LSCS MS Office e-Learning Tool

By: Juan Primo
LSC-North Harris Faculty and Staff Center

From now on, you can get the training you need when you need it and you can complete it at your own pace.

Training is available for all Microsoft Office products including:

• Word
• Excel
• PowerPoint
• Access
• Outlook
• SharePoint
• Project
• Windows Vista (and XP)

These modules can be accessed by all full-time employees in an on-demand format. This means you can get the training you need, anytime and anywhere you have an Internet connection.

Two ways to access the LSCS Office e-Learning Tool:

• LSCS intranet at: http://intranet.lonestar.edu/hr/ProDev/vtc/default.aspx or
• http://login.customguide.com/LoneStar

To log in:

1. Enter your LSCS long email address (include your middle initial if you have one)
2. Enter your password (the first time you access the site, the password is password)

Note: Make sure to change your password the first time you login by:

• Click the Profile tab then click the change password button

In the next window, enter your password (twice) and click the save button

Click on the home tab and you are ready to start learning.

If you have problems with your password, please feel free to call, e-mail, or visit your friendly neighborhood LSC-North Harris Faculty and Staff Center (or your professional development representative at any of the other campuses).

For more in-depth instruction on using this tool, download the Microsoft e-Learning tool Quick Reference Guide.

Simplify your online life through Google Docs

By Bruce O’Neal

Why Google Documents?

Two Words: Convenience and Collaboration

Documents (Google Docs) are part of a suite of applications that reside inside of your Google Gmail account. If you have a Gmail account, you already have access to a rich suite of applications including Calendar, Photos, an RSS reader simply called Reader, and even blogging tools through Blogger. To get started you will need an email account through Gmail. Just point your browser to www.gmail.com to get started.

Google Gmail – Convenience
Gmail works like just about all other email clients out there (Hotmail and Yahoo) meaning you can access, send/receive email anywhere there is an Internet connection. One nice feature is that you’ll probably never run out of storage space for all your sent and received mail as Gmail gives you a generous 7 MB of storage capacity. Another nice feature is that you can send and receive huge files (up to 10 MB). If you need the ability to send and receive large files and not have to worry about your email box being full, or wondering which emails you can delete to free up space, you should investigate Gmail. Another nice feature is that Gmail allows POP access. Without going into too much boring tech-speak (sorry my tech buddies) this feature allows you to configure your email client (such as Outlook, Apple Mail, Eudora, or Thunderbird) to send and receive mail; this is a nice feature that saves you from having to use the web interface. Gmail even allows IMAP access if you are stickler about keeping mail synchronized between several different devices such as a laptop, iPhone, and desktop machine.

Google Documents – Collaboration
Google Docs has an impressive list of applications including a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation software, and even forms which allows you to quickly create forms to capture information (it gets saved to an online spreadsheet). The beauty of Google Docs is not in their feature set, but in the ability you have to share information and collaborate with others.

Any document created in Google Docs can be shared with anyone with an email address. The person or persons you share it with can be given individual rights, so one person might have read-only rights and another could have full editing rights. If you are working on a team paper, presentation or spreadsheet, this feature is compelling. You no longer have to email different versions of the document back-and-forth to one another, only login-in and update one document as needed. Changes happen in real-time and changes are kept automatically as versions that you can revert to at any time. Because your documents are saved online, you can forget having to carry your jump drives for data retrieval as you access the files over an Internet connection.

Most importantly, Google Docs allows you to save or even upload documents from many different formats including Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and even Adobe PDF.

Oh, two more quick things. Google Docs and Gmail are free–as in no cost to use. Also, Google Docs is in beta, but don’t let that scare you …  just about every Google product seems to remain in perpetual beta status.

The Jing Project

By Bruce O’Neal

bruce.oneal@lonestar.edu

Ever needed to make quick screen shots? Have you ever needed to share those screen shots with other as an email, embed them in your blog or other applications like PowerPoint or Outlook, or would you like to save them for later when you really have time to work with them?

Would you like to spend more time writing, and less time trying to figure out how to embed your images as HTML or skip having to upload things and copy the HTML? (All very complicated and time consuming … especially for those that just want to write or share concepts and not be geeky web-monkies).

Well, Jing Project is just for you.

For the sake of space and brevity, let’s just say it does a lot of really useful things quickly and quite well. It can take screen shots, grab images or video within a browser frame, etc. But the most amazing part is how easy it makes it to do something with those images. It has built in tools to email images to others, make notations on top of those images, upload to Flickr or to its own free hosting service, grab HTML for you to embed in your blog or webpages, etc. The output format is flash (or .png I believe so it is Web 2.0 ready). It even has a history feature in case you need to revisit an image you created previously.

How cool is that!

The application resides as a small, pale yellow sun in the upper middle or right portion of your screen (kind of like an unobtrusive overlay that you can actually move to your favorite screen location if you don’t like the default placement).

In short … it’s … an amazing product.

I have worked with it for a week now, and in that short time it has become indispensable. I feel it would easily be worth $30 – $50 as shareware. But these folks make it for you for $0.

Yup … free!
(At least for now)

Jing Project is available for Mac and PC and I have to say it works great on both platforms.

Six (6) Quick Techniques to Work with Office 2007

1: Format painter

The Format Painter tool copies the formatting from one selection to another. To use format painter:

• select the text whose formatting you want to replicate.
• click the Format Painter toolbar button.
• select the text you want to format.

2: Increase or decrease font size

To increase the font size of selected text, press Ctrl+Shift+>

To decrease the size, press Ctrl+Shift+<

3: Quick Access Toolbar

All Office 2007 products (except Outlook) have a Quick Access Toolbar that you can customize to include your favorite commands. The Quick Access Toolbar is in the top left corner of the Office applications. To customize it click on the little drop menu on your right hand side

To add more commands…you guessed… click the More Commands… option.

4: Fill handle on Excel

Drag the little corner square to automatically fill adjacent cells.

Excel can fill up days of the week, months, sequential numbers… etc.

If you drag the fill handle with only one cell selected, it will repeat that cell’s value into adjacent cells. However, if you drag the fill handle with multiple cells selected, Excel is smart enough to figure out the series. For instance, in the following example, Excel will fill subsequent cells with the increasing series of odd numbers. This even works for other types of series, like dates and percentages.

5: Status bar statistics on Excel

The status bar in Excel shows handy statistics when multiple cells are selected. In Excel 2007, the status bar shows the selected cells’ average, count, and sum. This is an easy way to quickly analyze data without authoring formulas.

6: Clear formatting on Word

To remove formatting from selected text, press Ctrl+Spacebar. Back to no formatting at all.

Have a ball with these tips.

Discover exactly how much impact you make on the environment

By Bruce O’Neal

Are you doing enough for the environment? How can you determine exactly how much energy you are expending? How does this affect the environment?

The Earth Day Network has released an online Footprint Calculator.

Use it to see how much energy you consume, by analyzing your energy consumption, transportation needs, recycling efforts and more in a customizable, 3-D virtual space.

You can get started here: earthday.net/footprint

Link to Free Meal Tracker

The Daily Plate

Remember when you promised yourself that you’d give up chocolate completely and go to the gym every single morning during the summer?  Didn’t last the first week, did you? Probably not because when you have an “all or nothing” attitude, “nothing” usually prevails.
Instead of setting up yourself for failure, bookmark thedailyplate.com. It is a website that our own wellness guru Megan Franks has recommended for tracking what you eat. And it’s FREE!

Did you grab a Reese’s peanut butter cup and Pepsi at the gas station on the way to work this morning? No problem. There’s a search menu on the website to track down the information on nutritional and caloric values. Did you run through the McDonalds drive-through for lunch? No problem, just do the search. Are you looking forward to homemade chicken pot pie for supper? Or are you picking up a Swanson’s frozen one to pop in the microwave? No matter which, again there’s no problem. The search tool will get you the information you need for homemade, for takeout, for frozen, whatever you need.

If you do nothing else except track your meals, soon you will become very, very aware of how your eating habits are affecting your mind, your mood, and your moves (or lack thereof).  Awareness will then motivate you to the next logical step. Forget the “all or nothing” attitude and take it one step at a time.

The Social Media Revolution is Here

By Bruce O’Neal

Have you been hearing more about LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, and Web 2.0 … and the funniest sounding one of all … Twitter?

Are you confused and possibly a little intimidated by setting up a page on one of these services? Don’t be!

These sites and Web 2.0 services are where all the action is. And

by action, I mean, your friends, your acquaintances, and colleagues and your students. If you don’t believe this, just look at the new Lone Star College-North Harris Facebook page. Still don’t believe, then check out the MySpace page with over 200 friends of the college consisting mainly of students both past and present.

These services are how the current generation of students and young people are communicating. They’re posting pictures, blogging about their lives, and twittering away (posting short entries about their every activity).

And they’re doing this nearly 24 hours a day.

Why not take a minute to set-up your Facebook page and explore Web 2.0 by becoming a friend. You colleagues and possibly your students will thank you … and they just might give you a shout-out .. or a tweet.

Conditional Formatting for your Cells (Make Them Pretty)

Juan Primo
Faculty and Staff Center

On previous versions of Microsoft Excel ®, you may have kept track of attendance on a list by using an “X”. Excel 2007, offers easier to use tools for a more visually appealing list that can also be printed as a report.

We start by creating a list and using a “1” to indicate somebody will be attending and a “0” to indicate non attendance.

Now for the transformation, let’s follow those 5 easy steps:

1.    Select the range of values we want to represent (from B2 to B9 here).

2.    Click Conditional Formatting on the Home tab, then choose Icon Sets, then pick 3 Symbols (uncircled) in the gallery of options. They’re represented by a green check box, a yellow exclamation point and a red “X”. At this point, you have both the values (0 or 1) and the icon represented on the sheet.

3.    Click Conditional Formatting again, and then choose the Manage Rules command.

4.    Click the Edit Rule button.

5.    Check the Show Icon Only check box, click OK and there you have it.

Where Excel 2007 shines even more is that you can now filter this list by color. With the active selection being anywhere in the list, click the Data tab, then the Filter button. As you can see each column header now includes a drop-down arrow indicating it is filtered. Click the filter on the Will attend column, and then choose the Filter by Color command. See how you can now filter by green check boxes, showing only the people who will attend the event.

Of course, there are other reasons to use Conditional Formatting on Excel. You could show Top/Bottom Rules, Data Bars, Color Scales, and Icon Sets.

Play and experiment with them and happy conditional formatting.

5 Tips to Work Faster with Windows XP

By Juan Primo, Faculty Staff Center

Print without opening a document The fastest way to print a document without opening it is to browse your hard drive for the file, right-click the icon, and then click Print from the shortcut menu. The document will be sent to the default printer without the need of launching the program.

Pin programs to the Start menu Would you like to add your favorite programs to the Start menu? click All Programs. Locate the program you want to add to the start menu, right-click on the program’s icon, and then select Pin to Start menu. If you change your mind, right-click on the program icon on the Start menu and then select Unpin from Start menu.

Change the size of the icons on your Start menu Due to personal preferences you may want to use large or small icons. The default size is large. · To modify the size of your icons, right-click the Task bar at the bottom of your screen and select Properties. · Select the Start Menu tab and then click the Customize button. · Now click the General tab, select the size you would like to use Small Icons or Large Icons, and then click the OK button twice.

Search a Specific folder If you are searching for a file inside a bunch of subfolders you can search the main folder instead of having to search the whole hardrive. Locate the folder where you think the file’s located, for example My Documents, right-click on top of the folder, and then click Search. The Search window will open, by default, it will search only the folder you selected. By doing this, you won’t have to wait for the computer to search all of the other files on your hard drive.

Send an e-mail attachment from anywhere If you are going to send a file, instead of having to create an email message, and attach the file you could save time and do it faster by: ·Locate the file you are going to email, right-click on top of the file, click Send To > Mail Recipient. An mail message will be created with the file already attached to it · Select the recipient’s name and click send

Outlook Quick Tips

From your friendly neighborhood Faculty and Staff Center
Excerpts from Microsoft Office Online®

When can you get a day off?

Well, the question should be: When shouldn’t you take a day off? One of the benefits of living in a country of immigrants is that most of us have many countries in our genetic makeup and backgrounds, For instance, in my family, we’re made up of people coming from Spain, France, Turkey, Egypt, Lithuania, Poland, and Vietnam. And all those countries have lots and lots of holidays. Lucky us, we can add holidays to our Outlook calendar from virtually any country in the world.

1. On the Tools menu, click Options, and then click Calendar Options.

2. Under Calendar options, click Add Holidays.

3. Select the check box next to each country/region whose holidays you want to add to your calendar, and then click OK.

Hey, if you want to take Nauryz Meyrami Day off to celebrate the vernal equinox in Kazakhstan, don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t. If it’s good enough for Borat it’s good enough for you.

Preview an attachment before you open it (Outlook 2007)

When you receive an attachment in a message and want to quickly see what the attachment contains without opening it, you can preview the attachment in the Reading Pane. Just select the message that has the attachment, and in the Reading Pane, click the attachment once (not twice, which will open it). The content of the attachment, whether it’s a document, a presentation, an image, or whatever, will appear in the Reading Pane.

Search far and wide (Outlook 2007)

When you use Instant Search, the default option is to search only the folder you’re in. Think about that: When you lose something, how often do you know where you lost it? (Bedroom? Laundry hamper? Beneath the floor mats in the car?) Same with e-mail messages. You may need to search all your folders, not just the one you’re currently in.

1. On the Tools menu, point to Instant Search, and then click Search Options.

2. Under Instant Search Pane, click All folders.

Now your search will cover every inch (or centimeter) of your Outlook data.

Calendar Printing Assistant for Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 overview

By Juan Primo
Excerpt from www.microsoft.com

The Calendar Printing Assistant for Office Outlook 2007 is an application for people who need an easy way to print and customize their Outlook 2007 calendar information. It puts you in control of the tools you need and helps you plan and create designer-quality output.

The Calendar Printing Assistant allows you to:

• Print dynamic calendar views
• Customize and personalize your calendars
• Adjust information to changing views

The Calendar Printing Assistant can print a variety of dynamic calendar views.

Print dynamic calendar views

You can print and compare calendars in a variety of views:

Calendars for any time frame. Use day, week, month, and year templates to print your calendar data. Apply the template you want depending on your needs, whether that means keeping current from day to day or making long-term plans.

Print multiple calendars in one view. The Calendar Printing Assistant gives you the flexibility to print multiple Office Outlook 2007 calendars in either overlay or side-by-side views. These views can help you easily compare your calendar to the calendar of a coworker or a team.

Ensure professional quality. The Calendar Printing Assistant can help you produce and print designer-quality Office Outlook 2007 calendars simply, without special experience or complicated tools.

Use the Calendar Printing Assistant to customize your calendars. View a larger image.

Customize and personalize your calendars

Personalize your calendars with notes, images, colors, and designs:

Out-of-the-box template choices. The Calendar Printing Assistant offers many out-of-the-box templates with diverse designs and information. These templates include placeholders not only for a variety of Office Outlook 2007 calendars, but for tasks and notes as well.

Personalize your printed calendars with images. The Calendar Printing Assistant allows you to personalize your calendars by adding family photos, clip art, and other fun or meaningful content.

Customize your colors, fonts, and styles. Make a calendar look like your own by choosing distinct colors, fonts, or styles for the information you want to display.

Customize and create new templates. Calendar Printing Assistant calendar templates and designs give you the ability to design truly individual calendars by incorporating personal and creative content. They are authored in a documented, open XML file format, which makes them easily extensible to third parties.

Use the Calendar Printing Assistant’s tools to organize long-range views.

Adjust information to changing views

Display information the way you need it:

Forecast your activities. The Calendar Printing Assistant has tools to display and organize long-range calendar views like months or years. Using these views can help you get insight into long-term projects or activities as well as make better decisions and plans.

Use space-saving designs. The Calendar Printing Assistant provides a window into all of your calendar data. You can adjust daily views to fit as much content as possible without cutting off important information.

You can access a whole year of information from one calendar view.

Download the Calendar Printing Assistant now!

Note: When downloading the Calendar Printing Assistance, you may be prompted to install Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 Redistributable Package.

Once installed, the Calendar Printing Assistant can be found under:

1. Start
2. All programs
3. Microsoft Office
4. Microsoft Office tools.

Download get-started training for the 2007 Microsoft Office system

By: Juan Primo
Excerpts from Microsoft® online resources.

Would you like to switch to the new 2007 Microsoft Office Programs but you already heard how different they are?

Your friendly neighborhood LSC-North Harris Faculty and Staff Center can help you get up to speed with MS Office 2007.

Every week, we are offering training on the new Microsoft Office 2007 line of products.

For current listings of training visit the FSC blog at: fscweekly.blogspot.com or MyWorkshops for training offered at LSC-North Harris and other locations.

We also understand that time and availability can prevent you from taking advantage of training. If this is the case or if you are a self-learner, Microsoft has made available a plug-in for their current line of products called the Get Started tab to take advantage of training resources offered online by Microsoft.

The new look of Microsoft Office.

These resources include:

Video demos to show you how the 2007 programs work.

Interactive tools to show you where 2003 commands and buttons appear in the 2007 Ribbon.

Free online training courses to help you get the most out of the 2007 programs quickly.

You can download a connection to these resources right into the program, so it’s where you want it when you need it. It’s called the Get Started tab. The sooner you try it, the sooner you’ll like it.

The Get Started tab and part of what it offers you.

Get it now

You can download the Get Started tab by clicking the links for the programs you want:

Excel 2007

PowerPoint 2007

Word 2007

These links lead to articles with instructions for installing and uninstalling the Get Started tab for these programs.

Note : Before you install any of these downloads, close the program in which you want the tab. For example, close Word, install the Get Started tab for Word, and then open Word again to see the new tab. If you do not see the tab, close the program, and then open it again.

For more information or to request specific training, visit your friendly neighborhood LSC-North Harris Faculty and Staff Center. We are located on the second floor of the Library (LB-203).

Navigating Worksheets

Sometimes, you have workbooks that contain several worksheets. In order to navigate and get to where you need to be endless scrolling or constant re-organizing of the sheets are an everyday tribulation.

If this is your situation and you are not able to see all the worksheets at the bottom of the page, you still have a couple of options that can help you with the navigation.

1. You can use the navigation arrows for next, previous, first or last sheet.

2. You can also (this one is better)
right click on top of the Worksheet navigation buttons

A pop-up menu will appear with the list of the worksheets available on the workbook. Simply click the one you want to open.

A simple way to print photos.

By Juan Primo
Faculty Staff Center

You’re back from the Holidays and you’ve taken a bunch of wonderful digital pictures with your brand new digital camera. You want to share them with your family, friends and co-workers, but aren’t sure how to go about printing your digital pictures.

A not very well known tool in Windows XP is the Photo Printing Wizard. This tool makes printing pictures easy offering options such as different sizes and the option to repeat or use different pictures in the same page.

Ready to print some pictures?

1. Navigate to the folder containing the pictures you wish to print.
2. Right click on top of the picture you wish to print and select print. The Photo Printing Wizard will appear.
3. Click Next.
4. In the Picture Selection screen, Windows will show you thumbnails of the photos you selected for printing. If you want to change your mind, uncheck the boxes for any photos you do not wish to include in the print job.
5. Click Next.
6. In the Printing Options screen, select your printer from the menu.
7. Click printing preferences and set up your printer for the appropriate paper and quality settings. This screen will vary in appearance depending on your printer.
8. Click OK to confirm your printing preferences, then Next to continue the Photo Printing Wizard.
9. In the Layout Selection screen you can select and preview the available layouts. Click on a layout to preview it.
10. If you want to print more than one copy of each picture, change the amount in the Number of times to use each picture box.
11. Make sure your printer is turned on and loaded with the appropriate paper.
12. Click Next to send the print job to your printer.

Creating a PowerPoint Photo Album

Everybody knows you can use PowerPoint to create a slide show of your favorite pictures. What not everybody knows is that you DON’T have to insert one picture at the time. PowerPoint has an automated feature that allows you to insert a complete folder worth of pictures of your favorite NHC Event and have it ready for show in a matter of minutes.Getting started

When creating, changing, or updating a photo album, you can give it a unique look by:

• Selecting various layouts and frames.
• Adding captions.
• Applying design templates.
• Adding text boxes in combination with layouts to create custom designs.
• Displaying your pictures in black and white.

Creating a photo album

Microsoft PowerPoint automatically creates a new presentation when you use the photo album feature. Any presentations you currently have open in PowerPoint will not be affected.

Open PowerPoint and select Insert > Picture > New Photo Album (if this option doesn’t appear, click the Expand button or simply wait a few seconds) from the menu. The Photo Album dialog box appears.

If you are using PowerPoint 2007: Click the Insert tab > Photo Album.

Inserting your pictures

The first thing you need to do when creating a new photo album is to upload all the pictures you want to include in your photo album.

If you want to insert a picture that you have on file or on a disk, click the File/Disk button in the Album Content section of the dialog box.

In the Insert New Pictures dialog box, navigate to the folder or disk that contains the picture you want to insert, click the picture file, and click Insert. Repeat this process for every picture you want to insert, or, save yourself some time by inserting multiple pictures at once. To do this, simply hold down the <Ctrl> key as you click each picture you want to insert, then click the Insert button.

If you want to insert a picture from a scanner or camera, click the Scanner/Camera button. If you have more than one device attached to your computer, select the device you want to use from the Device list.

If you’re using a scanner to add a picture, first place the picture in your scanner. Click Web Quality or Print Quality (depending on how your photo album will be viewed), then click Insert to scan the picture. If you want to customize any settings before you scan, or if your scanner software doesn’t support an automatic scan, click Custom Insert in the Scanner/Camera dialog box.

If you’re uploading pictures from a digital camera, click Custom Insert and then follow the onscreen instructions.

Picture options

If you want to insert a caption below each picture in your photo album, click the “Captions below ALL pictures” check box under Picture Options in the Photo Album dialog box.

To add a classic effect to your photo album, try displaying all of your pictures in black and white. To do this, click the “ALL pictures black and white” check box under Picture Options. Selecting this option only formats the photos in your photo album; the original files will not be affected.

To insert text into your photo album (in addition to, or instead of, captions), all you need to do is insert a text box. To do this, click the photo you want to insert the text box below in the “Pictures in album” list, then click the New Text Box button in the Album Content section of the Photo Album dialog box.

Album layout

After you have finished uploading all of the pictures for your photo album, you need to format the album’s layout. Do this in the Album Layout section of the Photo Album dialog box.

First, click the Picture layout list arrow and select a picture layout from the list. A preview of the selected layout appears on the sample slide to the right of the list. Next, click the Frame shape list arrow and select a frame for your pictures from the list. A preview of the selected frame appears on the sample slide.

If you would like to assign a design template to your photo album, click the Browse button, double-click Presentation Designs, select the design you want, and click Select.

Finished?

Once you have finished uploading pictures, inserting text boxes, and formatting the album layout (Phew – that’s a lot of work!), it’s time to open your photo album in PowerPoint!

To create your photo album, click the Create button at the bottom of the dialog box. Tada! Your photo album opens in PowerPoint.

If you clicked the “Captions below ALL pictures” check box in the Photo Album dialog box, a file name appears underneath each picture in your album. Most likely you will want to replace this text with your own (what does D10004875 stand for, anyway?), and it is extremely easy to do so. Simply click inside the caption text box, press <Ctrl> + <A> to select all text inside the text box, and then type a new caption for the picture. Follow this same procedure to insert text into any text boxes you may have inserted.

Making changes

If you want to change or update your photo album after you have created it, no problem! Select Format > Photo Album from the menu to open the Format Photo Album dialog box.

To remove a picture or text box from your album, select Format > Photo Album from the menu, select the picture you want to remove, then click the Remove button. Change the order of your pictures using the arrow buttons.

Click Update when you’re finished to save your changes and return to your photo album.

Checking Mail Box Size in MS Outlook

By Juan Primo

If you are constantly getting e-mails from the Network Administrator warning you about the size of your mailbox there are three things you need to know:

1. The Network Administrator does not hate you: In fact is looking after you making sure e-mails don’t get returned just because your mail box is full. The NHMCCD system gives each one of us 100 MB of space and once the quota is reached (just like the post office) e-mails start getting bounced.
2. How to check the space available on your mailbox.
3. How to set up a Personal Folder to save items locally on your computer and reduce the amount of e-mail on the server.

We will start by learning how to check the space available on the server.

1. Right Click on the first item on the menu and select properties

1. With E-MAIL selected:
1. Right click on your name
2. From the shortcut menu click on Properties.

Click on the folder size button

Click the FOLDER SIZE button located near the bottom of the screen

Here you can check the totals and breakdown of your mail box usage on the server

1. Size: is the actual size of your inbox
2. Total size: is the total size of ALL your mail folders on the server and it includes your sent and deleted items folders. This is the important number the closer you are to 100000KB the closer you are too your quota.
3. This examples tells me that I can make some room by emptying my Deleted Items bin.

Note: After closing this last screen, you can empty the Deleted Items by right clicking on top of the trash bin icon and select “Empty Deleted Items Folder”.

Now that you know how to check your e-mail box size, you are ready for the most important part of this tutorial.

Creating a Personal Folder in MS Outlook

The NHMCCD email system is best defined as a Microsoft Outlook Exchange environment which means that our e-mail is by default saved and located on a network. Among the many advantages of having network e-mail is that we can access email by using the internet from any computer.

However there is a limit on the space we have on the network (for more information see above). Some of us get really attached to old and sometimes useless email for different reasons, one being that as soon as you delete the e-mail you are going to need it.

Fortunately, Outlook provides you with an alternative to deleting items to clear space on the server and be in good terms with the Network Administrator.

A Personal Outlook folder (.PST) will allow you to save those e-mails you need and love in your local computer so they are still available to you locally. To create an Outlook personal folder follow the instructions below.

With Outlook open, click on file, New, Outlook Data File

With Outlook open:

1. From the top menu click on File
2. From the drop menu select New
3. From the next menu select the last item: Outlook Data File

Go with the default and click OK

From the New Outlook Data File window:

1. Make sure the default is selected
2. Click the OK button

On the Create or Open Outlook Data File window:

1. Select the location where you want to save the file (read the important notes below)
2. Name your file in a way you can identify it later (e.g. YourName_local_folders.pst)
3. Click the OK button

Select the location, name your file and save it

Name your folder and set your encryption and security settings

From the Create Microsoft Personal Folders window:

1. Name your folder: This is the name you’ll see in Outlook
2. Encryption settings: Go with the default
3. Password section: if you set a password you will be asked for it when opening Outlook. I recommend leaving it blank.
4. Click the OK button and you are done creating your Outlook Personal folder

Right click on your new file to start creating folders and then drag and drop items …good luck!

Now you should be able to see your brand new Local Folder (or whatever name you gave it).

The advantage of having a Personal Outlook Folder is that organizing and moving files to and from the server is as easy as creating folders and dragging and dropping.

To create local folders:

1. Right click on top of your Local Folder
2. From the menu select New Folder

Name your folder and Click OK

Now you are ready to create folders inside your Personal Outlook Folder:

1. Properly name your folder
2. Make sure Local Folders are selected
3. Click OK

You can create as many folders as you wish just by repeating the steps outlined in the last two sections.

To move items from the server to your Personal Folders, just drag and drop the same way you do with any other Windows application.

Technology tips brought to you by your friendly neighborhood NHC Faculty and Staff Center.

What’s New in Microsoft Office Excel 2007

In a new results-oriented user interface, Microsoft Office Excel 2007 provides powerful tools and features that you can use to analyze, share, and manage your data with ease.

Results-oriented user interface

The new results-oriented user interface makes it easy for you to work in Microsoft Office Excel. Commands and features that were often buried in complex menus and toolbars are now easier to find on task-oriented tabs that contain logical groups of commands and features. Many dialog boxes are replaced with drop-down galleries that display the available options, and descriptive tooltips or sample previews are provided to help you choose the right option.

No matter what activity you are performing in the new user interface—whether it’s formatting or analyzing data—Excel presents the tools that are most useful to successfully complete that task.

More rows and columns, and other new limits

To enable you to explore massive amounts of data in worksheets, Office Excel 2007 supports up to 1 million rows and 16 thousand columns per worksheet. Specifically, the Office Excel 2007 grid is 1,048,576 rows by 16,384 columns, which provides you with 1,500% more rows and 6,300% more columns than you had available in Microsoft Office Excel 2003. For those of you who are curious, columns now end at XFD instead of IV.

Instead of 4 thousand types of formatting, you can now use an unlimited number in the same workbook, and the number of cell references per cell are increased from 8 thousand to limited by available memory.

To improve the performance of Excel, memory management has been increased from 1 GB of memory in Microsoft Office Excel 2003 to 2 GB in Office Excel 2007.

You will also experience faster calculations in large, formula-intensive worksheets because Office Excel 2007 supports multiple processors and multithreaded chipsets.

Office Excel 2007 also supports up to 16 million colors.

Office themes and Excel styles

In Office Excel 2007, you can quickly format the data in your worksheet by applying a theme and by using a specific style. Themes can be shared across other 2007 Office release programs, such as Microsoft Office Word and Microsoft Office PowerPoint, while styles are designed to change the format of Excel-specific items, such as Excel tables, charts, PivotTables, shapes, or diagrams.

Applying a theme A theme is a predefined set of colors, fonts, lines, and fill effects that can be applied to your entire workbook or to specific items, such as charts or tables. They can help you create great-looking documents. Your company may be providing a corporate theme that you can use, or you can choose from the predefined themes that are available in Excel. It’s also easy to create your own theme for a uniform, professional look that can be applied to all of your Excel workbooks and other 2007 Office release documents. When you create a theme, the color, font, and fill effects can be changed individually so that you can make changes to any or all of these options.

Using styles A style is a predefined theme-based format that you can apply to change the look of Excel tables, charts, PivotTables, shapes, or diagrams. If built-in predefined styles don’t meet your needs, you can customize a style. For charts, you can choose from many predefined styles, but you cannot create your own chart styles.

As in Excel 2003, cell styles are used to format selected cells, but you can now quickly apply a predefined cell style. Most cell styles are not based on the theme that is applied to your workbook, and you can easily create your own.

Rich conditional formatting

In 2007 Office release, you can use conditional formatting to visually annotate your data for both analytical and presentation purposes. To easily find exceptions and to spot important trends in your data, you can implement and manage multiple conditional formatting rules that apply rich visual formatting in the form of gradient colors, data bars, and icon sets to data that meets those rules. Conditional formats are also easy to apply—in just a few clicks, you can see relationships in your data that you can use for your analysis purposes.

Easy formula writing

The following improvements make formula writing much easier in Office Excel 2007.

Resizable formula bar The formula bar automatically resizes to accommodate long, complex formulas, which prevents the formulas from covering other data in your worksheet. You can also write longer formulas with more levels of nesting than you could in earlier versions of Excel.

Function AutoComplete With Function AutoComplete, you can quickly write the proper formula syntax. From easily detecting the functions that you want to use to getting help completing the formula arguments, you will be able to get formulas right the first time and every time.

Structured references In addition to cell references, such as A1 and R1C1, Office Excel 2007 provides structured references that reference named ranges and tables in a formula.

Easy access to named ranges By using the Office Excel 2007 name manager, you can organize, update, and manage multiple named ranges in a central location, which helps anyone who needs to work on your worksheet interpret its formulas and data.

Improved sorting and filtering

In Office Excel 2007, you can quickly arrange your worksheet data to find the answers that you need by using enhanced filtering and sorting. For example, you can now sort data by color and by more than 3 (and up to 64) levels. You can also filter data by color or by dates, display more than 1000 items in the AutoFilter drop-down list, select multiple items to filter, and filter data in PivotTables.

Excel table enhancements

In Office Excel 2007, you can use the new user interface to quickly create, format, and expand an Excel table (known as an Excel list in Excel 2003) to organize the data on your worksheet so that it’s much easier to work with. New or improved functionality for tables includes the following features.

Table header rows Table header rows can be turned on or off. When table headers are displayed, they stay visible with the data in the table columns by replacing the worksheet headers when you move around in a long table.

Calculated columns A calculated column uses a single formula that adjusts for each row. It automatically expands to include additional rows so that the formula is immediately extended to those rows. All that you have to do is enter a formula once—you don’t need to use the Fill or Copy commands.

Automatic AutoFiltering AutoFilter is turned on by default in a table to enable powerful sorting and filtering of table data.

Structured references
This type of reference allows you to use table column header names in formulas instead of cell references, such as A1 or R1C1.

Total rows In a total row, you can now use custom formulas and text entries.

Table styles You can apply a table style to quickly add designer-quality, professional formatting to tables. If an alternate-row style is enabled on a table, Excel will maintain the alternating style rule through actions that would have traditionally disrupted this layout, such as filtering, hiding rows, or manual rearranging of rows and columns.

New look for charts

In Office Excel 2007, you can use new charting tools to easily create professional-looking charts that communicate information effectively. Based on the theme that is applied to your workbook, the new, up-to-date look for charts includes special effects, such as 3-D, transparency, and soft shadows.

The new user interface makes it easy to explore the available chart types so that you can create the right chart for your data. Numerous predefined chart styles and layouts are provided so that you can quickly apply a good-looking format and include the details that you want in your chart.

Visual chart element pickers Besides the quick layouts and quick formats, you can now use the new user interface to quickly change every element of the chart to best present your data. In a few clicks, you can add or remove titles, legends, data labels, trendlines, and other chart elements.

A modern look with OfficeArt Because charts in Office Excel 2007 are drawn with OfficeArt, almost anything you can do to an OfficeArt shape can also be done to a chart and its elements. For example, you can add a soft shadow or bevel effect to make an element stand out or use transparency to make elements visible that are partially obscured in a chart layout. You can also use realistic 3-D effects.

Clear lines and fonts Lines in charts appear less jagged, and ClearType fonts are used for text to improve readability.

More colors than ever You can easily choose from the predefined theme colors and vary their color intensity. For more control, you can also add your own colors by choosing from 16 million colors in the Colors dialog.

Chart templates Saving your favorite charts as a chart template is much easier in the new user interface.

Shared charting

Using Excel charts in other programs In 2007 Office release, charting is shared between Excel, Word, and PowerPoint. Rather than using the charting features that are provided by Microsoft Graph, Word and PowerPoint now incorporate the powerful charting features of Excel. Because an Excel worksheet is used as the chart data sheet for Word and PowerPoint charts, shared charting provides the rich functionality of Excel, including the use of formulas, filtering, sorting, and the ability to link a chart to external data sources, such as Microsoft SQL Server and Analysis Services (OLAP), for up-to-date information in your chart. The Excel worksheet that contains the data of your chart can be stored in your Word document or PowerPoint presentation, or in a separate file to reduce the size of your documents.

Copying charts to other programs Charts can be easily copied and pasted between documents or from one program to another. When you copy a chart from Excel to Word or PowerPoint, it automatically changes to match the Word document or PowerPoint presentation, but you can also retain the Excel chart format. The Excel worksheet data can be embedded in the Word document or PowerPoint presentation, but you can also leave it in the Excel source file.

Animating charts in PowerPoint In PowerPoint, you can more easily use animation to emphasize data in an Excel-based chart. You can animate the entire chart or the legend entry and axis labels. In a column chart, you can even animate individual columns to better illustrate a specific point. Animation features are easier to find and you have a lot more control. For example, you can make changes to individual animation steps, and use more animation effects.

Easy-to-use PivotTables

In Office Excel 2007, PivotTables are much easier to use than in earlier versions of Excel. By using the new PivotTable user interface, the information that you want to view about your data is just a few clicks away—you no longer have to drag data to drop zones that aren’t always an easy target. Instead, you can simply select the fields that you want to see in a new PivotTable field list.

And after you create a PivotTable, you can take advantage of many other new or improved features to summarize, analyze, and format your PivotTable data.

Using Undo in PivotTables You can now undo most actions that you take to create or rearrange a PivotTable.

Plus and minus drill-down indicators These indicators are used to indicate whether you can expand or collapse parts of the PivotTable to see more or less information.

Sorting and filtering Sorting is now as simple as selecting an item in the column that you want to sort and using sort buttons. You can filter data by using PivotTable filters, such as date filters, label filters, value filters, or manual filters.

Conditional formatting You can apply conditional formatting to an Office Excel 2007 Pivot Table by cell or by intersection of cells.

PivotTable style and layout Just like you can for Excel tables and charts, you can quickly apply a predefined or custom style to a PivotTable. And changing the layout of a PivotTable is also much easier to do in the new user interface.

PivotCharts Like PivotTables, PivotCharts are much easier to create in the new user interface. All of the filtering improvements are also available for PivotCharts. When you create a PivotChart, specific PivotChart tools and context menus are available so that you can analyze the data in the chart. You can also change the layout, style, and format of the chart or its elements the same way that you can for a regular chart. In Office Excel 2007, the chart formatting that you apply is preserved when you make changes to the PivotChart, which is an improvement over the way it worked in earlier versions of Excel.

New file formats

XML-based file format In 2007 Microsoft Office system, Microsoft is introducing new file formats for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, known as the Office Open XML formats. These new file formats facilitate integration with external data sources, and also offer reduced file sizes and improved data recovery. In Office Excel 2007, the default format for an Excel workbook is the Office Excel 2007 XML-based file format (.xlsx). Other available XML-based formats are the Office Excel 2007 XML-based and macro-enabled file format (.xlsm), the Office Excel 2007 file format for an Excel template (.xltx), and the Office Excel 2007 macro-enabled file format for an Excel template (.xltm).

Office Excel 2007 binary file format In addition to the new XML-based file formats, Office Excel 2007 also introduces a binary version of the segmented compressed file format for large or complex workbooks. This file format, the Office Excel 2007 Binary (or BIFF12) file format (.xls), can be used for optimal performance and backward compatibility.

Compatibility with earlier versions of Excel You can check an Office Excel 2007 workbook to see if it contains features or formatting that are not compatible with an earlier version of Excel so that you can make the necessary changes for better backward compatibility. In earlier versions of Excel, you can install updates and converters that help you open an Office Excel 2007 workbook so that you can edit it, save it, and open it again in Office Excel 2007 without losing any Office Excel 2007-specific functionality or features.

Better printing experience

Page Layout View In addition to the Normal view and Page Break Preview view, Office Excel 2007 provides a Page Layout View. You can use this view to create a worksheet while keeping an eye on how it will look in printed format. In this view, you can work with page headers, footers, and margin settings right in the worksheet, and place objects, such as charts or shapes, exactly where you want them. You also have easy access to all page setup options on the Page Layout tab in the new user interface so that you can quickly specify options, such as page orientation. It’s easy to see what will be printed on every page, which will help you avoid multiple printing attempts and truncated data in printouts.

Saving to PDF and XPS format You can save as a PDF or XPS file from a 2007 Microsoft Office system program only after you install an add-in. For more information, see Enable support for other file formats, such as PDF and XPS.

Quick access to more templates

In Office Excel 2007, you can base a new workbook on a variety of templates that are installed with Excel, or you can quickly access and download templates from the Microsoft Office Online Web site.

MS Excel Training Opportunities at NHC

For upcoming October training on MS Excel 2007 visit MyWorkshops at: http://www.northharriscollege.com/108313/ or visit your friendly neighborhood Faculty and Staff Center (LB-203)