A few MS Office tips to start the new year

Zatni Arbi, Columnist, Jakarta
zatni@cbn.net.id

Happy New Year to all of you! Although the prognosis for this year does not seem very good -- with the likelihood of floods, natural disasters, an out-of-control crime rate, the elections, busway, additional three-in-one hours, etc. -- life must go on.

If there is not much we can do politically or economically, at least we can continue to find ways to make life easier amid the continued hardship of life in Jakarta.

We must continue to boost our productivity and find hidden -- but appropriate and legal -- ways to achieve more with less.

So, to mark the start of 2004, I would like to share with you a few of the tips I have come across for Microsoft Office.

My Places

Do you store your Office documents, spreadsheets and presentation files in different folders -- besides the My Documents folder that Office has automatically created during installation? I do. After the devastating crash of my hard disk in April last year, I added two mirrored IBM SCSI hard disks to store my important files.

I named the main folder My Vault. Under this top folder, I created folders for each of my clients. I also created my Personal folder to store all my personal files -- a phonebook, a list of tasks, a customized dictionary for banking and financial terms, you name it...

The problem was, that each time I opened a file stored in one of these folders, I had to go down the folder hierarchy, which took a couple of clicks. Whereas, as you probably know, in the Open, or Save as dialog, box of any Office program we have a bar on the left with buttons that will take us directly to the folder where we can look for, or save, our files.

Microsoft calls this set of folders My Places. Wouldn't it be nice if we could add a button to this bar for our customized folders? So, for example, if I had wanted to access the folder where I stored all my articles published in The Jakarta Post I could just click on the JP button... and bingo!

It turns out that, for users of Microsoft Office XP, this task is easily accomplished. I learned this tip from my favorite weekly newsletter, Fred Langa's at (www.langa.com). Here are the steps:

First, make the Open, or Save as dialog, box appear on the screen (click on File and then Open or Save as menu). Once the dialog box appears on the screen, go to the folder that you want to add to the My Places bar on the left. When the folder name is already highlighted, click on Tools at the far-top right-end of the dialog box's menu. On the drop-down menu list you will find "Add to My Places" (see the accompanying picture).

Click this command, and you will see the shortcut button to the folder on the bar.

Microsoft's Knowledge Base says that we can actually have up to 256 folder buttons on the My Places bar. I suggest that you change the default large buttons to the small ones.

Just place the cursor anywhere on the bar and click the right button of the mouse. Click on Small Icons, and you will see more buttons on the bar. Use the same menu list to remove, rename or relocate a button on this bar.

Remember, too, that in Office XP the Open, and Save as dialog, boxes can also be resized by dragging the dialog box's outer borders. So, if you have been adding new folder buttons, you can avoid having to scroll up and down to get to the desired button by making the dialog box taller.

Of course, if you have hundreds of buttons on this bar, you will have to scroll up and down. Then again, it may not be an ideal way of organizing your files and folders...

Change it as you wish

There are other things that you can adjust to make the dialog box more helpful by providing all the details you require at a glance.

First, take a look at the list of files inside the list box. By default, you will be able to see the names of the folders and files in the selected drive, followed by the file size in kilobytes (KB), followed by file types and then by other details.

The problem is that the list pane is spatially limited so that you cannot really observe the details of more than two files.

If you are curious and want to know what other details can be displayed, just click the column header -- the label on top of the list panel -- with the right mouse button. You will be stunned to see the long list of details, including Author, Owner, Genre, Camera Model, and even Bit Rate.

Normally, however, what we need most is the date and time a particular file was last modified.

The easiest way to display the Date Modified next to the folder or file name is to use the Choose Details dialog box. Click again with the right mouse button on the column header, and then click on More.

In the dialog box that appears, select this particular detail (Date Modified) and then click the Show button on the right. To place it next to the folder or file name, click the Move Up buttons until this detail appears right below Name. Then click OK.

There is one more thing that you can adjust in this dialog box. Perhaps you do not need a very wide column just to display the folder or file name, or you need more space to show other details...

To adjust the space, place the mouse cursor on the border of the column header, press the left mouse button (the cursor will change shape) and drag it slowly to the left until the desired width is obtained.

The column should be wide enough to let you recognize each individual folder or file name.

Preview the file content

The last tip for today, still for the Open, and Save as dialog, boxes, is that you can set the right panel of the box to display various things.

My favorite, and I am sure I have written about this in my previous columns, is to use the panel to display the content of the selected file on the left. This can be very useful during a search.

To display the content, click on the Views icon just next to Tools, and then click on Preview. This will give you a dialog box like the one you see in the accompanying picture.

As usual, while you are at it, you can experiment with other Views options and, who knows, you may find a different view that you like more.