Tag Archives: Microsoft Office

Outlook: Make Quick Work of Repetitive Tasks

Do you find yourself performing the same action again and again in Outlook?
Maybe it is filing a message or perhaps you frequently forward a message to a colleague.
Save clicks and keystrokes with Quick Steps.

Quick Steps are found in the center of the ribbon on the Home tab.

Quick Steps in Outlook

Quick Steps can be found in the middle of the Home tab.

There are some Quick Steps that are pre-programmed for you. We are going to create a new one.
Click on Create New.
A dialog box appears.

Edit Quick Step dialog box

Create your personalized Quick Step.

From here, you can choose your action. For this example, we will mark the email as read.

Mark as Read

You can also add an additional action, such as moving the email to a folder.
Click on Add Action to select an additional action for Outlook to perform. This example shows Move to Folder and then gives the option to select the folder.

Move to Folder

We can save this Quick Step, or we can further customize it.

For this example, I will rename it and also change the icon that displays on the Outlook ribbon.

Choose an Icon dialogue box

You can also create a Shortcut and customize the Tooltip for the Quick Step.

Shortcut Key and Tooltip

 

New Shape Styles in Office 2016

Office 2016 has new options for quickly formatting shapes.

After drawing a shape via the Insert ribbon, the Format ribbon will be accessible. Locate the Shape Styles group in this ribbon. Here, you will see some pre-set styles for your shape.

Shape Styles drop down.fw

Note that these styles are selected to match the theme of your document.

Shape Styles options.fw

 

The expanded list of shape fills may speed up your design process. The new fills are available not only in Word, but also in PowerPoint and Excel.

If the available shape fills are not what you need, you can choose Other Theme Fills or change the Shape Fill manually with the other functions in the Shape Styles group. You can also change the theme of your whole document through the Design ribbon. Select Colors from the Document Formatting group.

Shape Styles themes.fw

Microsoft Office: Put a Pin in It!

Microsoft Office makes it fairly easy to access items you were most recently working on with the aptly named “Recent” feature in their programs.  When you open a Microsoft Office program, there is a list of your recent items displayed on the left of the screen.  This Recent panel allows you to quickly retrieve documents that you have been working on very quickly.

Recent

If you see a document on this list that you would always like to see here, you can make that happen with just one click.  First, hover over the document.  At the right of the file name, a pushpin image will appear.  The pushpin will appear to be laying on its side.  Click on this image, and the pin will turn to face downward.  That’s it!  You have now pinned the document to your Recent files list.

If you would like to secure a document to this list and you haven’t opened it for a while, you will need to take one additional step.  Simply move your mouse to the bottom of the Recent files panel.  Select “Open Other __________.”  The word after other will differ depending upon the Microsoft program you are using.  Publications will appear here in Publisher, Workbook in Excel,  Documents in Word, etc.

After the document opens, click on the File tab, and then on Open.  The newly opened document will appear under the Recent Documents area here.  Follow the steps above to pin this document to the Recent list.