Sweet Suite Tips

Get the most out of Microsoft Office and Corel WordPerfect documents with these tips.

George Campbell, special to PCWorld.com

Most of us have a pet office-suite application, one that we use more than all other applications combined perhaps, and one that we think we know pretty well. You may consider yourself a Word wiz or a PowerPoint pro, but are these and the other productivity tools in your office suite making you as productive as you can be? Consider these tips little productivity boosters.

General Tips for Office Suites

Smarten Up Your Clicks and Drags in Microsoft Office: It's easy to click and drag text or objects between Microsoft Office applications (as well as between most other applications). You may not get the results you want when the object is dropped into the target application, however.

Instead of simply left-clicking and dragging the object, right-click and drag it instead. When you do that, a context menu appears that lets you choose the action you want to perform when you drop the object. The most common options are Move Here, Copy Here, and Cancel. If the target application supports hyperlinks, you'll also see Create Hyperlink Here.

Store Your Office 2000 Settings Online: Microsoft offers an easy way for you to transfer your Office 2000 settings from one PC to another. The Office 2000 Save My Settings Wizard helps you store your settings in a secure area of Microsoft's Office Update site; afterward you can download them to the new PC so that all your Office applications are set to work the way you want them to. When you're done, the computer reverts to the way it was set up before you started. This is a convenient way to take your preferred Office settings with you on the road or to restore your settings in the event of a system failure.

Make Precise Selections: If you select a range of cells in a Microsoft Excel worksheet, for example, and part of the area you select isn't visible, you may select too few or too many cells if you simply click and drag with the mouse. This is especially true on notebooks, whose pointing devices are lousy at clicking and dragging.

The Shift-click technique, however, works when you make selections in any Windows application. To select a group of visible and invisible cells, click the upper-left cell of the desired selection, navigate to the bottom-right cell of the area you want to select, and click that bottom-right cell while holding down the Shift key. Doing so will select the entire range. This technique also works when you're creating a formula and need to give it a range of cells to calculate.

To select a group of nonadjacent cells when creating a formula or formatting a group of separated cells, hold down the Ctrl key while you select each cell in turn. If you make an error in selection, Ctrl-click the cell again to deselect it.

Tips for Word and WordPerfect

Create Your Own Word Toolbar Buttons: With the limited selection of buttons for Word's toolbars and the overly long text titles for buttons, you might sometimes wish you could get rid of the text and create your own toolbar buttons. Fortunately, you can customize any button in Word 97 or 2000, but doing so takes time and requires some artistic skill.

First you need to get rid of the toolbar text. Select Tools, Customize. With the Customize dialog box open, right-click the toolbar button you want to alter. Be sure to right-click the button itself on the toolbar, not the name of the button in the Customize dialog box. Since Word requires some text for buttons associated with toolbars, select all the text in the Name box of the pop-up menu and press the spacebar. Word will accept a single space as the required text, so this will minimize the size of the button.

Next, to create a custom button (or to edit an existing button), select Edit Button Image in the same pop-up menu. Choose a color from the Colors palette of the Button Editor dialog box and draw in the Picture window by clicking and dragging or by choosing single pixels. The Preview shows what your new button will look like. You can move what you've drawn by clicking the up, down, left, and right Move arrows. To erase, click the striped Erase box and then click and drag on the picture. When you're satisfied with your creation, click OK and Close in the Customize dialog box.

Unscrambling Word's Menus and Toolbars: If you've fooled around with the Customize dialog box in Word 97 or 2000 and accidentally fouled up your menus and toolbars, or if another user has scrambled your Word interface, there's a simple method for getting back to the default settings. Choose Tools, Customize and then click the Toolbars tab in the Customize dialog box. Select the name of the toolbar or menu you want to fix from the Toolbars list and click Reset. Confirm by clicking OK in the Reset Toolbars dialog box. Repeat for any other menus or toolbars you want to reset and click Close.

Turn Off Word's Automatic Lists: Whenever you start a line with a number in a Word document, the application automatically starts a numbered list, even if that's not what you want it to do. To turn off this automatic-list option in Word 97 and 2000, select Tools, AutoCorrect and click the AutoFormat As You Type tab in the AutoCorrect dialog box. Deselect Automatic bulleted lists and Automatic numbered lists, then click OK. This will shut down those automatic features. Now when you need a bulleted or numbered list, just click the appropriate icon on the Formatting toolbar.

Convert Adobe PDF Files to Word or WordPerfect Documents: Adobe Acrobat's Portable Document Format files are popular, especially on the Internet, but you can't edit or save them in another format with just the free Acrobat Reader (you need the full version of Adobe Acrobat to do so). However, you can extract the text from a PDF file and paste it into either a Word or WordPerfect document.

Open the PDF file in Acrobat Reader, select Edit, Select All (or press Ctrl-A), and then choose Edit, Copy (or press Ctrl-C). Now open a new or existing document in either Word or WordPerfect and select Edit, Paste (or press Ctrl-V) to insert the text at the current cursor location. There's a catch, though: Acrobat Reader's Select All command selects only the text on the current page, so you'll need to repeat the process for each page of the document. And once the text is in the word processor's document, it'll probably look a fright, what with all the strange characters, odd font sizes and styles, and general PDF mayhem. You'll have to do your document formatting manually.

(Legal note: Be sure to observe copyright laws when moving text from PDF files into your own documents.)

Adjust Word 2000 Tables Automatically: How much time have you wasted dragging table cell borders around in Word 2000 in an attempt to make the contents of your rows and columns line up? There's an easier way: Fill in your table without any thought to the dimensions of rows and columns, and once the table is filled out and the text formatted, select Table, AutoFit. Now select the submenu command that best suits your needs: Shrink the table to fit the contents, expand it to the width of the window, give all columns the same width, or make all rows and columns the same size. Your table will snap into shape automatically.

The Single-File Approach to Document Management

Combining several individual files into a single document is easy to do in both Word and WordPerfect, and it can help keep you organized: You keep the contents of your folders from becoming unwieldy, and it becomes far easier to search for related files, such as different drafts of a proposal or a series of e-mails on a specific subject.

The single-file approach is also a good way to archive files on a completed project, and best of all, you're not limited just to the program's own document files. You can use the technique to create one document containing spreadsheets, text files, and any other type of file supported by the program.

Word 97 and 2000: Create a new document, select Insert, File, and navigate in the Insert File dialog box to the first file you want to add. If the file isn't a Word document, select All Files (*.*) in the 'Files of type' drop-down menu. Choose the file and click OK. Word converts spreadsheets to tables, inserts document files or text files at the cursor location, and repositions the cursor at the end of the document. (If a dialog box pops up asking how you want the conversion done, select the appropriate options and click OK again.) Repeat the process for all the files you want to add. When you're done, select File, Save As and give the new document a distinctive file name. Note: While this technique imports graphics already placed in other Word documents, you can't insert separate graphics files this way. To add a graphics file to the document, select Insert, Picture, as you would in any Word document.

WordPerfect 8 and 9: Create a new document, select Insert, File, and navigate in the Insert File dialog box to the first file you want to add. Choose the file and click the Insert button. If a dialog box appears asking how you want the file imported, choose the appropriate options and click OK. Once the file appears in your new document, WordPerfect positions the cursor where it was before the file was inserted. To move the cursor to the end of the document, press Ctrl-End. Repeat the process to insert any other text or graphics files you want to add. (Unlike in Word, in WordPerfect the same menu item performs both text and graphics importing functions.) When you're done inserting files, select File, Save As and give your new document a distinctive name.

Perfect PowerPoint Presentations

Create (Almost) Instant Presentations From Word Documents: It happens all the time: You finish a report only to learn that you have to use it in a presentation... tomorrow. If you're lucky, you formatted the report using Word's heading styles for titles, headings, and subheadings. This allows you to convert the document into a sharp Microsoft PowerPoint presentation in just minutes.

Open the document in Word and select File, Send To, Microsoft PowerPoint. PowerPoint will open, converting all text formatted as Heading1 into individual slides, and making other heading styles indented lists within the slides.

Now select Format, Apply Design (in PowerPoint 97) or Format, Apply Design Template (in PowerPoint 2000). In the resulting dialog box, choose a template design that suits your presentation. Preview designs in the preview window, and click Apply when you find one you like. Doing so formats all slides using the design you chose.

Review each slide and make any necessary changes. To add charts, tables, images, or other graphical objects from the original document, click the text in the slide and drag the text box's sizing handles to make room for the graphic. Go back to the original document in Word, right-click and drag the objects into the slide's text box, and then select Copy Here from the context menu. Resize the graphical objects as needed.

To finish up your instant presentation in PowerPoint, select Slide Show, Slide Transition. In the Slide Transition dialog box, select a transition effect from the list (you can check it in the preview window). Hint: For an eye-catching slide show, try the Random Transition effect to introduce some variety. Select On Mouse Click in the Advance region to gain the ability to control the presentation with the mouse or spacebar and then click Apply to All. Select Slide Show, View Show to preview your work and rehearse your presentation. Save the presentation and you're ready to go.

Create a Self-Running Presentation: Self-running Microsoft PowerPoint 97 or 2000 presentations are used frequently and to great effect at trade shows, showrooms, and retail locations. The presentations require no supervision and repeat automatically. It's a snap to set one up, once you know the drill.

Load your presentation into PowerPoint and select any slide in the Slide Sorter View. Choose Slide Show, Slide Transition and select a transition effect. Now choose Automatically after in the Advance region and enter the number of seconds you want each slide to remain on the screen. Deselect the On Mouse Click box and click Apply to All.

Finally, select Slide Show, Set Up Show, and in the 'Show type' area of the resulting dialog box, select Browsed at a kiosk. Click OK and save the presentation (use File, Save As if you want to change its file name). To run the show, load it into PowerPoint, select Slide Show, View Show, and hide the keyboard and mouse to prevent viewers from interfering with the show.

Get the Most Out of Outlook

Edit Linked URLs in Outlook: When you type a URL in Microsoft Outlook, either in a mail message or elsewhere, it becomes an active hyperlink. That's great, unless you discover a typing error while proofreading the text and need to edit the URL. If you click on the link, Outlook merely takes you there. You could click just to the right or left of the link and use the cursor keys to move the insertion point, but that's inefficient. Instead, hold down Ctrl and then left-click where you want to edit.

Power Keystrokes in Outlook 2000: Whether you're at your desk or on the road, using Microsoft Outlook means lots of mousing. The keyboard shortcuts in the following chart are sure to speed up your work, especially when you're using a notebook PC's pointing device. These keyboard shortcuts are some of the most useful in Outlook. To find more, search for "Keyboard shortcuts" in Help. (Note: Only some of these work in Outlook Express.)

Power Keystrokes in Outlook (chart)

To do this	Press this	Works with
Display Address Book	Ctrl-Shift-B	Outlook 2000, Outlook Express
Check for new mail	Ctrl-M (or F5)	Outlook 2000, Outlook Express
Reply to a mail message	Ctrl-R	Outlook 2000, Outlook Express
Reply to All	Ctrl-Shift-R	Outlook 2000, Outlook Express
Use Advanced Find	Ctrl-Shift-F	Outlook 2000, Outlook Express
Create a new Office document	Ctrl-Shift-H	Outlook 2000
Create an Appointment	Ctrl-Shift-A	Outlook 2000
Create a new Contact	Ctrl-Shift-C	Outlook 2000
Create a new Journal entry	Ctrl-Shift-J	Outlook 2000
Create a new Message	Ctrl-Shift-M	Outlook 2000
Create a new Note	Ctrl-Shift-N	Outlook 2000
Create a new Task	Ctrl-Shift-K	Outlook 2000

Power Keystrokes in Outlook

Excel and FrontPage 2000 Work Well Together

Move Excel 2000 Data to FrontPage 2000 Web Pages: If you use FrontPage 2000 to create your Web pages or Web site, it's easy to use all or part of an Excel 2000 worksheet in your site, and FrontPage gives you a lot of flexibility to decide how you want the data to appear.

Start by opening both the Excel worksheet and the page where you want the data to appear in FrontPage. Select the desired cells in Excel and then press Ctrl-C to copy them to the clipboard.

Switch to the FrontPage document and position the insertion point where you want the data to appear. To insert the data as a FrontPage table, just press Ctrl-V or select Edit, Paste. The new table will be unformatted, so format the text, right-click in the table, and select Table Properties to format borders and other details.

To insert the Excel data as regular text, select Edit, Paste Special, choose an option in the Convert Text dialog box to suit your needs, and click OK. For maximum flexibility, try the Normal paragraphs with line breaks option. When you're done, you can format the text using normal FrontPage tools.

Link Within Excel 2000 Worksheets: When working with large spreadsheets in Excel 2000, you can make life easier for yourself (or for others who might be reading the sheet) by providing Web-like links that let them jump quickly from place to place inside the spreadsheet just by clicking a cell.

Start by scrolling to the part of the worksheet you want to appear when the link is clicked, making sure the desired region of the sheet is fully visible on screen. Select the cell at the bottom left corner of the region, click Insert, Name, Define, and enter an appropriate name for this cell in the 'Names in workbook' section of the Define Name dialog box. When finished, click Add and then OK. Spaces are not allowed in cell names, so if you need to separate two words, use the underscore or hyphen character instead.

Now scroll back up to the location where you want the link to appear. Select an empty cell for the link and then press Ctrl-K or select Insert, Hyperlink. Click the button labeled Place in this document on the left side of the Insert Hyperlink dialog box. In the 'Select a Place in this Document' window, expand the Defined Names list and select the name you chose for the destination cell. Type descriptive text for your link in the Text to Display field. If you want, you can also create screen-tip text that appears when the reader's pointer hovers over the link cell; click the ScreenTip button to add that text. When you're all done, click OK. Click OK again to insert the link. It's also handy to create links that let the reader jump back to the place in the sheet where the first link originated.

Easy Metatags in FrontPage 2000: Getting your Web site noticed by the major search engines can be tough. One of the best ways is to use metatags to add a description and keywords to entry pages on your site. Search engines such as Google.com and Lycos.com use spiders that scan Web pages looking for metatags. If your pages include metatags, you'll soon find your site higher on their lists. Microsoft, in its usual inimitable way, calls metatags "Meta Variables," which makes it difficult for FrontPage 2000 users to learn how to create metatags. But it's actually easier than you may think.

Open an entry page, such as your index.htm or default.htm page, in FrontPage 2000 (click File, Open Web or choose the page from your list of recently accessed pages). Right-click anywhere on the page and select Page Properties from the context menu. In the Page Properties dialog box, click the Custom tab and then click Add in the 'User variables' section.

In the User Meta Variable dialog box, type description in the Name field and then type a short description of your page in the Value field. The description should include the main keywords that users might type in a search engine to find the page, but don't use any punctuation. Click OK when you're done.

Click Add in the User Variables section of the Page Properties dialog box again, and this time type Keywords in the Name field of the System Meta Variable dialog box. In the Value field, type a list of keywords and phrases that define your page, separating the words and phrases with commas. Type these in lowercase letters. Enter keywords and phrases your potential visitors might use when searching for sites like yours. When you're done, click OK twice.

Save the page and repeat the process for all entry pages on your site. Once you publish your changes, the search-engine spiders will be able to find your descriptions and keyword lists.

Speed Up FrontPage 2000: As you work on your Web site in Microsoft FrontPage 2000, you may notice that the program slows down over time, especially when you perform actions that affect the entire Web, such as searching for text in all pages. This is caused by FrontPage failing to delete the many temporary files it creates as you open individual pages. Literally thousands of these temporary files may be created as time goes by, eventually slowing the program's operation.

To fix this, exit FrontPage, open Windows Explorer, and navigate to the C:\Windows\Temp\FrontPageTempDir folder. Select all files beginning with 'wpe' and delete them. When you restart FrontPage, you'll notice a dramatic speedup in its operation. Repeat this process on a regular basis, or whenever you notice FrontPage slowing down.

Contributing Editor George Campbell is PCWorld.com's office suite guru.