Category Archives: MS Office
Outlook 2013: Set Email to Download Images Automatically
Outlook prevents the automatic download of images in email communications as a security measure to prevent potential spam. It allows images from sites in your Trusted Zone to be automatically displayed, but blocks the rest. You can override this feature by doing the following:
Add Calculator to Excel’s Quick Access Toolbar
I often run into situations that I need to use the Windows Calculator while working in Excel. This is mainly due to needing to run some figures while not wanting to modify the existing spreadsheet. It is very handy to add the Calculator to the Excel Quick Access Toolbar so that it is a simple click away instead of using the normal method of opening the program.
To add Calculator to the Quick Access Toolbar, simply follow these steps:
- Open Excel and go to the Quick Access Toolbar at the top of the window.
- Click the downward point arrow to the right of the toolbar and select More Commands.
- From the dropdown menu, select Commands Not in the Ribbon.
- Select Calculator from the list and click the Add button. You will see it appear in the list on the right side.
- Click OK.
- The Calculator icon will now appear in your Quick Access Toolbar. Now you can easily get to it when you need it.
Excel: Copy or Move Worksheets from one Workbook to Another
If you use Microsoft Excel, then you’ve run into the situation where the information in a worksheet is needed in another workbook. You could go through and copy and paste the cells from one worksheet to another, but if you are working with a large spreadsheet, this is way too painful. Excel makes it easy to copy (and even easier to move) worksheets from one workbook to another.
Copying a worksheet to another workbook:
- Open both the workbook that has the desired worksheet and the one that you want the worksheet copied to. (in my example, we will use Book3 and Book4).
- Go to the workbook with the desired worksheet. Right-click on the tab of the target worksheet (in this case, test sheet).
- Select Move or Copy from the context menu.
- When the Move or Copy window appears, use the To book dropdown to select the workbook that you want to copy the worksheet to. Then select the existing sheet that you want the copy to be placed in front of. Finally, check the Create a copy checkbox.
- Click OK. You will now have the same worksheet in both workbooks.
Moving a worksheet to another workbook:
You can use the above steps and simply exclude checking the Create a copy checkbox, but there is a simpler and quicker way to do this:
- Have both workbooks open. Do not maximize either one, you want to be able to see both of them.
- Left click and drag the tab of the target worksheet to the desired workbook.
- When you release the mouse button, the worksheet will be in the targeted workbook and no longer in the original spreadsheet.
How to Concatenate Text in a Spreadsheet
If you have text in two or more columns that you wish to join (concatenate) in another column, this can be easily done by creating a formula that utilizes the ampersand (&). I have found this to work in Microsoft Excel, OpenOffice’s Calc, and iWork’s Numbers.
For our example, we will use a scenario where a list of users’ first and last names are given to you and your boss wants them to be in a single column instead of two.
You could take the time to copy and paste the names together in a column, but there is a much easier way. We can go to C2 and input the formula: =A2&” “&B2 we would then get the concatenated string of Bob Smith in the new cell.
We could use =B2&”, “&A2 and produce Smith, Bob in the new cell.
Copy the formula to the rest of the cells in the column to concatenate the desired cells.
How to Customize the Outlook Today Page with Cut-and-Paste Code (and a little HTML)
The Outlook Today page is used as a summary of your email, appointments, and tasks. While you could make any web page your Outlook Today page (which would defeat the purpose) or customize the existing pages that came with Outlook (which can be rather painful), you could just create your own summary page. A simple page will require some basic HTML to create the layout, while an advanced page will require additional coding experience. Here’s some good starting info to create a basic page.
To begin with, you need to decide which elements of Outlook you wish to include on your new summary page. Do you want your Inbox, Calendar, Tasks, Contacts, and/or Notes all on the same page? Along with this, you need a rough idea of how much available room you have to display the page. This will be decided by what resolution you are running, whether you run the application maximized or not, whether you use the Navigation Bar and To-Do Bar (Outlook 2007/2010) and if you want to utilize scrolling or have everything easily viewable. This works for Outlook 2003, 2007 and 2010.
Outlook 2010: Map a Contact’s Address using Bing Maps or Google Maps
By default, Outlook 2010 allows you to easily map a contact’s address using Bing Maps. If you are a fan of Google Maps, a simple change to the registry will allow you to use it instead.