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office 2010 ultimate tips and tricks office 2010 ultimate tips and tricks by matt smith http smidgenpc.com edited by justin pot this manual is the intellectual property of makeuseof it must only be published in its original form using parts or republishing altered parts of this guide is prohibited http smidgenpc.com matt smith makeuseof.com page 2

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office 2010 ultimate tips and tricks table of contents chapter 1 introduction 4 welcome to office 2010 4 tips incoming 5 backward compatibility 5 chapter 2 exploring backstage 6 customizing the ribbon 6 collaborate backstage 8 fix those annoying file blocks 8 chapter 3 word 10 making repetitive tasks quicker 10 learning to use building blocks continued 11 enjoying word s improved document search 13 .doc and .docx compatibility 13 chapter 4 excel 15 present data at a glance with sparklines 15 groups save time 16 chapter 5 power up powerpoint 18 the new transitions tab 18 quick application and replication of animations 19 go beyond animation with video 21 live broadcasting 22 chapter 6 looking out for outlook 24 social gatherings 24 follow conversations 25 find emails easily with search 26 chapter 7 conclusion 27 http smidgenpc.com matt smith makeuseof.com page 3

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office 2010 ultimate tips and tricks chapter 1 introduction welcome to office 2010 there are few names in pc software more iconic than office the word itself is generic but the popularity of microsoft s productivity suite has made it instantly recognizable in the context of computers it reaches beyond the boundaries of geekdom and into the lexicon of everyday cubicle warriors who use the software constantly for everything from email composition to corporate presentations microsoft s last version of office office 2007 was a big deal it was nearly as large an overhaul as windows vista was compared to windows xp while office 2007 has many detractors ­ any major change to a popular and entrenched program is bound to result in some agony ­ the revision was mostly successful microsoft rolled out a major new user interface known as ribbon without excessive growing pains office 2010 is by comparison a minor update that s not to say it doesn t include new features some of which are incredibly useful but the interface is largely the same users of office prior to office 2007 had a bit of a learning curve associated with becoming re-acquainted with the software but anyone comfortable with office 2007 should have no problem with 2010 http smidgenpc.com matt smith makeuseof.com page 4

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office 2010 ultimate tips and tricks tips incoming since office 2010 doesn t change as much as office 2007 there isn t as much to instruct users on how to use the new software users who are coming from 2003 will still have to become acquainted with the ribbon interface but frankly most general tips related to the 2007 version will still help you there but specifics of course have changed instead office 2010 has many improvements this guide will focus on teaching users coming to office 2010 how to take the most from the program and use every feature offered in most programs it s not hard to find every single feature but office 2010 is so expansive that even veteran users will often find that they aren t expert in even half of the capabilities the software offers the tips you find here should be of use to most people who use office 2010 regularly my goal was not to go for obscure hacks but rather to present useful information that isn t commonly known hopefully this will make you more productive or at least give you the tools needed to handle your work with more speed and less stress backward compatibility the tips that i m presenting in this guide are purely from the perspective of office 2010 that is not to say some of them won t be partially or fully applicable to office 2007 but a lot of the tips focus on new features that were added in office 2010 mac fans who are using microsoft office for mac 2008 ­ which likely includes most people reading this on an apple computer will find very little information in this guide useful microsoft office for mac 2008 didn t even use the ribbon interface so there are many differences you re more likely to find similar features in the recently released microsoft office for mac 2011 however keyboard shortcuts and menu layouts may be different in many situations http smidgenpc.com matt smith makeuseof.com page 5

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office 2010 ultimate tips and tricks chapter 2 exploring backstage the largest change to the office 2010 interface is the introduction of the backstage gone is the file menu and gone also is the office button from office 2007 now you ll find a file tab but when you click on it you ll no longer open a menu but instead open an entirely new portion of the interface despite the new interface element most of the tasks accomplished in backstage are completely mundane you can open save and print files explore recent documents and open new documents yawn there are however some interesting features to be found if you dig deeper into backstage you just need to go looking for them customizing the ribbon the microsoft office ribbon isn t going anywhere ­ at least not until microsoft decides to revamp office again which likely won t happen until the end of this decade don t take this to mean that what you re presented with the first time you open microsoft office is set in stone it is possible to trick out the interface of office 2010 in a number of ways although the method of doing so isn t obvious while you are using the software changing the interface requires that you go backstage and open the options menu then navigate down to customize ribbon http smidgenpc.com matt smith makeuseof.com page 6

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office 2010 ultimate tips and tricks the ribbon interface is by default fairly busy however it actually does not represent the vast majority of potential commands that are available in any particular piece of office software the entire point of the ribbon interface was to reduce clutter and this meant getting rid of deep menu trees and getting rid of command buttons for functions that were rarely used of course rarely used is not the same as never used those commands are still there and you can find them in the commands not in the ribbon section let s say for example that i wanted to have quick access to the borders and shading menu and i want to add this button in the insert tab i can t add commands to any of the default groups so to do this i have to highlight the insert tab and then click new group once i ve created a custom group i can then highlight that group and bring over the borders and shading command presto now borders and shading appears in my insert tab that s just the beginning you can also create new tabs so if you d like you could create an entire tab full of custom groups with custom commands although i m not enough of an interface junkie to want to do this the tools are available to you if that s what you d like to do http smidgenpc.com matt smith makeuseof.com page 7

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office 2010 ultimate tips and tricks collaborate backstage the save command found in previous versions of office has now been replaced with a backstage section called save and send you can use this to save your documents of course but this is also where office s many collaboration features come into play there are a few ways to share documents besides email obviously the save to web option will save your documents to your windows live skydrive account this is a free account that can be used to store documents and share them with others skydrive uses a web interface and can be accessed at skydrive.live.com from skydrive you can share documents with your friends family and co-workers by either sending a link or adding them to the file permissions via their email address if you give permission others can edit these documents creating a truly collaborative microsoft office document without the need for a sharepoint server ­ although sharepoint is still part of the office ecosystem and can in fact be accessed directly below save to web fix those annoying file blocks it s sad but true security improvements go hand-and-hand with annoyance adding more hurdles for malware unfortunately results in more hurdles for users i d be perfectly happy with not running a firewall and antivirus if malware did not exist but it does so i have to deal with adding those extra pieces of software to my system office 2010 has its own security improvements and its own corresponding annoyances the greatest of which has to deal with file trust many older file types from microsoft have been dissected by hackers over the years and security flaws have been found malware such as macro viruses which hide in excel spreadsheet macros piggy-back seemingly legitimate office documents as a means of spreading http smidgenpc.com matt smith makeuseof.com page 8

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office 2010 ultimate tips and tricks by default office 2010 blocks certain types of documents they will open but only in protected view which means they can t be edited to change this behavior you can open options in the backstage area then go to trust center and then open trust center options finally open file block settings you ll find a number of file types and checkboxes that can be selected to enable or disable handling those files in protected view while you re there you might also want to check out the protected view menu which determines how protected view handles files from certain origins such as those downloaded from the internet just keep in mind that while disabling protected view might be more convenient it could open you up to certain malware threats microsoft didn t put the feature into office because its programmers had too much time on their hands http smidgenpc.com matt smith makeuseof.com page 9

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office 2010 ultimate tips and tricks chapter 3 word microsoft word is undoubtedly among the most used pieces of software on the planet it s the goto word processor for businesses schools governments and most home users you wouldn t think that a word processor could be complex but there are actually a lot of ways to manipulate a document and word has grown over the years from a fairly simple tool into a comprehensive program that can be used to create nifty materials like the .pdf guide you re reading right now i thought that i knew everything there was to know about word when i began composing this guide but as it turns out i was wrong i mostly use word for writing but there s more to the software than that making repetitive tasks quicker word documents aren t always unique ­ in fact i d bet that most of the content created with word is in some way a repetition of content that s already been created before that may sound odd but think about it businesses use word constantly and businesses put out a lot of documentation with repetitive information like the business s address the names of employees and so on if you re in a situation like this you can make life easier by creating a quick part select whatever text or content you plan on frequently using and then go to the insert tab find the quick parts button and click on it to call a drop-down menu now click on save selection to quick part gallery a window will open prompting you to enter the name of the quick part you might want to create a new category for it if you intend to have many different quick-parts but you shouldn t have much reason to change the save in and options categories http smidgenpc.com matt smith makeuseof.com page 10

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office 2010 ultimate tips and tricks now that you ve made a quick part you can enter it by clicking the quick parts button and then selecting it from the drop-down menu doing this for common information such as a business address can save a lot of time and effort learning to use building blocks continued the quick part you created is part of a larger category of microsoft word tools known as building blocks a building block is any type of saved content that is not a document but rather a portion of a document and it s not saved on its own but in the word interface once saved you can call upon that building block again in this way you can use very complex design elements in numerous documents without spending ages trying to correctly format them we ve already talked about how to make a quick part which is one type of building block but it s not the only type you can apply building blocks to headers and footers after which they can be selected and automatically added to one or all of the pages of a document for example let s say i want to create a header for my business i type the following acme services |555-123-4567|811 strump street new york ny all your togglelumping needs ­ in one convenient location al to all of you document ninjas out there i didn t say it was a good header it s just a header for example purposes of course as the chief of advertising for acme services i want to save this header so that i can use it in the future that s no problem i just select click on the header button in the insert tab to call the drop-down menu and then click save selection to header gallery just as with the quick part made in the earlier example my custom header now appears whenever i click on the header button http smidgenpc.com matt smith makeuseof.com page 11

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office 2010 ultimate tips and tricks if you think that the process for creating a custom footer is the same pat yourself on the back it most certainly is there are also two other buttons on the insert tab that provide the same functionality the equation button and the cover page button of course as you become familiar with building blocks and begin to use them more frequently you may end up needing to rearrange delete or change some of the building blocks you have available you can access the building blocks organizer by clicking on quick parts and then clicking the building blocks organizer menu selection or if you d like you can use the instructions in the chapter 2 section customizing the ribbon to add the building blocks organizer as a button to your insert tab the organizer itself is extremely basic so i ll explain it quickly the organizer window consists of a list of building blocks on the left and a preview pane on the right the edit properties button will bring up the menu that you used to add the building block so you can change the category and so on as you might expect the insert button places the building block in your document and the delete button makes the building block vanish from your sight http smidgenpc.com matt smith makeuseof.com page 12

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office 2010 ultimate tips and tricks enjoying word s improved document search document search has always been part of office but it s not always been easy to use it used to be its own menu that opened up and requested that you typed what you were looking for then you d basically go through the document one instance of the word or phrase at a time it worked but it was slow and confusing microsoft has smartened up with office 2010 and modeled the search function to be more like an online search engine that means context when you open search the shortcut is still ctrl-f a sidebar expands on the left side of the screen and you can type in what you re looking for however you are now provided with a short text excerpt from your document which provides context for what you re trying to find when you ve located what you were looking for you can click on the corresponding preview in the sidebar to be taken directly there this new search feature is much quicker than what was offered before but you can still access the older menu by clicking on the arrow besides the search magnifying glass this will present a drop-down menu that includes advanced find and find and replace both of which open a menu similar to the older search function you can also navigate directly to a specific page or other document element by using the go to function finally you can search for graphics tables and equations by selecting these options from the drop-down menu .doc and .docx compatibility before moving on to excel i wanted to add a brief note about the difference between .doc microsoft s older document format and .docx the new format microsoft switched to .docx in office 2007 but the change was significant and still http smidgenpc.com matt smith makeuseof.com page 13

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office 2010 ultimate tips and tricks causes users some confusion when they re coming from older versions of microsoft office the new .docx format is now the standard for microsoft word all versions of microsoft word after office 2007 will be using this format however all earlier variants of microsoft word are unable to open .docx you can fix this by downloading an office compatibility pack however you will lose some of the features available in office 2007 in above for example bibliography and citation text is converted to standard static text a full list of the features lost when opening a .docx file in an older version of word is available from microsoft http smidgenpc.com matt smith makeuseof.com page 14

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office 2010 ultimate tips and tricks chapter 4 excel excel has been a favourite tool of organizers and number-crunchers for over two decades microsoft has gradually added new functions over time but hasn t rested or failed to keep up with competitors microsoft excel is still the premier indeed there are few competitors that are remotely as capable present data at a glance with sparklines one of the cool new features added in excel 2010 is sparklines if you re like me and you don t pay attention to the names of graphs and other such information you may not have heard of sparklines ­ but you ve probably come across them in a newspaper or on a website a sparkline is a small high density graph that is meant to present a condensed form of information unlike a full graph that usually has a visible x and y axis sparklines are alone they don t provide as much detail as a normal graph but because there s no x and y axis or other luggage you can fit sparklines into small spaces ­ like a cell on a microsoft excel spreadsheet easily sparklines are quicker and smaller than a full graph and often just as useful http smidgenpc.com matt smith makeuseof.com page 15

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