Office 365 Reply All

You may have noticed that when accessing email on the web using Office 365, it defaults to "Reply All" instead of just "Reply." This can play havoc with campus communications, so here are instructions for how to change this default setting.

1.      Settings

2.      Options

 

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3.      Mail

4.      Automatic Processing

5.      Reply Settings

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6.      Reply

7.      Save

Easy New Way to Paste from Microsoft Word into Blackboard

Did you know that posting directly from Micrsoft Word can create display problems in Blackboard? This is a serious problem that I've written about before. The good news is that now we have an easy way to fix this.

There is a new option in the Blackboard text editor that allows you to paste from Word. This option removes the Microsoft code that causes the problem. Just click on the Add Mashup icon (it's the last icon on the far right of the third row of the toolbar) and choose the Paste from Word option.

Please encourage your students to use this Paste from Word Mashup tool when posting to Blackboard.

MS Office 2010 Accessibility Checker

Please follow these directions to make your files accessible to those with disabilities before you do your final save in Microsoft Office 2010. This is just a reminder that making files accessible is not only a good thing to do, we are required to do so by law.

1. Click the File tab.
   
2. Click Info.
   
3. Under Prepare for Sharing, an alert will appear if the Accessibility Checker has found any problems.
   
   
4. If there is an alert, click the Check for Issues button, then click Check Accessibility.
   
   
   
5. 
   You are returned to your file where the Accessibility Checker task pane is open, showing the inspection results.
   
6. Click on a specific issue to see Additional Information and steps you can take to fix or revise the content.
   
   Note:   If the content in the additional information pane in the bottom of the Accessibility Checker is hard to scroll because you can't use the mouse, press F6 to focus on the task pane, tab until the focus is in that area, and then try to scroll with the keyboard.

100 Essential Tips for Microsoft Office 2010

PCMAG.com has put together "100 tips for using Microsoft Office 2010." A lot of time that can be saved by using these tips, most of which I'd never known about before. You can view them at http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2387115,00.asp.

Microsoft Office Web Apps

Microsoft Office Web Apps allow you to store your files on the internet and access them from anywhere. You can use Office Web Apps to collaborate on documents online. More than one person can edit a file at the same time. You can use the Office Web Apps with just about any version of Office, or directly from your browser. Best of all, you get 25 GB of space for free!

Start by watching this video that shows what you can do with it:
http://youtu.be/BJ3PFZBa1BM

First, you sign up for a Windows Live ID. If you already have a Hotmail or Live account that you want to use, you can skip this step and just log in with that ID. Once you have a Live account, you have access to your online storage area called SkyDrive.

To explore more features of Microsoft Office Web Apps check out these links.

• Overview - office.microsoft.com/WebAppsThinks
• Share Office documents in SkyDrive
• Embed a PowerPoint document on a web page
• Embed an Excel spreadsheet on a web page

Use Outlook 2010 to Schedule Meetings

Lynda.com created a short video showing how to use Microsoft Outlook 2010 to find times that work best in your group for meetings.

You can watch this free, 2 minute video at:
http://blog.lynda.com/2011/04/11/outlook-20072010-shortcut-keeping-track-of-schedules/.

Contact me if you are interested in watching other Lynda.com videos on how to use Microsoft Office 2010.

Software For Home

A new order form is available that allows you to purchase either Microsoft Office 2007 or 2010 for $19 at http://www.gcccd.edu/faculty.staff/ .  The link is about half way down the text of the page and says "Office 2010 Form."  


You do not have to purchase SharePoint Designer 2007 for home.  Microsoft allows you to download it free from http://tinyurl.com/cz22uy.  The SharePoint Designer offered on that form is only there in case you want a disk for the program, you can pay $19.


This software is for use on your home computers only.  A date for updating campus computers to Office 2010 has not been determined yet, so please do not use the disks you purchase to update your office PC.

Work with others the easy way with Office Live Workspace

It’s easy—and it’s FREE.

Recently, Jodi Reed, Brian Josephson, and I worked together on a PowerPoint presentation for a Professional Development Week workshop. We had to email the PowerPoint file back and forth to each other as we made changes. A few times we had trouble figuring out which version of the file had all the changes.

I wish I had known about Office Live! We could have each worked on the PowerPoint file whenever we needed to without sending files back and forth to each other through email. If we had used Office Live, we could have shared just one file, with each of us able to modify that file from home or work, whenever and wherever it was most convenient for us.

Goodbye attachments. Hello sharing.

Office Live is the online extension of Microsoft Office, to store documents on the web, access them from virtually anywhere, and share them with others.

When you have multiple people involved in a project or planning an event, Office Live Workspace makes it easy. You can share documents, coordinate schedules, and manage to-do lists in your own password-protected online workspace.

There are several videos that tell you all about the features. More information is available and you can sign up for your own Office Live workspace whenever you like.

Reduce PowerPoint File Sizes

Reduce PowerPoint 2007 file sizes by changing image formats. The Compress Pictures button in Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 can often reduce your .ppt files by up to 50 percent. But that can still leave you with large files, especially if your images have been created from .png files. You can save even more space by changing them to .gif or .jpg formats. (Note: The .png format is more flexible than the other file formats. Flattening to .jpg or .gif reduces flexibility.)

Here’s how to reduce file sizes:

1. Save your PowerPoint file as Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), which creates an .htm file and a folder of the same name. This folder will contain all the images from the presentation.
2. Open the folder, and sort it by size to reveal which files are the largest.
3. Locate the largest images in your presentation. They may have been scaled, so they might look smaller than the saved image.
4. In PowerPoint, make sure that the image isn't grouped.
5. Select the image.
6. On the Picture Tools menu, in the Adjust section, click Compress Pictures.
7. Right-click the image, and then click Save as Picture.
8. From the Save as type menu, select .jpg or .gif (if you need to use transparency effects), and then save the image.
9. Delete the original image from your presentation, and reload the saved image at its original place.
10. Regroup the images if necessary.

From MS Office Tips and Tricks

Copy table data from a web page to Excel

If you see a data table on a Web page and you want to import it into Microsoft Office Excel:

1. Copy the URL (address) of the page.
2. In Excel, on the Data tab, in the Get External Data section, click From Web.
3. In the New Web Query dialog box, paste the URL into the Address box.
4. Select the table that contains the data you want to work with, and then click Import.
5. In the Import Data dialog box, indicate where you want the data to appear, and then click OK.

From Microsoft Tips & Tricks

Patience Pays

If you're thinking of buying software through the District Work At Home agreement, wait until November 1. The price is going down to $19.99 each for Microsoft Office 2007 and SharePoint Designer 2007. The price until November 1 is $29.99. Keep an eye on the Southland website for details.