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Did you know that when you crop images in MS Word, PowerPoint, etc., the full image is still there? Anyone who has a copy of your file can restore the image back to the original. This is especially problematic if you frequently crop after doing a print-screen. Do you remember what was in the background that you just cropped? A sensitive email? Student grades? Your credit card information? Fortunately, you can ask MS Office to delete the cropped areas of your images, but you do have to ask. For each image. In, for example, a Word file, click on the image, select the Format tab,Read More →

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I have put MS Office 2010 to bed and have moved on to MS Office 2013. There’s nothing like new software replacing old to knock you out of equilibrium. This post is going to deal with the “Save as” menu. When I first saw the “Save as” options, I was pretty stoked. I could save to my newly-created college SkyDrive account. I could save to my personal SkyDrive account. I could save to my computer. With “Add a Place,” I naively thought, “Cool, I can add places like Dropbox and Google Drive.” Using MS Office 2013 out-of-the-box, as it turns out, you cannot do thisRead More →

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It’s July! Remember how you said back in January that you wanted to try out some new things when you finally had the time for it? Your challenge for the month of July: Pick two of these to try out. The first of your picks is #1; we’re not even going to debate that. Your second pick is your choice. Stop talking on your phone while driving. This one is the easiest since it’s about not doing something instead of doing something. Watch this 55-min video of David Strayer from the University of Utah discussing his researching on multitasking while driving. This was a talkRead More →

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MagPointer is a PowerPoint add-on (Windows only) that allows you to highlight certain areas of your PowerPoint slides on the fly. Although designed with web-based presentations in mind, it works well in the face-to-face classroom. In the screenshot below you can see a PowerPoint slide with the MagPointer toolbar on the right – 5 colored squares. Sometimes when I run MagPointer, I get the black border you see here. Other times the slide covers the entire screen, and the MagPointer icons overlap the slide. It works fine in either case, just an fyi. MagPointer at work Mouse over any element to see the dotted outlineRead More →

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I was recently putting together a PowerPoint 2010 presentation that had a lot of charts in it. I wanted to reveal the data gradually, so I looked for a way to animate. It’s easy to do, if not entirely intuitive. After creating the chart, switch to the “Animations” tab. Click on the chart to select it, then click the “Add Animation” button. Choose the animation style you like; I chose “fade”. Now, with the chart still selected, click “Effect Options.” Here I can choose how I want the data to appear. When you mouse over each option, your chart will preview what it will lookRead More →

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Quick Tech Tip. Did you know that you can draw on PowerPoint slides during your presentation? You can use your mouse if you don’t have a touchscreen. When you run your PowerPoint slides, in the bottom left corner of the screen are four hard-to-see transparent icons: Left arrow, pen, menu, right arrow. When you mouse over one of them, you can see it. In the image below is the pen. Clicking the pen icon calls up this menu. Click the pen to draw; click the highlighter to highlight. Change the ink color if you’d like. When you want to go back to the arrow, forRead More →

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A couple months ago I wrote about a new tool that just launched. KeyRocket has grown up in that short time. Time for an update. Ready to learn some keyboard shortcuts for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook? Download KeyRocket, and you’ll have your own tutorial. As you work, KeyRocket recognizes when you use the toolbar and will suggest a keyboard shortcut to accomplish the same task. (Free for personal and non-commercial use; subscribe for $5/month for tech support and advanced setup with your business.) [Note: When KeyRocket first launched in beta, free users could only choose one of the four commonly used Microsoft Office tools.Read More →