10 Quick and Easy Microsoft Excel Tips

1. Display Formulas

To display worksheet formulas for auditing and printing, press [Ctrl] + ~ (called a tilde and found on many keyboards to the left of the #1 key). Use this shortcut again to revert back to worksheet results. In Excel 2010 and Excel 2007, this option, Show Formulas, is found under the Formulas tab.

2. Fast Moves Between Worksheets in a Workbook

Try these keyboard shortcuts to toggle or cycle between worksheets:

Next worksheet: [Ctrl] + [Page Down]Previous worksheet: [Ctrl] + [Page Up]

These shortcuts work great in smaller workbooks but how do you quickly move to a specific worksheet especially now that Excel 2007 supports up to 1,024 worksheets, an increase from the limit of 255 worksheets in Excel 2003? For another way to easily navigate to a worksheet in an Excel workbook, right-click on any of the 4 triangle navigation buttons (located immediately to the left of the worksheet tabs) to display a pop-up menu of worksheet names. Just choose the worksheet you want. The option for More Sheets displays as needed for a complete list of worksheets in the workbook.

3. Fast Data Entry

Save time with these quick and easy ways to enter data into an Excel worksheet:

Enter current date: [Ctrl] +;Repeat data from the cell immediately above: [Ctrl] + ' (single quote)

4. Wrapping Text

When entering titles or long paragraphs of text, the [Enter] key will move to a new cell. Instead press [Alt] + [Enter] to create a line break or new line in the same cell. With this shortcut, you can decide where the text breaks for column headings, text descriptions, and Excel notes and comments.

Not every long text entry needs this specific control, and so, you can anticipate and automatically format lengthy entries to wrap to multiple lines by applying the Wrap Text alignment feature to entire columns or rows even if some of your cells won't need it. To apply the Wrap Text format to a selection in Excel 2003, choose Format > Cells, select the Alignment tab, and check the Wrap text option. To format a selection in Excel 2007 to wrap text, pick the Wrap Text command from the Alignment group in the Home tab.

5. Go To Shortcut

Quickly move to a specific cell or range by pressing [F5] or [Ctrl] + G (Go To).

6. Editing Cells

Excel has lots of choices for editing text, values or a formula in a worksheet cell including:

Typing a new entry in the cell (no need to delete previous contents)Double-click on cell to open "in-place" or direct editingPress [F2] to open the current cell for editingClick once into the Formula Bar (above column headings)Press [Delete] to clear contents (cell is empty but retains formatting)When a cell is opened for editing, click with the mouse or use arrow keys, [Backspace], [Delete], [Home] and [End] to navigate within the cell.

7. Keyboard Shortcut to Go To the Formula Bar

The previous Excel tip included the option to edit a cell by pressing the [F2] function key which, by default, positions the cursor in the cell instead of the Formula bar. If you really like keyboard shortcuts over the mouse, you can change the [F2] function key so it moves directly to the Formula bar. Just follow the steps below for your version of Microsoft Excel:

Excel 2010: Pick the File tab and then select Options from the bottom of the screen.Excel 2007: Click the Office button and then pick Excel Options (at the bottom right).Select Advanced in the left pane.Uncheck the Allow editing directly in cell option. OK to apply.

8. Easy Cell Formatting

Try these quick Excel keyboard shortcuts to change formatting for your current selection:

Open the Format Cells dialog box: [Ctrl] + 1Apply the currency format: [Ctrl] + $Apply the percentage format: [Ctrl] + %

9. Quickly See a Sum or Average

Want to see a quick total or other calculation? Just highlight some numbers in a worksheet. Next, look at the status bar at the bottom of the window. As part of a feature called AutoCalculate, Excel displays the average of the numbers, a count of the cells, and the sum. The average, count, and sum in the status bar get updated each time you click another cell. By the way, when you use this tip, Excel ignores any cells you click that contain text or graphics instead of numbers. Although you can't automatically create fixed results from these calculations, this is an easy way to audit or review your Excel worksheets. You can also use this trick with non-adjacent cells. Just click on one cell, and then hold down the [Ctrl] key while you click on additional cells you want to add to the other selected values.

10. Quick Select All

If most or all of your Excel worksheet will have the same format (font style, size, number, etc.), you can apply global formatting to the cells even before you type text, data, or formulas into the cells. To select all of the cells in the current range or data list, press [Ctrl] + A. Press again to select the entire worksheet (Select All) or by clicking once on the upper-right intersection (the blank rectangle) of Column A and Row 1. Then choose the cell formatting options that you want to see in your worksheet.

Dawn Bjork Buzbee is The Software Pro® and a Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) as well as a certified Microsoft Office Specialist (MOS) Master Instructor, certified Microsoft Applications Specialist (MCAS) Instructor, and a certified Microsoft Office expert. Dawn shares smart and easy ways to effectively use software through her work as a software speaker, trainer, consultant, and author of 6 books. Discover more software tips, tricks, tactics, and techniques at http://www.softwarepro.com/.


View the original article here

Read Users' Comments (0)

Dealing With Service Management Challenges

In the current economy, almost every service management business is being pressurized into bringing down their costs and downsizing to bare necessities if they want to continue making a profit. And on the other hand, they end up having a customer base that is getting highly sophisticated and demanding and a competition that is always more than willing to pave the way for them.

In such cases, it is the service based functions of most companies that take a beating. You find very few of them to go around, they work hard, yet they are undervalued and more often than not are the first to take a hit in cost cutting. There are three primary service management challenges that companies face. The first of this is not being able justify customer service from the finance point of view and not being able to put a monetary value to poor service. This can be very difficult when it comes to creating and implementing service improvement measures.

Every organization will have a hierarchy through which one has to go through and they will continue to create bottlenecks on the way up. Because of the lack of a formal means of customer retention and a framework within which to work, there is no balance as far as investment in improvement goes.

The aim of any service based organization is to create a company that is based completely on being a customer driven set up. This needs some systematic planning and execution abilities; especially in places where a company is making shift to being more customer-centric and providing them with a value for money experience.

One of the simplest ways to overcome issues of workforce management is to use a software that has been created especially for service management. This software will help with the creation of work scheduling process that will ensure your team is out and working in a systemized manner. Both sides can be in constant touch while on the job since these software depends on team connectivity on the Internet. Smart devices will help the team stay in touch. They will also be able to get their next assignments without a fuss, within a short radii bringing down the need for excessive travelling.

Service management challenges need to be dealt it a professional manner with the right kind of electronic back-up. It makes the various deadlines of work more manageable and workable.

Click here for more info about how field service management can be used by business and also take a look at innovative UK cloud field service software supplier http://www.oneserve.co.uk/


View the original article here

Read Users' Comments (0)

The Importance of Safety at Work

Office security has become an issue that needs to be addressed by many businesses. This is not only true of the electronic issues that may arise from time to time but in many cases, it is true of the physical security of your business location. In order for you to keep yourself and your employees free from harm, here are a few suggestions that can assist you along the way. Applying these in your own business practices is relatively easy and it will have a profound effect on the safety of the workplace.

As far as the physical safety of the workplace is concerned, this is something that is really going to depend upon your business model. If you have hundreds of employees, it is likely that you are going to need to employ much more security than if you run a fairly small operation. Having somebody on hand which can offer the security that is needed in the workplace is often going to be of benefit. This is especially true of the nighttime security, regardless of whether you have employees on working during these hours or not. Not only can it help to secure the workplace so that problems are kept to a minimum, it can also make those who need to work at night feel comfortable in doing so.

It is not just the physical workplace that needs to be secured in today's world environment; it is also the electronic workplace. Your network is susceptible to hackers and unscrupulous individuals who want nothing more than to get their hands on your data. There are numerous ways that you can overcome this problem, but they must be employed properly. Securing your network is perhaps the most important thing that can be done and you may need the help of an ITT in order to accomplish this. You should also make sure that any security software that you are using, such as antivirus or anti-spyware is up to date and running on each and every workstation within your business.

When you have the security enabled through your network, make sure that any peripherals are also secured properly. This is especially important for businesses that run check printing software or print prescriptions. The number of individuals who should have access to those printers should be limited, but how can you do so effectively? Make sure that you set the permissions in the network properly and secure the physical location by purchasing printers that not only protect the toner cartridges by HP, they also protect the paper that is used for printing those documents.

Finally, make sure that everybody in your business is up to date on how to run a computer safely. This is especially important if you have open access to the Internet enabled through your workplace. There are plenty of dangers available and spyware/viruses can easily attach themselves to computers if you are surfing the web randomly. Be sure that you have regular meetings with your employees to discuss how to operate computers properly and how to use the tools that are available to keep your entire network safe.

The author of this article has experience using check printing software and toner cartridges by HP. During his free time he loves to travel around Asia and share his experience throughout different social media outlets.


View the original article here

Read Users' Comments (0)

Web Application Testing and Other Resources Available for Developers

Even when software developers hire the best programmers and provide them with state-of-the-art information technology (IT) resources, they still might need help completing important tasks. Today there are a number of tasks that developers outsource to specialized companies. Two of those tasks are web application testing and the installment of a simple issue tracking system. With each service, developers are able to improve the quality of their products and services by getting help with tasks that go beyond core competencies. This article will take a look at each of the above mentioned services to explain why companies benefit from outsourcing these tasks.

Simple Issue Tracking System

Software developers of all sizes have found that their offerings are vulnerable to the presence of bugs and other errors. Customers expect some problems due to the reality of human error; so generally they are less concerned with whether or not the software has bugs and more concerned with whether or not the developer is capable of quickly resolving the bugs. A simple issue tracking system empowers customer support representatives to quickly and effectively solve a problem. Problem resolution professionals uses a simple issue tracking system to see which glitches the company is trying to fix at any particular time, and will log their own actions when addressing a specific problem.

Real-time tracking enables other employees to pick up where someone else left off without having to work with someone else to get up to speed. Additionally, support representatives have a live look at how close a problem is to being fixed and can provide customers with frequent updates. Over time, the organization actually develops a database full of techniques that can be used to address issues as developers log their actions in the simple issue tracking system. This allows problems to be addressed by programmers more quickly, and in some cases these activity logs can be used by customer support reps to walk customers through bug removal steps over the phone.

Web Application Testing

When developers are working on a web application, they will conduct software testing before launching the new application. Web application testing aims to identify issues and eliminate them before the application is released to the general public. Issues that will be inspected with testing include application security, accessibility to users with different privileges (for example, if a site has a free section and a section that only registered members are able to access), and load testing to determine if the application can handle giant spikes in traffic. Many companies opt to outsource the task of web application testing because third-party companies can identify problems more quickly, provide accurate end-user metrics, and scan the application to identify quality issues.

Companies that focus specifically on providing a simple issue tracking system and completing web application testing will have the time, resources, and expertise that most organizations do not have in-house. Outsourcing these tasks allows organizations to not only save money due to the developer's elevated efficiency, but also ensures that the job will be done as well or even better than it would be in-house.

Developers can outsource tasks like the development of a simple issue tracking system and completion of web application testing to ensure the best results.


View the original article here

Read Users' Comments (0)

Different Types of Online Task Lists


View the original article here

Read Users' Comments (0)

Manage Your Pictures With Image Library Software

Working with graphics and images is a little different from a traditional job or business. While a store might sell CDs, books or fruits and vegetables, you're selling your skills and, most importantly, the pictures and media that you capture for your clients. You wouldn't risk your stock with a sub-par inventory system, so why would you risk your digital assets by not using a suitable filing and library software suite in the same way?

How can I take care of my digital assets?

Digital asset management and image library software is all you need to make sure that you and your business are protected from hard drive failure, viruses, theft and everything else that can ruin your data and set you back weeks, months or even years. By backing up your data to a secure, offsite location, you'll never have to worry about losing those important images or video.

What can image library software offer me?

This modern software primarily allows you to organise and backup your images. The Internet is an excellent tool that allows many new and innovative ways of organising your data - in the past five years online storage has become the norm that many businesses use in one way or another.

Good image library software will copy your images in full resolution to a backup server that can be accessed from any computer, anywhere in the world with the right software, login details and an Internet connection. Even if your business goes up in flames you'll still have everything you've worked on available from your online library.

You will also be able to keep better tabs on projects, completed work and you won't ever worry about where that image or job from months ago got to. Organise your library with tags, label jobs by client and search your entire catalogue of images quickly and easily with keywords.

The software can help with group work too. Because you can access data online from any machine, you can set up permissions and groups for employees, clients and anybody else that you choose to work with so that they can access and modify files themselves. Projects can be completed from halfway around the world by three different people in three different places with ease using the right image library software.

Make managing your pictures and data a breeze with high quality image library software. Treat your digital assets with care and enjoy the added functionality, security and peace of mind.

Find out more about our image library software at Mosaic by Original Image.


View the original article here

Read Users' Comments (0)

Training the New Workforce: SMEs and Learning Professionals Unite!

What happens when a bulk of employees are reaching the retirement stage? The organization need to add new and young workforce to replace the older employees. However, during this change it is extremely critical to capture the knowledge from the subject matter experts (SMEs) and transferring it to learning professionals. This setup of training and learning has its own challenges but it provides numerous learning opportunities. This can be used for future projects and teams to reach the desired goals and objectives of the company.

A three- step process can help in learning and overcome the problems:

1.) Partnership Agreement Worksheet: An SME could be an external resource paid to impart knowledge or an internal resource that will transfer knowledge to the learning professionals as an added responsibility to his daily role.

In case of an internal resource, it is important for SME to answer the question, "Why am I doing this?" Is it for the passion in the particular field or is it for extra compensation or incentive? In this agreement of training, the learning professional has to be clear about his expectation from the SMEs' training session and how is it going to help in context to his/her job description.

2.) EARS communication: It takes into account the famous theory of Malcolm Knowles about the way adults learns.

• Adults share and learn through each other's vast pool of prior knowledge gained through years of experience.
• They actively apply these new-found skills in their daily jobs and change their attitude towards work.
• They identify the need to learn when a relevant real-life situation demands newer solutions.
• Adults are fast learners when they take the initiative to learn and are self-directed.

The above EARS theory can be applied in communication between the SME and the learning professional to avoid any conflict and speed up the projects.

3.) Acknowledge and Appreciate: As an SME, appreciate the effort of the learner to take your knowledge and put it into context for organizational growth. Although the end product is what matters the most, there are still various phases to reach where efforts should be acknowledged and appreciated by both sides.

By following these simple 3 steps, the organization is able to create a sturdy platform where SMEs and learning professionals can come together and learn. The years of experience of an SME are a great asset for the company that needs to be saved and used for nurturing in future.

Elizabeth is an HR Software specialist who specializes in strategy, employee engagement, training and Learning Management System. She writes primarily on empowering employees to help business goals. She works for an award winning HR software company, EmployWise.com.


View the original article here

Read Users' Comments (0)