What are Tracking Catgories? It is an optional tool in Xero to allow users to further analyse their business income and expenses. You can have up to two tracking categories,
Microsoft Office Certification
Want to PROVE your Microsoft Office skills? Then become Microsoft Office certified! Microsoft Office Specialists are a part of a global community of distinguished achievers. This Microsoft credential tells the
Get control of your mailbox 6: Reminders and Flags
These days we get bombarded with emails. According to research, in 2010, we are each receiving an average of 74 emails per day, 61 of which are legitimate emails, and
Visually analyse data with Conditional Formatting
Applying conditional formatting allows you to change the format of the cells in your spreadsheet, depending on certain conditions. For example, you could highlight cells in a particular colour when
Get control of your mailbox 5: View settings
You can add and remove columns in your mail folder screen (each email folder can be set individually) so that you can view the information that is relevant to you. For example, if you do not categorise or follow up your emails then you would not need to view these columns. Similarly, if you have more than one email address you may need to have a column that shows which email account the email was sent to.
Spreadsheets explained…
What is a spreadsheet?
A spreadsheet is a rectangular table or grid used for organising and analysing data arranged in rows and columns. Data can be entered, edited, manipulated and stored as text or numbers. Data can be used in complex calculations, graphical chart creation or analysis.
Some common Excel terms
Worksheet – a single spreadsheet
Workbook – a single file containing a collection of one or more worksheets (up to 255).
Cell – a box where a row and column meet, into which data is input. Each cell has a different name, derived from the column and row in which it is contained. The cell name is displayed in the Name box
Active cell – cell indicated by a solid border, whose name is currently displayed in the Name box. The active cell is where data appears when keyed from the keyboard.
Formula bar – text or numbers that are keyed in to the active cell are displayed in the formula bar.
Range – a rectangular area of 2 or more adjacent cells
Menu – a list of application commands that is displayed when you click a menu name from the top of the Excel screen
Menu bar – horizontal bar below the title bar that contains the names of menus
Button – a picture that performs a command when clicked on
Title bar – the blue bar at the top of the window that displays the name of the workbook
Toolbar – contains a group of similar buttons
Worksheets and workbooks
Think of a ‘workbook’ as a book that contains ‘worksheets’ or pages. When Excel is started it opens a new workbook that contains 3 worksheets.
Common uses for spreadsheets
- storing complex data in tabular format e.g. customer records
- calculating budgets
- maintaining accounting ledgers
- performing “What If?” analyses
Examples of spreadsheet programs
- Lotus 1-2-3
- Microsoft Excel
- Corel Quattro Pro
- Microsoft Works spreadsheet
Some Excel facts
Each worksheet contains 256 columns and 65,536 rows… that’s 16,777,216 cells! If the entire worksheet was printed out, it would measure 5.6 metres wide by 327.7 metres long! Each cell can hold up to 32,767 characters… that’s a potential of 549,739,036,672 characters in just one worksheet!
Using Styles in Microsoft Word
What are Styles ?
A style is a collection of formatting instructions that can be applied to text, avoiding the need for manual formatting using the Format menu or Formatting toolbar.
Styles are used in everything that you do in Word, without you even realising. There are several reasons why it is important to understand how they work:
- Consistency – ensures that your document contains the same formatting throughout, providing a professional, clean-looking document.
- Easier to Modify – using styles means that you only need to modify the style and not every single paragraph in your document in that style.
- Efficiency – you only need to create the style once, then it can be applied anywhere else in that document (and other documents too)
- Tables of Contents – a table of contents can be generated automatically using the styles in your document.
- Faster Navigation – allows you to move to different sections, quickly, using the Document Map
- Working in Outline – enables you to easily outline and organise your document.
- Legal Outline Numbering – Numbering, when linked to styles, allows you to generate and update consistent outline numbering in legal documents, even ones with complicated numbering schemes like municipal law, tax law, and mergers and acquisitions documents.
Style Types
- Paragraph – These are the most common type of style. They apply formatting to the entire paragraph and include both font formatting and paragraph formatting.
- Character – These styles apply only font formatting to selected text.
- Table – These styles allow you to apply formatting to tables.
- List – These styles allow you to specify the way lists are numbered depending on the level of the numbering e.g. the list style “1 / 1.1 / 1.1.1” will apply number formatting as follows:
1. Sarah
1.1. Fred
1.1.1. John
How Styles Cascade
A style can be based on another style or on no style. Basing a style on another creates a hierarchy of styles that allow you to make changes to multiple styles in a single step.
For example, if you create a style called “Level 1 heading” which is Arial, 16pt and Bold, then a “Level 2 heading” which is based on the first, it will inherit level 1’s attributes. All you then need to do is to adjust that style, say to 14pt but leave the other formatting the same. If you then decide that you want all of your headings to be Verdana rather than Arial, you change the level 1 heading to Verdana and, because it is the ‘parent’ of the level 2 heading, it will change that to Verdana also.
You can create up to 9 levels of styles. Basing your headings on the built in ‘Heading 1” through to ‘Heading 9’ also allows you to use the Document Map feature:
View > Document Map
Styles & Templates
A new style can either be created and saved in that document only or added to the template that is currently in use. If you set up a new style but did not click on the ‘New Documents Based on this template’ check box, that style would only be available in that particular document, otherwise it would be added to the template which that document is attached to. Consequently, that style would then be available to all other documents using that template.
Do not use the ‘Automatically update’ feature unless you really know what you are doing! Any changes you make directly to your document will update anything else in that document with the same style, and you can end up overwriting your styles.
Modifying an existing Style
Changing a style will affect any text in that document that is linked to that particular style, and also any styles that may be dependent on that style. If you click on the ‘New Documents Based on this template’ check box, it will also modify that style within the template itself. For these reasons, it is important to decide whether you want to modify that style, create a new one or just apply manual formatting to some text.
- From the Quick Styles, hover over the style to be modified
- Right mouse click
- Select Modify from the list
- Change the formatting as necessary
Create a stencil of your favourite shapes
Instead of searching various Visio stencils to create your drawings, why not put all of your favourite shapes and pictures on to a new customised stencil. You could even save your company logo or favourite Clip Art drawings on there too. Here’s how:
- Go to File
- Select Shapes
- Select New Stencil
- Drag shapes from drawing page to new stencil
- Click on Save icon at the top of new stencil
- Type in a name for your new stencil
