Improve Your Safety Net: Tweak AutoSave in Microsoft Office

Submitted by schwarz on February 15, 2013 - 2:48pm

life preserver Computer crash? Power went out during a storm? And you were in the middle of editing a budget spreadsheet and didn't get a chance to save your work? Ugh.

Microsoft Office programs (which include Word, Excel, PowerPoint) are by default set to automatically save an open file every 10 minutes. So when you re-open the program, your file should still have all the changes you have made — except for the last 10 minutes of work. (Your file may retain more recent changes if you manually saved it yourself by pressing Control+S on the keyboard.)

10 minutes between autosaves not good enough for you? Me neither. Here's how to better protect your hard work:

Create Mailing Labels from Excel or Outlook

Submitted by schwarz on January 15, 2013 - 8:28am

Need to create mailing labels from an Excel spreadsheet or your Outlook Contacts? Go from raw data to a sheet of Avery labels that are ready to affix to your mailing:

What Type of Chart to Use When

Submitted by schwarz on January 14, 2013 - 5:13pm

Pie? Bar? Bubble? This infographic is a terrific cheat sheet for what types of Excel charts/graphs to use when.

Timesaver Tip: Let Excel Fill in the Blanks for You

Submitted by schwarz on November 15, 2012 - 10:12am

Watch this short video tutorial to see how you can save time by letting Excel ...

auto-fill cells with text you've entered previously on a spreadsheet
turn numbers into currency amounts, and
auto-complete a series — like days of the week, months of the year, and number sequences.

Convert a Row to a Column in Excel

Submitted by schwarz on March 12, 2012 - 4:19pm

If you've started a spreadsheet and then realized it would make more sense to have the data organized in columns rather than rows (or rows rather than columns), you can use Excel's Transpose function to make it so.

Find out how to do it in Excel 2003, 2007 and 2010 at the illustrated step-by-step instructions at The How-To Geek.

Convert PDFs to Editable Word, Excel, or PowerPoint Documents

Submitted by schwarz on February 14, 2012 - 4:53pm

When someone shares a document with you that's in PDF format but you need to edit it, try the free online PDFConverter. It'll convert a PDF to PowerPoint (PPT), Word (DOC) or Excel (XLS), and you don't need to download any software to use it.

Just select the type of conversion, upload your file, enter your email address, and receive an email with a link to your converted file.

Make Short Work of Common Tasks: Use Excel's Paste Special Command

Submitted by schwarz on December 14, 2011 - 2:45pm

paste special command in Excel In Excel, when you want to copy information into a new column, the column’s width doesn’t automatically adjust to accommodate the new data. But if you use Excel's "Paste Special" option, you can copy the source column’s width to the target column.

In Excel 2007 and 2010, Paste Special is in the Clipboard group on the Home tab. In Excel 2003, Paste Special is on the Edit menu.

Here's how to do it:

Excel Tip: Add a Comment to a Cell in Your Spreadsheet

Submitted by schwarz on October 14, 2011 - 5:49pm

You can add a comment to any cell to make your Excel spreadsheet easier to understand. This is handy any time you're sharing a spreadsheet with someone, to indicate how a complex formula works, or just to jot a note to yourself.

It's an unobtrusive way to add comments, that doesn't clutter up your spreadsheet.

Here's how to add a comment to a cell:

Wrap Text in Excel

Submitted by schwarz on June 15, 2011 - 3:21pm

When you enter text into a cell in an Excel spreadsheet, but it overflows the cell, you can instead have the wrap automatically,

how to wrap text in an Excel cell

Excel Tip: If You See #### Instead of Numbers

Submitted by schwarz on April 18, 2011 - 11:46am

Basic Excel tip: if you're looking at an Excel spreadsheet and instead of seeing numbers you're only seeing ######, it usually means the number is wider than the column . All you need to do is increase the column width in order to see the number instead.

To fix it...

1. Position your mouse pointer on the right boundary of a column heading until it turns into a double-sided arrow.

The Ides

Excel