Not only news and announcements, but a handy collection of hints and tips to help you get the most out of the software you use.
Tuesday, April 4th, 2017
Written by Jane Hames
With the Details View in Project, you can easily move between tasks and resources, viewing details about them. I find that this is a huge time saver as I don’t need to switch views as the details can be displayed at the bottom of the screen. Here are some examples of the type of information you can view:
Tuesday, February 28th, 2017
Written by Jane Hames
This post is aimed at those who already use PivotTables (as many of my trainees do!).
PivotTable grouping is easy enough to do, but it could cause a lot of frustation if you want to change the grouping in one table without changing the way that field is grouped in another table.
Read more on How to change PivotTable grouping in one table without affecting another table…
Thursday, January 5th, 2017
Written by Jane Hames
Imagine that you have a training course booked in for next week. Of course, you are hoping to learn some useful information and techniques. I would expect that you also hope to feel confident that you can put these new techniques into practise when you return to work, but how could you make absolute best use of this time in the training room?
I have been an IT trainer since 1998, and every time I see a group of people get together for the training, whether they are total strangers or colleagues, if they choose to, they can get way more from the day than perhaps expected. I am not talking about the content of the training or the objectives you want to achieve in order to help you back in the work place, you can read my tips about this here:
Read more on How to get even more than training from your training!…
Tuesday, December 13th, 2016
Written by Jane Hames
If you are a Microsoft Project user, you might be using recurring tasks to add monthly stakeholder events or other regular activities. It’s useful to remember that recurring tasks, don’t actually have to be tasks with durations, resources and costs.
Read more on Create a recurring milestone in Microsoft Project…
Wednesday, November 9th, 2016
Written by Jane Hames
I am often asked how to find blank cells in Excel within a specific range of data. Just having a look through your data could be time consuming, but there is a quick and easy way to find blank cells in Excel. Here’s what you need to do:
Monday, October 17th, 2016
Written by Jane Hames
If you use Excel to summarise and analyse data with pivottables, there may be some very useful options that you haven’t yet discovered (because they are fairly well hidden!). One such feature is the PivotTable Report Pages option. If you are using a report filter (you will have a field name in the Report Filters/Filters part of the pivottable layout box, you have the ability to filter the pivottable without having to show that field in the pivottable itself. See example below:
Read more on Show PivotTables over separate sheets using Report Filter Pages…
Tuesday, September 27th, 2016
Written by Jane Hames
On an Excel course this week, I was asked how to apply an advanced filter to show records that contain some blank cells. This is something that isn’t very obvious, but if you know how to use the advanced filter in Excel, you will find it very easy! Here’s a snippet of my data which does have a couple of records which are missing some data.
Read more on Excel Advanced Filter – find records with blank cells…
Monday, July 4th, 2016
Written by Jane Hames
If you have set up a formula in one workbook that uses cells from a different workbook, the two workbooks become linked. It is useful to be able to go to linked cells in an Excel formula, and it would be great to be able to do that both quickly and easily!
Read more on Go to linked cells in an Excel formula (Quickly!)…
Thursday, May 26th, 2016
Written by Jane Hames
How to find images that are free to use in Microsoft Word and Google Docs
When searching for an image to insert into a Microsoft Word or a Google Docs Document, do you check the copyright? Depending on the software you are using to create your document, and the search engine being used for the search, you will get different results and options to filter by license. My preference is to use images that I know are licensed for commercial use and modification. This is mainly because I am not an expert in copyright laws, so by filtering for images that are labelled for use commercially, and are allowed to be modified, I know that I am safe. However, filtering to this lowest level of licensing does produce far fewer image results, so if you need more options it would be worth having a look at stock images which you can pay to use.
Read more on Finding free images for your Word and Docs documents…
Wednesday, May 11th, 2016
Written by Jane Hames
More and more, PowerPoint users want to avoid “Death By PowerPoint”. Bullet points can be overused in PowerPoint and during recent PowerPoint training we have been thining about how we could replace bullet points with something else. Most good presenters who use bullet points, just give a teaser or a summary of what they are going to talk about by adding a couple of words to a bullet point. Would you consider using images, maps, charts or some other visual indicator as an alternative? Here are a few ideas:
