Using the Tell Me feature in Microsoft Office

Tamara Bredemus wandered into my office yesterday and said “here’s a tip you might want to use…”, and she was right! You can ask the Tell Me feature in Microsoft Office to show you how to accomplish tasks without having to figure out the exact search terms or find the menu options. Here’s how it works…

Multiple Office Clipboards in Office applications

Having done this tip gig for a number of years now, I don’t often find a tip that blows my mind. It’s even more rare that I find a tip that blows my mind, *and* has apparently been there for years. Today’s tip fits that bill… you can have up to 24 selectable Office Clipboard entries to choose from when you’re working in Outlook, Word, Excel, or PowerPoint. Even better is that they are shared across all those programs!  Here’s how it works…

Adding shadowing to your PowerPoint images

This is a subtle tip (or at least it should be in my opinion). When you add an image into a PowerPoint slide, it normally starts out in a pretty flat state. However, you can use the Shape Effects option to add some depth to the image, and it can make your slides look a lot more professional. Here’s how to do that…

Making your voice heard at Microsoft – UserVoice sites for our relevant software

Hardly a day goes by that we don’t get a question from someone along the lines of “does do , and why doesn’t it?”. Or, there’s the “when will Microsoft change to allow us to do ” question. Bottom line… we don’t know, and we have virtually no sway to influence Microsoft to change their software… but you do!

Running a PowerPoint presentation in Kiosk Mode

Let’s say you’re running a booth at a conference, and you’d like a PowerPoint slide show to run continuously and automatically. Or… perhaps you’re giving a presentation, and you want a “pre-show” slide deck to run continuously while everyone is coming in and finding their seats. You can do this by running a PowerPoint file in Kiosk Mode. Here’s how that works…