We have recently discussed how to show hidden formatting characters in Word, but it is also possible to hide text and even images in Microsoft Word, as long as you are using Word desktop on Windows or Mac. See Find and Remove Hidden Text in Word Hidden text positioning and formatting
Cell Margins and Cell Spacing are two important settings in any Microsoft Word Table but they aren’t used much and not well understood. Cell margins are the spaces between your text and the edge of the cell. They can be set separately for the top, bottom, and either side of
Microsoft Word’s Styles Gallery can be fixed to show the styles you want, rearrange to the order you want, not the collection and order decided by Microsoft. It makes sense to have the styles you use most frequently in a prominent place in this panel, and Word allows you to both add styles
Add a bit of zing to your document, Word has a fun little feature that allows you to add color gradients or rainbow effects to your text, the background of a text box or inside an Office shape. The rainbow effect is a bit gaudy but demonstrates the possibilities of
An IF statement might sound like a complicated thing that programmers do, but it’s actually fairly easy to do in Excel. An IF statement basically puts something into a cell depending on certain conditions – if A is true, put X in this cell. You can even use what’s called a nested
Change Case options in Word, like many Word features goes beyond the obvious choices from the basic shortcut. There’s up to five choices on the ribbon with a keyboard shortcut to reach it. Alter the upper/lower case of words, phrases or more. ‘change case’ can become ‘Change Case’ or ‘CHANGE
If you have included equations in a document, Word can generate a list of them all for you. Like a table of contents, this list or Table of Equations can include page references or links to each equation. A Table of Equations can be useful for creating a proper appendix
Microsoft Word can generate a list of all the images, graphs, tables or equations in a document – called a Table of Figures. Just like a table of contents, this list can include page references or links to each figure or picture. A Table of Figures can be useful for
Word has settings to automatically change the case of words that you type, fix common capitalization typing problems add items of your own to have capitalized the way you want them as you type. Word also has options to manually Change Case in Microsoft Word. The settings are in the
Here are the major marks Microsoft Word displays with the Show All option on. There’s common ones like Paragraph Mark, Tab and Space and lesser known such as optional hyphen and hidden text. Show All will also display the seven different types of break in Word. Paragraph Mark, the symbol is called a Pilcrow. It’s the symbol used for
If you are working on a Word document with complex formatting, sometimes you need to see the hidden characters and unseen workings. It helps figure out Word’s secrets or what’s going on when the layout doesn’t behave. That’s where ‘Show All’ becomes essential. Microsoft Word was designed to hide all
The appearance of all your captions in Microsoft Word can be changed by modifying the style that is applied to them or selecting the text and formatting manually. See Adding Captions in Word Caption Style All captions use the ‘Caption’ style, so modifying that style will modify the format of all
Captions let you add autonumbered labels under most Word objects including pictures (figures), tables or equations. Captions can be combined into a list of all the figures/tables/equations in the document, along with their page numbers. As usual in Word, there are many options beyond the simple adding of captions and
Typing or formatting cells of repetitive data can be very boring, but Excel has an Auto Fill feature to make it easier by automatically filling in data for you. We thought we knew Auto Fill, but just found nine surprising and useful tricks. Auto Fill goes beyond simple incrementing numbers
Section breaks are probably one of the most useful features in Word when you are formatting complicated documents. They allow you to change formatting aspects that would otherwise be the same throughout a document, such as page orientation, margins, columns, headers and footers. Column changes (2, 3 or more columns)
There are two ways to make Microsoft Word open with your preferred font ready to go. Just like with Two Ways to Change Word’s Opening Paper Size there are two ways to change the default or preferred font. Change the base Normal style or open the main Word template and
Google Slides can be handy for sharing and working on presentations with other people, but sometimes you just really need that file in PowerPoint. No problem – it’s actually really easy to convert them. All you have to do is download the file and save it as a PowerPoint file. If the Google Slides File is Open If you have your
Find and add the Indian flag into Office documents, Word, Excel or PowerPoint, then use some Office picture tools to enhance the image. The same help applies for any other national flag, just look for a different source. Get the Indian Flag Image There are many, many copies of the Indian flag available. We’ve opted for
Word and PowerPoint allow you to not only put a colored border around a picture, instead try a pretty gradient effect for single color or multi-colored rainbow effects. Like most of the fancier border effects, you can access gradient border settings in the Format Picture pane, by going to Picture
If you have words or longer sections of text that you type frequently and don’t want to have to type in full each time, Word allows you to set your own shortcuts to automatically enter this text in a few keystrokes either AutoCorrect or AutoText. There are two ways to
Google Sheets can be handy for sharing and working on spreadsheet files with other people, but sometimes you just really need that file in Excel. No problem – it’s actually really easy to convert them. All you have to do is download the file and save it as an Excel file. If
You can set up your own shortcuts to quickly apply any style in Word. You’re not limited to the in-built shortcuts for Normal and a few Headings. You may be familiar with using keyboard shortcuts to such has Ctrl+B or Ctrl+I to quickly change text to bold or italic but those don’t apply styles, just
If you’ve ever tried to enter a number starting with zero into an Excel spreadsheet, you will have had the frustrating experience of finding that as soon as you exit the cell, the zero disappears from the front of the number. Here’s how to stop Excel from ‘helping’ you when
One of the more obscure settings when putting a frame around a picture in Word or PowerPoint is the Cap Type or line ends. This setting only applies when you are using one of the dashed borders with the choices Square, Flat and Round. To put a dashed border on
