TIPS & TRICKS: Outlook 2011 Keyboard Shortcuts

I've always been a fan of keyboard shortcuts. Mousing is faster for somethings, but keyboard shortcuts really help to cut down time to do repetitive tasks. Here's a bunch of Outlook 2011 keyboard shortcuts from Microsoft:

http://mac2.microsoft.com/help/office/14/en-us/outlook/item/3b58300d-6f02-47f3-b1fc-9cbe8bb4eac7

Got any of your own you can't live without?

TIPS & TRICKS: Excel for Mac, Keyboard Shortcut for Absolute References

Many users of Excel have known to use F4 to change relative/absolute references on Excel for Windows. However, as more and more people come to use Office for the Mac, people want the Mac equivalent for some keyboard shortcuts, including relative/absolute cell references. From a student suggestion, the shortcut for Excel for Mac is CMD T. After the reference to the desired cell has been either typed or selected, hit CMD T to toggle between the different ways to make the reference absolute.

Hope this helps someone out.

RAVES: Solver for Excel 2008

By now we all know that the latest release of Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac has left out Visual Basic support. This means tools that relied on Visual Basic are also missing. One such tool was Solver.

Fortunately, there is now an interim answer before Microsoft puts Visual Basic back in the next release of Office for Mac. A company called FrontLine Systems has come up with a solution for those of us who rely heavily on Solver. Here's the link to a Microsoft affiliate website to download the software for this new solution:

http://www.officeformac.com/blog/Solver-For-Excel-2008-Is-Available

Hope this helps.

TIPS & TRICKS: Word 2008 Documents Not Opening

Recently, I found that my installation of Word 2008 was not opening documents properly. Specifically, I found after double-clicking on a Word file, especially one residing on a network share, Word would launch normally. But, the only thing that would come up was a new blank document. I would close the new document and the file still wouldn't open. The only way I could get it to open was to go up to File (in Word) > Open.

That was quite annoying and, apparently, some of my users thought so too. Luckily, my boss found a fix. And, even more fortunate, the fix is bundled in the latest update for Office. The version is 12.1.1. Make sure to run your Office updates to get this. There are two ways: 1. launch an Office application and go up to Help > Check for Updates to run the Microsoft AutoUpdate tool; or 2. Go to Library\Application Support\Microsoft\MAU2.0 and launch Microsoft AutoUpdate.

TIPS & TRICKS: Missing Microsoft Equation Editor in Office 2004

Had a student come in today and report that Microsoft Equation was missing from the Word application. This normally shows up in Word under the Insert > Object menu. I suppose this isn't a frequently occurring problem so I didn't find anything online about how to get it back in. But, rest assured, it's easier than solving a Rubik's Cube for a Cube champion.

As long as you have the original install CD, the file for Equation Editor resides in Microsoft Office 2004 > Office. Just copy the file called Equation Editor to the same location where you have Office 2004 installed on your computer (usually, Macintosh HD > Applications > Microsoft Office 2004 > Office). I even did it with Word open and it worked. I would recommend shutting Word down and the reopening it when done. But that's it.

Good luck.