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ANCHOR THIS
H. Y. asks us to discuss floating toolbars. We've touched on this topic before, but let's take a quick look.

If you want to turn a toolbar into a floating toolbar, hold down the Alt key and use the mouse to drag a toolbar down into the document window. Make sure you click the mouse on an empty part of the toolbar; if you click and drag a button, the button will disappear.

You can position the floating toolbar anywhere in the document window. If you drag the toolbar to the top, or bottom, of the window, it will anchor. To quickly anchor a floating toolbar, double-click its title bar. It will anchor in the position from whence it came.

I NEED MORE SPACE
"Is there a way to add worksheets to an existing workbook? If I do add sheets, will it damage the data I already have entered?"

Don't worry, you can add worksheets without doing any harm to existing data--but there are a few peculiarities. Let's say that your current workbook has three sheets. These sheets are named Sheet1, Sheet2, and Sheet3. Now, let's say that you want to add a new sheet that is to be named Sheet4. Click the Sheet3 tab and choose Insert, Worksheet. You'll get a new sheet named Sheet4, but it will appear between Sheet2 and Sheet3. Excel inserts a new sheet before the selected sheet. But, you wanted it after Sheet3, right? So, use the mouse to grab the new Sheet4 tab and drag it to the right of the Sheet3 tab. When you release the mouse button, Sheet4 will appear after Sheet3.

MOVE THIS TO A NEW WORKBOOK
In the last tip, we said that you can move worksheets within a workbook by using drag and drop. All you have to do is grab a sheet's name tab with the mouse and drag it to a new location.

You can also use drag and drop to move a worksheet to another workbook. Try this: Run Excel and then create a new workbook by clicking the New button (or choosing File, New). Next, choose Window, Arrange. When the Arrange Windows dialog box opens, select Horizontal (for our example) and click OK. Both worksheets will now appear in the window. Use the mouse to drag the Workbook 1 Sheet1 name tab up to the space between Sheet1 and Sheet2 of Workbook 2. The worksheets in Workbook 2 will now be Sheet1, Sheet1 (2), Sheet2, and Sheet3, etc.

WHO NEEDS THIS?
Here's a PowerPoint question from T. D. M.:

"Why does Microsoft put titles in the defined boxes? If you choose a slide layout that has three of these boxes when you only need two, then you have to waste time deleting all that extra stuff so it won't appear on your slide show."

We have good news for you: That stuff won't appear on the slide during a show. You don't have to delete anything. And you only have to fill in those areas on the slide template that you want to fill in. Give this a try. Run PowerPoint and choose one of the predefined layouts. Let's say the layout says Click to Add Title, and Click to Add Text. Before you do anything else, choose Slide Show, View Show. When the show starts, you'll see nothing but a blank slide. The prompting text doesn't appear. So, if you choose not to place a title in the Title box, that space will appear empty in the slide presentation.

I WANT JUST ONE
By default, Word prints an entire sheet of labels. So, what do you do if you only need one label? Here's a way to print that single label. Choose Tools, Envelopes and Labels. When the Envelopes and Labels dialog box opens, click the Labels tab. Enter the name and address and then select the radio button labeled Single Label. Now, choose the row and column of the label you want to print and click Print.

PLEASE TURN IT OFF!
It's amazing how quickly people get tired of that cute little Office Assistant popping up at seemingly random times. F. H. sends us this Office Assistant tip.

To turn off the Office Assistant, run Windows Explorer and go to c:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\Actors (assuming your installation is on Drive C. If it isn't, substitute the correct drive letter for C). Right-click the Actors folder and choose Rename. Name the folder Non-Actors and press Enter. The Office Assistant will stop assisting you.

DON'T HYPHENATE
When you add text to PowerPoint slides, always avoid hyphenating words. This may be acceptable on printed material, but hyphenated words on a slide will cause your audience some confusion. They are required to pause and interpret what they see.

If a word requires hyphenation, try reducing its size. If this isn't practical, try placing that word on a line by itself.

MY DRAG AND DROP WON'T DRAG
"Now and then I see tips about using drag and drop in word documents. When I try to use drag and drop, nothing happens. Is something wrong with my copy of Word?"

Most likely drag and drop has somehow become disabled. Choose Tools, Options and click the Edit tab. There's a check box labeled Drag-and-Drop Text Editing. Select this check box and click OK. Now, select some text and move the cursor over the selected text. It should turn to an arrow. Once it becomes an arrow, you can use the mouse to drag the selected text to a new location.

GO TO YOUR LEFT, YOUR RIGHT, YOUR LEFT
R. T. wants to know if there are any shortcut keys that you can use to set the text alignment (left, center, right, justified).

Below is a list of keystrokes you can use to align text:

Keys: Alignment

Ctrl-L: left
Ctrl-E: center
Ctrl-R: right
Ctrl-J: justified

OUTSTANDING OBJECTS
Frequently, you can apply 3-D effects to a ClipArt object to enhance its appearance. Let's take a look at an enhanced map.

Run PowerPoint and open a blank slide. Choose Insert, Picture, ClipArt and then select Maps - U.S. Double-click one of the U.S. maps to insert it. Now choose Insert, Picture, ClipArt again and this time, double-click one of the states to insert it into your slide. Now, select the state and choose Draw, Ungroup to ungroup the picture. When asked if you're sure you want to do this, click Yes.

With the state selected, click the 3-D button (the icon resembles a 3-D cube). For the purpose of this example, select the 3-D effect that shows a long shadow to the left (3-D Style 16).

Click the state map to select it and choose Draw, Order, Bring to Front. Now, you can adjust the size and position of the two pictures to make it appear that the large 3-D state map rises out of that state's location on the U.S. map.

BREAK IT HERE
Picture this: You're working on a Word document and the style you're using will switch to a new style as soon as you press Enter. Your problem is that you don't want to switch styles right now, but you do need to start a new paragraph. What to do? If you press Shift-Enter, Word will start a new paragraph but will retain the current style.

This is a useful technique when you're working with templates that expect you to adhere to a specific layout.

BACKGROUND EFFECTS
There are all kinds of animation tricks you can use with your PowerPoint slide show presentations. Most of these animations deal with objects on the slides. Another useful approach is to animate the background. If you change the background from one slide to the next, you can approximate some of the techniques used in TV commercials.

Run PowerPoint, open a slide show and right-click the first slide. When the Background dialog box opens, click the arrow at the right side of the Background Fill list box. When the list expands, click More Colors and then click the Custom tab. Choose a color and click OK. Back in the Background dialog box, click Apply.

Now, move to the next slide and repeat, this time choosing a different shade of the same color. Continue for as many slides as needed. When you run the slide show, the background will progressively change shades. Of course, the more slides you use, the more subtle the change will be between each one.

NEW STYLES FOR OLD TEMPLATES
"When I work on documents at the office, I like to be able to copy them to a floppy disk and take them home (I also have Word 97 at home). This works OK, but sometimes I need to start a new document at home. When I do, the styles I use at work aren't available at home. Is there a way to move styles to my Normal.dot template?"

Try this: Load one of the documents from the office and then choose Format, Style. When the Style dialog box opens, click Organizer.

When the Organizer dialog box opens, you'll see that the styles in your document appear in the left pane and the styles in your Normal.dot appear in the right pane. In the document pane, click the first style that you want to copy to Normal.dot and then press and hold down Ctrl while you click the remaining styles that you want to copy. With the styles selected in the document pane, click Copy. You may be asked if you want to replace an existing style. If this is what you want (if the styles used in the office are what you want to always use at home), click Yes.

Click Close to close the Organizer dialog box. Now, close Word (choose File, Exit). Start Word again, and you'll find that your new styles are available.