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Cut, Copy And Paste Tips In Excel August 20, 2009

Posted by Interesting Stuff in : Sofware and Computers , comments closed

The Cut, Copy and Paste commands are a feature of almost all computer software and allow users to transfer data from one location to another via the clipboard. As with most programs, Microsoft Office Excel uses the clipboard in two ways: it allows you to manipulate standard data, such as text and graphics, and also data which is unique to Excel, such as formulas.

MS Excel uses four main commands to manipulate data via the clipboard in Excel: Cut, Copy, Paste and Paste Special. The most commonly used combinations are Cut or Copy followed by Paste or Paste Special. Whenever the operation starts with the Cut command, information will be transferred from one location to another; if Copy is used instead, information will be duplicated at the destination. Regardless of which operation is being performed, there are a few tips which every Excel user should be aware of.

For a start, when using the copy and paste commands, you may paste once or paste repeatedly. If you only want to paste the information once, then having made your selection and used the Cut or Copy command, simply position the cursor in the top left cell of the area where you want to data to go (you don’t have to select multiple cells) and press the Enter key. This will paste the data and exit Copy mode; i.e. the flashing border will disappear from the selected cells. If you want to paste the data repeatedly in different locations, then use the Paste command. This pastes the data at the specified location but keeps you in Copy mode.

It is even possible to make several discontiguous selections and paste the copied or cut data into each of them simultaneously. Imagine, for example, you have a worksheet containing product information which includes a column headed “Product Status”. You select a cell in that column which contains the text “Obsolete but for sale” and copy it. You now want to copy this text into several other cells in that same column. To do this, you can click on the first cell that needs this text, hold down Control and click on each of the others. Next, simply press the Enter key to paste the copied text into each of the selected cells and exit Copy mode.

Each time you copy a formula, Excel will change all relative cell references (those without dollar signs; such as “A5″, as opposed to “$A$5″). Most of the time, this is quite useful. However, occasionally you want to copy the exact same formula in a cell. The way to do this is edit the cell containing the formula and copy the formula while in Edit mode. To copy, highlight the formula and right-click Copy or type Control-c. When you paste the formula into another cell, it will be identical to the original formula.

Paste Special is a very versatile variation of the Paste command. One of its most useful function is to “freeze” volatile or dynamic data; i.e. data which is being generated by formulas. Simply copy the data including all of the formulas and then with the data still highlighted, choose Paste Special; activate the option “Values” and click the OK. Any formulas in the original selection will be permanently replaced with their current values.

If you would like to learn more about Excel, why not attend one of our Microsoft Excel training classes.

Character And Paragraph Formatting In Word August 15, 2009

Posted by Interesting Stuff in : Sofware and Computers , comments closed

Microsoft Office Word 2007 is sometimes criticized by designers for not affording them the accuracy provided by DTP software such as InDesign and QuarkXpress. However, over the years, the features available for formatting text and paragraphs in Word have been gradually enhanced. Today, there are features to control just about every aspect of your text.

A key distinction is between character and paragraph formatting. Character formats can be applied to any text you care to select; anything from a single character upwards. Paragraph formats apply to entire paragraphs; a paragraph being any text between two carriage returns. A second distinction is the way in which text is formatted: manually or through the use of styles. Manual formatting, where you specify the formatting attributes you want to apply to your text one item at a time, is suitable for short documents; especially those which will not be repeated at some stage.

Styles are best used when creating longer documents. Here, text formatting is encapsulated into a series of named styles, each with its own associated series of formatting attributes. To format one’s text, one simply assigns a particular style to it. If the attributes associated with a particular style are modified, all of the text which has been formatted with that style is updated and inherits the new attributes.

If formatting is being done manually, character formats are obtained in the Font group of the Home Tab of the Word ribbon. Character formats include such attributes as the typeface, size and color. Paragraph formats are found in the Paragraph group of the same Tab and include such attributes as the space between paragraphs, alignment and indentation.

If you decide to take the styles route for formatting, you can use Word’s built-in styles, your own styles or a combination of both. Here too, there is a distinction between character styles and paragraph styles. However, it is important to note that while character styles include only character attributes, paragraph styles include both character and paragraph attributes. Paragraph styles are used far more frequently than character styles and most people will be happy to use Word’s built-in styles (especially “Heading 1″, “Heading 2″ etc.) rather than reinventing the wheel and creating their own. The good thing about these styles is that you can modify the attributes associated with them simply by right-clicking on the name of a style and choosing “Modify”.

Character styles are not used that often but they can be quite handy. Suppose you are creating a promotional document about a service offered by your company and you want the name of the service to stand out wherever it occurs. No problem: simply create a character style and use it to format the text in question. If you are doing this as an afterthought, MS Word will even allow you to use the Replace command to apply the formatting.

You can learn more about Word formatting features on our Microsoft Word 2007 training courses.