Tips and Tricks

Customize the Placement of Building Blocks in Word 2007

You might have already used the “Building Blocks” functionality in Word 2007 to insert complete, formatted document components, such as a cover page or table of contents, with just one click.  You also might have noticed that when you click to insert some types of building blocks, your selection is automatically added to a specific place in the document, such as, in the case of a cover page, the first page.

But, what if you want more than one of the same type of building block in the document, perhaps at a different position?  Instead of clicking to insert your selection, you can right-click for a set of options.  For example, right-click an entry in the Cover Page gallery (on the “Insert” tab) for options to insert the selected cover page at the beginning or end of the document or section, or at your current position in the document.

Compare Documents in Word 2007

You can use the “Compare” feature in Word 2007 to compare document versions and see exactly what changes were made. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Click the “Review” tab, click the “Compare” button, and then click “Compare” again.
2. Choose the original document and the revised version that you want to compare.

For additional settings, click the “More” button. You can choose to show changes in the original document, the revised document, or in a new document.

Identify Duplicate Values in Excel 2007

In Microsoft Office Excel 2007, you can easily highlight duplicate values with conditional formatting. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Open the Excel spreadsheet in which you want to identify duplicates.
2. To identify duplicate values within a particular column or group of columns in the spreadsheet, select those columns.

On the “Home” tab of the Ribbon, in the “Styles” section, click “Conditional Formatting,” point to Highlight Cells Rules, and then click “Duplicate Values.” Pairs of duplicates will then be highlighted, and you can choose which of each pair to delete.

Enter PowerPoint Slide Show Mode from Any Slide

Pressing F5 in PowerPoint will start the slide show, but by default, it will open the first slide in the deck. To start your slide show with the current or selected slide, press SHIFT+F5 instead.

Saving a Search in Windows Vista

When you perform a search in Windows Vista, you can save it for reuse. Saving searches can speed up your efforts to find important information, especially as you save more and more files. To save a search, type the search term into the search box in the upper right-hand corner of a Windows Explorer window, and click “Save Search.” The search file is now saved in a separate folder called “Searches” under your user folder.