Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Microsoft Excel: Sparklines

Available in both 2010 for Windows and 2011 for Mac, Sparklines can be a nifty little option. If you love the dynamic line charts for your data, but wished it was available to put at the end of a row/column right next to your data, you’re in luck. Sparklines are for you.

  1. Place the cell selector on the cell(s) to display the Sparkline.
  2. On the Insert (Charts on the Mac) ribbon, Sparklines (Insert Sparklines on the Mac) group, select the type of trend to display.
  3. Enter the range of data to be included.
  4. The Location Range should be the cell you selected in step #1.
  5. Click OK

Monday, February 14, 2011

Happy Geek Valentines Day

Here is a special Valentine message for you.
x^2+(y-(x^2)^(1/3))^2<1
 Have trouble figuring it out? Plug it in to WolframAlpha.

Friday, February 11, 2011

Migration Guides

How is it that I have not come across these before? Apparently, around the time of the release of Microsoft Office 2010, a few of Microsoft's bloggers created migration guides for Access, Excel, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint and Word. For some reason, I'm just now finding these fantastic guides. So, here are the Microsoft Office 2010 Migration Guides. ENJOY!

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Microsoft Word: Quick Parts

As a toddler, I’m sure many of you played with building blocks. As we get older, we can continue to play with building blocks. To make it sound more efficient, let’s call them Quick Parts. I’m all about being lazy (for the polictically correct, efficient), and Quick Parts works for me.

Words comes with many of these built in Quick Parts (cover page, header, footer, etc.) You can use one of the built in cover pages, headers or footers, but I really prefer my own. NU Central Administration provides some nice letterhead templates where the header and footer are already done for you. You can use one of these or open a document that already has the header, footer or cover letter you want. The point is, you need something to copy or save for use later.

Got it? Now select it. Next, go to Insert ribbon, Text group, click Quick Parts and select Save Selection to Quick Part Gallery… Add the necessary information in the dialog box. Be sure the name is something you’ll remember, like “UNL Header.” You will also need to select the appropriate category, like “Headers.”

To insert your new Quick Part, place the insertion point where you’d like the part to appear. Go to Insert ribbon and select the item, like “Header.” In the gallery of optoins, you’ll find your part neatly alphabatized with the rest. Select it and there you go.

Did you know you can also do this with boilerplate text? If you remember AutoText but didn’t know where it disappeared to in 2007-10, you’ll be happy to know it’s a Quick Part, too.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

25 Years of EXCEL-lence

On September 30, 2011, Microsoft Excel will celebrate 25 years. In this video, you'll see Nebraska-boy, Jeff Raikes, talking about his contribution and experience working with Excel.

Friday, January 14, 2011

PowerPoint for Mac 2011 at CES 2011

Removing the background from images (which can also be done in Word) has been a great feature in both the PC and Mac latest versions. Thank you for making it so easy!

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Word for Mac 2011 at CES 2011

Reading view in Mac 2011 is so much better than in PC 2010/07. And don't even get me started on the layers. Come on Word for PC development staff, we want this, too!