Eight Handy Tools in Microsoft Word

Shrink document by one page. A document whose last page is mostly blank is a waste of printer paper, especially if you have to make a lot of copies. Your letters and mailings will also look more professional if they fill the pages nicely. If Print Preview reveals a skimpy last page, click the Shrink to Fit (Word 2003) or Shrink One Page button (Word 2007). Word will tweak the fonts in the document to make it a page smaller. Don’t like the results? Just press Ctrl-Z to Undo.

Calculate in tables. Sure, you can embed an Excel worksheet in a Word document, but if you just need a few simple calculations, you can use Word’s own math skills. Select a cell at the bottom of a column and click Formula on the Table Tools Layout ribbon (Word 2007), or select Formula from the Table menu (Word 2003). Word will suggest =SUM(ABOVE), but you can select among over a dozen functions. Besides choosing ABOVE, BELOW, LEFT, or RIGHT to work with all cells in the specified direction, you can reference individual cells and ranges as you do in Excel—for example, =AVERAGE(A1:C3).

Merge to e-mail. Mail-merging to letters and envelopes is too-too 1990s, but you may still need to send a common message to a group of correspondents. That’s no problem, since the familiar mail-merge feature in Word can also send e-mail messages. In Word 2007, complete your letter, click Finish & Merge in the ribbon and choose Send E-mail Messages from the menu. In Word 2003 select “E-mail messages” at the very first step of the Mail Merge wizard. Either way you’ll be prompted for a subject (the same for every message) and for a data field that holds e-mail addresses of the recipients.

Compare two documents. Your newest client just returned a revised version of a contract document file but didn’t mark his revisions. Is he trying to hoodwink you with sneaky changes? Rather than ruin your eyes poring over the old and new documents, have Word find the differences. In Word 2003 open the old document, choose Compare and Merge Documents from the Tools menu, and select the new document. In Word 2007 choose Compare | Compare from the Review ribbon and select both the old and the new document.

Document inspector. Your Word 2007 documents may contain a lot more information than you realize–tracked changes, comments, hidden text, private properties, and more. Distributing a document with this kind of data present can be embarrassing. To make sure you’re not revealing too much in a Word 2007 document, click the Office button at the top left, point to Prepare, and click Inspect Document in the resulting menu. Word 2003 has no precise equivalent, but you can get some benefit using the Security tab of the Options dialog. Check the boxes “Remove personal information from file properties on save” and “Warn before printing, saving, or sending a file that contains tracked changes or comments.”

Built-in translator. The Research panel in both Word 2007 and Word 2003 includes an option to translate the selected text or the entire document between various languages. It’s more useful when you’re trying to puzzle out what a foreign-language document means than when you want to communicate your own thoughts with those who don’t speak English. To see why, translate a few sentences from English to another language and then back to English.

Create fancy equations. Sure, you can write “the electric field equals one over the electrical conductivity times the electric current density,” but is a lot more compact. To insert an equation into Word 2007 choose Equation | Insert New Equation from the Insert ribbon and use the tools on the Equation Design toolbar that appears. In Word 2003, it’s a bit more awkward. Select Insert | Object from the menu, choose Microsoft Equation 3.0, and click OK, then use the Equation toolbar that appears.

Use math autocorrect. (Word 2007 only) All of those fancy math symbols can be available even outside the Equation Design toolbar. Click the Office button at the top left, click the Word Options button, select Proofing, click AutoCorrect Options, and check the box “Use Math AutoCorrect rules outside of math regions.” Now you can type \aleph to insert an aleph (ℵ), \int for an integral sign (∫) or even type \quadratic to insert the entire quadratic equation (x=(-b±√(b^2-4ac))/2a).

Eight Tools in Excel

1. Subtotals. When you’ve got reams of data organized by date, it may be hard to see the big picture. Excel’s built-in subtotal feature can help. Click Subtotal on the Data ribbon in Excel 2007 or choose Subtotals from the Data menu in 2003. By default it offers a sum-type subtotal at each change in the leftmost[ column, but you can pick the column and operation you prefer. You can even create multiple subtotals, perhaps for month, quarter, and year. An outline strip at left lets you suppress detail data and just see the different levels of subtotals.2. Automatic conditional formatting. Conditional formatting in Excel 2003 is a drag. Excel 2007’s automatic conditional formatting really helps point out patterns in data, and it’s simple to use. Highlight a group of cells and click Conditional Formatting on the Home ribbon. As you mouse over the choices, you see an immediate preview. You can give each cell a color that reflects its rank in the whole range of values, add a transparent data bar whose length reflects the cell’s value, and more. It’s way easier than tangling with Excel 2003’s daunting Conditional Formatting dialog.

3. PivotTables. Excel’s PivotTable feature offers quick and flexible data analysis. Want to see how many times each value in a long column occurs? Highlight the column, click PivotTable on the Insert tab (in Excel 2003, select PivotTable from the Data menu), and click Finish. Drag the column-head field name into the Row Labels box and into the Values box (in Excel 2003, the Drop Row Fields Here area and the Drop Data Items Here area). Instantly you get a sorted list of all unique values in the column, along with the number of times each value occurs. That’s just one PivotTable trick—for more, see “PivotTable Magic“.

4. Document Inspector. Your Excel 2007 documents contain a lot more information than just rows and columns of data. They may include tracked changes, comments, private properties, and more. To examine (and clean out) the hidden data in an Excel 2007 document, click the Office button at top left, point to Prepare, and click Inspect Document. It’s very similar to the Document Inspector in Word, but instead of seeking hidden text it looks for hidden rows and columns, hidden worksheets, and objects formatted as invisible. Excel 2003 has no precise equivalent. The most it can do (which isn’t much) is to remove personal information from file properties when you save files.

5. Page Break Preview. Excel will print your spreadsheet using as many pages as necessary to display all the data both vertically and horizontally. If the last column doesn’t quite fit, printing the spreadsheet may take twice as many pages. It’s even more wasteful if you have to toss those pages and try again. To avoid this annoyance, click Page Break Preview on the View ribbon (in Excel 2003 select Page Break Preview from the View menu). Now when you resize columns, change font sizes, or make other layout changes, you’ll immediately see the effect on page breaks. It’s also a quick way to find out just how many pages you’ll be printing.

6. AutoSum. After you’ve entered a column of figures, nine times in ten you’ll end the column with a total. Excel makes it easy to total up a row or column. Click a cell just after the row or column and click the AutoSum button from the Home ribbon in Excel 2007 or the toolbar in Excel 2003 (or simply press Alt-=). Excel sums the row or column automatically. Don’t want a sum? Pull down the button’s menu to choose among the average, minimum, maximum and other functions.

7. Excel lists/tables. Excel 2003 calls them lists, while 2007 changed the name to tables. Whatever you call it, this feature lets you define a range of cells and easily sort, filter, and total the columns and (hooray!) insert or append rows without screwing up your formulas. Excel 2007 also offers dozens of predefined table styles for easy formatting. In Excel 2003 highlight the cells and choose Data | Lists | Create List from the menu. In Excel 2007 click Table on the Insert ribbon. Done!

8. Get data from the Web. You’ve found a fantastic table of data on a Web page; go ahead and pull it into Excel! Click From Web in the Data ribbon (Excel 2003 users select Data | Import External Data | New Web Query from the menu). Copy/paste the Web page address from your browser to the New Web Query dialog. An arrow icon appears next to each table that Excel can import; click one or more of these and click the Import button. Presto, the data is in your worksheet. And it’s semi-live—just click the Refresh Data button in the floating toolbar (2003) or the Refresh All button on the Data ribbon (2007) to update your worksheet with the latest version of the table.