Send a Calendar via E-Mail

Being able to view my coworkers’ free/busy time is a great time-saver when I want to schedule a meeting with them. But there are times when I need to schedule a meeting with someone outside of my organization. When that’s the case, I send them a copy of my calendar for the time period requested so they can match their free time with mine.

To send someone your calendar…

1. In a new e-mail message or a reply, click in the body of the message.
2. On the Message tab, Include group, click Attach Item and select Calendar.
3. In the Send a Calendar via E-Mail dialog box:
   1. Specify which calendar to include (if you manage more than one).
   2. Specify the date range. If you don’t see the option you need, select Specify Dates to choose the beginning and end of the date range.
   3. Select the amount of detail to include.
   4. If you only want to include working hours,
      select ☑ Show time within my working hours only.
4. Click OK.

The calendar will be added to your message as a neat and easy-to-read table, making it easy for the recipient to select a time that works for both of you.

Why I have been M.I.A.

UNL (and the entire University of Nebraska system) is changing from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Outlook and Office 365. It's been a major undertaking and we'll be at this for a while. This has drawn my attention away from my blog and I apologize. I'll begin posting again, but you will now notice I'm including Outlook with my tips.

See What's Coming in Windows 8

The Consumer Preview is here. http://win8.ms/dthzvf.

Take Attendance in Excel (and so much more)

In training, I need to take attendance. I can have a list in Excel that looks like the one below. But, by using Conditional Formatting, I can get a better looking list that is easy to filter/sort to what I need. Here’s how I do that.

The first step is to change how I use the “Attended” column. Instead of x’s, I need to enter 1’s and 0’s. Excel is designed around the use of numbers and this will only work if I do the same. In this instance, I use 1’s for those who have attended and 0’s for those who were absent.

1. Select the column with the values to format. In my example, I selected column D.
2. On the Home tab, Styles group, click Conditional Formatting and select the 3 Symbols (Uncircled) under the Indicators options. (It's the green check, yellow explanation point and red X.)

You will see the icon and the value listed in the column together. Now to hide the value.

1. Click Conditional Formatting again and this time select Manage Rules… at the bottom of the gallery to open the dialog box
2. Click the Edit Rule… button.
3. Select the Show Icon Only check box. Click OK to finish the rule, and OK apply.

The bonus is now you can filter/sort on this column. Turn on the Filter (on the Data tab) to view the filter arrows on each column heading. Click the filter for your column, move to Filter by Color and select to view only those who attended or get a list of those who were absent.

EXCEL =SUM(10,10,5)

Excel was released to the world 25 years ago today. Geek out to the history...

Microsoft Word: Document Clean-up

I was recently assisting someone in the clean-up of a rather large document. After setting a style for the document text to have a first line indent, we needed to get rid of the tab character used to originally create this indent. You know I’m all about the shortcuts, so here’s how we did it.

Set a first line indent for the document text

1. While the cursor is in the first paragraph of text, grab the top part of the left margin boundary marker on the ruler bar and move it to the desired location.
2. [You can also click the dialog box launcher of the Paragraph group and change the Indentation, Special: to First line and By: (any amount).] 
3. In the Styles group on the Home tab, right-click the Normal style and select Update Normal to Match Selection.

Remove all tab characters

1. In the Editing group of the Home tab, click Replace.
   If you see the More >> button, click it to view more options. 
2. Be sure your cursor is in the Find what: field. Click the Special button at the bottom and select Tab Character. You will see ^t in the field to represent the tab. 
3. Leave the Replace with: field empty. This will replace all tab characters with nothing, thus deleting them. 
4. Click the Replace All button.

You’re done!

Microsoft Excel: Highlight all cells referenced by a formula

When helping a client, I often look at worksheets I am totally unfamilar with. This makes it hard for me to know what’s going on to easily find the problem. To help me understand how cells and formulas are interrealted, I will highlight all the cells referenced by a formula.

To do this, select a cell with a formula and press Ctrl+[ (open-square-bracket). Excel highlights all the cells referenced by the formula. Use Enter and/or Tab (Shift+Enter and/or Shift+Tab to shift into reverse) to move among the selected cells.

But what if you want to do the reverse, and see the formulas that reference the a cell? You guessed it, select the cell, and press Ctrl+] (close-square-bracket).