Office 2013 Quick Start Guides

Get to know the new Office 2013 with these downloadable and FREE Quick Start Guides. These printable guides contain useful tips, shortcuts, and screenshots to help you find your way around. If you are a Windows 8 user, you can open and view these guides in the Windows 8 Reader app without any additional steps.

Where was I? or RELOCATE!

Yes, there are two names for today's post. Because I'm old school, I used the old terminology, "relocate." If you spent any time on an electric typewriter, you may remember a fabulous button called RELOCATE. It would take you back to the last three places you were on your document. It worked great for when found a mistake and needed to fix it and then return to where you left off. These electric typewriters were the beginning of today's word processors.
This brings us to today's Word tip: Shift+F5.
If you are a person who likes to "jump around" your document as you type, you'll love this. Say you're typing a long thought. You stop and read what you have just finished typing. You notice an error. You click on the error and make the change and now need to return to where you left off to continue your thought. Pretty easy to do if your error is on the same page, but if it is on different pages, you might want a shortcut. After fixing your error, you don't need to scroll all the back to where you were to continue. Instead, just press Shift+F5. Word will remember will remember the last five places you've been for easy navigation as you type.

EXPOSED! Excel's secret formula

There is a function that is not listed in the Insert Function dialog box. Microsoft does acknowledge the formula if you search their support page where you will find some nice examples for it. It's a simple function to calculate the days, months or years between two dates.

=DATEDIF(Date1,Date2,Interval)

• Date1 is the first date (start date). Must be <= Date2 or a #NUM! error will be returned.
• Date2 is the second date (end date). 
• Interval is the unit of time for the result. Must be in the proper unit (see table) and enclosed in “quotes."

Unit	Returns
"Y"	The number of complete years in the period.
"M"	The number of complete months in the period.
"D"	The number of days in the period.
"MD"	The difference between the days in start_date and end_date. The months and years of the dates are ignored.
"YM"	The difference between the months in start_date and end_date. The days and years of the dates are ignored
"YD"	The difference between the days of start_date and end_date. The years of the dates are ignored.

Try it out for yourself. Here's a sample you can try.

Happy Birthday, Outlook!

On this day in 1997, Outlook 8 was released as a part of Office 97, replacing Schedule+ and Exchange Client. I began using it when it came out. One of my favorite features was flagging. I love to flag messages for me to follow-up on later.

When I came to UNL in 2000, I (begrudgingly) made the switch to Lotus Notes.I really missed my flagging option. I had to resort to changing items to be marked as unread so I'd remember to go back to them later. I am so happy to return to Outlook and have my flags back. YAY! It's the little things that make me happy.

If you want to learn more about using flags in Outlook, read this article from Microsoft.

New Year's Resolution

I LOVE my job. I really do. Trouble is, I've been caught up in so much, I have neglected this blog. Well, I'm going to remedy that. I'm going to make the time to keep up my tips and tricks for Microsoft Office. I've just been having so much fun playing with the new Office 2013 and there is so much to share. Look for more posts to come, again.

PowerPoint 2013

For the last upgrade, you may have noticed I was absolutely giddy with excitement of the changes to PowerPoint. This time around, I'm not as giddy, but there are a lot of things I like about the new version. Here are a few of the improvements to PowerPoint.

Getting Started and Backstage view have changed. There are more options available for you. It does take some time to get used to the new look, but you will soon find that the same old stuff is still there with a few improvements.

Insert online pictures and video

You don't have to go outside of PowerPoint to search for and save pictures or video for use inside of PowerPoint. 

1. On the Insert tab, Illustrations group, click Online Pictures OR Insert tab, Media group, click Online Video.
2. In one of the search boxes, type a word or phrase that describes the clip art or video you want, and press ENTER.
3. In the list of results, click an item, and then click Insert.

Properties in the Task Pane instead of dialog box

When formatting an object, whether it be a shape, picture or chart, you now have the properties on the right side in the task pane instead of floating on top of your object in a dialog box.  Double-click an element (or right-click and select Format [element]).

Improved Presenter View

I don't have to have two monitors connected to run Presenter view. YAY! When preparing at my desk, having a dual monitor setup is not always possible. Now I can practice the presentation without being the actual room where I'm presenting. During a presentation, you can also zoom in on a slide. I've had to use 3rd party programs to accomplish this before. There is also a slide navigator to make it easier to jump to the slide you need.

Widescreen friendly

With much of the world using TV and video, the aspect ratio has changed for many of us. Instead of showing a presentation with the black boxes on the side, you can set up your presentation for a wide screen (16:9 layout). New themes are included for this as well.

Design variations

The rule of thumb for background colors is to match the light of your room. If in a dark room, use a dark background. When in a brightly lit room, use a light background. When I don't know the room I'll be presenting in, I'd bring two versions of my presentation; one dark and one light. It took some work and time on my part to do this in advance. Now, you have variations of a design to make this much easier.

Line-up and space objects

Another program I use is Adobe InDesign. A couple versions ago they added this cool feature that pops up a "grid" when moving objects that allows you to better align and space objects as you move them around. I've loved this feature and now PowerPoint has it, too. I don't have to go to the ribbons for the tools for alignment or spacing.

Motion paths improved

When creating a motion path in the past, I'd have to run the animation multiple times to get the start or end point to land exactly where I needed. Now, you'll get a ghost of the end point as you edit the path so it's far easier to work with.

Merge common shapes

This feature was in the previous version, but it was buried and few people were able to find it to use. It is far more prominent and gives a few more options that allow you to do a bit of illustration design in PowerPoint.

Improved video and audio support

A major problem in the past with PowerPoint is their very limited selection of compatible multimedia formats. It required work on the user's part to find another program to convert a file to one of the limited acceptable formats. PowerPoint now includes more built-in codecs. Also, check out the Play in Background feature which never worked as promised in previous versions.

Eyedropper for color matching

Once again, I can ditch my 3rd party software and use the eyedropper in PowerPoint to find the color being used in a picture so I can use it for my text, shapes or complimentary colors.

1. Select the shape or text to apply the color to.
2. From the Fill or Outline tools of a shape or text, select Eyedropper.
3. Click the area of the slide or picture to pick up the selected color.
4. The color is applied to the select shape or text.

Windows 8 Preview at UNL

If you haven't figured it out yet, I'm a Microsoft geek. I've been using the Windows 8 preview for a few weeks. I like it now, but didn't feel that way in the beginning. Like most mid-westerners, I'm not a fan of change. The first thing I see after logging in is the Start screen (Metro UI, or user interface). It replaces the Start menu. If you like to click first and ask questions later, you may end up in one of the apps. I did this. My first thought was to press [ESC] to get out, but that doesn't work. You can press the Windows key on your keyboard to return to the Start screen, but I use Windows on my Mac laptop and don't have this button when I'm on the go. Move your mouse to the upper left corner of your screen and you'll get a desktop thumbnail you can click to return to the desktop.

The idea behind the "reimagined" design is to provide a unified experience no matter what hardware you have. Desktop or laptop computers, tablets and Windows phones will all look the same and work the same. For the purpose of this post, I'm looking at Windows 8 from the point of view of the desktop/laptop user experience.

Start menu

The blocks you see are called tiles. The default tiles on the left are Live Tiles and linked to various apps. Apps are an important part of Windows 8 as they link you to all your other programs, such as Mail, SkyDrive, People, Calendar, Photos, and Messaging. If anyone is interested in developing, check out the Windows 8 apps page. My favorite tile is the ability to return to my desktop.

On the right, you'll see your programs. Right-click and you'll see a bar at the bottom. If you right-click the background, you'll get the All apps button on the right side of the bar. If you right-click a live tile, you can choose to change the size or remove it. Right-click a program and you can unpin it from the Start screen or pin it to the taskbar in addition to removing it or viewing all apps.

Desktop

Once you click on the desktop tile, you'll see a very familiar environment. You can still right-click the desktop for all the same options. Of course, I took no time at all personalizing my theme with different backgrounds and such. I love a beautiful picture.

When you look at the taskbar, it's exactly the same except there is no Start button. So how do I get back to that Start screen to open another program? Lucky for me, I have a Windows keyboard and can just press the Windows button. But I do run Windows on my Mac and when I'm on the go, I don't have a Windows button on the Mac keyboard. Move your mouse cursor to the bottom left corner of your screen and a thumbnail of the Start screen appears. You can now click that thumbnail to open the Start screen. I'm not a fan of this. It's difficult to get as it's very sensitive and a tiny hotspot. To make my life easier, I pin my frequently used programs to the taskbar. This way, I don't have to go to the Start screen as often.

Charms

There are five charms available on the right side of the screen. To open the charms, there are keyboard shortcuts, but there is too much in my head already with all the voice, I can't memorize another key combination. To open the charms, move your mouse cursor to the bottom right of your screen, just over the time and date. Now, bump the right side of your screen. The charms will appear. Move your mouse straight up on top and you can select your charm.

Charms available are Search, Share, Start, Devices and Settings. For the desktop, I don't use most of the charms. I do like the Settings charm, but I can honestly get most of these things from the Control Panel or Personalize window. A few extras here include the ability to change notifications and to sync across devices. While this is super cool for my personal account, it's really not a good option for us at UNL without web app or SkyDrive integration with our UNL credentials.

Conclusion

Windows 8 is different and has a learning curve for the Start menu and some navigation. Once you get past the initial Start screen with the Metro UI, you can feel a bit more comfortable and continue to work until you learn to use the Start screen. As far as the question, "when will we get Windows 8 at UNL?" I don't have a date for you. What I can say is that Information Services will not recommend Windows 8 until Symantic End Point (our antivirus program) and our other core systems are compatible with it.