Category: Office

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Microsoft Office

Google Calendar Sync – Auto Run

A nice quick hint.

I kept forgetting to start Google Calendar Sync when I started Outlook. I don’t always start Outlook when I start my laptop and I’m not always online when I run Outlook so puting it in my Startup folder is not really an option.
My solution, a macro that runs when Outlook starts that gives me the option of running Google Calendar Sync if I feel it’s appropriate.

Private Sub Application_Startup()
Dim response As Integer
Dim RetVal
op
response = MsgBox(prompt:=”Do you want to run Google Calendar Sync?”, buttons:=vbYesNo)

If response = vbYes Then
RetVal = Shell(“C:\Program Files\Google\Google Calendar Sync\GoogleCalendarSync.exe”, vbMinimizedNoFocus)
End If

End Sub

NOTE: WordPress seems to “prettyfy” the quotes so when copying the code above it is better to delete and retype the quotation marks in your code editor of choice.

Categories
Microsoft Office

How Annoying is the Microsoft At Home RSS Feed?

Microsoft At Home
I’m using Microsoft Outlook 2007 and I think it’s a great piece of software.
It has a built in RSS feed reader. Typically I use Google Reader but as that can’t handle authenticated feeds I’m using Outlook for all of my work related Sharepoint feeds.
In order to introduce people to RSS, Microsoft have included two “standard” RSS feeds: “Microsoft At Home” and “Microsoft At Work”.
The only problem is, I’m not really interested in reading these feeds.

Continue reading “How Annoying is the Microsoft At Home RSS Feed?”
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Maxima Information Group Microsoft Office Work

MS Excel – Convert Percentage To Number

I have spent most of today throwing data around in MS Excel.

One of the things that I have had to do is to convert percentages into real numbers.

In excel percentages are stored as fractions, for example 50% is stored as 0.5, 75% as 0.75 etc.

I am trying to chart these figures in Business Objects Xcelsius but the y-axis labels are just showing 0 to 0 hence why i need to convert my numbers.

I have just found a really easy way to do this.

  • In the target cells, enter the value 100 in each cell.
  • Copy the source cells
  • Select “Paste Special” using the options “Values” and “Multiply”

This takes the source value 0.75 multiplies it by 100 and stores the result 75 !

I have used pase special – values often but I have never seen the need for the multiply option until now !

You may want to check out some of my other Excel related posts here.

Categories
Microsoft Office Work

Microsoft Word 2007 Keyboard Shortcuts

I use Microsoft Office 2008 on my work laptop. Whilst I am no touch typist; I wish I could take the productivity hit whilst I learn, I do prefer to use the keyboard for most functions, growling when I have to resort to using the mouse.

I was torn by the ribbon interface; for 80% of the things that i want to do i can find it very quickly, the remaining 20% often required a trip to help to find it. Another thing that I hated was that I “had” to use the mouse to access the ribbon features.

Then I pressed the “Alt” key !!!!!!!

This pops up an overlay on top of the ribbon interface that shows you which key to press to access http://pharmacy-no-rx.net each feature. Or should I say, EVERY feature. If you can see it on the ribbon, you can access it via a keystroke. I’m beginning to like this user interface.

The remaining bugbear is that I always use styles, nost commonly the heading styles and normal. In the previous version of Word I always assigned my own keystroke shortcuts to access them, but I was always over riding exisiing keystrokes and features.

In Word 2007 I have found that there are system assigned keystrokes:

Ctrl + Alt + 1 = Heading 1

Ctrl + Alt + 2 = Heading 2

etc

Strl + Shift + N = Normal

Productive typing here I come !