Chapter 19
Microsoft Office is famous for burying tons of useful features that most people never know about, so this chapter is about exposing some of Office 2016’s features so you can take advantage of them and make Office 2016 more convenient (and safer) for you to use.
Most people dump their documents inside a folder in the Documents folder. Store too many documents in this folder, however, and you’ll find it’s nearly impossible to find anything. To make retrieving files easier, it’s a good idea to store different data in its own folders, such as storing tax-related information in a special Tax Returns folder or invoices in a special 2017 Invoices folder.
Left to its own devices, of course, Office 2016 will cheerfully save all your files in the Documents folder, so you’ll need to tell Office 2016 where you want it to save files.
In addition to defining a default folder to store files, you can also define a default file format for your Office 2016 programs. This can be especially useful if you need to share files with others, such as people still stuck using an older version of Microsoft Office (97/2000/XP/2003).
Finally, to protect your data (as much as possible) from inevitable computer crashes and hard drive failures, Office 2016 programs include a special AutoRecover feature, which saves a temporary copy of your file at fixed intervals, such as every ten minutes. That way, if the power goes out, you lose only those changes you made in the last ten minutes and not all your changes.
To customize the location, format, and AutoRecover feature of an Office 2016 program, follow these steps:
Click Options.
An Options dialog box appears.
Click Save in the left pane.
The Options dialog box displays various Save options, as shown in Figure 19-1.
To prevent prying eyes from peeking at your Word, Excel, or PowerPoint files, you can password-protect them. That way, if someone wants to open, view, or edit your files, she must use your password. If someone doesn’t know your password, she won’t be able to view — let alone edit — your files.
To password-protect a file, follow these steps:
Choose Save As.
The Save As window appears.
Click the Browse button.
The Save As dialog box appears.
Click the Tools button.
A pull-down menu appears, as shown in Figure 19-2.
Choose General Options.
The General Options dialog box appears.
(Optional) Click in the Password to Open text box and type a password.
Another dialog box appears and asks you to confirm the password by typing it again.
(Optional) Click in the Password to Modify text box and type a password.
This password can be different from the password you typed in Step 6. Another dialog box appears and asks you to confirm the password by typing it again.
Macro viruses are malicious programs designed to attach themselves to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files. When an unsuspecting victim opens an infected file, the virus can spread and do something nasty, such as deleting your files or deleting the entire contents of your hard drive.
To stop these pests from wrecking your files, get an antivirus program, avoid downloading or accepting any files from unknown people, and turn on Office 2016’s built-in macro-protection feature, which can disable macros or restrict what macro viruses and worms can do even if they infect your computer.
To turn on macro protection, follow these steps:
Click Options.
The Options dialog box appears.
Click Trust Center.
The Trust Center options appear in the right pane.
Click the Trust Center Settings button.
The Trust Center dialog box appears.
Some people love the Ribbon interface of Office 2016, while others only tolerate it. No matter what your feelings toward the Ribbon interface may be, you can customize which icons appear on it so it only displays those features you need (and use) most often.
To customize the Ribbon interface, follow these steps:
Click Options.
The Options dialog box appears.
Click Customize Ribbon in the left pane.
The Options dialog box displays two columns. The left column displays all additional commands you can place on the Ribbon, while the right column lists all currently displayed tabs and commands, as shown in Figure 19-4.
(Optional) Clear a check box in the right column to hide an entire tab from view.
Hiding tabs can be handy when you never use a particular group of commands and you want to simplify the Ribbon interface.
(Optional) Click the Reset button.
The Reset button lets you restore the default settings of a single tab or the entire Ribbon. Use this feature to make your copy of Office 2016 look like everyone else’s.
If you find something useful (or useless) in Office 2016, you can send feedback directly to Microsoft. If enough people like (or complain) about the same item, hopefully Microsoft will modify future versions of Office to make the program easier to use.
To send a compliment (smile) or a complaint (frown) to Microsoft, follow these steps:
Click the smiley face icon on the far right.
A pull-down menu appears, letting you choose between sending a smile or a frown, as shown in Figure 19-5.
Click either Send a Smile or Send a Frown.
A Microsoft Office Feedback window appears, as shown in Figure 19-6.
Select or clear the Include email address check box.
If you select the Include email address check box, you can type an email address so someone from Microsoft can get back to you.
As a shortcut to giving commands to Office 2016, remember this simple guideline: First select, and then right-click.
So if you want to change text or a picture, first select it to tell Office 2016 what you want to modify. Then right-click the mouse to display a pop-up menu of the commands. These pop-up menus display a list of only relevant commands for the item you just selected.
One problem with creating large spreadsheets in Excel is that your identifying row and column headings may scroll out of sight if you scroll down or to the right of your worksheet.
To prevent this from happening, you can “freeze” a row or column that contains identifying labels. That way, when you scroll through your worksheet, your frozen row or column always remains visible.
To freeze a row or column in an Excel worksheet, follow these steps:
When you display a PowerPoint presentation, your slides typically appear in the order that you arranged them, starting with the first slide. If you want to display your slides in a different order in the middle of a presentation, follow these steps:
Load your presentation in PowerPoint and press F5.
The first slide of your presentation appears.
Type the number of the slide you want to view and press Enter.
If you want to jump to the fifth slide in your presentation, type 5 and press Enter. If you jump to the fifth slide, clicking the mouse or pressing the spacebar next displays the sixth slide, and then the seventh, and so on.
If you have an email account, you will get spam, that unwanted email that clogs millions of inboxes every day with obnoxious offers for mortgage refinancing, low-cost prescription drugs, or celebrity pornography. Unless you actually enjoy deleting these messages manually, you can use Outlook to filter your email for you.
Outlook can move suspected spam to a special junk email folder automatically. Because Outlook looks for keywords in spam, be aware that it will never be 100-percent effective in identifying spam, but it can identify the more blatant spam and save you the time and effort of deleting the messages yourself.
To define Outlook’s spam filter, follow these steps:
Click the Junk icon in the Delete group.
A menu appears, as shown in Figure 19-7.
Click Junk Email Options.
The Junk Email Options dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 19-8.
Click OK.
The Options dialog box appears again.
A Safe Senders list lets you define all the email addresses you want to accept messages from, and Outlook routes all email from other email addresses directly to your Junk Email folder.
The advantage of a Safe Senders list is that it guarantees you will never receive spam. On the downside, though, it also guarantees that if someone tries to contact you whose email address doesn’t appear on your Safe Senders list, you will never get that valid message, either.
To create a Safe Senders list, follow Steps 1 through 4 in the preceding section, “Setting up Outlook’s junk email filter,” to display the Junk Email Options dialog box. Then follow these steps:
In the Junk Email Options dialog box (refer to Figure 19-8), click the Safe Senders tab.
The Safe Senders tab of the Junk Email Options dialog box appears.
(Optional) Select (or clear) the Also trust email from my Contacts check box.
Selecting this check box tells Outlook that if you store someone’s email address in your Contacts list, you will also accept email from that person.
(Optional) Select (or clear) the Automatically add people I email to the Safe Senders List check box.
This tells Outlook that if you send email to someone, you’ll accept his or her messages in return.
(Optional) Click the Add button.
The Add Address or Domain dialog box appears.
If a particular email address persists in sending you spam, you can choose to selectively block that single email address or domain. To create a Blocked Senders list, follow Steps 1 through 4 in the earlier section, “Setting up Outlook’s junk email filter,” to display the Junk Email Options dialog box. Then follow these steps:
In the Junk Email Options dialog box (refer to Figure 19-8), click the Blocked Senders tab.
The Blocked Senders tab of the Junk Email Options dialog box appears.
Click the Add button.
The Add Address or Domain dialog box appears.
Type an email address or domain name and then click OK.
The Options dialog box appears again.
Office 2016 gobbles up a huge chunk of hard-drive space and bombards you with waves of features that you’ll probably never need (or use) in a million years. In case you want to use Microsoft Office but don’t want to pay its hefty upfront cost, you might like Office 365 instead.
Office 365 provides versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint that you can access over the Internet. As long as you have an Internet connection and a browser, you can use Office 365 to create, edit, and share files with others.
Perhaps the greatest advantage of Office 365 is that multiple people can collaborate on a single document from anywhere in the world. Instead of swapping files back and forth (and risk losing track which file may be the latest one), Office 365 lets you store a single copy of your document online for everyone to access.
Of course, the biggest drawback of Office 365 is that you need an Internet connection to use it. However, as Internet access becomes cheaper and more accessible, this disadvantage shouldn’t be a problem for most people.
Even better, anyone with a browser can use Office 365, including Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux users. Office 365 is basically Microsoft’s answer to Google Docs, so if the idea of using a word processor, spreadsheet, or presentation program over the Internet appeals to you, then give Office 365 a try.
In case you don’t like the idea of accessing Office 2016 through the Internet, grab a tablet running Android or iOS. By using Office for Android or iOS, you can create and edit Office files when you’re away from your computer.
Now you can still be productive with your favorite Microsoft Office programs without lugging around a heavy and bulky laptop computer running the full version of Windows 10.
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