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Customising shapes

This post was inspired by my child's project last week.  She was listing some interesting facts about her topic - easy enough - but she wanted them to be typed into "cacao pod" shapes.  Obviously.

Now, you are probably quite comfortable with creating basic shapes in MS Office applications but did you know you can now customise those shapes to suit your exact shape requirements?

• First, you need to insert a basic shape that is reasonably similar to the ultimate shape you would like to create.
• Next, right click over the shape and choose Edit Points.
• The shape will now be highlighted in red with black markers to indicate where the points are.
• Place your mouse pointer over an edit point marker and click and drag to amend the original shape.
• Once you are satisfied with the new shape, click anywhere else to deselect the shape.

That's it - facts typed into cacao bean pod shapes ready to stick onto a cacao tree project.

As always, please share if you think someone else may find this useful and let me know if there are any other tips, tricks or tutorials you'd like to see featured on this blog.

Where is the bottom border?

Working with tables in MS Word can make many of your documents much easier to manage.  However there are occasions when even the simple-to-use tables can be frustrating. One frequent frustration that many people face is:

"Why has the border not printed at the bottom of my table"

Well, that's because borders only appear at the end of a row (and I'm going with the assumption that borders have been switched on) 

So, if a row contains a reasonable amount of information, there may come a time when it can't physically fit all that info onto the space available at the bottom of the page, and just like any other text, as soon as MS Word runs out of space it adds a new page.    As you have not inserted a new row, MS Word will NOT draw a border to indicate the end of the row, because, well.... it hasn't reached the end of the row.

Of course this is all well and good, but it just doesn't look very nice, does it?

Instead of trying to manually shift your information around - or the even more common sin of reducing font size to force the information to fit - you can simply instruct MS Word to not allow the row to split between pages.

Position cursor in the row that you want to stop breaking over two pages

• Select the Layout tab in the Table Tools ribbon

• Click the Properties button 

• Click on the Row tab and deselect the option Allow row to break across pages

• Click OK

That's it.  Neat and tidy without too much effort from you - especially not mismatched font sizes trying to force.

Hope this was helpful. As always...share if you think someone else might find this beneficial, or leave a comment if there is anything else you'd like to see featured here.

Using Indents in MS Word

Indents are something which seem to leave many people baffled, and yet if you get to know how to handle them, you'll be surprised how easy and useful they are.  If you've ever found your self tabbing or pressing the space bar numerous times to shift your text over then this is post for you.

Typically your text is typed within the boundaries of the margins, however margins are set for the entire document and you may want to adjust the margins for only a small section of your document.  In this case you can make use of Indents.

Indents are used to align blocks of text by creating left and right boundaries for selected paragraphs without having to change margins for the whole document.  There are four indent markers positioned at the edges of the horizontal ruler as depicted below:

Moving the First Line Indent moves the text on the first line of the paragraph in line with the indent, but the remaining lines of the paragraph adhere to the margin settings.

Moving the Hanging Indent moves the text on everything except the first line of the paragraph.

Moving the Left Indent moves all the text within the paragraph to the match the indent settings.

Remember that each line within a document can have its own indent settings, so to ensure that your indent changes take effect to the required areas, make sure you have selected each line that requires the indent changed.

Don't be afraid to play around with the indents to see the changes they can make - save regularly when you're happy with a change, and press Undo when you're not :) and of course -please share this if you think it could be of value to someone else

How to add a password to an Excel file

You may want to add a password to a file if you are storing sensitive data on a USB drive, emailing it to others, or you just want to add an extra layer of security to a file on a shared network drive.

• Select Save As
• Specify the file name and location as normal.  If the file is an existing file, leave the current information in place
• Click the Tools drop down list
• Choose General Options…

• Enter the password(s) you would like to use. (You may use one or both passwords as required)

1. Password to Open – This password will be required every time the file is opened.
2. Password to Modify – This password will be requested when you open the file. Without the password you still have the option to select the Read Only button to open the file without saving privileges. 

• Click OK and reconfirm password(s).

Please don't forget the password you have allocated to the file though - here is the official Microsoft stance

"Excel lets you password protect your workbooks, and your worksheets. But, it's easy to forget or misplace your passwords. Unfortunately, if that’s happened to you, we don’t have a way to help you recover a lost password.
Excel doesn't store passwords where you or Microsoft can look them up. That's also true for the other Office programs that let you protect files. That's why it's always a good idea to store your passwords someplace safe.
Some third-party companies offer programs for unlocking files. For legal reasons, we can't recommend those programs. You can try them, but at your own risk."

http://office.microsoft.com/en-001/excel-help/recover-a-password-to-open-a-workbook-or-worksheet-HA102809703.aspx

Getting VLOOKUP to return multiple values

This post is for the somewhat more advanced Excel user.

You may already be familiar with the VLOOKUP function, what you may not know is that you can get a single VLOOKUP formula to return multiple values by using an array.

1. Select each cell that you want to contain a result from the VLOOKUP.  In the screenshot below, the cells I4:K4 were selected
2. Switch to the Formulas tab, select Lookup&Reference, VLOOKUP
3. Specify the Lookup_value and Table_array as normal
4. Enter a column number for each column that you want data returned from.  Separate the column numbers by commas and enclose it all in braces / curly brackets {  }.  The column numbers can be specified in any order.  In the example below, data will be returned from columns {5,6,3}
5. Specify your Range_lookup requirements
6. Press CTRL, SHIFT, ENTER

Hope this is a time saver for you!  Please share if you think anyone might find this useful too.

Restrict values using Data Validation lists

Using the Data Validation feature in Excel you are able to restrict entry to a predefined list of values.  

In many cases spreadsheets are completed by more than one user which often results in different styles of inputting data.  By having a drop down list to select from ensures consistency which not only makes for a neater appearance, but also significantly improves the ease of use of tools such as Pivot Tables and Filters.

• Somewhere in your spreadsheet, type out the list of values that you would like to use as the source for your drop down list 
• Select the cells to which you would like to add Data Validation drop down list
• On the Data tab, select Data Validation. (A drop-down menu will appear.)
• Select Data Validation.
• Select List from the Allow drop down.
• In the Source field, select the range of cells that will act as the source data for the drop down list

• Click OK and begin using the drop down list to aid data entry

Happy spread-sheeting! Please share if you found this useful.