Posts Tagged ‘box’

Control the Display of your Formula Bar in MS Excel

Friday, January 13th, 2012

For those of you who do not know, your Formula Bar in MS Excel is located at the top of your screen, bust underneath your Ribbon or the Formatting toolbar, depending upon which version of Excel you have a license for.

The Toolbar is comprised of two parts:

  • On the left-hand side is the Name Box;
  • On the right-hand side is the contents of your currently selected cell.

Now sometimes you may need more real estate to view one of your worksheets and sometimes you just don’t need to see the information provided in your Formula Bar and the good news is that you can turn it off if you do not need it!

Follow the steps below to learn how:

Versions 2007 – 2010:

  1. Click the Office button | Excel Options to display the Options dialog box.
  2. Click Advanced on the left-hand side.
  3. Scroll down until you see the Display options.
  4. Click on the Show Formula Bar check box.  If it is currently selected, then your Formula Bar is displayed. If you deselect it then your Formual Bar will not be displayed.
  5. Click on OK.

Earlier Versions:

  1. Click on Tools | Options to display the Options dialog box.
  2. Be certain the View tab has been selected.
  3. Click on the Formula Bar check box. If it is selected then your Formula Bar is selected. If you deselect it, your Formul Bar will not display.
  4. Click OK.

Note:   You can also view your Formula Bar option from the View tab of your Ribbon or from the View menu. This operates as a toggle: Click on it one time and the Formula Bar disappears – click on it again and it will reappear.

Quickly Display the Tabs Dialog Box in MS Word

Thursday, January 12th, 2012

As anyone who subscribes to my newsletter or blog knows, I am the queen of saving time and keystrokes.  Why on earth would one want to do something the long way??

So in that regard, here is a handy little shortcut you can use to display your Tabs dialog box:

Simply double-click on your Ruler just below the markings that appear there.   Be certain that you double-click ONLY at the bottom of your Ruler.  If you click at the top the Page Setup dialog will appear instead of the Tabs dialog.

Please note that when you double-click on your Ruler, you may also find that you have accidentally created a tab stop. Don’t fret though. You can quickly and easily remove that inadvertent tab stop by dragging if off your Ruler. Of course, you can also do it in the Tabs Dialog box by clicking Clear All.

Assign a Shortcut Key to your Styles in MS Word

Tuesday, January 10th, 2012

I have covered using styles in previous blog posts, but did you know you could assign a shortcut key combination to your styles?  And why wouldn’t you want to do this??  After all, it does save you valuable time and keystrokes!

Follow the steps below to define a shortcut key combination for a style:

  1. Display the task pane by first clicking on the Home tab of your Ribbon and then clicking the small icon in the lower right-hand corner of the Styles group. In earlier versions MS Word displays the Styles and Formatting task pane at the right-hand side of your screen.
  2. In the list of styles, hover your mouse over the name of the style whosse shortcut key would would like to change and a drop-down arrow should appear to the right of the style name.
  3. Click the down arrow and choose Modify or right-click and select Modify to display the dialog box.
  4. Click on Format and select Shortcut Key from the menu and the Customize Keyboard dialog box will appear.
  5. Click the key combination you would like to apply to your style. Any current assignments for that particular key combination appear just below what you just keyed in.
  6. Click on Assign.
  7. Click Close.
  8. Click on OK to close teh Modify Style dialog box.

That’s all there is to it!