Archive of entries posted on November 2007

Reason #5 why I like Office 2007: using Slide designs/layouts in Powerpoint 2007

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PowerPoint XP gave us ‘Multiple Masters’. Until then, we were limited to 2 master layouts: a Title master and a Content master. With multiple masters, we finally could create presentations with different, yet consistent background for different sections of our presentations.

The problem with multiple masters was that PowerPoint XP used a rather strange user interface for switching between the different masters. In Training sessions I gave, this topic always was one of the most confusing for trainees. You had to combine the “Slide Design” and “Slide Layout” panes in the Task Pane to get the layout you wanted, which was far from intuitive. PowerPoint 2003 did not improve in this area.

Finally, with PowerPoint 2007, Multiple Masters are really usable and pretty intuitive.
There’s no difference anymore between “Slide Design” and “Slide Layout”. When you need another layout, you simply click the “Layout” button. It will list all available layouts, for all masters in your presentation. With one click, you can change layout and/or master.
This is really an elegant solution to the complex issue of using Multiple Masters.

Keyboard Shortcut Favorites

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I am one of those guys who likes to use Keyboard Shortcuts a lot. While I’m not particularly fond of the way Office 2007 provides keyboard access to all entries on the Ribbon (*), I do use quite a few of the “old-fashioned” Keyboard Shortcuts that worked in previous versions of Office. Luckily, all of the keyboard shortcuts in Office 2007 continue to work exactly as they did before.
These are a few of my favorites:

Excel 2007:

  • F2: enter formula
  • CTRL+PageDown / CTRL + PageUp: Previous/Next Worksheet
  • CTRL+0 (zero, not Num key zero): Hide column
  • SHIFT+CTRL+0 (zero, not Num key zero): Show column
  • CTRL+9 (nine, not Num key nine): Hide row
  • SHIFT+CTRL+9 (nine, not Num key nine): Show row
  • ALT+=: AUTOSUM
  • CTRL+SHIFT+U: Resize formula bar
  • When entering a formula: SHIFT+CTRL+A: fill in arguments
  • CTRL+` (left apostrophe, on most keyboards above the TAB key): show formulas in cells

Word 2007:

  • CTRL+[ / CTRL+]: Increase/Decrease font size with 1pt
  • CTRL+SHIFT+SPACEBAR: Insert a non-breaking space
  • CTRL+SHIFT+-: Insert a non-breaking hyphen
  • CTRL+-: Insert an optional hyphen
  • CTRL+SPACEBAR: Remove formatting (particularly useful to remove Character Formatting)
  • CTRL+K: Insert a hyperlink
  • SHIFT+F5: Toggle through the last 3 locations where you were editing
  • SHIFT+F3: Change case

PowerPoint 2007:

  • Quickly add a new slide, using the Layout you want: CTRL+M, Alt (**), H, L
  • TAB: Move through all objects on a slide, even the ones that are not visible (behind another object). Start by selecting any object that is not a text box, then (repeatedly) press TAB.
  • In presentation mode: press B to make the screen Black, B again to return to your slide. Also, press the slide number, followed by ENTER, to move to that slide.

Notes:

  • (*) Pressing and releasing the ALT key will give you ‘KeyTips’, letters that you can press to activate a tab or button:

    Another way to get to all entries on the Ribbon is pressing F10, and then using the arrow keys to select the Tab and button you need.
  • (**) Press and Release the ALT key.

Blogweek!

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I know I should not do this, because until now, I couldn’t really keep my promise to update this blog frequently, but I anyway intend to make this week “Blogweek”. The idea is to post an entry to this blog every day of the the week until Friday. Let’s see whether this will work 🙂