Weekly Computer Tip # 119
16 July 2005
Useful Task Pane tricks (Microsoft Office 2002 and beyond)
First of all I like to thank you for all your recent feedback and suggestions ... it made my inbox perform a backward somersault. As you all know, I'm committed to sharing the best of what I know with you. And the more YOU tell me, the more I can share. Like this week, where combining two pieces of feedback resulted in a wonderful trick!
I'd like to start with some great tips of one of my dear friends and fellow trainer, Naomi Porter. Naomi has been "floorwalking" for an Office 2003 upgrade. (Floor what? You know, when us, trainers, are there to assist and instruct you at your own desk, providing immediate answers and solutions to those repetitive everyday problems and tasks.) During this process she found out all sorts of useful stuff about the task pane.
But first of all ... what's a task pane? Well, they're "helper windows" on the right (or left) side of your screen and they were introduced in Office XP (AKA 2002). They can help you perform certain tasks such as starting a new document, asking a Help question, or paste your copied items into any Office document.
In tip # 113 (http://www.roem.co.uk/tip_113.html) we already talked about how you can quickly display the Clipboard Task Pane by pressing CTRL+C twice. Which prompted Naomi to tell me about some excellent shortcuts when using the Task Pane. (Thanks, Naomi!) ...
- F1 : Display the Help task pane.
- CTRL+F1 : Return to the last task pane you used (or close the task pane completely)
- Home button on the task pane : Open the Getting Started task pane which gives you easy access to your recently used files.
By the way, if you've just upgraded, don't be tempted to close down the task pane immediately, never to be opened up again. (At least, not intentionally. ;-) You probably know it takes about 21 days to break a habit and replace it with a new one (Why 21 days? Who knows, but it works!) - so stick at it!
Finally, two subscribers (Naomi you already know but let's introduce Signe Olausen) gave a much more user-friendly way of removing the Reply to All button from Outlook, as described in last week's tip http://www.roem.co.uk/tip_118.html. Both methods were different, which only confirms Microsoft's determination to prove the saying that there is more than one way to skin a cat ... Signe emailed and told me to click on the little down arrow at the end of the relevant toolbar, select Add or Remove Buttons, then uncheck Reply to All. (Thanks, Signe!) And Naomi said to hold down the ALT key and simply drag the button away from the toolbar. (Wow!) Combine these two with what Signe was really after ... ("What I'd really like is to move the reply all to another location but I haven't found an easy way to do that.") and jump up and down with joy!
Well, as mentioned before, keep these emails coming. If you enjoyed today's tip, please forward it to anyone you feel may benefit and might want to subscribe themselves. Let's work on more subscribers so we can get and share even more tips! Let's see how far we can reach!
Until next week.
PS I’m committed to sharing the best of what I know with others so please don’t keep me a secret. If you enjoyed today’s tip, please forward it to anyone you feel may benefit. Alternatively, feel free to reprint it (with full copyright and subscription information) in your newsletters and message boards.
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