Learning new Microsoft Office tricks in "just a minute"
I recently had a question from someone asking if there was a way to take a column of names in Excel that were in all upper-case and convert them to proper case. In Word, it’s just a menu option, but that feature doesn’t exist in Excel. However, you can get there with an Excel formula. Here’s how…
I’m used to sorting columns in Excel, as that’s one of the main things you do. But I never really thought about sorting content in a Word document, as it (in my mind) is just unformatted “stuff.” But, you *can* sort a list of content in Word, and it’s pretty slick. Here’s how…
This probably doesn’t bother anyone else like it bothers me… If I have a message in my Inbox that’s unread and I delete it (or if I have a rule that routes certain messages directly to the Deleted Items folder), it still shows as unread in my Deleted Items folder. And since I have my folders set to show the number of unread messages, I always have a number next to the Deleted Items folder that’s completely meaningless to me… and it annoys me. Yes, I’m old, so get off my lawn…
This tip shows you how to have any message (read or unread) that’s moved to the Deleted Items folder to be marked as read…
If you’re old like me, words like “policeman” and “fireman” just want to roll off your tongue, as that’s what you grew up with. But today’s communication often requires a more gender-inclusive word selection like “police officer” or “fire fighter.” Microsoft Word has an option that will allow you to do grammar checks for that very scenario. Here’s how to activate that…
If you have a spreadsheet that has a lot of column filters set, it can be laborious (and probably error-prone) to try and delete all the filters one at a time. But by using the CTRL – SHIFT – L keyboard shortcut, you can turn them all off at once. Here’s an example…
It’s a nightmare of mine… someone pings me and says that hundreds of files are missing from a document library, and they’re not in the recycle bin either. If you’re lucky, you figure out who deleted the files, and often they didn’t realize they did that. Now in SharePoint Online and OneDrive, Microsoft will notify you via email if you’ve done a “mass deletion” of data. Here’s what happens…
I was working with Sandra the other day on a project that involved an Excel spreadsheet and about 2400 lines of data. I had to check to see if I had any duplicate values in one of the columns. Since I’m not the sharpest tool in the drawer when it comes to Excel, I asked her if she could help me somehow find potential duplicates instead of me scanning through the list manually. I was duly embarrassed when she showed me just how simple that is… 🙂
OK… I haven’t lost my mind here… It is very possible that if you have a large spreadsheet that has very little data in it, you might have a large number of blank rows in one of your worksheets. Each of those “blank” cells in the “blank” rows takes up space, and it can add up rather quickly when it comes to the overall size of your spreadsheet… let me show you how to fix that.
Today’s tip comes courtesy of Francis Hayes – The Excel Addict, where he explains how to simulate a “paper tape” function in Excel. For you young’uns who are confused by this concept… in the olden days, people used to add numbers on an adding machine, which often produced a paper tape as the numbers were entered. You would get a total, plus a visual list of numbers that got you to that total. You could then confirm that you entered everything correctly. Some habits die hard however, and here’s how you can do the same type of “paper tape” function in Excel.
