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Ribbon Hero – Boost Your Microsoft Office Skills With This Fun Add-on

Saikat Basu — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 18:31:53 +0000

We normally don’t associate the word “fun” or “play” with Microsoft. Pinball and Minesweeper are fine…but hey, a game for Microsoft Office? This is where the guys from Redmond have got off the well trodden path and done something that’s downright unique.

Microsoft has introduced a Microsoft Office training game called Ribbon Hero that attempts to fill the learning gap for new users as well as Microsoft Office old hands who just can’t find their way with the Ribbon.

The feelings towards Microsoft’s interface enhancing Ribbon (the panel that has all the commands and icons arranged in tabs) has been somewhat mixed. It was a departure from the old vertical menu approach, which brought in a learning curve. The Ribbon is meant to be a ‘Fluent User Interface’. It is meant to enhance speed and productivity by putting the oft used commands right in front of our face.

Despite the changes, one thing has remained constant – some of us are unaware about how to use MS Office to the max. There are easier ways to do certain things and then there are ways to do a lot of things with Microsoft’s Office suite. We sometimes fall short in both.

That’s where Ribbon Hero is supposed to come and give us a hand, in a fun and engaging sort of way. Ribbon Hero is also a well timed idea because from Office 2010 onwards, all applications will come with the Ribbon.

So throw out your ‘Dummies’ guides, shut off the help file and start off with the free ‘n small Ribbon Hero Microsoft Office training download. Ribbon Hero installs itself in Office applications (Excel 2007 and PowerPoint 2007) and of course, where else but on the Ribbon?

Office Play

Do you see the round green icon sitting on the Ribbon all alone? When at first, you go your own way, working on a document and using some functions here and there, the little white digits indicate the points you are adding up doing your Office functions.

Each command has certain scores and with some you will score more than others. For instance, applying Styles will give you more than just normal formatting.

Clicking on the Ribbon Hero button takes you to the Microsoft Office training interface. The first thing you see is the Points Breakdown.

All the fun and games are arranged around the three sections – Working with Text, Page Design and Layout, and Getting Artistic.

Clicking on each section showcases on the right all what you can follow and learn. For instance, one of the lessons under Getting Artistic is on playing around with Shape orders.

You can also get to the lessons by clicking on the small arrow for the Challenge List. Ribbon Hero puts in challenges for you to play, to expose you to new features.

Clicking on Play Challenge opens up a new document with a lesson and instructions. Get a better idea of what’s required from a Before and After snapshot given right below the instructions. This is how it looks –

Now you just have to follow the instructions laid out and complete the task. If you are stuck, take a Hint. You can also take a peek at a small preview of the step.

If you get it right, there’s the ring of congratulations and a few celebratory balloons as a cheer. You can apply the lessons learnt with some real world working to boost your Ribbon score.

Ribbon Hero brings in some Facebook social sharing. Post your scores on Facebook and check the leaderboard to see if you are on the same class as your friends. Every 100 points earned by you prompts Ribbon Hero to ask you if you would like to publish it on Facebook’s newsfeed.

For me, Ribbon Hero is proving to be a shorter hop towards improving my MS Office craft. Citing my own example, my score zoomed up in MS Word, but took a beating in MS Excel. To please my ego, I am using Ribbon Hero more as a guide for MS Excel. I check up on the categories and see how it has been done.

What I Am Learning

Learning + Fun = Better Learning.

This equation is always true and more so for the digital age.. Think of the seconds you can shave off by executing a command in a speedier way. The seconds can snowball into minutes with a long document, spreadsheet or presentation. A few rounds with Ribbon Hero and we can well become MS Office experts. The great thing is that it would be achieved without the help of a boring help guide or the guy in the next cubicle.

The only slight problem I found was that the word count stopped working. That’s a rough edge but it’s still a Microsoft Office Labs application on a test drive.

So, let the games begin.

Your thoughts matter. Use Ribbon Hero and let us know if it’s a dumb, good or a great idea.

Ribbon Hero works on Microsoft Office 2007/2010 (both 32/64 Bit) and for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint only. Find out some more rules for the game from Jennifer Michelstein, the brain behind the project.

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How To Convert Delimited Text Files To Excel Spreadsheets

Saikat Basu — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 20:01:57 +0000

I am not much of an Excel hand; spending most of my time either in Microsoft Word or PowerPoint. My most regular use of Excel is as a tool to keep track of my schedule and to list what I am putting out on the web as a writer. So I can safely say that at least in my case, the enormous power that’s in this spreadsheet program lies latent. But it happens to all of us that sometimes some tasks, if not taken, get thrust upon us (just like greatness!).

So it was with me when I had to convert a delimited text data file to Excel and format it within the columns and rows. That’s a rough challenge for a guy who has a chronic fear of anything that resembles figures. The raw file that I had in my hand consisted of higgledy-piggledy blocks of text and numbers. My simple task was to make sense out of this jumble by importing it into Excel and sorting the data into columns and rows.

Thankfully, many web tutorials came to the rescue of my dead brain cells.

Delimited files are a simple way to store data and import or export it between various applications. Delimited in essence means, data that’s separated by specific delimiter characters. Common delimiters are tab, comma and semicolon.

Think of delimited files as the most basic file format that’s almost uniformly accepted by most spreadsheet and database programs. For those of us who don’t go down that road, a common example is the CSV (Comma Separated Value) files or Tab-separated files we come across in the Import Export wizards of email programs like Outlook and Gmail.

A delimited file is of no actual use unless it is converted into some form suitable for analysis and study. Microsoft makes it easy to convert a delimited file to a spreadsheet in three easy steps.

Let’s start with a text file with some data separated by commas.

To bring the data into Excel –

Open Excel and copy-paste the text contents into a spreadsheet. The contents take up one column and several rows.

Click on the column header to select the entire column. Click on the Data tab in the ribbon and then Text to Columns in the Data Tools group.

Clicking on the above command opens the Convert Text to Columns Wizard.
Alternatively – You can directly import a text file into Excel. Excel handles file types – Text, Comma Separated Values and Printer Text File. Make sure to dropdown to All Files or Text Files in the File Open dialog while selecting the file to import. If Excel recognizes it to be a delimited file, it opens the Text Import Wizard which is similar to the Convert Text to Columns Wizard.

In the Wizard, choose Delimited and click on Next.

In the second step, choose the Delimiter for you particular file (comma, in our case). For some other character, check Other and enter the character in the little field. The Data Preview window gives you an idea how the contents get separated into columnar data. Click on Next.

In the final window, you get to set the data type for each column by selecting it in the preview. The default data format is General. Date and numeric values can also be handled here.

Click on Finish to exit the wizard and get your neatly arranged spreadsheet.

It’s just three easy steps courtesy of a wizard. This simple utility gives us the ability to import delimited text files into Excel and apply its number crunching tools on it.

Liked this? We have other Excel tutorials to make an analyst out of you.

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How To Create Self-Updating Excel Charts In Three Easy Steps

Paul Coffman — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 22:01:12 +0000

If you’re like me, you love the idea of charts and can think of dozens of useful applications for them, but when it comes to creating them, the frustration starts.

Charts often make decision making easy. They’re a nice change from staring at rows and columns of numbers. They add some style and pizazz to your documents or presentations. Creating charts in Excel seems complicated, so you end up settling for simple charts which require a lot of work to maintain.

In my full time job, charts help shorten the decision making process, as we can immediately see our results and where changes need to be made. The difficulty in handling data and charting it is you constantly have to go back to the chart and update it for new data.

Well, no more! I want to show you three easy steps to creating charts in Excel that self-update. All you’ll have to do is add data to the spreadsheet and the chart will automatically graph it. You won’t have to depend on others to manipulate or mess up the chart and you won’t have to do all that extra work either. You don’t need any Visual Basic skills, but you do need to understand the basic fundamentals of Excel charts.

To walk you through the process, I have created a fictional pet store called “Paws n’ Fangs” and I have begun an Excel workbook titled “pnfinv.xls”. Here is the October inventory of pets as of the seventeenth of the month, along with a basic chart of the dog inventory. This is the starting point and step one – a spreadsheet with a basic chart.

The problem is updating the chart for new daily inventory numbers. I may not want store clerks to mess with the charts and I may be tired of doing it all the time as well. I can quickly look at these charts and determine when and how many pets I need to order from my supplier, so I don’t want to abandon the use of the charts.

Step two is to name the column that I want to chart. This is done through the menu bar by clicking Insert>Name>Define. When the “Define Name” window pops up, we start by clicking inside the text box under “Names in Workbook”. In this blank space, we type in the label for the column we plan to chart.

For our example, we would type in “Dogs” exactly as it appears in the spreadsheet. Now we have defined a Name, but we have to further define what the name means.

At the bottom of this window is a blank area for “Refers to:”. This is where the magic happens for our chart. In this box we use the OFFSET function. Notice the formula is “=OFFSET(Sheet1!$B$7,0,0,COUNTA(Sheet1!$B$6:$B$37)-1)”. This looks complicated, but let’s break it down.

What we have done in this formula is to define that the name “Dogs” refers to data in Sheet1, with data starting in cell B7. The “0,0” pinpoints to B7, as these are “Row, Column” variables. If we used “$B$7, 1,0” we would be referencing B8, as the “1” in the row variable position would mean that we were referring to one row below the stated cell. In our simple example, it is much easier to directly reference the starting point of the data by using “$B$7, 0,0”.

Next, the formula counts the non-blank cells in the entire column, including the header (B6:B37) and subtracts 1 (for the header-necessary for sorting functions). Notice two important points. First, the “Sheet1” portion of the formula is simply the name of the sheet on which the data is located. Excel’s default is Sheet1. Your charts could be in the same Excel workbook, but on a page titled “Charts”, while you may have various sheet titles such as “Oct 09 Inv”, “Nov 09 Inv”, etc. Be sure to properly reference the sheet title or you’ll have a mess on your hands.

The second point is that for our example, we have a defined number of days in the month (31), so our maximum number of entries at one per day is thirty-one. Thus, our defined range to count extends to cell B37, where the 31^st piece of data will be. You may have hundreds of data points you will eventually want to fill in and chart, or you may have a defined number. The point is to use a large enough reference so that you won’t have to go back and readjust the Names. If your spreadsheet is a defined size, simply use the maximum cell reference here.

Now we have defined the column name and the data referred to by the name “Dogs”. The third and final step is to point the chart to the name “Dogs”. This is pretty simple. Right click on the chart, and select “Source Data”. Click the “Series” tab and in the text box beside “Values”, simply type in the name of the worksheet and the name of the range in this format – “=workbook name!RangeName”, which for our example will end up as “=pnfinv.xls!Dogs”. The workbook name is used here instead of the sheet name, as the Defined Names from step one are rooted to the workbook.

Click “OK” and the chart will now self-update! We can test this by entering more data for the next several days. If the syntax of your formulas was entered correctly, your charts should update before your eyes! No more clicking and dragging cell reference outlines all over the place every time you add a piece of data to your spreadsheet. You don’t necessarily have to create a chart to begin with. You can wait until after you have defined a Name, and then begin the charting process.

Finally, for all the other pets in my imaginary store I can go back through the simple three step process and work on creating self-updating charts in Excel for my entire inventory.

For other tips, tricks and cool free charting applications check out the MUO Charts tag directory and also check out the Excel tag for more Excel posts.

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How To Get an Early Preview of Microsoft Office Web Apps

Varun Kashyap — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 22:00:42 +0000

Office suite applications are ubiquitous. There are so many options available if you want to a create a document or a spreadsheet.

There are open source free desktop applications, then there are free cloud-based applications. Microsoft has been working on a free version of its popular Office franchise as well. The free version would be available online. Microsoft recently launched a tech preview. It is an invite-only preview, however you just need a Skydrive account and some URL tweaking to try out the Microsoft Office Web Apps Preview.

Here is how:

The following steps seem to work only if you have ?mkt=en-us appended to the Skydrive URL. So click here.
Create a Skydrive account (Windows Live Account) if you don’t have one, or log into your existing one. It gives you 25GB of online space you can use to store/backup your files. We wrote about it some time back.
Make sure there is a Word/Excel file in your Skydrive. If there isn’t, you can upload one.
You will see an option to join the tech preview to edit the file.

Click on the link, read and choose to accept the terms. Silverlight should be installed for you to use Office Online. Don’t worry, you will be given instructions to download and install in case it is not found on your computer.

With all that done and completed you are in and ready to test out the latest in cloud office apps.

So how good is it?

Well to begin with – the Microsoft Office web apps have the same ribbon interface of Office 2007 and Office 2010. So if you were hoping to get back to the Office 2003 like menus and buttons, you will be disappointed. The similar look definitely makes it easier to find your way around. All the icons, menus and options (though few) resemble the ones you would find in the desktop version of the software.

As for the file format, Microsoft Office Web Apps uses Office Open XML formats (i.e. the .docx, .xlsx, .pptx formats). However, you can still use the older formats, only they will be converted to the newer OOXML formats before Office Web Apps allows you work on them.

Overall, it is limited and don’t expect to see all the functionality of the desktop version or something reasonably close to it. You would be better to make a comparison with some of the web-based office suites instead, in which case the functionality seems respectable, no amazing over-the-top stuff that would overthrow Google Docs.

Collaboration is the key feature, as is often the case with most cloud-based applications. You can share files with others, make your files public, choose whether they would be able to edit documents or not. People can leave comments as your file gets edited, re-edited and refined.

Go ahead check it out and let us know what you think. Do you think Office Online offers the features you need to do your day to day work? Or is it too stripped down to be used for any decent job? Give it a thorough spin and sound off in the comments!

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14 Application Cheat Sheets & Posters for Popular Programs

Varun Kashyap — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 19:19:15 +0000

It is a known fact that if you want to commit something to memory, continuous revision is the key. You read something every time you are at your desk and within days it becomes second nature.

To be able to revise quickly and often, it helps if the information is terse and to the point highlighting only the important aspects. Something like an application cheat sheet or a poster that you can print and pin to a board or keep on your desk.

Here are some application cheat sheets for commonly used software that will hopefully make you more productive.

Microsoft Office

Need to get that report typed and formatted quickly? Can’t find your way around the ribbon interface? Check these out:

Explains the ribbon interface, smart shapes, which format to choose and how to do things like adding a digital signature, protecting the document and other little tips. (Download)


Excel 2007 (Download)	Word 2007 (Download)

PowerPoint 2007 (Download)	Outlook 2007 (Download)

If you are interested in other Office applications or different version of Microsoft Office, Customguide is a great resource.

Browsers

Browsers are among most commonly used software these days. You may be using Firefox or Chrome or Opera or even Internet Explorer, the bottomline is you need to get online and browsers help you in doing so. It is always nice to know your browser inside out and have some tricks up your sleeves, here are some cheat sheets that should get you started:

Google Chrome

Contains keyboard shortcuts, command line switches and the about:urls (Go there) (PDF)

Firefox

Contains keyboard shortcuts, highlights important directories related to Firefox, and presents a trick or two. It has not been updated for a long time but the information still stands good for Firefox 3.5 (Go there) ( PDF )

Linux

This is a huge 18 x 18 in poster that presents you – “The Anatomy of a Linux System”. It has a plethora of information about Linux, top Linux magazines, top Linux sites. In addition, it lists the popular software on Linux systems along with the sites and useful books (it’s from O’Reilly after all) on each of them. (More) (Download)

Lists commonly used commands, switches and what they do. Good for beginners. (Download)

Looking for something a little more advanced? Linux Administrator’s Quick Reference card has you covered with the important files and commands you need to know for system administration. (Download) Credit: Jialong He

Vi/Vim

One of my personal favorites, I actually learned Vim way back using this. It is a complete tutorial and apart from the all inclusive version, there are ones for individual chapters. You can download the SVG versions and scale them to make a wallpaper if you like! (Download)

Photoshop

Concisely lists all the common Photoshop shortcuts you should know to make your work easier and faster. (Download for CS4) (Other Photoshop Versions)

Twitter

Twitter finds its way into everything these days, how could we not have a reference sheet for Twitter?

Packed with all kinds of information about Twitter including important pages, desktop clients, widgets and apps, a definition of various Twitter buzzwords and ethics! (Download)

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

It has tons of information on what to include in tags, redirects, sitemap syntax, robots.txt syntax and much more. Presents lots of useful information in a tiny little booklet. A must for anyone working with SEO. (Download)

Looking for more?

I bet you are. Didn’t find the one you were looking for? Well there were too many of them to fit in one post. If you are looking for a specific application cheat sheet fire up the request in the comments section, someone might drop you a link. There are two great resources for posters and cheat sheets here and here. If you ever created one for yourself we would love to see them too!

Plus, don’t forget that MakeUseOf have our very own cheat sheets. Click here to check them out and if you like them, download them for free!

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How To Save Time In Excel By Using The Fill Handle

Jim Henderson — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 20:01:20 +0000

I want to help you get a handle on the handle. Excel has, for quite a few versions now, had a number of shortcuts for using the mouse rather than the keyboard.

I want to clarify how some of them work, so you can make the most of the tools at your disposal.

Cell handles

First off, let me tell you about the various cell handles that Excel makes use of. You use a cell handle by hovering the mouse on various parts of the screen. Fire up Excel and try this for yourself. Nothing beats a little practice.

I’m going to show you this in Excel 2007, but only the most advanced options are version-specific. You’ll be fine. One thing though. If you don’t use the default Windows mouse cursors you might see different sorts of shapes. Change it back to the defaults until you get the hang of this.

Select

You already use this one, if you use a mouse at all. Hold the mouse anywhere within the confines of a cell in a spreadsheet, and the mouse cursor becomes a small white cross. Hold the left button down and drag the mouse to select all the cells you slide over, in a rectangular shape. That’s it.

Move

If you hold the mouse over the edge of a cell, then it behaves differently. It’s quite common for people to do this by mistake, but it’s easy to avoid if you take a look at the cursor. It should be a thin black cross with arrow-heads on it.

The move handle does exactly what you would think. It moves the current cell, or the current block of cells if you have more than one selected. It’s smart though. If the cell you are moving is referenced by formulae in other cells, each formula is automatically adjusted so everything still works.

One safety tip. Make sure the cursor isn’t over the small black square in the bottom right corner of the cell. You’ll be doing something completely different. I’ll explain that soon.

Copy

To copy cells instead of moving them, put the mouse in the same place, and hold down the Control (Ctrl) key. The cursor changes back to a white arrow, with a small black cross beside it.

The behaviour is a little different now. If you drag the mouse to another location, the cell or cells you have selected will be copied and pasted there. If the cell contains a formula, it will change its references just the same as it would if you have used copy and paste. The contents of the cell you are copying from will not be changed.

Fill

Now this is the interesting one – the Excel fill handle.

If you hold the mouse over the bottom right corner of the cell or cells selected, the cursor will change to a simple black cross. That’s the Excel fill handle, and it does some cool stuff.

First off, if you have a formula in the cell, and you want to copy it to some adjacent cells, you can do that.

Hold the left button…

…and drag the mouse down (or to the right).

Release the mouse.

What happens in this case is the same thing as you would have achieved with the copy example further up. However, if the cells don’t contain formulae then the behaviour is different.

If the cells involved have a discernable pattern, then Excel will attempt to extend that pattern as best it can.

So imagine the above example again, but pretend, just for fun, that it contains 500 rows, instead of the four shown. You’re suddenly required to apply numeric codes to the items…

Create the first two, or however many are needed to establish a pattern. Hover over the fill handle…

… and drag the cursor down over the next two (or 500) cells.

Note the indicator to the right of what the final number will be. Release the mouse.

That’s it. The series of numbers is extended down over the other cells. Note that all the cells contain the actual values, not a formula.

You can use this for much more complex operations, none of which I have room for in this post, including complex lists, custom lists, and copying a formatting pattern along with the value pattern.

So tell me, do you use the handles? Did you already know what they do? Have you ever used the Excel fill handle by mistake? I certainly have. What else could I cover in Excel that might be useful?

Let me know in the comments.

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How To Make A Calendar Template In Excel

Ryan Dube — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 18:01:16 +0000

As an avid Excel user, I often find myself trying to do things with Excel that most folks would never consider. There are several reasons for this, but the most important is that Microsoft Excel has certain features that make certain unique formatting tasks extremely simple and easy to automate.

Earlier, I introduced MUO readers to my love affair with Excel when I wrote about how you can use it to create an effective household budget. I was also pleased to read some love from other MUO authors, such as Karl’s article about how to split a monster sized Excel spreadsheet, or Eyal’s Excel printing tips.

Today I’m going to share a few additional cool features in Excel that you can use specifically to make a calendar template in Excel.

Make a Calendar Template in Excel – A Step-By-Step Tutorial

The following calendar sheet is an Excel calendar template that you can open up and print each month. You have the option to keep it blank and it’ll automatically update to the correct month – all you have to do is print and fill in the days. Or, you can use the last few techniques described at the end of this article to fill in the sheet with the days before printing. It requires a little extra work, but it looks very cool.

Step #1 – Create The Header And Title

The first thing you’ll need to do is create the weekday header as well as the month title. This step will demonstrate the merge-and-fit feature as well as how to set the width of multiple columns at once.

First, type in the weekdays in a row across the top, but leave one row blank for your title. Format the text around 12 point and bold. You’ll notice that some of the weekdays extend beyond the limit of the column.

To fix this, just highlight the weekdays that you’ve typed and then select Format -> Column -> Width – and set the width for around 15 to 20.

Now that you’ve got your weekday header nicely formatted, it’s time to add the current month at the top of your calendar sheet. While you could just manually type in the month at the top of the sheet, this wouldn’t be very efficient, as you’d have to change it every time you wanted to print a new calendar sheet. It makes more sense to create an Excel calendar template that knows what month it is and changes the month title for you.

You do this by choosing any cell above your weekdays, and typing in the formula, “=TODAY()” – which tells Excel that you want today’s date in that field. After you do this, you’ll notice that it looks nothing like the month and it’s formatted all wrong. First, format the title with a font of around 20 to 22 and bold. Then, go into the Format -> Cells -> Number tab, select date and choose the format that you’d like for the month title.

Once you’ve got your title formatted correctly, you’ll still notice that it’s not centered properly and exists only within one cell at the top of the spreadsheet. In other words, it looks odd. To fix this, highlight all of the cells above your weekday header (including the one where your month is displayed) and click on the “merge and center” button.

Clicking “merge and center” turns all of the highlighted cells into one collective cell, and then centers your title in the middle of the highlighted region. Now you’ve got yourself a nicely formatted, automated calendar header.

Step #2 – Create The Calendar Days

The next step to make your calendar template in Excel is to once again use the “merge and center” feature, but this time you’ll merge a few empty cells in order to create one larger cell that represents a single day.

This step is where you’ll build the body of your calendar template, but it’s also the easiest step. First, highlight about 5 or 6 cells, and click on the “merge and center” button. This will form one cell the perfect size for one day on the calendar. Then, while this large cell is highlighted, copy it (control-c or Edit->Copy) and paste it into the other days (or just drag the lower right corner of the box over to the right). This will duplicate your box for every day of the week. Do this for five rows. Your calendar should now look like this:

Highlight your entire calendar click on the borders tool, and select the “grid” so that every grid line shows – essentially “drawing” out your calendar for you. Finally, you can either leave your template as it is (so you can write in the days yourself) and move ahead to step 3, or you can add in the days using Excel. Instead of going through and manually typing in “1″ to “30″, you can save a lot of time by using Excel’s auto-fill feature.

Using this technique, you simply enter in a formula for the first Monday and the second Sunday of the month. For example, if the 1st of the month is on Sunday, you’d enter “1″ into the first Sunday box (and of course nicely format it at 14-point and bold). Then, for Monday you’d type “=” then click on the day before it (A1) and type “+1″.

When you’re finished, highlight the box where you’ve entered this formula, and drag it across the entire week – this will correctly fill in all of the days of the week. Then, do the same thing for the following Sunday, but click on Saturday and add 1.

When you’re done, drag this box down each week so that every Sunday has the same formula (adding 1 to the previous Saturday). Drag the formula from the previous Monday down through the month as well – and then drag from Monday across each week. While it may sound confusing, as you give it a try you’ll find that filling in the days only requires a few clicks and less than 5 minutes.

Step #3 – Printing Your Calendar Template

Finally, you’re ready to print out your calendar to a nice clean paper so you can pin it up on your wall. By this point, your calendar should look like this.

While this looks absolutely fantastic within the Excel sheet, it won’t print properly because the edge of the calendar template goes beyond the printable page, so you’ll end up with parts of it on two pages. To fix this, go to File -> Page Setup, click the Page tab, and make sure it’s configured as shown here.

Set the format for landscape, and fit the entire calendar to 1 page wide by 1 page high. Click OK, and when you do a print preview you’ll find that your calendar template is formatted on one sheet and ready to print!

The next month, just open up the same Excel file (the month will already be correct), renumber the days and click Print – it’s as simple as that!

Do you have any tricks that might make creating a calendar in Excel a little simpler? Have you ever created any unique projects using Excel? Share your experiences in the comments section below.

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Use OfficeTab To Give Microsoft Office Firefox-Like Tabs

Karl L. Gechlik — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 12:01:16 +0000

I got a hot tip today on a piece of Chinese software that will make my life MUCH easier by adding Microsoft Office tabs to your installed MS applications. Have you heard of OfficeTab?

Well if you are not into finding the latest and greatest software you have probably never heard of it. But I am here to show you what it is, how it works and how to grab it. Interested?

Good, I thought that would spark some interest!

Feel free to download OfficeTab from this link. BUT WAIT – the catch is that the site is NOT in English.

So the direct download link lives here which, if you scroll down to the bottom of the product page, is the only link there. So no need for Google Translations today. The actual application IS multilingual so there are no issues there. Let’s take a look at how it works.

After downloading the application you have to install it. You will see a screen that looks like this after the initial start…

Simply check the Microsoft Office Applications you want OfficeTab to add Microsoft Office tabs to. I left the only three that showed up checked. I guess you wouldn’t have a real need for it in Access or Outlook (or would you?) Finish your install and then check out the settings.

These are the Excel settings which start with the check box to enable the Microsoft Office Tabs inside Excel. I left the rest of the settings alone until I really get into using the application.

The other tabs include WordTab and PowerPoint Tab – they are essentially identical. But peruse them and see if there is something that tickles your fancy like enabling custom colors, changing the hot key to switch labels and more. If you find a particularly helpful option, let us know in the comments.

Hit apply if you change anything and let’s see how it looks in Word:

Wow just like Firefox! Very cool and a lot handier than having to hit the task bar to switch between windows. All you need to do is open multiple files and they will each have their very own tab. Sweet!

Let’s see how it works in Excel:

It works the exact same way in Excel as it does in Word. And guess what? It works the same exact way in PowerPoint as well. It could not be easier and this really helps my work flow.

Now here is a little hint that you Firefoxers will love – you can open a new tab the same way you would in Firefox by simply double-clicking the area where the new tab would appear. Go ahead and try it – we will wait.

See I told you we would wait. Wasn’t that worth it? For me this is going on all my systems where I use Microsoft Office.

What do you think? Will this help you work faster? Do you know of other free MS Office plugins? We would love to give them a try. Go ahead and leave them in the comments – I dare you

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How To Split a Huge CSV Excel Spreadsheet into Separate Files

Karl L. Gechlik — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 12:01:27 +0000

I recently started working with a company that does HUGE mailing lists. I deal with a lot of records everyday but this really is a lot of data.

They have an opt-in mailing list that they blast to once or twice a month. When I say huge I am talking about between 7 and 8 million email addresses.

Now if you have ever tried to open a file like this in excel you would see something that looks like this:

The reason you get this error is simple.

Excel can only handle 65,536 lines per sheet. It cannot display the rest of it and will truncate it. This is not good if you need to cut your list into smaller pieces. In my case I need to have less than 1 million records in my csv file to be able to import it into my mailing list program.

I tried using Base from Open Office with the same results. Now I could open this as a text file and chop it up manually or import it into an access database and try and manipulate it there as well. But hey let’s check out a free and EASY alternative to split an Excel spreadsheet into seperate files. It is called FXFisherman’s CSV Splitter v1.1 by Sopheap LY.

We came across it here but I was able to trace it’s origins to the actual post on a forum it was created for and that is here. The original purpose of the app was to work with stock data in smaller chunks from a huge dump.

But hey I guess it will work on ANY csv file. Simply download the application and run it – no install required.

That will bring you to this screen:

Now this program has two simple options : you can split the csv file by the number of lines and specify the maximum number of files. Simply type in the number of lines you want to split each file into, and/or make the maximum pieces that you would want to see.

Next browse for your file by hitting the Browse file button and then hit the Split Now! Button.

When the program is complete you should see something that looks like this:

This tells me that my file of approximately 100,000 records was split successfully into a few even files. If they were more than 25 pieces with 50,000 lines in each it would have changed the algorithm to make each one slightly larger. Either which way this saved the day! I was able to import almost 4 million addresses at the end of the day into smaller chunks! (Thank god for interns!)

Do you know of a better, easier and / or faster way to accomplish the same thing?

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Excel Printing Tips – 6 Steps For Perfect Printing

Eyal Sela — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 22:01:01 +0000

Do you get tens of pages out, with some of the columns standing by themselves in an unknown page every time you print out an Excel worksheet? Tired of wasting paper time and time again?

It’s time to get things straight. Let’s see how to print an Excel sheet the right way.

[All the Excel tips shown here work in Excel 2003 as well]

Step 1 – A new sheet filled with data

I used Google tables to get some excel suitable data. Currently, it looks like this:

This is how our sheet looks like at the beginning

Step 2 – Convert the data to a table

(If you do not use a tabular structure in your sheet, you can skip this step.) One Excel tip to make the data look better and easier to scrutinize with, start by converting it to a table. Select the cells that contain data and press Ctrl + L. in the opened window click OK .

The sheet now looks like this:

The data designed as a table

Step 3 – Set the area to be printed

Another Excel tip to print only the part of the sheet you need is to set a print area. Select the cells (if it’s a table, click somewhere inside it and press Ctrl+Shift+8). On the ’Page Layout’ tab, in the ’Page Setup group’, click ’Print Area‘, and then click ‘Set Print Area’.

Step 4 – Wrap the text in the cells to make it visible

In order to make all the text in the cells visible, leave the cells from the previous step selected. On the ‘Home’ tab, in the ‘Alignment’ group, click ‘Wrap Text‘. Doing so will make the lines spread down and the text within them visible. This is a useful Excel tip when you have long lines of text in individual cells.

wrapped Text

Step 5 – customize the data to fit into the desired size and number of pages

Now is the critical part. In order for the printing to look well and make sense, you need to set it right in the print preview mode. Go there by pressing Ctrl+F2.

Click ‘Show Margins‘ in the Preview group. The page margins will be displayed. Stand on each of them with the mouse and drag them to the edges of the page, as much as your printer can handle (you can also choose one of the default margin values by going back to the normal view and in the ‘Page Layout’ tab, in the ‘Page Setup’ group, clicking ‘Margins’).

Now, choose ‘Page Setup‘ in the Print group. In the opened window, fill-in the desired values under ‘Fit to‘. If you set it to 1 page wide by 1 page tall, as I did in this showcase, your data will be printed on a single page. The cost of doing so is that the text will become smaller (since all of it has to fit into a single page).

Step 6 – Center the table and add a header and a footer

Still in the ‘Page Setup’ window, click the ‘Margin’ tab. Under ‘Center on page‘, select the ‘Horizontally‘ and ‘Vertically‘ check box.

Now move to the ‘Header/Footer’ tab, click ‘Custom Header‘, and fill-in a header. You can include text, page number, images and so on. Click ‘Custom Footer‘ to add a footer. Click OK.

Step 7 – customize row and column sizes

As different cells contain different data or information, you might want to change the length or width of the rows and columns. You can do that in the print preview mode, by standing with the mouse exactly on the borders of the cells and dragging them right or left.

Since now some of the cells might be bigger in length then they need to be, lets make them automatically fit the text inside them. Press the ESC key to go back to normal view. Select the entire sheet by pressing Ctrl + A, and double click the separator between line three and four.

You may need to repeat step 6 several times until the table fits perfectly to the page.

The final display is present below. You are ready to print.

How do you achieve perfect printing? Do you have any Excel tips of your own to share? Let us know in the comments.

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Make a Personal Budget on Excel in 4 Easy Steps

Ryan Dube — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 16:01:35 +0000

About 10 years ago, my wife and I were straddled with so much debt that we thought it would take the rest of our lives, or at least the next sixty years, to pay it all off. The combination of school loans, car loans and credit card debt was enough to make a grown man double over and cry. There came a moment when we realized that we either had to make a personal budget that could outsmart the system or it would keep us enslaved for our entire adult lives.

That’s when I sat down with a blank Microsoft Excel spreadsheet in front of me and just started playing around, using various techniques to cut down our budget to bare bones, and create a debt plan that wouldn’t take decades to eliminate our debt, but also wouldn’t keep us eating Macaroni and Cheese for dinner until we retire. In the end, I was able to eliminate all of our credit card debt in only 5 years, and we even had good enough credit in the end to get approved for a low-rate mortgage to buy our first home.

Today, I’m going to share a few of the nifty spreadsheet techniques that I used to generate a usable (and useful) budget, and finally, I’m going to share a technique to pay down your debt in a fraction of the time using the same exact payments you’re making today. It’s a trick that I’ve seen a lot of guys trying to sell elsewhere on the net – I’m going to share it with MakeUseOf readers here, for free.

Step 1: Structure a Personal Budget Spreadsheet That Doesn’t Drive You Nuts

Anyone who has tried to make a personal “budget” knows the basics. You need to make a log of all of your bills and all of your income. Your bottom line is how much you have left over for fun, or how much fun you have to cut out of your lifestyle before you go bankrupt. It sounds easy, but when you start entering all of your details into a spreadsheet, things get very messy very quickly. A lot of people give up after the first attempt.

The basic layout is easy enough. List your bills in the first left column, and then in the next few columns list total balance you owe, monthly required payments, and the date that the bill is usually due. These four columns are really all you need to create a budget.

However, here I’ve gone an extra step and added a column to the right for each month for easy expense tracking. However, once you get a large number of columns and rows, the screen starts to scroll and you can’t always see the bills to the left or the header at the top. The quick and easy technique to fix this is using the “freeze panes” feature.

First, select the box where the intersection at the upper left represents the row and column that you don’t want to scroll when you use the spreadsheet’s scrollbars. First, select Window->Split, and then go back again and select Window->Freeze Panes.

Now, when you scroll up or down (as shown here), the header and left column remain static, so you always know what the value you’ve selected applies to. This is a very useful feature and since I have a very bad short term memory, it has saved me a great deal of frustration where I normally would have had to keep scrolling back to check which bill I’d selected.

Step 2: Lay Out an Organized Budget Using Shading

I remember looking for a free budget spreadsheet back then and finding all of these templates filled with data that just made my head ache. Without clear lines separating the major sections of your budget, you’ll have a hard time zoning in on the area that you’re interested in. The best way to organize a budget spreadsheet is by shading each summary section between your major groups.

As you can see here, the first section of the budget pertains to bills, including household utilities and fixed bills, as well as another section devoted to only credit cards. At the bottom of this particular section, the total for fixed bills is highlighted with light green shading so it’s clear and easy to find.

As you can see, once you start shading rows, the entire spreadsheet becomes much more organized and easier to follow.

The “Fill” tool is located on the Excel menu bar and appears as a paint can tipping over with paint pouring out. Just highlight the entire row (click the numbered gray cell to the left) and then click the Fill button and select what color you’d like to use.

Step #3 – Use Excel Formulas to Project Your Credit Card Balances Into the Future

Now that you can make a personal budget that is well organized and structured in a way that’s very easy to follow, the next step is attacking that nagging credit card debt that’s been plaguing you for years. In these next examples, the same formatting techniques are used to create a list of credit card balances and monthly payments.

Set up your debt log in the same way – split and freeze the panes, but this time list each month along the left, and your credit card balances (and monthly payments) to the right. After you’ve entered in your current balance in the top cell (for example, in this case Capital One is $3,000), in the next cell below it you would enter a formula that multiplies that balance by your card’s interest rate and divides by twelve. That is your estimated monthly interest.

Then you subtract your monthly payment from the balance, and add the interest that you just calculated. Once you’ve got that first cell calculated correctly, you can duplicate the formula for every month below it by clicking and holding the small box to the lower right of the cell you just calculated, and dragging it down as far as you like. Each month will have a new calculated balance based on the previous months balance.

When you do this projection, you’ll eventually find the spot where the balance is completely paid off. As you can see from my own calculations, when I maintain a $250 payment every month until it’s paid off, it’ll take me until July 2012 to pay off the entire Advanta credit card balance.

Step #4 – Recalculate Payments Based on Interest and Eliminate Your Debt

By playing around with this kind of spreadsheet, I uncovered the very simple, common-sense solution that a lot of scammers out there are charging people for. Instead of maintaining constant payments on each of your credit cards until it’s paid off – you pay the minimum balance on all of them, and divert all of your current “debt-payment” money toward the credit card with the highest interest. Here is how it works.

This is also why I love Excel. By using the ability to “autofill” the monthly balance calculations, I tested different scenarios to pay off debts faster. Instead of paying $100 on Discover and taking until 2011 to pay that balance off, I paid $200 and will have it paid off by December 2009. Then I take that $200 and add it to the existing $250 I pay on Advanta.

As you can see, the Advanta balance is paid off in April of 2011, almost a year earlier. If you have additional credit card balances, you simply “snowball” the payment and eliminate your debt in months rather than years. Excel allows you to see that concept in a very cool graphical form by using the formula “autofill” feature.

Do you use Excel or other spreadsheets to make a personal budget or to plan out your family bills? Share your own tips and resources in the comments section below.

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How To Open, Edit and Print any Text Document File

Varun Kashyap — Sun, 10 May 2009 20:30:39 +0000

There are so many good software available these days – some free and some not free that you can use to create documents of all kinds. The downside? Each has its own format, some open formats and some not and you have to take care of which ones play well with which software.

Every now and then you would get a file that is not supported on your computer, there are couple of ways to tackle such a situation:

If you want to view and print the contents

If all you want to do is view the file and dont want to make any changes then look into TextMaker Viewer.

A 4MB download that allows you to view and print documents in a variety of different formats. Once you have it installed you can view almost all of the common document formats irrespective of the fact whether you have the requisite software installed or not.

TextMaker viewer allows you to open, view and print docx, sxw, dotx, rtf, doc, dot Microsoft Word templates, pwd, tmd, htm/html, odt and txt files.

On the other hand if most of your chores are related to Office 2007 file formats (i.e. docx) and if you have still not made the jump to Office 2007 you can use these Microsoft downloads to get those files working on Microsoft Office 2003, XP etc.

If you want to edit the contents

If you would like to work upon a file that is not supported by the software you have installed, you have to go for file conversion and hope that everything turns out the way you wanted.

If you are going for conversion there are some pretty handy online resources that you should keep in mind. Cometdocs and Convertfiles are excellent for such purposes. You can mostly convert all the common document file formats using these two sites.

Zamzar is another very popular site for similar purposes. Besides documents it also does video, audio and text to speech, so you might want to check it out for your other conversion needs as well.

Online resources generally have a file size limit and you might have to wait in some cases, if you are looking for a solution that is “closer” to home you might want to check out the “Save As” feature of your software. Generally there are plenty of formats available that you can choose from so that your recepient is able to use your file. OpenOffice as an example is able to read doc, docx, pdf besides the native formats, so if you happen to be using OpenOffice you can always open a file and save it in the desired format.

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How to Fix Microsoft Office Problems with MS Office Diagnostics

Saikat Basu — Mon, 04 May 2009 13:00:54 +0000

You are working on a vital spreadsheet and Microsoft Excel comes crashing down. MS Office applications do go down and all we can do is wring our hands or ring for support. But what if we could do a bit of sleuthing and get to the root of the cause ourselves?

Sometimes the glitch may not be in the Office suite but in the innards of the computer itself. It could be caused by a faulty RAM or a problem in the hard disk drive. Or maybe you were too lazy to install one of the released service packs.

Microsoft now offers an in-house physician. MS Diagnostics is a tool included with the Microsoft Office2007 system that runs a battery of tests which can let you know about the problems and help you with ways that to solve them. You must have run into Microsoft Office2003’s Detect and Repair features; MS Office Diagnostics is like a MRI Scan to the former’s X-ray. It gives a more thorough run over to your system with better repair choices.

MS Diagnostics sizes up your system by running these scans,

Setup Diagnostic

Files and the registry are scanned for glitches commonly caused by viruses and faulty installations. This test can take up to 15 minutes or more as it goes into the very nerve center of the computer.

Disk Diagnostic

This diagnostic test scans the hard disk for potential problems. It looks at the Windows system event log and the SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) feature of your hard disk if available. This test is sure to let you know if the hard disk is headed for a crash.

Memory Diagnostic

This checks up on the stability of the RAM.

Update Diagnostic

This is an update check – does your computer and your Office suite have all the updates installed? It is important as official updates smoothen out the bugs and make the system more stable. This test is available only if Check for Updates is enabled for the Office suite.

Compatibility Diagnostic

Sometimes you may have different versions of the same Office application installed or conflicting DLL files might be causing the errors. The compatibility test checks for this and nails the problem factor.

Check for known solutions

This test uses the vast database of Microsoft’s crash cases and their possible solutions to offer a similar for you after reviewing the crash reports on your system.

Now, let’s diagnose…

Though it sounds like a very serious piece of work, in practice it’s not. That’s a hurrah for Microsoft’s user friendliness. Before running the tests, close all open programs and avoid using the computer for the duration of the check-up.

MS Office Diagnostic can be found under the MS Office tools group menu.
MS office Diagnostic window opens to inform the user that the test may take up to 15 minutes and also connect to Microsoft’s servers. Click on continue.
This window displays the tests that will be carried out. Begin the scan by clicking on Run Diagnostic.
The diagnostics will run one by one and notify you of any glitches detected. This should ideally complete in less than 10-15 minutes if there aren’t any errors.
At the end of the diagnostic run, a summary of results is displayed. Here, perhaps is the only significant catch in the tool – it does not give the specific error. The diagnostic tool can make some repairs to the installation. Clicking on continue will connect you to Microsoft’s vast information resource of problems and solutions. You can follow its recommendations to resolve an error if the repairs fail.

The above steps diagnose the entire Office suite. To save time, you can shortcut the process and have the tool check up on a single Office application. For instance,

Diagnostics on MS Word can be accessed from: Microsoft Office Button – Word Options – Resources
Similarly for MS Excel/MS Access/MS PowerPoint, the tool can be accessed from: Microsoft Office Button – [Office Suite] Options – Resources

For the others like MS Outlook/MS Visio/MS SharePoint Designer/MS Project/MS Publisher, the path is: Help – Office Diagnostics

Note: If all the above options fail to open MS Diagnostics, you can access the application directly from its location – C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\OFFICE12\ offdiag.exe

After a run of MS Diagnostic tool, the problem may or may not get resolved. But Microsoft Diagnostics packs in a rapid detect and fix mechanism which gives us a ‘crash’ course in Office repair.

Has the Microsoft Diagnostic tool helped to reduce your emergency calls to the support guys? Do let us know about your experiences with Microsoft Office crashes and how you got back on your feet?

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How To Make Microsoft Office 2007 Look Like Office 2003

Saikat Basu — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 19:04:22 +0000

I remember the first time I set my eyes on Microsoft Office2007. It was love at first sight because everything seemed so stylish. At second sight, I found myself a bit lost among the buttons of the new Ribbon menu. I knew there was a bit of a learning curve ahead of me. Though I mastered it in a short while, I must confess that it did take some getting used to. That was me…but then there were some (and still are) who found the learning curve a bit steeper. Accustomed to the older pre-2007 classical interface, they thrashed about with the new one. Baffling for most, I guess.

Necessity is the mother of invention and so someone thought up UBitMenu (and thankfully made it free!)

UBitMenu is a small plugin for Microsoft Office 2007 (Excel, Word, and PowerPoint) that makes Office 2007 look like Ofice 2003 by giving the menu – the Office2003 makeover. It gets added on as an additional menu tab in the three Office 2007 applications.

While you will get back your old usage habits, do also realize that the new Ribbon interface was designed keeping fluency in mind (take a look at the Quick Styles feature in the Ribbon). The Ribbon interface allows for first level access to the commands we use most often.

For instance, I personally find the Ribbon interface a better help in MS PowerPoint. One point to remember is that shortcut keys will continue to behave as they do in Office2007.

The add-on benefits…

UBitMenu lets the bewildered switch back and forth at will between the older and newer style interfaces. That’s great because it doesn’t replace the newer feature rich menu with the classical one but merely adds an extra tab. And kilobyte-sized, it’s no extra flab.

UBitMenu does not interfere with the new features of Office2007 in any way. The contextual tabs like the Mini-formatting toolbar works just as well with the classical menu active.

UBitMenu also retains any extra features that may have been installed through other plug-ins. For instance, documents can still be saved to PDF or XPS from the File – Save As submenu.

UBitMenu is based on standard Microsoft® Office-Add-in technology; therefore it seamlessly integrates with Microsoft Office2007.

This 359KB freeware application lets you keep the best of both worlds. UBitMenu is available for download in several languages from here.

Are you still one of those (Office2007 has been out for some while) who wished they could cut the ribbon and make Office 2007 look like the classic Office 2003 in Windows XP? Then you just might see the utility of this small software. Give us your freewheeling opinion in the comments below.

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Create Awesome Excel & PowerPoint Charts with ChartChooser

Matt Brian — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 23:01:34 +0000

When displaying your work in a presentation, it can often be difficult to visualize your data for the benefit of your audience. If you are working with numeric data, your data can be displayed in a number of different charts but there are so many to choose from.

Chart Chooser from Juice Analytics is an innovative tool that lets you create Excel and Powerpoint charts and choose what characteristics you wish to highlight in your data; Comparison, Distribution, Composition, Trend, Relationship and/or Table, and it will filter the selections highlighting the possible charts for your needs.

Once you have decided on your selection, Chart Chooser will display options to download templates for Excel and Powerpoint. The downloaded files will have random data filled for you to get an idea of how the data is presented and where you will be able to enter your own figures.

The good news about this service is that Juice Analytics doesn’t seem to be stopping with the current selection of graphs available on the site. Users are encouraged to suggest different charts to be added to their website and even design bespoke versions for organisations. Juice Analytics have also endeavoured to make all their charts Tufte-compliant (clean and minimal) whilst remaining visually aesthetic.

Juice Analytics also operates an analytics blog that focuses on free tools and open source code. Here, you are able to find a wealth of information on how the Juice Analytics team tackle different projects, including this project inspired by the New York Times.

One tool that the team recently released was Concentrate, a search analytics tool for SEO and paid search professionals who wanted to make sense of search keyword data. Concentrate works by connecting to your Google Analytics account and helps to visualize keyword relationships to see connections and performance of common word combinations. All data collated by Concentrate is automatically formatted and information such as categorized search phrases and pattern groups can be downloaded to CSV format for off site analysis.

Juice Analytics is a great source of Excel and Powerpoint information as well as providing open source code, most of which are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. If you need to impress the board, your boss or your peers at your next meeting, a visit to these guys, even just for the Chart Chooser, should be your first stop.

Do you know of any other sites that offer templates like these? If so, let us know of your recommendations in the comments!

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Convert That PDF To Word. Get That Text Back!

Karl L. Gechlik — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 15:01:46 +0000

Anyone who has been involved in the computer game for more than a little while knows what a PDF is. PDF is a file format that stands for Portable Document Format. A PDF is meant to be non-editable and the body of the document is an image and not editable, or selectable text.

So if you received a document of say names and email addresses in a file called Leads.PDF. You can open the document, print the document and even send the document on to others. But if you want to import that information into your email address book, an excel spreadsheet or otherwise manipulate the data – you just can’t.

Now as The Admin – can’t is not in my vocabulary. No I do speak English and know what it means….but I started to look for an answer. Most of them came back to buying Adobe Acrobat Pro – Mucho Dinero. Not an option for the little guy. Then I came across all these little sites also promising to help me for $29.99 or $49.99.

I looked around the web and then I searched good old MakeUseOf.com and found this article by Aibek from January of this year. He ran down some popular free PDF tools. And low and behold he listed exactly what I needed. It’s called…..wait for it….wait for it…

FREE PDF to Word Doc Converter

I downloaded it from the link above, installed it and was greeted with this screen:

The fields and options are not only straight forward but simple as well. Just input the file you want to convert by hitting the browse button on the left and navigating to your PDF file. It will automagically set the output file to be in the same directory with just a .doc extension.

You can set how much of the document you want converted and what program if any should open the .DOC after it is created. You can choose your font, and if you want images and shapes to carry over.

That’s it. Click the “Convert to Word Document” Button and you’re off. I sat back and waited for my 986 page document to convert and it only took a few minutes. It then popped up in Word 2003 – fully editable!

What do you guys use for converting PDF’s to text? Anyone have any better or other solutions?

How do you get numbers into Excel from a PDF? Is anyone actually using Microsoft’s version of the PDF format – called XPS?

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9 Must-Have OpenOffice Extensions

Damien Oh — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 16:00:43 +0000

Like Firefox, OpenOffice also comes with extensions that you can use to improve its functionality. Here, we have tested all the extensions and sorted out those that are useful for everyday use. Some of them are for general use while some are only meant for Writer, Calc or Impress. (For those who haven’t heard about OpenOffice before, it’s a popular free alternative to Microsoft Office)

Before you carry on reading, here are some things that you need to do/know:

here

To install the extension, you have to go to Tools -> Extension Manager in any of the OpenOffice applications. Click ‘Add’ to install the extension that you have downloaded.

Let’s proceed onto the 9 must-have extensions for your OpenOffice.

1) Sun PDF Import Extension

Normally, OpenOffice only allows you to export your file to PDF format, but not to import and make changes to it. With this PDF Import extension, you can now import your PDF files and make changes to the date, numbers or even a small portion of text.

By default, this extension imports the PDF file into the Draw application rather than Writer, even though it may contain a full page of text. You may be wondering why, but if you remember that when the PDF format was first created, it was designed not to allow any editing at all. As such, importing as a text document into Writer may prove too difficult a thing to do.

With that, capturing the content as a Draw object now seems the easiest and most logical thing to do. When you import your PDF file into your Draw application, every single line of text will be treated as a draw object and you can edit the text and rearrange it as you like.

Sun PDF Import Extension is still in beta and only works in OpenOffice 3.0.

2) Professional Template Pack II – English

With more than 120 professionally designed document templates at your fingertips, it is hard not to create a high quality document or presentation.

This extension adds various kinds of templates, ranging from business correspondence, budgets and project plans, event posters, invoices, notes, minutes, press releases to personal letter templates.

You’ll never have to spend your time writing up the whole document again.

After installation, the templates can be found under File -> New –> Templates and Documents.

3) OpenOffice.org2GoogleDoc

This extension allows you to export and import documents from Google Docs, Zoho and any WebDav server. Files supported include OpenDocument Text (.odt), StarOffice (.sxw), Microsoft Word (.doc), Rich Text (.rtf), OpenDocument Spreadsheet (.ods), Microsoft Excel (.xls), Comma Separated Value (.csv) and Microsoft PowerPoint (.ppt, .pps).

Java 6 is required to use this extension.

4) Writer’s Tools

If you are just like me, who spends a great deal of time sitting behind OpenOffice writing articles, then Writer’s Tools is the extension that you must have. Writer’s Tools is a set of utilities designed to help OpenOffice users perform a wide range of tasks. You can back up documents, look up and translate words and phrases, manage text snippets, and keep tabs on document statistics. Some of the useful functions of this extension include:

Lookup word from several sources, including Cambridge Dictionaries, WordNet, and Google Define.
Backup a copy of your current document by sending an email to a specified address.
Wikify Word tool links a selected word or text fragment in the current document to a Writer document, which is created on the fly
Quick Converter that lets you convert between the metric and imperial systems easily.
Bookmarks tool allows you to bookmark often-used documents, so you can access them with a few mouse clicks.
Word of the Day tool picks and displays a random word and its definition from the accompanying WriterDB database.

and many more…

5) LanguageTool

What use is there if you can’t check your grammar and other language errors in an Office suite? The LanguageTool extension is an Open Source language checker for English, German, Polish, Dutch, and other languages. It is rule-based, which means it will find errors for which a rule is defined in its XML configuration files. Rules for more complicated errors can be written in Java. You can think of LanguageTool as a tool to detect errors that a simple spell checker cannot detect, e.g. mixing up there/their, no/now etc. It can also detect some grammar mistakes.

The Language Tool extension does not include spell checking.

6) Creative Commons Licensing

If you are always creating open source projects with the Creative Commons License, this extension will come in handy to you. The Creative Commons Licensing extension provides the ability to select and embed a Creative Commons License in Writer, Calc and Impress documents.

7) Data Form

In the Excel application in Microsoft Office, there is this feature – Data -> Form – that allows you to key in data easily. What this extension does is to replicate that feature in OpenOffice. The Data Form extension generates a data input form for tables in the Calc application that you can use to enter values.

In Calc, create a table with at least one row and the headline, for example:

Then, click on a range or any cell of the newly created table (not on empty cells), and go to Data – Form. That’s it. A form should appear letting you insert other records, or edit-delete the old ones.

Modern Impress Template

The Modern Impress template extension installs more than 30 beautiful templates that you can use for your presentation. All the graphics in the template are based on open-source art.

After installation, you can access the template at File -> New -> Templates and Documents -> Templates -> My Templates

9) Sun Presenter Console

For those who need to give presentations regularly, wouldn’t it be great if during the presentation, you can view what the next slide is and read the note that you have written all from the screen? It will take the guesswork out of you and also keeps you away from the troublesome paper notes scribbled with tiny text. What this extension does is to project different views to different monitors and allows you to see your upcoming slide and note while the audience only sees the current slide and the slide effect.

There are three views that you can configure in the Presenter Console. The first view displays the current slide for your audience to read while the second view shows the speaker’s notes in large, clear and scalable type plus the current and upcoming slide. The third view is a slider sorter view with the slide thumbnails. In your Impress application, go to Slide Show -> Slide Show settings and you can decide which view is to be projected to each monitor.

Do you use extensions for your OpenOffice? If so, which one is your favorite?

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Build Yourself A Virtual Cloud To Fall Back On

Tina — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 18:02:21 +0000

These days virtually everyone is in touch with Cloud Computing. In fact, most of us are relying on it to some degree. The internet, metaphorically referred to as “the cloud”, produces ever more Web 2.0 applications that enable us to take our lives online. We don’t write diaries – we blog. We don’t call to share news – we twitter. We meet friends through social networks, and our busy calendars are readily available online.

Ultimately, the cloud will be able to replace a majority of everyday programs on local desktop computers. This brings freedom and convenience in that we don’t have to buy expensive software, we can access our data wherever we go, and we don’t have to worry about updates or security, since it’s all taken care of by the providers. The danger of course is loss of control over your privacy and data, and potential consequences are data piracy or identity theft. What if the service fails and data cannot be accessed? Imagine the internet went down, all hell would break loose. These are just some of the scenarios to be considered.

While at this point it may not be advisable to transfer your whole life to a cloud, detaching from a desktop computer may actually have great advantages, such as retaining a great deal of independence. So after starting with a somewhat lengthy introduction, let me provide you with a short list of online software alternatives to popular desktop applications.

Microsoft Word becomes Zoho

Zoho is, without a doubt, one of the most complete online office suites available to date. Zoho comes with a word processor, spreadsheets, presentation tool, note taker, organizer, project management, web conferencing and much, much more.

Other than that it provides plugins for MS Office, MS Outlook, Firefox, and IE to ensure you’re not locked up with this service, but can take your files out of the cloud to create backups or avoid online storage.

Microsoft PowerPoint becomes Preezo

If you don’t want to rely on Zoho to replace your whole office suite, here is an alternative for PowerPoint worth mentioning. Preezo is an Ajax-based web application to create and share professional presentations over the web without the need for software or plugins installed on your computer. It totally looks and works like PowerPoint and you can import or export .ppt files. Perfect.

Microsoft Excel becomes EditGrid or ChartAll

Not quite Excel but close. EditGrid is one of the most comprehensive online spreadsheet providers. Another possible alternative, much simpler but therefore not requiring you to sign up, is chartAll.

MS Outlook becomes Google Mail

What more do I need to say? At this point we are stuck with Google because to my knowledge there is not a worthy alternative to GMail.

If you would like to learn more about GMail, and let me tell you there is a lot you probably don’t know about it yet, search Make Use Of for some great articles! Or go directly to our Gmail tag.

Microsoft OneNote becomes LinoIt or Springnote

LinoIt is an online pinboard to which you can stick your notes to. You can have multiple canvases for multiple purposes, make them public or share them with specific users. The stickies can serve as reminders or to-to lists, organizing and customizing stickies is easy, and you can post new ones by eMail.

If you’re looking for more advanced note taking, give Springnote a try, which I reviewed in detail several weeks ago.

Adobe Photoshop becomes Splashup or PhotoShop Express

Websites like Photoshop Express or Splashup may not be a complete or worthy replacement for Adobe’s Photoshop. However, they provide a very familiar interface and cover more than just the most basic photo editing tools. Definitely better than fiddling with some crappy desktop application (e.g. the Windows default), when Photoshop is not available.

Instant Messengers become Meebo

Meebo allows instant messaging through all popular messengers via your browser. It supports AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, Google Talk, and more.

Simon wrote about Meebo and two more web-based IM clients back in July this year.

Your Desktop Online

Back in March I wrote about online desktops (aka Web Os). As pointed out in the comments, this may not make sense for most people. However, to retain a familiar desktop environment with shortcuts and wallpapers, it may be quite nice to have. It’s those seemingly superfluous things that make life great.

Now that you know some alternatives to desktop applications, let me say this: It may be convenient to use Google for everything, but unless there is absolutely no better alternative, don’t. Keep a variety and make your private cloud rest on more than just one foot. Last but not least, keep backups!

How far into Cloud Computing are you, and which services would you rather not trust anonymous providers with?

(By) Tina is a regular MUO author. In her offline life she’s a PhD student interested in unraveling signaling events that determine cartilage and bone development.

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3 Excellent Sites to Get Free Document Templates

Aibek — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 04:34:02 +0000

Once in a while we all need some kind of document, it may be a business plan presentation, rental contract, non-disclosure agreement, or even a name change request form. In most cases, Googling the document may ultimately get you what you need, but it’s both time consuming and frustrating. Below, I want to go through 3 excellent resources that can provide you with any professional document or form template for free.

(1) Docstoc – Extremely useful community-powered service for sharing all kinds of business document templates. If you need a professional document, Docstoc is the first place to check out. Whether it’s a legal document, a business form or whatever is out there. Docstoc was launched just recently but already counts over 65.000 user-submitted documents, covering legal, business, financial, technology, and education areas.

For all Docstoc features and video demo check out Docstoc profile here.

(2) Gazhoo – Unlike Docstoc, Gazhoo is a marketplace for legal, financial and business documents, case studies and research papers. Mainly it’s a place to buy and sell professional documents. However, with the exception of few scarce document types (i.e. market research papers) most of the listed documents are free. So, it’s a pretty good resource as well.

(3) Scribd – Scribd has the biggest document collection, but it’s not focused on professional documents alone. It’s more like a virtual document library, where anyone can freely upload and share any kind of text documents (jokes, facts, stories, legal, presentations, etc.). Although, there is a good deal of useless stuff, it still has lots of legal forms and document templates. Read more: Scribd – Online Document Sharing.

Are you aware of any other similar websites? Share them in comments

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OxygenOffice Pro: Enhanced Version of OpenOffice

Adam Hirsch — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 15:31:12 +0000

Previously known as OpenOffice.org Premium, OxygenOffice.org Professional (OOOP) is a modified source of Open Office 2.3 that contains all the “extras” you would find in a standard Microsoft Office suite and more. The simple extras include everything from a rich clip art gallery to variety of standard document templates (CV, greeting cards, etc.).

However, OOOP goes well beyond just the 3,400 graphic clip art gallery and templates… The developers have included over 90 text fonts, OOOWikipedia (an integrated Wikipedia Search Tools), ability to run Visual Basic for Applications from Calc (the OpenOffice alternative to “Excel”), ability to import Office Open XML (Microsoft Office 2007), and option to export (save as) documents to PDF, LaTex and MediWiki. To top it all off, OOOP has been able to integrate importing of Works and WordPerfect documents.

Completely open source, multi-lingual (11 languages in total) and multi-platform (Linux and Windows). You can find the download here. If you want to know more about the OpenOffice, I have previously covered OpenOffice here and Aseem covered it here.

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6 Free Office Suites That Are NOT Microsoft

Aseem Kishore — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 15:53:20 +0000

Microsoft Office may be the most popular office productivity suite currently on the market, but don’t expect this to last forever considering the slew of new, web-based, and open-source alternatives coming every day. Recently, in only the last 2 to 3 years, not only has the number of MS Office competitors grown significantly, but also the quality of these products has increased immeasurably.

The best part about these new office alternatives is that they are completely FREE and they work with Microsoft Office, so if you or your company are locked into Office currently, you can integrate open-source software into your systems slowly and carefully. If you’re a consumer, you can now create documents, spreadsheets, and presentations on the fly, access them from anywhere, and open them in MS Office for compatibility purposes.

Here’s a list of six of the most popular alternative office productivity suites out there today:

Online Office Software

1. Google Docs – This is probably the most heard of Office competitor that most people already know about. Google Docs is completely online and includes a web-based Word Processor, Spreadsheet application, and a Presentation app. More on Google Docs features (incl. introduction video).

2. Zoho – Zoho is probably the best online office productivity suite with not only word processor, spreadsheet and presentation apps, but also includes online project management, CRM solutions, web conferencing, online database with reports, online planner, group chat, wiki, and lots more. It also includes a plug-in for MS Office so you can work both online or offline. Learn more about Zoho.

3.Thinkfree – Thinkfree claims to have the best integration with Microsoft Office. Also, the interface for each app is very similar to MS Office including the toolbars, icons, and functions. Thinkfree also has advanced collaboration features such that users can share, edit, and contribute their ideas remotely. More on Thinkfree (incl. video demos and screenshot).

Downloadable Office Software

5.StarOffice – StarOffice is from Sun Microsystems and has recently been released under the Google Pack as a free download. StarOffice runs on Windows, Linux, and Solaris systems. You’ll have to download OpenOffice if you want it for the Mac.

4. IBM Lotus Symphony – IBM Lotus Symphony is a direct competitor to the Microsoft Office suite because it is also a desktop application aimed at individuals and businesses. The suite consists of Symphony Documents, Symphony Presentations, and Symphony Spreadsheets. I wrote about it before, so if interested check out my IBM Symphony review.

6. OpenOffice – OpenOffice is a multi-platform (Win, Mac, Linux) and multi-lingual office suite which is compatible with all major office suites (i.e. Microsoft Office). It includes Writer (word processing), Impress (presentation), Math, Draw, Calc (spreadsheet), and Base applications. IBM Lotus Symphony and StarOffice are both based on the code from OpenOffice.

And if that’s not enough choices, Adobe is planning on releasing it’s own online word editor called Buzzword. Plus, Yahoo may be joining the crowd soon also with it’s recent purchase of Zimbra. So if you’re still stuck on Office, be sure to check out all the new alternatives as they will probably be the future of office productivity suites.

Posted by Aseem Kishore from Online-Tech-Tips

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Top 3 FREE web-based Office Suites (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.)

Aibek — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 19:13:01 +0000

Web-based office applications have reached top heights these days: bringing together several features you won’t find in traditional office software i.e. Microsoft Office. These include: document sharing, group collaboration, support for all popular Office file formats, and remote access and editing. Although it’s still yet to reach a stage where it can be used as a viable alternative to your local office software, it definitely makes an excellent complimentary tool. So in case you’re looking for a free, all-in-one type web-based office suite than one of the below ones should be a good place to start with.

(1) Zoho – Office
Very well implemented, all-in-one type office suite. Zoho consists of several stand-alone applications ranging from must-haves i.e. Zoho Writer (for Word processing) , Zoho Sheet (for Spreadsheets) and Zoho Show (for Presentations) to more specific tools i.e. Zoho Project and Zoho Meeting. Additionally, Zoho provides a handy plugin for Microsoft Office letting you work on office files offline and quickly sync them afterwards.

(2) ThinkFree
Thinkfree provides solid and well-integrated office suite, supporting 3 main office applications: Word, Spreadsheets (i.e. EXCEL) and Presentation documents. Once you sign-up, you’ll be provided with an easy-to-use control panel (aka Webtop) where you can create, edit, store, organize and collaborate on documents. ThinkFree also features a premium version (non-free) which lets you work on your ThinkFree docs both online and offline. More on ThinkFree

(3) Google Docs & Spreadsheets

Unlike Zoho and ThinkFree, Google Docs doesn’t provide support for working with presentation files (i.e. Powerpoint). However, it really does an excellent job, when it comes to Word and Spreadsheet docs . It is clean, simple to use, feature-rich, collaboration friendly and fast. Read more on Google Docs here OR check out Demo (with Screenshots).

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