MAKE TRACK CHANGES OR COMMENTS ANONYMOUS
Want to remove your identification when adding a Comment or an edit change in Word’s Track Changes or a Comment in Excel?
If you add a comment in Word or Excel, the application adds your identification (usually your initials) to the box. If you go to Tools, Options, Security and place a check at Remove personal information from file properties on save, the comment will appear without the identification after you save and then reopen the file.
Follow the same steps for Excel.
INSERT KEY
I hate the Ins (Insert) key. Not only is it useless, if you accidentally press it, it really messes up what you’ve written, replacing all the characters you typed with the newly typed characters. Is there some way to shut it down for good?
Join the club. I used to hate it, too. Notice I said used to. I figured out a way to dismantle it. Here’s how to do it in Word:
Click on Tools, Customize, Options and Keyboard. In the Categories box, (left pane) select All Commands and in the Commands box (right pane) select Overtype. Then, in the Current keys box, highlight Insert and click on Remove.
FOCUS AN EXCEL PRESENTATION WITH A MOVABLE ELECTRONIC MASK
I frequently make presentations with Excel worksheets, and I find that when the screen is filled with loads of numbers my audience goes into what I call the unfocused or snooze mode. Is there some way to improve the focus of a presentation to get around that problem?
Probably the most effective way is to create your presentation as a PowerPoint slideshow. But that takes lots of extra work, and if there’s any danger of the data changing, you have to link the spreadsheet to the PowerPoint file. Here is a more low tech method. I create a virtual mask that, in effect, does the job that a piece of paper did when you positioned it over the parts of a worksheet you wanted to hide when it was being displayed by one of those old overhead projectors.
You’re probably smiling to yourself as you recall how clumsy that process used to be when you used a sheet of paper-especially when you struggled to keep the paper centered over the document on the overhead projector or when someone opened a window and a breeze blew it away.
Let’s say this is the worksheet you want to present. But you want the audience to focus only on the data.
To do that, you can create a movable mask with your Drawing tool that blocks out all the data you don’t want to show. And when you move on to other data, you can slide the mask over different data using your mouse.
Activate Excel’s Drawing Toolbar by clicking on View and placing a check next to the Drawing option. That will position the Drawing Toolbar on the bottom of your screen.
Now click on the rectangle icon and move the cursor to your spreadsheet and draw a rectangle over the area you wish to mask by clicking and dragging the cursor. That entire area would be blocked out-with one exception: Your mask is just a plain white box, a little extra touch adds some pizzazz to our mask.
If you wish, you can even add color to the mask. To do that, return to the Drawing Toolbar and click on the down-pointing arrow to the right of the Paint Can icon to generate a Fill Color (yellow) label. Click on that to evoke that screen.
If all you want is color, select one from the available array. If, however, you want something a bit fancier, click on Fill Effects and such a screen will pop up.
The Fill Effects screen gives you a wide choice of effects-from gradients to textures, patterns and even pictures of your choice.
Once the virtual paper has been created, it’s easy to slide it in any direction to cover any part of the worksheet you wish. To move it, click on the rectangle and that will bring up tiny grab handles. Grab any handle with your mouse and either drag it to a new location or use the arrow key to move it.
You even can tilt the mask by grabbing the green handle on top and pushing it either left or right.
You may not want to completely mask a section of the worksheet. It’s possible, using Fill Effects, to make the mask semitransparent so the data under the mask is barely visible but does not distract the audience.
To do that, click on the sliders under Transparency to experiment for the level of transparency you desire.
Filed under: Excel
