Office

Anything related to Microsoft Office

Save as in Office 365

by Dave Farquhar
February 9, 2022February 9, 2022

I was working on some documents in Word and Excel last week and needed to know where the files were. Figuring that out used to be easy: Just use Save As. But that looks really different in Office 365. Here’s what happened to save as in Office 365, and where to find the old one.

The key to not getting frustrated with Microsoft is knowing that when useful functionality goes missing, they usually didn’t get rid of it entirely. They hid it, and in this case, it’s hiding behind the Browse button.

Word line wrap not working? Here’s the fix

by Dave Farquhar
September 8, 2021January 23, 2022

I ran into a problem with Word line wrap not working. Even though the text had spaces in them, Word was treating some of the spaces from my copy and pasted text like they weren’t spaces.

Reveal codes in Word like Wordperfect

by Dave Farquhar
August 30, 2021January 23, 2022

If there’s one thing people miss when they switch from Wordperfect to Microsoft Word, it’s the old Reveal Codes function. This lets you view and fine tune document formatting and fix weirdness. Word has a similar function that nobody talks about. Here’s how to enable the closest thing to reveal codes in Word.

This trick works in recent versions of Word newer than Word 2007. So it’s been around a little while.

How you view message headers in Outlook

by Dave Farquhar
July 19, 2021July 18, 2021

Viewing message headers is helpful for troubleshooting, and also making sure you’re not getting phished. Microsoft moved things around in recent versions of Outlook, so here’s how to view message headers in Outlook–the current version.

Make a Word hyperlink UNC path

by Dave Farquhar
February 20, 2021

I had an issue in a document with a hyperlink to an existing file. The file existed on a network drive, so the link worked fine… until someone with different drive mappings than me had to look at the document. Then the link didn’t resolve and the person got an error message. A confusing error message. It turns out it’s tricky to make a Word hyperlink UNC path.

Fixing it wasn’t as easy as it should have been.Read More »Make a Word hyperlink UNC path

How to use Excel VLOOKUP

by Dave Farquhar
August 10, 2020July 25, 2020

VLOOKUP is a very useful tool in Excel but can be difficult to get right. Here’s how to use Excel VLOOKUP, including an example and what to do when it doesn’t work right.

VLOOKUP is a useful tool for data analysis in Excel, especially merging data from multiple sources. It’s a frequent question in job interviews for business analysts and other jobs that handle data.

Combining cells in Excel

by Dave Farquhar
July 21, 2020July 19, 2020

Combining cells in Excel is something we frequently need to do. And there are multiple ways to do it, depending on what exactly you need to do. One is easier to remember than the others, but let’s step through them.

I find the easiest-to-remember way to combine cells is to use the & operator with the cells you want to combine, along with any additional text. For example, the formula =A1&” “&B1 will combine the cells A1 and B1 with a space in between them.

How to sort by color in Excel

by Dave Farquhar
February 14, 2019February 14, 2019

When doing data analysis, frequently you’ll use conditional formatting to highlight certain cells. But then you’ll probably find you still need to group those similar cells afterward. That’s where sorting by color comes in. Here’s how to sort by color in Excel.

You can sort by color in Excel using either the filtering function, or the Sort button on the Data tab of the ribbon. Sorting with the filtering function is faster and easier, but using the sort button lets you set up complex criteria, including multiple levels. This is useful if you want to sort on both cell color and font color.

What is the purpose of Powerpoint?

by Dave Farquhar
December 18, 2018December 19, 2018

What is the purpose of Powerpoint? You might be surprised how many people ask that. Once you reach a certain stage in your career, you can expect to use it a lot. But there are definitely right and wrong ways to use it.

How to make a hanging indent in Word

by Dave Farquhar
October 23, 2018November 19, 2018

There are several reasons to use hanging indents when writing. Proper use of hanging indents include numbered or bulleted lists, citations, and dialogue lines in scripts. Here’s how to make a hanging indent in Word.

This works in Word 2013, Word 2016, and virtually any other version of Word you’re likely to be using.