March 2015 – Carol's Corner Office

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!!

Posted on March 14, 2015 by Carol Bratt

Posted in Carol's Ramblings

Tuesday will be St. Patrick’s Day. As they say “Everyone is Irish on St. Patrick’s Day!” But I really am Irish – very Irish. My great grandmother was straight from Ireland. My daughter’s middle name is O’Neill. My hairdresser told me this morning. “You have the typical dark hair and extremely fair skin of an Irish woman.” I smiled and said there’s a reason for that. I hope you all enjoy a wonderful St. Patrick’s day! Us Irish are a great clan! There’s nothing like an Irish woman or man!

Hopefully all of the bitterly cold and snowy weather is over for us now. The first day of Spring will arrive on Thursday and I am very, very ready for it! The birds were singing when I walked out the door two mornings this week – a sure harbinger that Spring is near.

I have been busy as usual and I am really looking forward to getting outside in the fresh air again. I know some homeless folks who are really looking forward to the warmer weather too. Please remember to look out for those not as fortunate as ourselves, regardless of the weather. That’s what it’s all about – helping each other along the way, after all.

I hope this finds you well and that you too are looking forward to the warm Spring days ahead. Until next time, take care of you…

Subscribers: How to Insert Serial Numbers in your Word Document

Posted on March 14, 2015 by Carol Bratt

Posted in Subscribers Word 2010

A client asked me recently how she could put serial numbers in her documents. The catch was that the serial numbers were unique (i.e., B2398, B 3487, B4576, etc.) Let's assume that you know what serial numbers you need to use for your document. If that is the case, the most efficient method to do

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How to Insert a Cross-Reference to Text in Word

Posted on March 13, 2015 by Carol Bratt

Posted in Word 2010 2 Comments

Cross-references come in very handy in our documents and although most folks think that it is a very complicated process, Word really makes it very easy to use this feature.

Follow the steps below to learn how:

Select the text you would like to be cross-referenced.
Assign this text a bookmark name.
Place your cursor where you would like the cross-reference to appear.
Click Ctrl + F9 to insert field brackets. Be certain that your cursor stays in between the brackets.
Key in ref followed by the name of the bookmark you assigned above.Click F9 to update the field information.

Word has now replaced the field with the text to which the bookmark was assigned.

AutoFill Tricks in Excel 2013

Posted on March 13, 2015 by Carol Bratt

Posted in Excel 2013 1 Comment

The AutoFill button can be used in Excel 2013 to quickly populate a series of cells with labels such as months or days of the week.

Follow the steps below to learn how:

Key in your first label (i.e., January or Monday) in the first cell of your series.
Place your cursor on the AutoFill button until it becomes a cross.

Left click and your mouse and drag down to continue the labels in your column or drag to the right to continue labels in your row.

You can also use AutoFill to copy a formula to additional cells in the same column. This feature can also be used to populate a series of cells with a label that begins or ends with a sequential value. (i.e.,, key in Week 1 in your first cell and then grab the AutoFill handle and drag to the next five cells to the right) and you will get the results shown below:

Subscribers: How to Use Slide Design Templates in PowerPoint 2103

Posted on March 12, 2015 by Carol Bratt

Posted in Subscribers PowerPoint 2013

PowerPoint makes it easy for you to create a streamlined presentation that always looks as if it has been professionally done. One way in which they do that is by providing you with design templates, which are formatted themes with their own backgrounds, fonts and styles. They even have color schemes that you can select

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Subscribers: How to Find All Merged Cells on your Worksheet

Posted on March 12, 2015 by Carol Bratt

Posted in Subscribers Excel 2010

Lots of folks used merged cells in their worksheets and then can definitely be helpful but many times, those helpful merged cells can cause you untold heartburn when selecting ranges, sorting and lots of other functions we use in Excel every day. Even if you do not use merged cells because you once experienced the

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How to Insert Different Dashes in Excel

Posted on March 12, 2015 by Carol Bratt

Posted in Excel 2013

Different dashes are used for different uses. The only real difference in the dashes is the width of them.

As you know, you get one type of dash when you use the minus key on your keyboard – it is very narrow.

A longer dash is called an En dash because it is the same width of a lowercase letter n on your keyboard. An En dash is usually used to denote a range of numbers.

An even wider dash is the Em dash, which is (you guessed it) as wide as the lowercase letter m on your keyboard. This dash is ordinarily used in sentences.

Follow the steps below to learn how to insert the En dash and the Em dash in your documents.

To insert an En dash in your document use your Numeric keypad (numpad) and simply depress and hold your Alt key while simultaneously keying in 0150.
To insert the Em dash in your document use your numpad and depress your Alt key while simultaneously keying in 0151.
Of course, you could also use the Special Characters tab of your Symbol dialog box to add these dashes as well, but who would want to go all that extra time, etc.? Certainly not me!

I am sure you have used the En and Em dashes while working in Word and they work exactly the same way in Excel. The only drawback to using En and Em dashes in Excel is that Excel will automatically see the information in your cell as text because you didn’t use the regular minus sign.

Subscribers: Protection & Security in Word 2013

Posted on March 11, 2015 by Carol Bratt

Posted in Subscribers Word 2013

Many times you find yourself working on a confidential or sensitive document. Sometimes the data in your document is so confidential and sensitive that it requires a level of protection and security. Of course your document can be marked final or you can assign special privileges to it so that your document can only be

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Subscribers: How to Create a Document of Multiple Envelopes in Word

Posted on March 10, 2015 by Carol Bratt

Posted in Subscribers Word 2010

I don't know about you, but I really dislike creating an envelope manually. You know, when you need to send out a payment or something that you do not have a letter for where you can just highlight the address and print an envelope. Now, I don't have that many envelopes that I use infrequently

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