Administrative Arts » Microsoft Word

Learn Office 2007 with Ribbon Hero

Jodith — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 09:00:45 +0000

One of the biggest problems with Office 2007 is that the interface of the programs is very different from previous versions of Office. Tasks you can usually do with your eyes closed have become absurdly hard in 2007 simply because we have to relearn the interface. Once you figure out the interface, you’ll find that Office 2007 is really a great set of programs, but you might pull your hair out learning it.

Well, the folks at Microsoft have finally come up with a way to help us learn the new interface. It’s called Office Ribbon Hero, and it’s a game to help you learn the 2007 interface and new functionality. It installs seamlessly with all of your Office programs, and you earn points just through doing your every day work. However, you can also complete the “challenges” within Ribbon Hero to go through tutorials teaching you the new interface.

Office Hero is still in beta, and it has a few bugs (some challenges don’t update properly), but I’ve really enjoyed playing and learning some really great functionality that I didn’t even know existed in Word 2007. I’ve played through most of the challenges in Word 2007, and I’m looking forward to playing in the other Office programs as well. If the game is popular, Microsoft is planning to release new content and challenges for it in the future, to help you lean to use more advanced functions in the Office Suite of programs.

If you want to learn the ins and outs of Office 2007, download and install Office Ribbon Hero. Remember, it’s important to keep your software skills top notch, especially in today’s challenging employment environment.

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Ask the Admin: Watermarks in MS Word Part II

Jodith — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 15:26:51 +0000

NOTE: Don’t forget to enter my contest to win a Starbuck’s Gift Card.

In my last post, I showed you how to make a graphic into a watermark in Microsoft Word. Today, I’ll show you how to do the same thing with text using WordArt. The reason we use WordArt is because a text box does not have an option to make the text transparent, so it doesn’t work well for a watermark (at least, I don’t know of an option. If you know, please let us know in the comments!).

Here are the steps to use WordArt to make a text-based watermark in Microsoft Word. As usual, all graphics are thumbnails. Click on the graphic to see it full-size.

Click on the WordArt button on the drawing toolbar (if you don’t have your drawing toolbar open, click on View|Toolbars|Drawing).
Choose the format of your WordArt and click “OK”.
Enter your text and click OK.
You now have your WordArt inserted into your document. Right click on the WordArt and choose “Format WordArt”.
Click on the drop down box next to “Color” and choose “Fill Effects”.
In the Fill Effects dialogue box, under “Colors” choose “One Color”, and under transparency, set your desired transparency. I usually set it to around 50%. You can experiment and find the best settings for you. Click OK when finished.
Click on the Layout tab. Choose “Behind Text” and then click on the “Advanced” button.
In the Advanced Layout dialogue box, uncheck the box next to “Move object with text”, and then click “OK”.
Click “OK” again, and you have your WordArt watermark in your Microsoft Word document. You can now move, rotate and align your watermark to your heart’s content.

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Ask the Admin: Watermarks in MS Word

Jodith — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 11:00:44 +0000

NOTE: Don’t forget to enter my contest to win a Starbuck’s Gift Card.

Quite a while ago, I posted about using the watermark function in Microsoft Word. Like most bloggers, I tend to spend time reviewing what search terms bring people to my blog. This month, I’ve had several folks searching for some different ways to use watermarks in MS Word. Hence, a follow up to my previous post.

Using Text Other Than That in Drop Down List

A couple of googlers wanted to know how to use different text in your watermark besides those in the drop down list. That’s actually pretty easy. Just highlight whatever text is in the dropdown list and type over it. This is true for many Microsoft product functions that utilize drop down lists for inserting text, so it’s a good thing to remember.

Aligning or Moving Watermarks

Unfortunately, using the watermark function in MS Word doesn’t give you any way to make changes to the default watermark location. However, you can easily mimic a watermark in your documents with your own graphics.

To insert a graphic watermark (Note: all graphics are thumbnails. Click on each to see a full size version):

Insert the graphic into your document, and move it to the desired location.
Right click on your graphic and choose “Format Picture”.
On the “Picture” tab, click the drop down list under “Image Control” and choose “Washout”.
Go to the “Layout” tab and choose “Behind Text”, and then click on the “Advanced” button.
Uncheck the box next to “Move object with text” and click OK.
Click OK again.

There you have it, a unique watermark that you can change size, alignment and location on. This way will also allow for more than one watermark on the page. Just add other graphics and repeat the steps with each graphic. Stay tuned on Friday, when I’ll show you how to use WordArt as a watermark.Similar Posts:

Grammar Tip: Easier vs Easily

Jodith — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 19:00:54 +0000

photo credit: quinn.anya

Proofreading is an essential skill for all administrative support personnel. In addition to spelling and typos, you also need to be looking for proper word usage. In a previous post, I talked about confusing the words Prospective and Perspective. Today I have another pair of words that I often find misused.

Easier vs. Easily

I must admit to using these two incorrectly on occasion in every day speech, many of us do. However, in writing, especially professional and business writing, these two words should never be used interchangeably.

Easier

The word “easier” is an adjective and should be used to modify a noun. For example:

The easier route is A.
This route is easier.

In both examples, the word “easier” is used to modify the noun “route”.

Easily

The word “easily” is an adverb. Adverbs are used to modify verbs and sometimes adjectives. For example:

This cake is easily prepared.
This cake is prepared more easily than the other cake.

In both examples, the word “easily” is modifying the verb “prepared”.

Remember, when you are proofreading documents, you need to not only look for typos and misspellings, but also correct word usage. So don’t get these two words confused when writing and proofreading documents.Similar Posts:

Creating a Printed Watermark in MS Word

Jodith — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 15:55:08 +0000

You’ve seen them, documents with a word or picture in the background with the text of the document running over the top of it. Just how do they do that, anyway? If you use Microsoft Word, placing a printed watermark in your document is easy.

What is a watermark anyway?

A true watermark is created during paper processing. Most standard paper doesn’t contain watermarks because it costs more to produce. However, fine papers often contain a true watermark. If you hold a piece of premium paper at an angle, you can often see the manufacturer’s name or logo. This is imprinted while the paper pulp is still wet.

Printed watermarks are created during the printing process. By using special inks or varnishes, you can print something that will only show up when the paper is held at a particular angle. Many checks use this as a security measure.

The type of printed watermark we are discussing here are text or graphics that are visible behind text in a document without obscuring the text. Now that we know what a watermark is, let’s look at creating one.

How to Create a Watermark in MS Word

Creating a watermark in Word is quite easy.

On the menu bar, click on “Format” and choose “Background” and then “Printed Watermark”.
Click on Thumbnail to see larger image.
This will bring up the Printed Watermark dialogue box to choose your options.
Click on Thumbnail for larger image.
Choose your options. For a Graphic, choose Picture Watermark and then Browse to choose your graphic. For Text, choose Text Watermark and choose your options for Font, Font Size, Color and Text Direction. Then choose OK.
Voila! A watermark.
Click on Thumbnail for larger image

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What Are Your New Year’s Goals?

Jodith — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 16:36:53 +0000

As the holidays wind down, New Year’s Day looms, and with it the spectre of New Year’s Resolutions. While most people look at these resolutions in a personal sense, like losing weight, exercising more, or being more assertive, I’ve found it beneficial to apply the idea of New Year’s Resolutions to work as well. We need goals in our jobs as well as in our personal life. After all, how do we know what we are achieving if we aren’t striving for something?

How to make good, achievable resolutions

We often make resolutions, but after a few weeks, they fade into the background, and we don’t think about them again until the next New Year. Here’s some tips for not just making, but keeping your resolutions:

Keep it achievable. Make sure your resolution is possible. Don’t shoot for the moon, but rather incremental steps toward your goal. If you set your bar too high, you can feel overwhelmed by the challenge. Instead, set small, achievable goals that will step you along the way to the ultimate goal of your resolution.
Make it specific. A goal that is too general isn’t always an impetus for change. State specifically what you want to achieve. Losing weight is too general. Losing 20 pounds is an actual goal that you can mark yourself against.
List concrete steps towards your goal. Don’t just state what you want to achieve, but make part of your resolution specific steps you intend to take to meet the goal. If you want to be more assertive, add a goal of speaking up at least once in every staff meeting. Again, keep it achievable. And every time you achieve your goal, remember to reward yourself, even if it’s just a mental pat on the back!
Share your goal with at least one other person. It’s easy to lie to ourselves, but it’s harder to backtrack when we have someone else helping us to be accountable.

My work related resolutions for this year are fairly simple:

Learn CSS (cascading style sheets). I’ve already dabbled with CSS in my blogs, since it’s the backbone of WordPress. However, since it’s also the styling for SharePoint, learning CSS is a good direction for me to take not only in my current job, but in my career as well. So, I resolve to spend at least 1 hour per week this year working on my CSS skills.
Keep my desk neater. Neatness has never been my forte, so this year, my goal is to keep everything neater. Keep my pens in a cup, keep my papers in their folders. Put things away when I’m not using them. I resolve to spend 10 minutes every evening before I go home and 10 minutes before lunch every day tidying up my desk so it remains neater.
Be more assertive in asking for new duties. I’ve been holding back in this job so far, but I’ve seen a number of things around this office that I can lend my expertise to. So I’m putting together a list of things to cover with my boss on extra duties I can take on when I’m not tied up with my primary job here. I resolve to set up a meeting with him during the first two weeks of January to share my ideas.

So, what are your work and/or career resolutions for this year? It can be anything from a small resolution relating to a current duty, or something as big as getting a new job in another industry. Share with us your resolutions for 2009 and how you want to go about achieving them. Or if you aren’t sure how to achieve them, ask and we’ll help you with some ideas for achieving your goals this year.

So, what are your goal for the New Year? Share them with us. Maybe we can help?Similar Posts:

Creating Calendars in Microsoft Word

Jodith — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 14:19:12 +0000

2009 is just around the corner, and you’re going to be needing new calendars. You can save your company some money by printing out calendars from Microsoft Word instead of buying an expensive calendar from the office supply store. It’s an easy process.

In Microsoft Word, click on File and then New.

This will bring up the New Document dialogue Box. Under “Templates”, click on “On my computer”.

This will bring up the Templates dialogue box. Click on the “Other Documents” tab.

Lastly, double click on the Calendar Wizard.

The Wizard will come up. Enter your desired choices in the Wizard and voila, you have a calendar ready to print out.

You can customize your calendars as you wish, add notes to dates, whatever you need.Similar Posts:

Quick Navigation in Word

Jodith — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 14:44:32 +0000

I know you’ve been there. You’re editting a huge document, and now you need to go back through and proof your edits. Here’s a tip to help you out.

Shift-F5 will take you through your edits in a document. Hitting shift-F5 once will take you to your last edit, and subsequent uses will go through previous edits consecutively. That should help you proof your edits to make sure you entered everything correctly.Similar Posts:

Making A Full Page of the Same Label

Jodith — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 17:38:55 +0000

So, you have a mailing to process, and you want to make a full page of the return address label. Don’t worry, you don’t have to type out each label individually. Making a full page of the same label is very easy in Microsoft Word.

First, click on Tools: Letters and Mailings: Envelopes & Labels:

Next, click on the Labels tab, enter your return address information, make sure your choose “Full Page of Same Label” under “Print”, and then click on “New Document” on the right.

Word will then open a new document with a full page of labels with the same address. You can now format the labels however you wish and print them out.

Note: MS Word will default to the Avery 2160 Mini-Address label. If you want to use any other label, then click “Options” before you choose “New Address” and select the template for the labels you wish to use.

You can also use this procedure to make a template for typing in other labels, such as file folder labels. Just leave the address portion of the dialog box blank. When you choose “New Document”, you’ll get a page of blank labels, which you can then fill in and print.Similar Posts:

Controlling Your Graphics

Jodith — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 15:04:03 +0000

Has this ever happened to you? You place a graphic in your Word document and send it to the back so you can type the text over it. But then you decide the graphic placement isn’t quite right, and you click on it to move it. Only it won’t click. All you do is move your cursor in your text.

The way to click on a graphic or other element that you have moved behind text is to right click on it. Right click in an area of the graphic where no text exists, and the focus of the document becomes the graphic. You can now move the graphic, change its properties, or delete it as you wish.

If the text over the graphic is very dense, you may have to move your cursor around a bit to find a place with no text, but you should be able to find a place where you can right click to focus on the graphic. If the first place doesn’t work, just try another spot until you get it.Similar Posts:

Using Tabs to Align Text

Jodith — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 23:12:19 +0000

In my previous post, I told you why using the space key to align text doesn’t work well. Today, I will show you how to use tabs to align your text properly, giving your documents the professional look your boss expects.

In the upper right corner of your Word window, where the left and top rules meet, you’ll see the tab setter

The tab setter by default is the one shown, which is the left align tab. It aligns text on the left wherever you set the tab.

The other tab possibilities are:

The Right Align tab aligns text on the right wherever the tab is set.

The Center Align tab centers text at the point of the tab.

The Decimal Align tab aligns by decimal point. This one is handy when you want to put a column of aligned monetary amounts in a document.

The Bar Tab doesn’t actually align text. Rather, it inserts a vertical bar at the point of the tab. This is a good way to put a vertical bar in the text without using a drawing tool.

To set a tab, all you need to do is click on the selector in the upper left corner until the type of tab you want to set shows, and then click where you want the tab on the toolbar. If you have text already typed that you want to align, highlight the text and then set the tab. Below is a screen shot showing the different tabs in use. Click on the thumbnail to see it full size. I’ve left formatting on so you can see where the tabs are inserted.

Remember, your boss is judged by the quality of correspondence with her name on it. Make your documents stand out from the crowd by their quality and polish.Similar Posts:

Make Your Documents Cleaner

Jodith — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 15:57:23 +0000

One thing that I see over and over again, even from experienced Administrative Assistants, is badly aligned text. It might not look that bad on screen, but once you print out your document, it detracts from the overall look and professionalism that you want to project.

The mistake that most make is using the space key to try to align text. This is a mistake for a couple of reasons.

First of all, most fonts used these days are proportional fonts, meaning that each letter takes up only as much space as it needs, instead of every letter taking up the same amount of space as was the case in typewriter fonts (like Courier). It is nearly impossible to exactly line up two lines unless they have exactly the same text, since different amounts of text take up a different amount of space.

Second, if you are using spaces to line up text, it is easy for the eye to be fooled by letters like T and O, that is letters that take have different thicknesses from top to bottom. The eye will fool you into thinking that your text is aligned when it isn’t. It’s not really apparent until you print it out, but then it can be very noticeable.

In my next post, I will walk you through the steps of setting up your tabs to align your text.Similar Posts:

Understanding formatting in Microsoft Word

Jodith — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 16:33:44 +0000

One question I often get from other Administrative Assistants is how to figure out why a document is doing something strange. Most of the time I find out they have formatted something without realizing it. Usually they are quite amazed that I figured out the issue, when all I did was turn on hidden symbols in the document.

On your formatting toolbar, there should be an icon that looks like a backwards P (it’s the paragraph symbol or hard return symbol).

Clicking this icon will turn on the formatting symbols in your document.

The first symbol is the tab symbol. This indicates that you have inserted a tab at that location.
The second symbol is the hard return symbol. It indicates, of course, a hard return.
The third symbol is the space symbol. These can be confused with a period at times, so if you have trouble seeing them, increase your zoom.

These are the three most common formatting symbols you’ll see. There are others, but they are less often used. I will post some of those at a later date.Similar Posts:

Software Tutorials from Microsoft

Jodith — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 22:52:02 +0000

Yes, there are other office products out there besides Microsoft Office. But if you work in the administrative field for any length of time, you’ll soon discover that Microsoft Office is the industry standard for office administration. And, when you reach the upper echelons of your administrative career, you will be expected to know the software inside and out.

If you don’t already have a strong handle on using Microsoft Office applications like Word, Excel, and Outlook, then I have a tip for you! Microsoft has a website of training tutorials. Even if you’re fairly well versed in using most of the Microsoft Office products, you can probably find a tutorial here that will help you update your skills. And let’s face it, in today’s competitive market, it’s important to have your skills as up to date as possible. While they have tutorials for Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Outlook, they also have tutorials for some of the less commonly known applications like Visio, Access, and Publisher.

Whether you’re just starting out or have been an administrative professional for decades, odds are you’ll find a tutorial there that will teach you something new.

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