1. Search Folders

As described in previous posts, Search Folders are a powerful, underutilized part of Outlook. A Search Folder is a saved search, which means that you can retrieve results from your Inbox like ‘All emails from James Joyce’ or ‘All emails about Project X’ simply by clicking the Search Folder.

2. Rules

Anytime you find yourself repeating the same organizational steps over and over again in your Inbox, look into programming a Rule. Rules can do things like reply to particular emails with a templated response, or redirect all emails from an important client into a folder for that client.

3. Categories

Categories are a powerful tool in Outlook – right-click any email or meeting, and your categories will appear. Later, you can use categories in one of two potent ways:

– Search Folders: by categorizing your emails as they come in and creating a Search Folder for that category, you remove the necessity to drag-and-drop between different folders in your Inbox. This may not seem important now, but come see me when you’ve got 150 folders you have to maintain.

– Advanced Search: the most important benefit of categories is your ability to apply them to EVERYTHING. Create a category, and soon you’re able to find the meetings, contacts, tasks, AND emails related to that category, with one search.

4. AutoReplace

In Word, AutoReplace is the tool that takes (c) and turns it into the copyright symbol. If harnessed correctly, you can replace any misspelling that you habitually make, or create an autoreplace that takes a code from you and create a long string of text.

5. Fields

If you want to enter today’s date, or create a Table of Contents, or have a page numbering system that can be switched between Roman numerals, Arabic numbering, and lettering, you need Fields. A field is a programmed portion of your page in Word that is responsible for outputting not a set result, but a dynamic value. That means tomorrow, the ‘Today’s Date’ field will pick up the new day. Or that the Table of Contents will pick up the new section you decide to add.

6. MailMerge

One use of fields is the ability to bulk email or create envelopes for everyone in your contact list – MailMerge. Using MailMerge, you’ll be able to simply type a letter and specify “First Name”, and Word will replace it with the first names of everyone you want.

7. AutoFilter

With a large quantity of data, it’s often important to isolate records that meet a certain criteria. In Excel, all you have to do is select the data that you want filtered, apply an AutoFilter, and get to work. You’ll find that there are drop-down arrows for every column, and if you want to show only the employees in IT, you should be able to do exactly that with two clicks.

8. Pivot Tables and Pivot Charts

When it’s time to go above and beyond filtering, Pivot Tables will allow you to take that large quantity of data, filter it, then run subtotals, averages, maximums, minimums… the possibilities are endless. And understanding Pivot Tables only takes about 15 minutes!

9. IF Functions

Most people can grasp SUM, AVERAGE, MAX, COUNT, etc. When the time comes for your functions to make decisions, however, like ‘Only add these numbers together if they are both sales from 2008′, then you need the power of an IF. There are many varieties – SUMIF, COUNTIF, and you can nest functions with an IF to make them more powerful.

10. Presentation Shortcuts

When in mid-presentation, sometimes you just need to darken the projected screen for a couple of minutes while a side conversation plays out. Turning the projector on and off is sloppy – try the ‘B’ key on the keyboard. There are a ton of those shortcuts that make your presentation that much more potent.

Over the next several months, these and many other tips will be thoroughly examined in this blog. In the meantime, look over an Excel manual, or take an Outlook class from us, or just start clicking around. You’ll be amazed at what you can pick up just by clicking random options.

One of the more prevalent uses of Microsoft Excel is saving large tables of information, and then wringing some quantity of interpreted information from that table. Unfortunately, many Excel users lean on an overuse of functions to interpret that information, when a pivot table would make their jobs easier. This needs to stop. Let’s start from the beginning:

This is a table of data. We have records that have categories like Department and Division, that contain numerical data like Hourly and Weekly Pay. Given this kind of data, I can foresee situations where you’ll need to show the total amount we pay out every week, or the average we pay per hour for a Development employee. You can very easily write a function to average the amount of money we pay to Researchers from Vermont, but what if we needed to get a summary report for all the averages? Or, what if we needed to quickly swap between totals, averages, and maximums? The most efficient solution is the Pivot Table. To create a pivot table, first select the data by clicking on the table. Then, choose the Insert Tab on the Ribbon and click the Pivot Table button.

Now we have the Pivot Table environment, and we need to populate it to generate table. There are two different ways of building the table, but both involve the same fields and information. Take a look at option 1, the actual table area.

The simplest way to think through the building of the table is this: in a typical table, we see data in the center of the table to be calculated. If, for instance, we were filling this with quarterly sales information, the center of the table would be the dollar amounts. Additionally, the quarterly sales table would have labels on the left and top of the table. These labels would hold information like ‘Quarter 1′, and ‘Region 1′. Think about these labels. Quarters 1, 2, 3, 4… these are categories, of which there are only a few. We probably wouldn’t have 100+ labels across the top of the sales table.

Take exactly this idea to populate the pivot table: fill the center with number values, and place categories across the top and left sides of the table. We can use the fields in the screen shot above, or we can use the panel on the right side of the screen:

So, we take things like Department and Division, and drag them to the appropriate areas, and the same for Gross Pay. The new information in these areas will look like this in the panel:

The final result:

There is a TON of customization that can be done to this table – plenty of material for more tutorials! In the meantime, check out our Excel and Excel 2007 courses. Day Two contains the information about Pivot Tables.

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To help you through those moments, you may want to use Microsoft’s Command Reference Guides:

• Microsoft Word
• Microsoft Excel
• Microsoft PowerPoint
• Microsoft Outlook

Each of these is a direct translation of your old tools to your new tools. If you’d like an in-person walkthrough of how these work, try out our Office 2007 Tips and Tricks class. If you find that you want more detail, we have three-day courses in Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel, and two-day courses in Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft PowerPoint. Also, there is a one-day course on Microsoft Visio

First, get a table of information, like the one below. It doesn’t have to have a ‘unique identifier’, unlike VLOOKUP. If it has multiple columns that you can use to identify the information, like ‘Department’ and ‘Division’ and ‘Category’, then you can actually use all those columns in combination with each other.

Next, you’ll need to set up your criteria. On your spreadsheet, you need to provide the column that you’re using, and the criteria itself. In the example below, if you want to ‘Get’ one record, you’re going to look through the SalesPerson, Customer, and Quarter columns so that we can be assured we’ll only return one value. There should be only one match for the sale Richardson made to Prince Paper in the first quarter.

Then, open the Insert Function dialog box, and look for the Database category of functions. The one you want is the DGET.

DGET needs to know where the table is (cells A6:F38), the column that has the values in it (F6, the ‘Commission’ column), and the criteria you set up to return the value (I6:K7, the SalesPerson, Customer, and Quarter labels, and the values that are under the labels).

DSUM is another popular request – the ability to add up all the sales that meet your critera. Your criteria needs fewer columns, because you’re not just trying to return one value, you’re getting a lot of them and adding them together. Choose the DSUM function from the same Insert Function dialog box.

Then, use the same table range for the first input, use E6 to specify the ‘Sales’ column, and the criteria you’ve put on your worksheet.

As you can see, they return the values from the table very easily, and if you change the criteria, your value returned changes. This is a great tool for retrieving business data from large tables of information.

If you’d like experience with the VLOOKUP, HLOOKUP, and Database functions, try either our Excel 2003 or Excel 2007 courses. For more cool functions you should be using, keep checking back with us on the blog.

Start by having all your data touching, or contiguous. Extra rows, columns, and other spaces breaking up your data make this trick tougher. Then click any of the cells in the data set.

Have you drag-selected a big hunk of data? We all have. The keyboard shortcut that will save you a lot of grief is <CTRL> + <A>. This selects all the data that’s touching (this works in Excel 2003 and 2007). Make sure your selection is inside the data before you try it.

If you needed to select just the row you were in, the keyboard shortcut is <SHIFT> + <SPACE>. To select the column, it’s <CTRL> + <SPACE>. This selects the entire row or the entire column, the same as when you click the column header.

Finally, the one I like the best: selection of a column or row from within a data set. The difference with this tool is that you’re selecting only a single column or row, not the entire set of information, and you’re only selecting the cells with information in them.

First, click the label of a column, or the first cell of a row. Then, hold down <CTRL>+<SHIFT>. Then, press the arrow key in the direction of your data. To select the entire column, <CTRL>+<SHIFT>+<DOWN ARROW>. To select an entire row, <CTRL>+<SHIFT>+<RIGHT ARROW>.

If you want to know every keyboard shortcut in Excel, visit Microsoft.com.

For more training in Microsoft Excel, look into our Microsoft Excel 2003 Course or Microsoft Excel 2007 Course. For more efficiency using Microsoft Office, including some killer keyboard shortcuts, check out our course in Microsoft Office Efficiency.