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Microsoft Announces First Step In Office For iPad – OneNote [News]

Yaara Lancet — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 20:31:09 +0000

If you’re eagerly anticipating Microsoft Office for iPad, you’d be happy to hear that the process has officially started. Microsoft has released OneNote for iPad, the first in what we can hope will be a long line of Office applications for the iPad.

OneNote, which is a part of some versions of Microsoft Office, is a note taking application which combines the use of text, lists, images, videos, audio clips and free drawing. Users can create different notes, called “notebooks”, move elements freely around each note and file the notebooks in different folders.

The iPad version of OneNote is somewhat more limited, and seems to be aimed especially at syncing and viewing notes from the desktop application on the iPad. Using the iPad app, you can create notes using text, bulleted and checked lists and images. You can’t move elements around, and organizing different notebooks is also hard. You can, however, sync OneNote for desktop and OneNote for iPad (or iPhone) with SkyDrive and view all your notebooks wherever you are. You can also email notes from within the app.

The app’s interface is pretty slick, and creating informative notes on the go is very easy. Hopefully, Microsoft will add some missing features in time, which will make this first Office application for iPad even better. To use the app, you would need to have a Windows Live account and iOS 4.3+. If you’re trying to log into the app with your Windows Live ID and get the following error….

…then go to http://office.live.com, log in using your Windows Live account and accept the terms of service. After that, you will be able to log into the app from your iPad.

What do you think of the new OneNote app? Is it a good start for Microsoft on the Office for iPad campaign?

Source: Official Office Blogs

How You Can Use The Document Map Feature Of MS Word As A Time Saver

Saikat Basu — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 15:31:51 +0000

If you are not a power user on MS Word, I am assuming that you haven’t heard about the Document Map. The Document Map is one of those little features tucked away in MS Word. For our examination into the Document Map and how we can use it for better document management, we take it up on MS Word 2010.

The Document Map is a separate display (in the form of a left-sided pane) that helps you navigate through a long Word document and access different parts of it. Think of it as a jumping off point for reaching different sections in your document. It is almost a control center for moderating different parts of document.

Let’s put the definitions aside and look at how it can help us become better office workers and writers.

How Does The Document Map Help Us?

The Document Map does not help us to write better. But it does help us a lot when it comes to format our writing quickly by applying different visual styles easily. More than that, the Document Map really comes into its own when you have a long document and you need a ‘navigational guide’ to move around it. It is the map of your document. It is not a table of contents list though.

The Microsoft Definition Of The Document Map

Here’s how The Document Map is described by the guys at Microsoft Office.

The Document Map is a separate pane that displays a list of headings in the document. Use the Document Map to quickly navigate through the document and keep track of your location in it.

Switch On The Document Map

Getting to the Document Map is a simple as clicking on the View – Navigation Pane in MS Word 2010. In Word 2007 and earlier versions, you can click on View – Document Map. Alternatively, you can use the shortcut of Alt – V –D.

As in the screen above, it is the small icon that says – Browse the headings in your document. Strangely, it’s not called the Document Map in Word 2010, but we will keep using that.

Uses Of The Document Map

Now, that we have nailed down the location of the Document Map, let’s also peg down a few uses we can put it to.

Display All Headings

If you have applied the heading styles to your documents (by using the Styles in the Home tab), the Document Map lists all document headings in the navigation pane. Subordinate heading levels are displayed in a hierarchical manner.

Jump From One Heading To The Other

For particularly large documents, using the navigation pane is a time-saver as you can hop from one heading to the other with a click.

See Where You Are

It’s easy to lose track of exactly where you are in a large document. With the navigation pane/Document Map open, you can see that the section is highlighted in orange as you move from one part to the next.

Quickly Change The Heading Levels

Changing the structure of your document is easy as a right-click with the document map. With the headings displayed, you can click on Heading Level 2 and promote it to a Heading Level 1. That is you can change the hierarchy of the paragraphs quickly. You can just as easily demote one section of text under a heading level and bring it under another.

Drag Headings Around To Rearrange Your Document

Like to re-organize your document in jiffy. Simply select the paragraph (i.e. the heading level) and drag it to another location. All heading levels and paragraphs nested under it (i.e. at a lower-level to it) will move along with it.

A Few More Document Organization Aids

As you can see in the right-click menu of the navigation pane, you can select a section of a document and print the heading and the content. The Document Map is also a quick way to outline your document by adding new heading levels and filling them up with content.

Document Map is a great tool to exploit if you like working with multi-page Word files and document styles. You can go and re-organize your old MS Word documents using the Document Map and the Navigation pane. With it, you don’t need to scroll down, but simply glance through the hierarchical list of headings to find the important tidbit of information. It lets you see how the whole document pans out.

Do you use the Document Map and the Navigation Pane? Were you aware of this MS Office and MS Word productivity tip?

How To Display The Current Date And Time In A PowerPoint Presentation

Saikat Basu — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 17:30:06 +0000

Good presentations need little touches. With screen real estate at a premium when it comes to Microsoft PowerPoint presentations, you also need to justify design with functionality. One of the little touches I have always found useful as a viewer and an occasional presenter is the display of time and date on a Powerpoint slideshow.

Displaying the current time and date in a PowerPoint presentation is an essential option to select if you are using handouts too. As we will see, it’s also very easy to accomplish.

Another useful addition is using date and time formats according to the culture of the audience you are showing the presentation to. This is a tip to use if you work in a global company. Without counting the seconds, let’s dive straight into the method.

Add the Current Time and Date to a PowerPoint Slide

1. Open your PowerPoint document and got to the View tab on the Ribbon. Choose the Normal view. Select the first slide of the slideshow.

2. Click on the Insert tab and go to the Text group. Click on the little Date and Time icon which gives you options to insert the current date and time into the PowerPoint document.

3. Clicking on the Date and Time icon opens up the Header and Footer dialog box. Using the two tabs (as in the screenshot) we can add the date and time values to our main slides as well as the Notes and Handouts we usually print out and give to the audience as reference material.

4. The next few steps are pretty simple – choose the date and time format from the dropdown. Selecting a Fixed time acts as a marker that lets you know when the slide was created. It is obviously constant. The Update automatically selection displays a dynamic time that takes the current time from the system clock. The options are the same for the Notes and Handouts tab. (Preferably, don’t show the date and time on the title slide).

Remember: Each time you open or print the presentation, PowerPoint will update the time. PowerPoint does not continuously update automatically but only at the start of the slide show.

5. Select Apply to All and you are done.

Add the Current Time and Date According to the Language

1. Choose File – Options – Language. The Options dialog gives you a lineup of additional languages to edit your document.

2. Expand the dropdown for Add additional editing languages and select the language(s) of your choice which you want to use for the date and time. Click on Add.

3. Press OK and exit the PowerPoint file.

4. Reopen the presentation and position your cursor where you wish to insert the date. Take the usual route of selecting the Insert tab and then clicking on the Date and Time button.

5. If you are using something like a text box to insert your date and time, you will get a dialog box like this:

If you are adding the date and time as a footer, then the usual box appears. In both cases, select the date and time format, and pick the language from the dropdown. After the Ok, the date and time is entered in the language of the country chosen.

Using the date and time with your PowerPoint slides is a simple final step to follow before you give or distribute a presentation. Do you do so in your presentations?

Image Credit:Shutterstock

Clip Web Page Notes from Firefox to Word with Notesaver!

Danny Stieben — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 16:30:24 +0000

We’ve all probably had to do something like this at one point or another, especially students. Taking notes about information that we find online can be very beneficial, and having a local copy of the exact information that you need can save some time (and possibly your butt).

Some people choose to bookmark all the pages that they find temporarily useful for whatever project they may be working on, while others go through the long, common processes. Going to the page in Firefox, copying it, opening Word, pasting the content into Word, and then saving it.

Instead, there’s a better way to do things, and the first step to that is to install this nifty Firefox add-on called Notesaver.

Getting Started

The said add-on, named “Notesaver!”, can be installed by visiting this page in the Firefox add-ons collection, and will be active once you restart the browser. The page says that the add-on is for Windows only, but I’m not sure if it could be used on other operating systems as well because it doesn’t require the use of Word itself.

Once that completes, you’ll see that there isn’t a special button for Notesaver to be seen anywhere. Instead, you’ll only see it right when you need it. Whenever you right-click while in the browser, you’ll get your usual list of options that Firefox provides along with a new option called “capture”.

Menu Options

Going further into this menu will lead you to two options:

If you don’t have anything highlighted when you right-click, the first one is CREATE_FILE, which will create a new, empty Word document.

The second option will be File Options, which will let you change the order of the most recent files created that are shown (more on that later).

If you did have something highlighted when you right-clicked, you’ll only see one option named DEFAULT_FILE. If you haven’t done so already, clicking on DEFAULT_FILE will result in the add-on asking you to set the default path of your Word documents, along with options to change the number of recent files that should be be shown, and whether or not the date and time should be appended to the end of whatever you’re saving.

Useful Tips

If you keep saving content by clicking on DEFAULT_FILE, you’ll see everything you saved in the default.doc file.

However, you can right-click when nothing is highlighted, and choose the CREATE_FILE option to create a new one, and then when you try to save content again you’ll see two options, the default file and the newly-created file.

The number of files shown that you could adjust earlier is talking about this list right here. Whenever you highlight something and then right-click, you’ll see up to the number of files chosen in the settings. Note that these settings can also be changed via the Firefox button –> Add-ons –> Extensions –> Notesaver! –> Options.

Conclusion

There’s really not much else about this add-on, which is good because there won’t be any extra fat that you’ll have to ignore when you use it. It’s simplistic, and works great for when you need it. Saving highlighted content to a Word document can be a major plus for some people, who may need to work with Word anyways, and having the content already saved to a local file would be the best option.

For some people it might be beneficial simply because they would rather not use cloud services like Google Docs or Evernote to store their clipped content. Whatever the reason, this add-on definitely enables you to work as efficiently as you wish. If Notesaver isn’t quite what you’d like, you can also check out other recommendations such as Scribbly, or choose one by looking through this list.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

Customize The MS Word 2010 Ribbon By Adding Your Own Tab With Commands You Use Most Often

Saikat Basu — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 18:31:24 +0000

We have seen quite a few ways to tweak MS Office 2010 for our own productive ends. Granted, the whole MS Office suite is a productivity tool to begin with, but there’s still some spanner work you can do to make it more personalized.

We have seen ways to customize the MS Office Quick Access toolbar, we saw how to add tabs to MS Office and improve your document management, and we even went retro by getting back the classic ribbon-less look. In this Word tutorial on how to customize the Word 2010 ribbon, we stay devoted to the Ribbon, but improve our workflow by adding a favorites tab to the Ribbon with all our frequently used commands. Let’s fire up MS Word 2010 (this works for other MS Office applications too).

Your Own Favorites Tab Improves Your Workflow

You cannot change the default tab and groups on the Ribbon. But it’s very easy to add your own tab (and your own groups) with all your chosen commands. For example, there might be a task you do day in and day out. You might want to do it with as few clicks as possible. Customizing your own tab with the oft-used commands helps with your workflow. For example, I am a writer and blogger. Here’s how I would go about setting up a new tab on the Ribbon.

5 Steps To My Own Tab On The Ribbon

Select File – Options – Customize Ribbon. Or you can right-click on Ribbon and choose Customize the Ribbon.

Click on New Tab and then Rename if you want to rename it to something that’s more interesting than the dull ‘New Tab’.

This tab is now your own. You can start populating them with commands. You can also create Groups for similar commands grouped together. Naming groups allows you to choose symbols from the dialog box.

Commands can be picked up from and added to the groups from the list on the left which says – Choose commands from. To view all the commands available for you to pick, click the dropdown and select All Commands.
Select the command and click on Add to move under the particular group. As you can see in the above screen, I have selected commands that help me with my writing.
Use the arrow keys to arrange the commands in the order you want. Also, you can rearrange the entire tab order with the same arrow keys.

Oops…I Made A mistake

If you made a mistake or you just want to get back the original look, click on Reset to reset all customizations.

Export Your Ribbon Customizations

You can export all your hard work to another computer (say, if a colleague likes your tab groups). Click Import/Export – Select Export All Ribbon And Quick Access Toolbar Customizations. Type in a name for your customizations file and click Save. The file is saved with an “.exportedUI” extension.

The customization file can be imported via the same button.

Free Customized Ribbons Available For Download

Microsoft Office 2010 has taken user feedback and has packaged the most commonly used commands in a Favorites file for all programs under the Office suite. This is how the Word 2010 customized Ribbon file looks like:

The file is available here. You can read more about it on Microsoft’s Office blog and also download the ones available for the other programs.

Do you feel that the Ribbon is friendlier now? Have you set up your own customized tab for productivity? Tell us about it.

How to Customize The MS Office 2010 Quick Access Toolbar

Saikat Basu — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 18:31:10 +0000

The Quick Access Toolbar has been a part of MS Office since the 2003 version, but it has come to the forefront since the introduction of MS Office 2007 and more prominently with MS Office 2010. The Quick Access Toolbar is a customizable toolbar that houses the common commands – Save, Undo and Redo. Faithful to its name and function, the Quick Access Toolbar is there at the same spot irrespective of the Ribbon tab you are working on.

You can enhance your productivity with two quick and easy changes to the Quick Access Toolbar –

1. Change the location of the Quick Access Toolbar.

2. Customize the Quick Access Toolbar by adding new commands.

This Quick Access Toolbar is common to all applications under MS Office. The first step won’t change, but obviously adding new commands will depend on the application and the use. We use MS Word 2010 to show the steps.

Move the Quick Access Toolbar below the Ribbon

If the default location of the toolbar is a bit on the summit for you and above your eye-level, you can move it just below the Ribbon. Click the downward pointing arrow (Customize Quick Access Toolbar) and click on Show Below the Ribbon.

Note that this reduces your working area by a bit. Looks a bit too cramped? Click on the arrow again and move it to its original location.

Add your oft used commands to the Quick Access Toolbar

There are two ways to add new commands to the Quick Access Toolbar and both are quick.

You can add commands to the toolbar from any of the Ribbon Tabs. Select the tab from where you want to pick the command. Right-click the command and then click on Add to Quick Access Toolbar on the menu.

To add non-Ribbon commands to the toolbar, you need a few more steps. But they are just as simple:

Again, click the Customize Quick Access Toolbar button and then select the More Commands option that’s right at the foot of the list.

The Quick Access Toolbar options are displayed. This dialog has the master list of all the commands you can expect to find and use for that particular MS Office program. The box on the right displays the commands that are currently on the toolbar.

The box on the left (Choose commands from) displays the Popular Commands. You can go through the list and add the desired ones by selecting them and clicking on the Add button. But just click on the dropdown and see what more options it throws up.

You might like to take this route and select a few commands which you won’t find on the Ribbon conveniently. You have a long list of choices. Just to give you an example: as a writer, I like to keep MS Word’s writing tools close by instead of digging through the Ribbon. Choosing commands like Grammar, Grammar Settings, Formatting Consistency Check, Spelling Recheck etc. does a bit for boosting productivity.

You can also customize a set of commands for a particular document (or by default, for all documents). Customizations can be reset easily with a click on the Reset button. You can re-order the commands using the Move Up and Move Down buttons on the Quick Access toolbar.

There are only two things you cannot do – increase the size or change the icon of the buttons on the toolbar. Other than that, you can really set up MS Office and any of its programs for a productivity boost with the Quick Access Toolbar.

We have seen its use in some of our previous MS Office and MS Word tutorials:

3 Ways To Strip Formatting From Text in MS Word 2007
How To Do Simple Calculations In Microsoft Word 2003 & 2007
How To Turn MS Word 2007 Into A Minimalist Text Editor

Also get our Microsoft Office 2010: Ultimate Tips & Tricks free eBook for more interesting lessons.

Tell us if you have ever bothered to play around with the toolbar or have left it alone with its three default commands.

Make A Fillable Form In Word 2010 & Collect Data The Easy Way

Saikat Basu — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 17:30:06 +0000

As every day users we usually treat MS Office in a rather half-baked way. It’s only later that we realize we could cook up so much more with tools available under MS Word, MS Excel, and MS PowerPoint etc. This is a very basic tutorial on how to easily put together an interactive form with the help of Microsoft Word 2010. The feature of MS Word forms has been a constant feature from the early days. Most of us missed it because either we don’t need it or we found it too difficult to wrap our heads around it.

Creating fillable forms are an advanced aspect of MS Word, but it’s a skill you would do well to master; especially if you routinely gather data or feedback from a target audience. So, here’s the not too difficult approach as demonstrated on MS Word 2010.

It all starts with a plan

Any design project starts with a thought and then takes the shape of a definite plan. Best thing you can do is to design it first on paper. To illustrate how to create a fillable form in Word 2010, here’s a basic feedback form for MakeUseOf.com readers.

The Developer Tab is the control center for forms

The Developer tab is hidden in the Ribbon. Reveal it by going to File – Options - Customize Ribbon. Under the long list of main tabs, select the checkbox for Developer.

The Developer tab gets a place on the Ribbon.

Adding Content Controls

Content controls are interactive elements that help you design documents and templates quickly. Available since Word 2007, there home is on the Developer tab. Every content control has properties which can be set for user input and data collection. We start adding a few as building blocks for our form.

Type in the details that you want the recipients to fill out – like Name, Gender, Age, Country, Operating System…and a few more.

Now, the form will be embellished with a few content controls against the details we have filled out. Go to the Developer tab – insert the cursor where you want the control to appear. Under the Controls group, you can see that there are nine options to choose from depending on the user input you want. For instance, Name needs a Plain Text Control as a fillable data field. Gender could do with checkboxes for male and female. Similarly, you can insert the appropriate content controls at the right places.

To configure the properties of the form control, click on Properties in the Controls group. The Control Content Properties dialog box will appear when called for each type of form control. Select or enter the desired properties.

For instance, for the Text Form field for comments, you can restrict the length or keep it limited with the options in Properties.

For dropdowns, you can add individual items easily from its Properties dialog.

Finalizing the form by restricting unintentional editing

Another basic feature you can enforce for form input is to control formatting and editing of form content.

Click on the form control and then select Restrict Editing from the Protect group. Options open up in a sidebar. Under Editing Restrictions select – Allow only this type of editing in the document. Select Filling in forms. Now, click on – Yes, start enforcing protection.

This step limits user input to the form controls only and not to the surrounding text.

A pop-up box opens up for setting up password protection. If you do not want to password protect the document click on OK to exit the dialog. Try out the form by filling in some sample data. To get back into the design mode, stop the protection by clicking on the button and then click on Design Mode in the Control Group.

This is a form at its simplest. Formatting and designing with Word’s other tools can turn even this simple form into a powerful document for data exchange. Let us know if this tutorial has served to illustrate the primary steps to create a fillable Microsoft Word 2010 form.

Synchronize Your MS Office Documents With Google Docs Using Google Cloud Connect

Yaara Lancet — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 00:31:50 +0000

Collaborating on a document has become increasingly easy these past few years. You can work together on the same document using services like EtherPad, you can have your documents in the cloud using Google Docs or you can sync your documents in real-time using services like Dropbox – and this is just naming a few.

Another player in the field is Google Cloud Connect. Google Cloud Connect is a plugin for MS Office that connects your Office documents to your Google Docs. It serves both as a backup for your documents, and as a means to share, get feedback and collaborate on a document.

Getting Started

First, you will need to download the Google Cloud Connect plugin and install it on your computer. The installation takes some time, but you will end up with a new toolbar in all your MS Office applications. To get started, you will need to log into your Google account and give the plugin access to your Google Docs.

You will then get the chance to configure the global settings of the plugin. There isn’t much to configure here, really – you can choose to sync your documents manually or automatically, and you can decide where the files will be saved. This is also the place to go if you wish to associate Cloud Connect with a different Google account.

The Cloud Connect toolbar is quite obtrusive. If you want to hide it, look for the (very) small triangle in the bottom center part of the toolbar and click it. This will hide the toolbar, and you can click it again to unhide it at any time.

Syncing and Sharing

Using Cloud Connect, you can create a new Word, Excel or PowerPoint document and sync it to the Google cloud or share it from within the document itself. Clicking the Sync button will sync your document to your Google Docs, and you will immediately get a link to it right in the Office window. The Share button will allow you to add people to this document. You can add many people at once, and choose whether they’ll be able to edit the document or just view it.

When you sync your document to the cloud, it will appear in your Google Docs. You will now be able to access it and view it online, but you will not be able to edit the document using Google Docs. The document will be mingled with your other Google Docs, and you can tell them apart by the little icons on the left.

If viewing and sharing online is not enough, you can convert your Office Doc into a Google Doc easily, by clicking on Actions and creating a Google Docs copy. However, you will not be able to download this copy using Cloud Connect and work on it offline.

Downloading

The newest feature of Cloud Connect is the ability to download documents from Google Docs into MS Office, right from the MS Office window. To do this, click on the huge “Google Cloud Connect” logo and choose “Open from Google Docs…”.

Note again, that you cannot download your Google Docs into MS Office. To use this feature, you will need to have Office documents synced to your Google Docs first. When you have some of those, you will be able to choose the document you want to download, and get it to instantly open in Office.

Collaborating

Cloud Connect can be used to work together on a document. If what you all like best is to work on your document in Office on your own computer, this could be the solution for you. Each person can download and edit the document, and then sync it to the cloud. If you’re all working on it at the same time, you might get messages like this:

This is nice, because it makes it harder for several people working together on the same document to erase each other’s work, and it also keeps all the versions of the document, in case you wish to revert. To access all the versions from within Office, click on the little page icon and choose “See revision history“.

Conclusions

I can’t really decide what to think about Cloud Connect. On the one hand, I feel it could be much simpler to use Dropbox to save my documents in the cloud and share them with a friend. On the other hand, Cloud Connect lets me do everything from within the document I’m working on, and allows me to share the document with numerous people without giving them permission to actually edit it.

All in all, I think this is a nice solution, and I will love to see them add the ability to also edit documents in the cloud. This is one thing that will truly make Cloud Connect stand out. Meanwhile, if you’re looking for Google Docs replacements, you can read about some of them here.

So what do you think? Is Cloud Connect useful or boring? We’d love to hear about it in the comments.

How To Create Attractive Professional Looking Charts Using The Chart Tools Of MS Word 2010

Saikat Basu — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 15:31:03 +0000

Creating professional documents is as much about the content as it is about the look. The right graphics at the right place are the icing on the cake. We have seen how MS Word helps us create professional documents. We have also taken a gander at some of the new attractive features that MS Word 2010 is parading about town, like applying artistic effects.

Charts, as an illustrated way of showing boring facts and figures, has always helped to embellish professional Word documents. Charts help readers compare data and understand trends with a glance. Charts are especially useful as supporting arguments to the underlying text that can easily be ignored. Charts are more in-your-face.

But how do you create that impact with a well-designed chart? Let MS Word 2010 and its Chart tools show you the way.

Overview

The automated chart feature uses data stored in a MS Excel 2010 file to plot a chart in a MS Word 2010 document. Then you can modify the style, color, and layout of the chart as you please in MS Word. You need MS Excel 2010 to be installed in your system as both the Office programs will be working together. (If you don’t have MS Excel 2010 installed, Microsoft Graph will be called up.)The good news is that you don’t need to know how to work on MS Excel.

Inserting a Chart in a Document

1. Click on the Insert tab on the Ribbon. The Chart feature lies on the Illustration group.

2. Clicking on the button opens up the Insert Chart dialog box where you can see the different types of charts you can choose from. The screen tips give you the chart names. The choice of the chart type will of course depend on how you want to portray your data. Some charts lend themselves well to specific kinds of data. Check out the available chart types on MS Word.

3. When you pick a chart type and press on OK, two things happen – Microsoft Excel 2010 opens up with some sample data and a sample chart is inserted in your Word document.

4. Entering your own data in place of the sample data in the Excel worksheet modifies the chart as the Excel worksheet is linked to the chart in the Word document. When you have entered all your data, you can close Excel. If you want to edit some more, click on the Edit Data button on the Chart Tools (or right click on the chart and select Edit Data).

Stylizing Your Chart with Chart Tools

Chart Tools gives you three extra tabs to change the appearance of your basic chart. You can free your creativity with the Design, Layout, and Format tabs. If you don’t see the Chart Tools, click anywhere on the chart to make it appear.

The design options before you are too many to mention here. Here are a few that allow me to make a humdrum chart look rich.

Change the Chart Type if you feel that the original isn’t cutting it. Clicking anywhere on the chart area you can bring you can bring up the dialog that lets you apply effects to the chart area as a whole.

Chart Layout lets you change the orientation of the data and the Layout tab under Chart Tools gives you lot more to customize with.

The Format tools similar allow you to select each individual element from the dropdown and customize it with styles, color, and position.

The sheer number of design variations enables you to create rich aesthetically designed charts. The automated features also allow for quick design changes and customization whenever you wish. The underlying data stays the same and it’s only the representation that changes according to the style applied. As a final step, place and align the chart at the right place in your document.

Explore all the automated features of the chart tool in MS Word 2010 and let us know your take on it. Do you think it’s a great enabler for your MS Word and MS Office tasks?

How To Link MS Word 2010 To OneNote & Use It For Writing Linked Notes

Saikat Basu — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 15:31:47 +0000

I speak of myself alone when I say that Microsoft OneNote gets treated like a poor cousin while MS Word and MS PowerPoint walk away with the greater share of the attention. MS OneNote isn’t a sideshow at all but a very useful package in its own right. It’s perhaps the only place in the MS Office suite where you can offload everything – from documents to images, and now even audio commentaries. You don’t even need to tell it to save as it does so automatically.

We had seen earlier how MS OneNote 2007’s screen clip and OCR tool could be used to collect information. MS Office 2010 adds another by letting you link MS Word 2010, and MS PowerPoint to OneNote 2010.

The Linked Notes Feature and the Uses We Can Put It To

The direct benefit of the Linked Notes feature is that you can take notes in a docked OneNote window on your desktop while you work side-by-side in the other programs. This linking allows you to refer back to either the note or the main document by clicking on the link. Quite simply, you don’t have to copy-paste information manually. You can use the Linked Notes feature to work with MS Word 2010 (or PowerPoint) and OneNote side-by-side. Plus, you can use Tags on OneNote (like, Remember for Later; To-do etc) to flag the notes or even assign an Outlook Task to it.

In fact, the PowerPoint blog has a very nice explanation on the uses to put Linked Notes to.

This free ‘exchange’ of information makes for a great information management and research aid. But how do we set it up? Let’s try out with a demo.

Let’s Make OneNote and MS Word Work Together

Launch MS Word 2010. Please note that the document needs to be saved in Word 2010’s DOCX format. The Linked Notes button can be found on the Review tab of the Ribbon.

OneNote opens up and displays the Select Location in OneNote dialog box. You can click and expand the notebooks to pick a location to save the linked notes.

With a click on the OK button, you can start your note taking. When you select the note, a small Word icon (or a PowerPoint icon if you are working there) appears to indicate the link with the document in context. Of course, like in the earlier versions too, if you copy-paste any content from places like web pages it appears with the source link as reference.

To show the other side of how these two Office programs work together, close both the linked note and the main Word file. Open OneNote and the saved note. Click on the little Word icon or the little link icon on the upper-left to get to the connected Word document.

Managing the Linked Note Window

One of the easiest ways to take quick notes is by clicking the Dock to Desktop button on the View tab in OneNote 2010. Dock to Desktop allows you to take notes while working from any program on your computer. To reiterate again, if it’s Word or PowerPoint; your notes will be stored in context.

Clicking the Normal View button on the View tab closes the linked note taking session.

If you want to remove any of the linked notes, click on the chain link button on the upper-left and click on Delete Links on This Page.

The ‘in context’ linking handshake between OneNote and MS Word or PowerPoint is a great help when you are looking to extend your research with extra notes and external resources. It takes away some of the headaches involved in organizing notes and puts it all within the reach of a mouse click.

Do you use this new feature of MS Office 2010? If yes, how useful do you find it?

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