You might remember how Ribbon Hero , introduced last year, made learning about Office features as you work seamless and enjoyable. But it wasn't really a game, even though it did track your score and progress. Now Ribbon Hero 2 is here, and it really...

Not everyone works 9 to 5 or Monday through Friday. If your schedule is different from the norm, simply change your work week calendar view in Outlook to match. In Outlook 2010, go to File , Options , and select the Calendar tab: Here you can adjust start...

People like to become more productive for varying reasons. Some want to get to The Top, wherever that is, more rapidly. Others have a mission they fervently want to fulfill—the sooner, the better. And some of us just want to make more time for a workout...

How many times has this happened to you? You're copying and pasting some Excel functions and they change to reflect the cells relative to where you pasted them, but you want the original values intact. There's a neat trick that will make this problem...

If you review and Accept / Reject changes regularly, here's a quick tip to add some time back to your week and reduce wear and tear on your clicking finger. Don't accept any changes as you read through the feedback from your stakeholders, just reject...

When you're presenting, the last thing you want to do is lose the flow of your presentation when moving around your PowerPoint deck to answer a question or activating a presentation feature. Here are some handy keyboard shortcuts that will help make your...

Have you ever wanted to quickly delete unneeded symbols in front of a bulleted list, or select text in a column in Microsoft Word? There's actually an easy way to make vertical selections. Simply hold down the Alt key and then drag across the area you...

Simply because I can, I herewith expose little-known but potentially powerful forces at work—in this case, five keyboard shortcuts that could simplify or enrich all our lives. I leave it to the world to decide what to do with this declassified intelligence...

The cloud-based version of Microsoft Office and related services, called Office 365, is now in public beta. This means you can sign up to try the subscription service, which offers your favorite Office applications plus SharePoint, Exchange, and Lync...

If you find you spend a lot of time switching between editing and the default print preview in the Print pane, Word 2010 has a hidden Print Preview Edit Mode you should try. First, you'll need to add it to the Quick Access Toolbar so you can find it quickly...

If you want to design your own postcard, there's no need to start from scratch. You can find some great templates on Office.com, which you can access from inside of Microsoft Word. Here's an example of how to modify a picture postcard template to make...

Whether it's for the office team-building offsite event or the weekly sales status summary, a quick way to add impact to your emails is with the Insert tab in Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010. You can add shapes, such as arrows, flowcharts, and word balloons...

Some of us have been around long enough to remember the Web in its infancy. It was an amazing time—and I'm experiencing some serious deja vu with the introduction of Internet Explorer 9. Have you seen Internet Explorer 9 ? You really must! Here's a little...

If you've ever need to translate Celsius to Fahrenheit, miles to kilometers, or teaspoons to cups, all you need is the handy CONVERT function in Excel. Simply enter your value, its measurement unit, and the target unit for conversion, and you'll get your...

Have you ever sent a mail and asked that recipients use Reply All, only to have some people respond just to you? Then YOU have to forward the mail to the rest of the group. Thankfully, there is a way to force Outlook to send replies to a specific list...

How many times have you started a PowerPoint presentation and then realized you needed to use a different template? Fortunately, there's an easy way to copy over the theme from one presentation to another. This works in both PowerPoint 2007 and PowerPoint...

If you've ever worked on a wiki, you'll appreciate this next tip. And if you haven't, this brief intro will make you a faster linker in OneNote 2010 and ready to start authoring collaboratively should you ever find a wiki in need of tending. Sure, you...

There's no place like home—where have I heard that before? Whether you live and work in Kansas or elsewhere, you've likely set up your home to reflect your own tastes and lifestyle. Wouldn't it be great to experience that same, comfortable-as-an...

If you color-code the text in your Word documents, you may feel constrained by the 15 Highlight Color choices: Fortunately, there's another command available if you want to expand your color palette: Shading . The button is not far from the Highlight...

If you spend a lot of time creating and manually formatting new tables in Excel, there's a better way. Simply select the range of cells that you want to include in your table and click the Format as Table button: You'll be prompted to confirm your...

It's easy to create an Outlook signature. Just click on the Signature button in a new message, select Signatures and then click New and start typing. The only problem with this approach is that the signature editor is fairly limited. A better option is...