end “FYI: To apply the formatting in multiple places, double-click Format Painter”.

That’s right, you can use this puppy on more than one other object!

 So, select your first object or cell. Double click the Format Painter (it should stay a dark green color once selected), and then select the other cells or shapes to format. This tool is available in Excel, Word, PowerPoint and Outlook to name just the obvious ones. 

Don’t forget to tell your friends!

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Email Reply Shortcuts

Are you aware you can reply to emails via Meetings, IM or Call? No? Then you’re in luck. 

Replying with Meeting

This is one of my favorite shortcuts. It allows you to take an existing email thread and reply with a meeting invitation to all people included on the email chain. Retains the subject line, attendees, and email chain. 

Replying with IM

This once is obviously reliant on an integration with a messaging service in Outlook. Trying to respond without access to Skype for Business may make this an awkward experience for you. 

This is a good quick one for either instant messaging a group or instant messaging an individual in the scenario where the email chain just isn’t cutting it to get the answer you need or give the response you want. 

Reply with Call

Once again, reliant on an integration with a messaging service in Outlook. 

This is just handy when you have the contact information and instead of digging around for it, you just want to give them a quick call. Personally, my least favorite of the three but it’s there for those who prefer a quick call to a less personable interaction.

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Social Media Automation: Simultaneous Posting

I have a love / hate relationship with social media. I love to share, I love to see what’s happening, but I despise that I have to do roughly the same thing across multiple platforms. 

For example, I like to post cool links on Twitter. I also like to post cool links on LinkedIn. 90% of the time, I want to post the same link on both. But, by the time I whittle my tweet down to 120 characters I have lost the patience to craft a punchy introduction on LinkedIn. 

First world problems, I know. 

But, there’s a solution. A really easy one. Here’s how to automate your social media / automatically post to your social media accounts. 

Enter IFTTT. If you’re familiar with computer science or logic statements, then you’re famliar with the phrase “If [this is true] then [do that]”. 

IFTTT = If This Then That. 

Using IFTTT, you can automate your social media feeds.

Llike so:

If [I post a new tweet] then [ copy the tweet and link to LinkedIn]. 

If [I post a new photo on Facebook] then [add it to my Tumblr].

If [it is my friend’s birthday] then [automatically post on their wall]. 

The possibilities are (almost) endless. 

So, go set up an account (I’ll wait, don’t worry). 

Now, associate your chosen social media platforms. 

Now, let’s create a recipe.

1. You can create it directly from the main page

2. Or create a new one under My Recipes

3. Choose your trigger channel

I’m going to choose Twitter. You can search by name or just scroll through a list of available options.

4. Choose your trigger

The default options avaialble based on that trigger channel.

5. Choose your action channel

I’m going to choose LinkedIn here.

6. Choose your action

I’m going to choose to share a link on my LinkedIn profile.

7. Choose what is included in your automatic update

You can choose specific components of your tweet to include in the LinkedIn update.

8. Complete recipe

And that’s it! Your recipe is created and active. You can choose to turn off the recipe or modify it at any time. Go ahead, take some of the stress out of your day to day. 

What recipes do you plan to create?

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Sorting Lists in Microft Word

Did you know you can sort lists in Microsoft Word? No? Perfect, this is the tutorial for you. It’s quit, it’s simple, and it’ll save you some time (hopefully).

Believe me, this will shock and amaze you at how easy it is.

Go to the Home Tab and click Sort

Make sure you have all your text selected first. You’ll find the Sort button in the Paragraph section. 

Choose What to Sort

Sort paragraphs, headings,basic fields? 

Choose How to Sort

Are you sorting text alphabeticall? Number or dates numerically? Do you prefer ascending or descending?

Done

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How to Edit Multiple Excel Sheets

Ever wanted to make the same change to multiple sheets in an Excel document? Lets say you want to create multiple version of the same table or you want to update formatting, or you want to putt the same forumla at the top of every sheet. 

It can be done! (and really easily)

But with great power, comes great responsibility. So let me show you how it’s done. 

(Bonus GIF just in case you needed another reason to read this majestic post)

Step 1: Validate that you can make identical changes on each sheet you will select

Each change will take place in identical cells on each sheet and replace any existing data. 

Step 2: Select all sheets you wish to change

Select the first sheet, hold the Shift key, and select the last sheet if you want to select multiple. 

Alternatively, hold the CTRL key and select each sheet to edit. 

Your sheets should now look like the image below. 

Step 3: Make your changes

Types of changes you can make:

Formatting like fill, font, border

Values

Formula

Step 4: Verify your changes

You’ll want to make sure that 

Here’s a GIF showing how easy it is. 

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The best way to format emails

How many emails do you send a day? One hundred? Two? Yeah, me too. But sometimes you want to take one to the next level whether it’s an invitation, notification or update to a large group. You’ve got a great header, some pretty graphics, but it’s looking a little lackluster. 

Don’t sweat, I got you. 

We’re going to use a table. 

Collect your materials. We’re going to use an event invitation.

This is an example of a sad event invitation. Don’t be this person. 

This is a kick butt event invitation. Who knows, someone may even show up!

How to create the sexy event invitation seen above? 3 steps. 

Step 1: Choose size and create your table

Here I like to use a single column with several rows as it allows me to break the content up however if you want to include a second column (perhaps to include photos for a Newsletter), go right ahead.

Step 2: Insert text / graphics 

Paste away! I like to make my table the same width as the header image and adjust any other graphics so they fit as well. The table also means that text will auto wrap instead of adjusting to the width of the window, which can lok ugly. 

Step 3: Hide borders 

(or don’t if you like to live life dangerously)

Here, I choose no borders which means that the lines disappear but the table keeps doing its thing. 

And there you have it. Sexy event invitation. 

Go on, tell your friends. 

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My greatest strength as a consultant is to be ignorant and ask a few questions.

Peter Drucker

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Using Digital Signatures

Ever needed to sign a digital document? I, personally, do not have the time to print out, sign, scan, save and send back a piece of paper. There are faster and more efficient ways of adding your signature. 

I’ll be using dear Franny Mayweather (fake name) as my example.

First, you receive your document. it could be a PDF, it could be PowerPoint, Excel or Word. But let’s say it looks something like the image below. 

You don’t want to go through the rigamarol of printing, signing, scanning, etc. so instead you decide to insert a digital signature. Perfect. Let’s show you how to digitally sign a document. 

Step 1: Open OneNote.

Step 2: Sign your name.

This is obviously easiest if you have access to a touch screen, stylus, iPad, or are particularly dexterous with a mouse. Let’s assume one of the above. 

Step 3: Select the whole signature and copy. Paste into PowerPoint.

Step 4: Select, and right click. Choose Save as Picture. 

Step 5: Save as PNG (optional).

Why PNG? It stays transparent and you don’t have to worry about some ugly block that you can’t paste on top of other images.

Step 6: Open document that requires signature. Insert PNG image. 

You can do this by copying and pasting from PowerPoint, inserting an image, or clicking and dragging into the document. 

Make sure that under Layout Options, you have chosen “In Front of Text”.

Step 7: Save document and send.

That’s it! You’re done. You can now save this document and send to the right people. 

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Excel Tutorial: In Cell Edits

Did you know you can make edits directly inside cells? No? Then what are we waiting for? Here’s a quick trick that will save you time. 

This is also the last of our “getting started in Excel” series. Next up? A more moderate tutorial for those of you starting to load in your data and getting crazy!

1. Click File then choose “Options”

2. Choose “Advanced” from the left menu

3. Select “Allow editing directly in cells”

4. Click OK

Now, to edit directly in cells just double click on the cell and its contents

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Static Cell Selection in Excel

In many of my formulas, I like to pivot on a single cell and use it against other values. I do this for concatenation, calculation and even just labeling. And if you’ve ever wanted to use a single cell in a formula, it’s pretty simple. 

Let’s take a look at the example above leveraging what we’ve learned in our other line break tutorial and concatenation tutorial. 

In the tutorial we can see 7 elements: 2 labels (blue and purple), 2 values (red and green), 2 strings of a text and a line break. We’re going to focus on the labels.

The labels are found in B1 and C1 but in order to make these selections static and not apply reletavily as the formula moves down the page, we insert ‘$’ before the row and column values. 

Yes, it’s that simple. 

B1 becomes $B$1 and C1 becomes C$1$. 

And now, as the formula moves, the value cells will change relative to the cell the formula is found in (i.e., A2 references B2 and C2, A3 references B3 and C3) but the references to B1 and C1 will remain the same.