Microsoft Office tips

Three ways to prevent inadvertent e-mail replies to all

The dreaded Reply All button rang up another victim last week when a Los Angeles Police Department commander asked his officers in an e-mail to arrest someone for the illegal sale of underage bunnies so the department wouldn't receive a "black eye" in the media.

As Ana Garcia reports for NBC Southern California, the commander didn't realize his reply to an LAPD officer was also sent to the TV news producer who requested information on the lack of animal-cruelty arrests months after the department claimed to be cracking down on the practice.

Unlike many Reply All … Read more

The safe way to 'write down' your passwords

Following my post earlier this month on "Ten simple, common-sense security tips," reader John B. asked whether it was safe to store his passwords in a Word DOC file and then copy and paste them into sign-in screens to thwart keystroke loggers. John just has to remember to type in one password: the one he uses to encrypt and password-protect his Word password document.

Of course, John's passwords are vulnerable to clipboard loggers that capture the contents of the clipboard just as key loggers grab your keystrokes. That's why John has to add extra characters to … Read more

How to share contacts in Microsoft Outlook

Few resources on your computer are more valuable to your worklife than your list of contacts. Unfortunately, contacts are also among the most difficult assets to maintain.

Recently, a reader named Alan posed this question:

I and my two associates use Microsoft Outlook for our sales contacts. Right now we maintain three separate contact databases. We would like to merge our databases into one that all three of us can access, modify, and update as necessary. Is there a process/software you can recommend to accomplish this?

If you don't mind the manual approach, Outlook lets you export your … Read more

Change MS Word's default paste setting to plain text

In the annals of computer history, no two keystroke combinations have done more to boost worker productivity than Ctrl-C to copy to the clipboard whatever you've selected on the screen, and Ctrl-V to paste the contents of the clipboard to wherever you've placed the cursor.

What often follows the paste is the laborious process of reformatting the pasted material to match the look of the destination document. Microsoft Word lets you apply the formatting of the destination document when you paste, but by default Ctrl-V retains the original formatting of the pasted text.

Back in 2007 I described … Read more

Prevent Excel from reformatting two numbers to a date and month

Topping my list of Microsoft Excel pet peeves is the program's automatic conversion of two numbers on either side of a hyphen into the date and month the numbers correspond to, such as "1-1" becoming "01-Jan."

The change occurs even when you choose any of the options available when you select Paste Special. I have looked high and low for a way to disable this setting in Excel, to no avail.

You can make the change for an entire worksheet by clicking the small box above 1 and to the left of A in the … Read more

Zendio tracks when e-mails are opened, clicked on

Who uses those receipts for e-mails read? Most people either block sending receipts altogether or ask to be notified before sending a read receipt (a default setting in Microsoft Outlook and other mail clients). So read receipts either don't work at all, or they require acceptance by the recipient--no sure thing.

That doesn't mean that we aren't curious about when the messages we send are opened, and when the links they include are followed. For most organizations, this information can be a valuable asset. The Zendio add-on for Microsoft Outlook tracks the messages you select and records … Read more

Sync Gmail and Outlook contacts automatically

A reader named Maribeth is migrating from Outlook to Gmail and asked about synchronizing her two accounts:

"I just read your blog about Outlook/Gmail [ Merge your Outlook and Gmail contacts]. I understand this is a fix to make them both the same, but do you know if there is a way to sync them continually? I still want to use Outlook on my desktop and also have IMAP movability on my Droidx2 phone and also on an iPad. Is it possible?"

In a July 2009 post I described how to "Sync contacts and calendars between Outlook, Gmail, and iPhone.&… Read more

How to use PowerPoint effectively

If I were president, I would propose legislation making misuse of Microsoft's PowerPoint presentation software a Class C misdemeanor. Read a slide; go to jail.

I would empower audience members to confiscate the presenter's hardware if they're shown any slide with more text than the average tweet, with dark-on-dark or light-on-light text, or with more elements than the Periodic Table. They would also be allowed to pull the plug whenever anything on the screen is illegible to anyone in the back row.

Microsoft's ubiquitous presentation program has been used and abused by everyone from elementary school … Read more

Simple format tweaks give Word docs more impact

Microsoft Word is arguably the most widely used business application in the world, yet few Word users think twice about the format of their documents. People may change Word's default font size and style or switch between a single space or double space between lines, but that's about it. If you'd like a simple way to communicate your message more effectively without looking flashy, try these simple Word format tweaks.

First, a word of warning: nearly any document can benefit from a little creative formatting, but it can be easy to overdo the effects. Remember, the goal … Read more