I know you're probably on vacation right now, trying not to check your mail. But what if an important mail comes in while you’re gone. Are you the sort of person who would want to read it right away, even if you're off on an exotic beach or family trip...

Our next "Interview" with a Windows feature! Celebrities are a common site around the Microsoft campus, and sometimes we can get them to stop and chat. Today we're rubbing elbows with the famous virtual bodyguard, Windows SmartScreen Filter...

Locking down Office documents isn't new, but Office 2010 offers a quicker, more informal method to discourage editing once a document is finished: You can mark it as final. This does away with the need to create and remember a password or set complicated...

When you're on vacation or holiday, it's wise to set an Out of Office message (abbreviated as OOF). Here are some tips to writing a good one: Provide the dates that you are unavailable. If it's only a partial day, provide the time you expect to be back...

It's great to be having an office picnic... and really nice of you to volunteer to organize it. First, better find a venue— Bing will surely give you a fast head start. Firing up Internet Explorer, you quickly identify five park-like locations that could...

If you had to choose a program to use for changing case (UPPERCASE, lowercase, Sentence case, etc.) Microsoft Word works best in most cases. It has several options available, and the changes you make are retained if you copy and paste them. But Excel...

If you're trained in design or typesetting, you'll be thrilled to know that Word 2010 offers even more control over your type including options for kerning of letters, ligatures, number spacing, and more. Simply select the text you want to adjust, right...

It's almost the New Year, which means shopping for a new calendar. Or does it? Did you know that Microsoft Office offers calendars you can download, customize, and print yourself! In PowerPoint 2010, simply go to File , New, and click Calendars under...

There are a few handy techniques for inserting dates into Word 2007 and Word 2010, which not only save you from stopping to check your calendar but can even be refreshed if needed - say for a letter, or when keeping track of when a document was updated...

Yesterday, I looked up to see Kate, my next-door-cube neighbor, peering at me over the partition. "Don't you need me anymore?" "Whatever makes you think so?" "You've stopped asking me for PC advice. Ever since ... well, it's been...

The numbered sort technique is useful when you need to carefully plot the restructuring of a long, complex document. But what if you just want to quickly move a paragraph or two up or down? No problem. First select any paragraphs you want to move, hold...

One significant improvement to OneNote in Office 2010 is the addition of styles, which can be used to apply six levels of headings, body text, quotes, citations, and even code samples. Simply select the text you want to change and then pick the style...

If you frequently restructure your documents and prefer not to cut and paste many paragraphs around, there's a simpler way: Use the Sort feature in Microsoft Word. Normally you'd use Sort to alphabetize a list of names or products, but it can also help...

When you work in OneNote, it's easy to create lots of separate boxes for your text, images, and whatever other elements you capture or record in this powerful tool. But do you know the quick way to combine them? No, you don't need to cut and paste. Simply...

No matter how powerful, sometimes a desktop or laptop can get overwhelmed by too many applications, files, documents, and windows. And those of us who have to make do without the fastest system on the block tend to reach those limits a little sooner....

If you just want to spot check the smallest and largest values in a selected range of Excel cells, you can simply add MINIMUM and MAXIMUM to the status bar . But if you want these values to appear in your reports, you can save time by using the MIN and...

If you have an image that you want to imbue with new life or perhaps alter for a special event or time of year, the artistic effects built in to Office 2010 can be used to quickly add visual flair. Let's take the Productivity Hub icon we use for our Twitter...

If you've never used mail merge, this is the time of year where it really makes sense to learn this powerful feature. It can really make addressing holiday cards easy, and—best of all—the work you do setting this up will save you more time next year!...

You've no doubt had AutoCorrect save you from typographical errors, letting you know with its helpful red squiggle when it believes a word is spelled incorrectly. It may have even replaced obvious mistakes such as "claer" for "clear"...

A Feature Interview—with a Windows 7 feature! Here at Microsoft we like to think of our features as genuine celebrities.They're busy, of course, but now and then they honor us with their presence here on campus. Today I have the good fortune of corralling...