When working with a large worksheet, losing sight of your headings can make it difficult to navigate your document. Luckily, Excel 2003 provides a helpful tool to solve this problem. To freeze your headings so they can be seen while you work on any other row in your worksheet, simply click on the row that is below your headings and select Window at the top menu, then Freeze Panes. You can also click the rows after the second one instead to freeze several of the first rows at once!

Sometimes the amount of data that needs to fit in a cell seems to be just too much. If you need more space, try this tip! Type up all the data you want to be in that cell, hit Enter, and click that cell once more.  Select Format, then Cells, then Alignment. Select Wrap Text. Hit OK. Everything fits!

Getting your timing down in an important presentation can be difficult, but PowerPoint can help make it easier! To set new timings in the show mode, press "T". To revert back to original timing ideas, press "O".

When printing some documents, a bright blue underlined hyperlink can look unprofessional and out of place. In order to remove hyperlinks, go to Tools, then AutoCorrect Options. In the tabs marked "AutoFormat" and "AutoFormat As You Type", remove the check from the box next to "Internet and Network Paths with Hyperlinks".

To spice up a spreadsheet, or simply to organize one better visually, you can change the color of the sheet tabs at the bottom of the screen. Right click on the tab you'd like to change, and select "Tab Color". There is a fairly large selection of colors to choose from. To change the color of many tabs at once, hold the control key while left-clicking each tab.  Select Format, then Sheet, then Tab Color to display the color palette and pick your color.

      Ctrl + :                            Enters the current time

      Ctrl + ;                            Enters the current date&l ... Read More »

To calculate the number of years, months and days between dates in your spreadsheet, there is an Excel function available. It is called DATEDIF that doesn't appear in the inset Function box. Type DATEDIF (cell with first date, cell with second date, "y") to calculate the number of years between. You can also insert "ym" instead of "y" to calculate months, or "md" to calculate days.  If you would like to calculate all three, type DATEDIF(cell 1, cell 2, "y")&"Years,"&DATEDIF(cell 1, cell 2, "ym")&"Months,"&DATEDIF(cell 1, cell 2, "md")&"Days".

Here are some helpful tips to keep your presentation from getting disrupted:

• Disable power saving features if you are working on a laptop,
• Hide your cursor by right clicking, choosing Pointer Options, then clicking "Hide Now", which keeps your pointer hidden until the mouse is moved, or "Hide Always", which turns if off for the rest of the show,
• Always disable screensavers!
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Any time you enter a quotation mark in a document in Microsoft Word, it is automatically changed by the program to a prettier version of your average quotation mark. This is nice for some documents, but when text is transferred to other applications, these nice marks turn into small boxes, indicating unreadable text. To turn these “smart-quotes” off, click Tools, then Auto-Correct Options. Select both the Auto-Format and Auto-Format As You Type tabs, and clear the “straight quotes with smart quotes” checkbox. You now have documents that should transfer anywhere, with no annoying little boxes!

For printing purposes, files in PowerPoint should be around 150 dpi or larger, but for viewing only, there is no need to let a file exceed 96 dpi because the screen always displays at this setting. Keeping files in bitmap format can take up too much space, so why not make these files smaller? When you go to "Save As", you can save your presentation as a specific kind of file ("Save As Type" appears in the File Save browser). Selecting a .gif or .jpg can significantly reduce the amount of space your file takes up.