Friday, January 23rd, 2009
There will be times in your life when you will have to duplicate the spreadsheets in a workbook and it can get pretty tedious when you do it by inserting a new spreadsheet and then copying and pasting everything into it.
You can accomplish the same thing in less than half the time. As long as you have created your spreadsheet properly to begin with, you can duplicate it by simply holding down the CTRL key while dragging the sheet tab of the original.
While you are dragging it you will notice a small sheet icon with a plus sign, which indicates copying, and a small black arrow that indicates where the duplicated sheet will be inserted.
Release the mouse button and CTRL key and you will now have an identical copy of your original sheet.
Pretty cool eh? Didn’t I tell you it would save you time? Saves keystrokes too!
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Tags: button, Ctrl, duplicate, key, keystrokes, mouse, MS Excel, original, spreadsheet, tab, workbook
Posted in Excel 2003, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Office Excel | No Comments »
Sunday, January 18th, 2009
This tip can be useful to everyone who uses MS Office but it is particularly useful to those in the legal and financial profession, as well as those in academia.
The the MS Word feature I am referring to was added in version 2003 and has been hailed as one of the best features yet by many. The feature is the Research task pane. The following services are available from the research task pane:
- Dictionary – Will look up words or phrases in the MS Encarta English dictionary while you work
- Thesaurus – Looks up synonyms while you work and insert them into your document directly from the Research task pane.
- Encyclopedia – Research your subject using the Encarta Encyclopedia which contains over 42,000 articles.
- Translation – Get translations quickly and easily using bilingual dictionaries on your computer and online.
- Company Information – Look up company information where you work. You can insert company information and perform custom actions.
- Comprehensive company information is provided by Gale, a company profile service provider.
- Third- party services – you can add third party premium content to your list of research services, such as Factiva (news), eLibrary (news and periodicals), WordLingo (translation provider), Hoovers (financial information),and LexisNexis (legal research).
- Web search – Searches the Web along side your document using MSN search.
Many of my law office subscribers didn’t know about using LexisNexis in the Research pane in MS Word. It’s pretty cool though once they get the hang of it. Say you have a legal memorandum and you have to check your case cites, you simply highlight it and right-click and select Lookup and then use the drop-down arrow to select LexisNexis and it does all the work for you.
It is pretty simple to add the third resources to the Research task pane. Follow the steps below to learn how:
- Open the task pane by clicking on Tools | Research.
Your should now see Research options hyperlink at the bottom of the pane.
- Click on the hyperlink to bring up a dialog box.
- Click the Add Services button.
- Enter the URL of the service you are installing.
- Click the Add button to continue.
- Click the Install button in the dialog box.
- Follow the prompts until the conclusion.
In my opinion, this is a great feature and I think you will come to that conclusion as well.
Tags: company, eLibrary, encyclopedia, Facativa, Gale, law office, legal, LexisNexis, library, memorandum, MS Word, party, Research, services, site, thesauras, third, translation
Posted in Microsoft Office, Word 2003 | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 13th, 2009
If you are employed in the legal arena, then you know that there are always lots of fun little footnotes in your documents, especially if you are still in law school. Believe it or not, I grew a lawyer – yes, my son is an attorney at law so I know of what I speak. You will note the Baltimore Injury Lawyer Blog on my Blog Roll – yep, that’s my boy!
I think I speak for lawyers and legal assistants everywhere when I say that it is a big old pain in the butt to click on Insert | Reference | Footnote every time you need a footnote in your document. So I will share this handy dandy hot key that will make your life sooooo much easier. My mantra is save time and keystrokes!
MS Word has a nifty hot key that will insert a footnote for you no matter where your cursor is sitting in your document. See below for the magic key combination:
Abra cadabra! You now have a footnote – just enter the text. I really do know how to save time in a law office don’t I?
If you aren’t a premium subscriber of Carol’s Word Bytes Newsletter, you really should be!
Tags: articles, attorney at law, documents, footnote, hot key, law office, law school, legal, MS Word
Posted in Microsoft Office, Microsoft Office Word, Office Productivity, Word 2003 | No Comments »