Free quick reference guides to popular software applications

CustomGuide, a computer software training company, have made available — for free — their quick reference guides for all Microsoft Office products, some other Microsoft products, some Adobe products, etc.

You can get these two-page illustrated guides here: http://www.customguide.com/quick_references.htm

[Links last checked September 2009; thanks to @onemanwrites for tweeting this site]

Email: Use plain text

A workshop article titled 20 steps to a Fort Knox PC in the July 2009 issue of Australian Personal Computer (APC) had this advice listed as #12:

Turn off HTML

It might be pretty but you really should turn off HTML mail in your email client. In the bad old days, it was easy to spread malware via email because programs such as Microsoft’s Outlook Express had HTML switched on and ran any embedded JavaScript.

Times have changed, but spammer’s haven’t. They’re still very interested in knowing if your address is active, and all they need to gain that knowledge is for you to read an HTML email. This is because HTML allows for the inclusion of remotely stored images.

When accessed from the spammer’s server by rendering an HTML email, he instantly knows that you’ve read his message and your address is active. He can then either spam you again, or as is more likely, sell your address along with millions of others to other fraudsters.

Here’s how you turn off HTML email in Outlook  2003 (the process for Outlook 2007 should be very similar):

1. Go to Tools > Options > Preferences tab.
2. Click the E-mail Options button.
3. Select the Read all standard mail in plain text check box.
4. Click OK.

Other settings to consider:

1. To send email in plain text, go to Tools > Options > Mail Format tab.
2. Change the Compose in this message format to Plain HTML.
   
3. While you’re at it, turn off the check boxes for using Microsoft Word to edit or read email messages (unless you REALLY need this).
4. Click OK.

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Microsoft Office 2007 shortcut keys

Microsoft have put together a single page of links to all sorts of keyboard shortcuts for various Office 2007 programs. So you only have to go to this one place and you can find the rest: http://office.microsoft.com/en-au/help/HA103382151033.aspx

Office 2003: Set the default language

Office 2003 has several different programs — Word, Outlook, etc. — and each has an option to set the default language for the spellchecker. Most of the time it works.

But sometimes the default language is set to something you don’t want and it won’t hold the new setting when you change it. Case in point: English (US) is the default, but I want to set English (Australian) as my default language. It holds for Word, but it won’t hold for Outlook.

I found a solution to this thanks to a Google search — and in a place where I would never have thought to look!

1. Go to Start > All Programs > Microsoft Office > Microsoft Office Tools > Microsoft Office 2003 Language Settings.
2. You may get a message that the program cannot be installed. If so, you’ll need to find your Office 2003 CD, insert it, then click OK. It should install in a few seconds.
3. Check the list of Enabled Languages on the right — select and click Remove for any you don’t want.
4. Select the language you want as the default from the list at the bottom of the window, then click OK.
5. If any Office programs are currently open you’ll be asked to either restart them now, or, if you choose to restart them later, you’ll get a message to say that the new default language settings will apply next time you start them.

Office 2003 Language Settings dialog

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Office 2007: Ribbon

One of the things that drives new Office 2007 users crazy is the ribbon interface seen in Word, Excel, Access, some of Outlook, and PowerPoint. Personally, I don’t mind the ribbon, but so far I’m not using Word 2007 on a daily basis (my clients are still on Word 2003), which means that I haven’t encountered the daily frustrations other users rant about.

Microsoft’s regular columnist, ‘Crabby Office Lady’, wrote a piece entitled How I learned to stop worrying and love the ribbon, where she gives some helpful hints to make using the ribbon easier.

Her article is here:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA102553291033.aspx

Outlook: Turn off notifications

There are many gurus out there who suggest ways to get control of a never-ending torrent of email. One of the best ways to gain back control is to turn off the email notification message in Outlook. By doing so, you can hopefully control the Pavlovian response that seems to emerge from seemingly ordinary people whenever they see the ‘you’ve got mail’ message pop up. Even when they are in conversation with someone else, the flicker of the rise and fall of that message attracts the eye and some just have to check who the email is from — even when it’s just plain rude to the other person to do so.

These steps work in both Outlook 2003 and 2007.

1. Go to Tools > Options. It should open at the Preferences tab.
2. Near the top right of the Preferences tab, click the E-mail Options button (1 on the picture below).
   
   

   E-mail options

3. Click the Advanced E-mail Options button (2).
   

   Advanced E-mail Options

4. Clear the Display a New Mail Desktop Alert check box (3).
   

   Turn off notifications

   (If you really, really, really must leave this setting turned on, at least click the Desktop Alert Settings button and change the amount of time and the transparency for the popup message.)

5. While you’re at it, make sure the Play a sound, Briefly change the mouse cursor, and Show an envelope icon are all clear too! All these are productivity-sapping distractions.
6. Click OK on each window to save your settings and close that window.

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Outlook: Creating a hyperlink to a network file

Microsoft Outlook’s Help is not much help when you are trying to create a clickable link to a file in your email message. Those of us who have worked in—or continue to work in—networked offices often have to send a clickable hyperlink to a document stored on the company’s network. For whatever reason, we don’t want to send the actual file—it may be too big, we may not want the recipient to save it and work on it on their own machine, or similar.

Here’s how to create a clickable link to a file on your network, using Outlook 2003:

1. First, you must be using Rich Text Format for your email messages—not Plain Text or HTML. To set Rich Text Format, go to Tools > Options on Outlook 2003’s menu, select the Mail Format tab, select Rich Text Format from the Compose in this message format drop-down list, then click OK. (Note: You can change this setting back to what you normally use after you’ve sent your file link.)

    

   

   Outlook 2003: Rich Text mail format

2. In a new email message, select Insert > File from the menu.
3. Navigate to the file and select it. DO NOT click Insert.
4. Now, look carefully at the Insert button. See the little arrow to its right? Click on that arrow.
5. From the shortcut menu that displays when you click the arrow, select Insert as Hyperlink.

    

   

   Outlook 2003: Insert a link to a file

6. Voila! The file link is inserted into the message.

If you want to change your mail format back, repeat Step 1, this time selecting either Plain Text or HTML as the message format.

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Show full menus in Office 2003 applications

Some people love those collapsed menus in Word and other Microsoft Office 2003 applications where you have to click the arrows at the bottom of the menu to see all the options, but I loathe them. One of the first things I do when I have a new installation of Word is to turn on the option to show menus in full.

1. In Word 2003, go to Tools > Customize, then select the Options tab.
2. Make sure the Always show full menus check box is ticked.

If I remember correctly, setting it in one Office 2003 application applies it to all other Office 2003 programs.

Note: Office 2007 programs have a ‘ribbon’ interface not menus, so this information does not apply.

[This article was first published in the September 2003 CyberText Newsletter]

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Outlook: Skip to another month in the calendar

When you’re in Calendar view in Outlook, you’ve always been able to skip from one month to another by clicking on the next and previous arrows on the blue bar above a month’s name. But this only moves the calendar one month at a time.

What if you want to skip a few months? Well, there’s a very simple trick that I only learned about a short while ago. No doubt it’s been available in Outlook *forever*, but it was new to me!

You click ON the colored bar—a shortcut menu pops up displaying the previous three months and the next three. You then just move you mouse up or down the list and click the month you want to see. Neat huh? I never knew you could do that!

So what if it’s now July and you want to see December? Well, you could select October from July’s list then repeat the trick. But it’s quicker to click in September’s colored bar (assuming you can see September, of course) and you’ll get the three months before and after September.

To get back to today’s calendar, just click the Today button.

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Outlook: Remove attachments from messages

The good folks over at OfficeWatch have documented how to save Outlook storage space by removing attachments from emails. They give instructions for both Outlook 2007 and 2003.

In essence:

1. Double-click the email message to open it.
2. Select Edit > Edit Message* (or Revise Contents*) from the message window’s menu.
3. Right-click on the attachment then select Remove.

* My Outlook 2003 (version 11.8206.8202 SP3) has a slightly different menu option than the Revise Contents they show in their screenshot—mine says Edit Message, just like in Outlook 2007.

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