Archive of posts filed under the Microsoft Office category.

Display a thumbnail of Word and PowerPoint files in Windows Explorer

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I like to see a thumbnail of the first page of a Word document or the title slide of a PowerPoint slide deck in Windows Explorer.

With Microsoft Word, you can check the Save Thumbnail checkbox in the Save As dialog box to create the thumbnail:
word_save_thumbnail

In Microsoft PowerPoint, this feature is a bit more hidden. You can find it in the Advanced Properties: Click File > Info, click on the Properties heading on the right-hand side and click Advanced Properties:
ppt_properties
In the dialog box, click on the Summary tab. There you can check Save preview picture:
ppt_advanced_properties_summary
Now save the file and the thumbnail will be visible in Windows Explorer.

Quick Word Tip: Using a Style Separator

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In an article on MakeOfficeWork.com, I learned that you can apply 2 paragraph styles to 1 paragraph using a Style Separator. I would love to have known about this feature before as I had quite a few occasions where I wanted to use only part of a heading to appear in a Table of Content (TOC).

The trick is to press CTRL+ALT+ENTER between 2 paragraphs with a different style. This will change the paragraph break of the current paragraph to a Style Separator, merging the current paragraph with the following paragrah without merging the paragraph styles.

Example: using this technique for a paragraph with style Heading 1, followed by another paragraph with another style:
style_separator
generates the following TOC:
toc

Changing the default Theme (Colors, Fonts, …) in Outlook 2010

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I wanted to ensure I use the proper fonts and colors when creating emails for the company I work for. We have a strong focus on visual identity and Office 2010 allows for creating custom Themes so that the right colors and fonts are used automatically, as this help-document from Microsoft explains.

I could not figure out how set this custom theme as default for Outlook 2010 however. While you can select the theme when creating a new message in the Options tab, there is no option to make the theme the default:
Outlook 2010 New Message Options tab Themes button

Finally I found a way to do this: in C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates, a file NormalEmail.dotm stores the defaults for email messages. Ensure Outlook is closed, open the file in Word 2010, make the necessary changes (select the Theme and modify the Normal style to ensure the right font is used) and save the file.

Now Outlook will use this as default.