2012 - Glide Training

December 2012

Splitting Text Into Separate Columns

Thursday, December 13th, 2012

Written by Jane Hames

Lists of data are often received in a format that is not ideal for the work that needs to be carried out with it. One example of this is when you have first name and surname in one cell, where you really need the information to be in two separate cells.

A quick and easy (when you know how) solution is the Text to Columns feature and the following tutorial describes how to do it.

One space or two? A clever use of Find and Replace in Word

Wednesday, October 24th, 2012

Written by Jane Hames

I have been delivering Word training to secretaries this week and they like to have two spaces after a full stop. For a lot of us one space is enough, but for those who are “proper” typists or trained secretaries two spaces is the correct way to do things. This explain a quick way to add spaces in Word.

So, if you have been given a document from someone who hasn’t put in two spaces after a full stop, you probably don’t want to go through and type an extra space after each full stop. Below is a solution that could save a lot of time:

The Perfectly Centred Heading In Excel

Wednesday, October 10th, 2012

Written by Jane Hames

In Excel you can centre values within a cell, merge cells and centre values within those cells, but my preferred option is the one that I often get asked about – Center Across Selection.

Using Transpose in Excel to rotate data

Wednesday, September 5th, 2012

Written by Jane Hames

I often hear a ripple of words like “wow”, “ooo, I never knew that”, “ahhh, write that down” when I show my workshop participants how to use the Transpose feature, so I thought I would share it with you too!

Changing a negative value into a positive value in Excel

Thursday, August 16th, 2012

Written by Jane Hames

I was doing some analysis on my banking this week (hmmm, not the most exciting job!) and decided to export the month’s transactions into Excel so that I could separate my incomings and outgoings more easily. The outgoings were displayed as negative values which is what I would expect. However, I wanted to be able to subtract my outgoings from my incomings to check the balance.

How can I shrink text to fit a page in Word 2010?

Thursday, August 9th, 2012

Written by Jane Hames

I deliver a lot of Microsoft Office upgrade training and I have been asked this same question several times recently: “From the Print Preview, in older versions of Word, I used to be able to shrink the text in a document onto one page. The option doesn’t seem to be available in Word 2007 and 2010.”

Autofill is creating a series and I just want to copy data!

Thursday, August 2nd, 2012

Written by Jane Hames

Many Excel users make use of the Autofill feature for copying formulas or entering days, months, dates or other things that form a series. There are occasions when users want Excel to ignore the fact that the value is part of a series so that rather than create the series, it just copies the value.

Should I use Clear, Delete or Delete in Excel?

Wednesday, July 18th, 2012

Written by Jane Hames

Yes, the title of this post does sound as though I’ve made a mistake! It is, however, entirely deliberate as I am going to explain the difference between Delete on the keyboard, the Delete command on the ribbon and Clear in Excel.

Love ’em or hate ’em: Automatic Formatting Features in Word

Thursday, July 5th, 2012

Written by Jane Hames

Last week, during a Microsoft Word course, one of the participants asked me the following question:

“I typed some dashes/hyphens in my document. Word then extended the dashes to make a line going all the way across the page. I have been trying to delete it, but neither backspace nor delete gets rids of this line.”

Software Secrets: Choosing colours for a PowerPoint presentation

Monday, July 2nd, 2012

Written by Jane Hames

Lots of research has been done around the human reaction to colour, so if you’re really serious about the impact of colour it is well worth looking in to. Personally, I just try to keep it simple and follow a few basic guidelines.