The Microsoft Office Standard Toolbar has buttons for New file and Open file but it doesn’t include a Close file button, which would be very handy to use when you want to close a document, worksheet or presentation, but you don’t want to exit the program.

First of all, open MS PowerPoint 2003. Point at the blank area NEXT to the Standard or Formatting toolbar and tap your right mouse button to pull up a toolbar menu. Select Customize at the bottom of the menu.

Select the Commands tab. With File selected as a Category on the left side, look under the Commands on the right side. Select the Close command with your right mouse button and drag it up to the Standard Toolbar. Drop it to the right of the Open button (as you drag the button, you’ll see a little plus sign and when you move the mouse cursor to the proper place, you’ll see an I bar showing up in the toolbar). When you let go, the Close button icon will appear. Note: If you put it in the wrong place, just drag it where you want it to go. Now click on the Close button on the Customize dialog box. Now you can easily close PowerPoint presentations. You can exit the program.

Now open up MS Word 2003. Repeat the same steps, then exit the program.

Now open up MS Excel 2003. Follow the same steps as before. Notice that when you have the Customize dialog box open in Excel, there is only a word that says Close instead of a Close button. Drag it up next to the Open button on the Standard Toolbar, anyway. After the word Close appears on the toolbar, point at it and select Default Style. The Close button image will appear. Close the dialog box. You can exit the program.

Now, whenever you have saved your work (if you haven’t saved your work, it will prompt you to do so), you can close your files in MS Word, Excel and PowerPoint with one click.

By the way, you can also use these steps to add other button functions that are useful to you, too.

This tip is short, but sweet. You already know that scrolling your mouse wheel up and down will move your document, worksheet, or presentation up and down.

If you hold down the Ctrl key on your keyboard while you do it, you will change the magnification of your screen. Hold down the Ctrl key and scroll up to enlarge your screen and scroll down to reduce its size.

The Format Painter button is a handy little tool that can quickly copy formats for text and shapes, to other text or objects. It’s located on the Standard Toolbar in MS Office 2003 and earlier editions. In MS Office 2007, it’s on the left side of the ribbon, in the Clipboard area.

In Excel, click on the cell where the text is formatted the way you want it. Click on the Format Painter button. (Your cursor turns into a plus sign with a paintbrush next to it). Then click on the cell that has the text that you want to change. It should instantly change to match the formatting that was in the first cell. If you want to change the text in multiple cells, see the Quick Tip down below.

In MS Word, have you ever had a section of text suddenly look different from the rest? The cause might be that the section of text has been switched back to the default settings that are MS Word’s default settings, or it could be a computer glitch. You might also want to change text that you’ve pasted in your document from somewhere else. To fix this, select some text that has the proper formatting, by dragging your cursor over it. (Don’t worry about selecting entire words or phrases – ANY text will do). Click on the Format Painter button. (Your cursor turns into an I bar with a paintbrush next to it.) Then drag over the text that you want formatted the same way (note – if you drag over additional text that already has the correct formatting on it, that text will not change, so don’t worry about being precise).

This works in PowerPoint the same way, too.

Quick Tip: If you double-click on the Format Painter button, it will keep the selected formatting on, so you can change multiple selections of text or objects. Just click once again on it when you are finished, to turn it off.

Oh, no! It looks like I might need better reading glasses. The words seem to be dancing around in front of my eyes!

It’s April Fool’s Day! There are a LOT of jokes that you can play with a computer. Here is one of my favorites that works with MS Word 2003 (not version 2007). Before you play your prank, however, be certain that your intended target has a good sense of humor and is not working under any critical deadlines.

Wait until your target has left their computer unattended for a few minutes. Open MS Word 2003 and pull up a document that they use often, or the last document that they were working on if it’s a work in progress (check under File, then the document listed at the bottom as number 1). Use Ctrl-a keys to select all of the document, or triple-click in the left margin, then choose Format, Font. Click on the last tab, Text Effects, then choose Shimmer, OK. Save the file.

When your target returns to their document, the text will be shifting back and forth, and might lead them to believe that it’s time to get their vision checked. After they’ve rubbed their eyes a couple of minutes, ‘fess up, and set their document back to normal by going through the same steps, except that you should choose (none) at the top of the Text Effects menu, OK.

Happy April Fool’s Day!

Create a toolbar button in Word 2003 that will let you shadow the text you’ve selected.

I like the 3D emphasis that the shadow effect has and I use it on my titles often. In the Tools, Customize area of Word, it lets you drag additional formatting buttons to your toolbar, but they didn’t include the shadow button among them. So I decided to create a macro to let you apply shadowing to text with one click of a new toolbar button.

Skills You’ll Learn:

• Creating a macro
• Editing a macro
• Customizing a macro button

My TeacherTube video on Creating and Editing a Word Macro

When you know what you want to say but can’t think of the exact word you want, have Word help you find it. Follow these steps: Right-click the word you want to change. A shortcut menu appears. Point at Synonyms, and select the suggested word you want to use. If none of the words are what you had in mind, select Thesaurus. A task pane appears on the right. If the word can be interpreted in more than one way, alternate words will appear under categories. If there aren’t any suggestions, change the tense of a word to get more word suggestions (use think instead of thinking, for instance). Type in the new word and click the green arrow to get your new suggested words. Pointing at a suggested word will make a down arrow appear next to it. Click on that down arrow, then select Insert to replace your original word with that word.

You can also find synonyms for phrases. For example, to find a substitute for cool as a cucumber select the phrase, right-click that phrase, and follow the steps above.

Note: If the word you want to replace is flagged for a spelling or grammatical error, you must fix that first before the Synonyms option will appear in the shortcut menu.

MS Word Selecting and Moving Text Shortcuts

Knowing how to select text quickly is very important, because many commands begin by selecting the text that you want to effect. Remember: You’ve got to select what you want to effect!

Some of these selection tips involve clicking in the left margin area of the document. The best way to do this is to be in Print Layout view (View, Print Layout). That will give you a large left margin to use. (It’s also the best way view to use to see what will actually be printed when you want to print your document.)

• Ctrl, Home moves the cursor to the top of the document.
• Ctrl, End moves the cursor to the bottom of the document.
• Press the Home key to go to the start of a line; press the End key to go to the end of a line.
• Page Up moves up one screen.
• Page Down moves down one screen.
• The direction keys will move one space (or row) in their direction.
• Clicking once on a word lets you edit the word at that point.
• Double-clicking a word will select the entire word.
• Triple-clicking a word will select the paragraph containing the word.
• Holding down the Ctrl key while clicking on a word will select an entire sentence.
• Clicking once in the left margin will select a line.
• Double-clicking in the left margin will select a paragraph.
  Triple-clicking in the left margin will select the entire document.
• Holding down the Ctrl key and pressing a left arrow or right direction arrow will jump one word. Keep holding down the Ctrl key and you can jump over several words as you keep tapping the direction arrow. Holding down the Shift key at the same time will let you select them at the same time.
• Hold down your Ctrl key and you can select non-contiguous text. (That’s text that’s not touching).
• To select a large section of text, click once where you want to start your selection, scroll to where you want to end your selection, hold down the Shift key, then click where you want the selection to end.
• Note: If you need to adjust the selection a little, don’t start over! Instead, hold down on the Shift key as you use the direction keys to add or subtract to your selection.

Tip: Hold down the Shift key while moving, to select text at the same time, or while you are using navigating keys (like Ctrl End), as well.

I made a song about highlighting (selectiing) large amounts of text. You can hear it at my podcast website: http://www.gcast.com/u/spooferkd