If you plan to use one font for the majority of your text throughout a presentation, you can set this font easily to be your default for the presentation. 

Make sure the presentation you want to change is open in PowerPoint and choose Format/Font menu options.  In the Font dialog box, change the Font, Font Style and Size to the defaults you want to maintain for the presentation and click OK.   Save your presentation.

It can be helpful to have your AutoShape resize to fit any text you type in it.  But there are occasions when this resizing is terrible a nuisance.  Trying to drag the AutoShape's editing handles to shrink or enlarge the object after you have entered text rarely works the way you want as PowerPoint automatically resizes AutoShapes to fit to the text you place in them.

However, it is easy to change this default.  Choose Tools/AutoCorrect Options and click on the AutoFormat As You Type tab in the AutoCorrect dialog box.  Next, deselect both the AutoFit Title Text To Placeholder and AutoFit Body Text To Placeholder check boxes, and click OK.  AutoShapes will not now be resized automatically as soon as you enter text in them.

It’s easy to apply the same animation effect to several objects simultaneously instead of one-by-one.  Start by opening an existing presentation with a number of objects on one of the slides.  Choose Slide Show/Custom Animation from the main menu, when the Custom Animation dialog box appears, click on the Order & Timing tab and select the check box next to each object you want to animate.

When editing a presentation in Slide view, PowerPoint offers you a number of ways of displaying a particular slide:

1.      you can move forward or backward one slide at a time by clicking the Previous Slide and Next Slide buttons on the vertical scroll bar

2.      You can also drag the scroll bar up or down to navigate to the desired spot or use the [Page Up] and [Page Down] keys.

You can change the colour scheme easily for a group of slides in your presentation without changing the colour scheme of the entire slide show.

Switch to Slide Sorter View, hold down the [Ctrl] key ([Shift] for PowerPoint 97 and PowerPoint 2001) as you click on the slides you want to change. 

If using PowerPoint 97/2000/2001, choose Format/Slide Colour Scheme from the menu bar, select a new colour scheme or create a custom scheme in the resulting Colour Scheme dialog box, then click Apply; only the selected slides will be changed.

If you do not want to display a slide show' with animation effects, you can disable them temporarily using the Set Up Show dialog box.  Start by choosing Slide Show/Set Up Show to open the Set Up Show dialog box.  Select the Show Without Animation check box in the Show Type panel (Show Options panel in PowerPoint 2002).  Click OK to apply the change and then start the slide show.  As you advance through the slide show, none of your animations will play. 

 In some presentations, you can sometime find that the Title Master option is unavailable (either greyed out or not displayed at all) in the submenu when you choose View | Master from the menu bar.

 When you execute an action, you can repeat it by adding the Repeat action button to a toolbar and clicking on the button, or you can choose Edit/Repeat action. However, there is a quicker way to repeat your last action by pressing the [F4] function key.

You can create flowcharts or other connected object schemes easily using PowerPoint's Connectors feature which enables you to connect AutoShapes, text boxes, WordArt and clip art.

First insert, modify and position at least two objects as you want them to appear on your slide. Next, display the Drawing toolbar, if not already displayed, by right-clicking on any open toolbar and selecting Drawing from the resulting shortcut menu.

To connect two objects, choose AutoShapes/Connectors from the Drawing toolbar. Select the connector tool you would like to use then position the pointer over one of the objects to be connected. The pointer will change to a connector icon and the object's connector handles are displayed in blue. Place the mouse pointer over the connector handle from which you would like to connect and click once. Place the mouse pointer over the connector handle of the object to which you wish to connect and click again. PowerPoint inserts a connector line between the objects' connector handles.

You can edit your WordArt picture fills as you would any other inserted image using the tools on the Picture toolbar.

To fill your WordArt text with an image, click the Format WordArt button on the WordArt toolbar to launch the Format WordArt dialog box. Next, click the Colors And Lines tab and choose Fill Effects from the Color dropdown list in the Fill panel to launch the Fill Effects dialog box. Then, click on the Picture tab, click the Select Picture button, navigate to and select your image file in the Select Picture dialog box, and click the Insert button.

When adjusting transparency for an object fill, its much easier to preview the changes before you apply them than to have to exit and re-open either the Fill Effects or the Format AutoShape dialog box.

Hiding slides is a great way to save additional notes, slides you want to display only if you have extra time or slides that contain images linked to another slide containing thumbnail images.

When a slide is hidden, it will not be displayed through the regular navigation of your slide show. However, you can display it at any time using the shortcut menu located in the bottom-left corner of the screen in Slide Show view.

To hide a slide in your presentation, click the Slide Sorter View button or choose Slide Sorter from the View menu. Click on the slide you want to hide and click the Hide Slide button on the Slide Sorter toolbar.

MS EXCEL TIPS

Microsoft has patched a security vulnerability that affects several versions of Excel. In addition, they've released a Critical Update to fix a bug that pertains to the recently released Excel 2003.

The security problem involves issues with macros created using the legacy Excel 4.0 Macro Language (XLM). The vulnerability allows commands to run without first triggering the usual macro warning.  The problem affects all version of Excel from 97 to 2002 and Microsoft has indicated that the fix is "Important."

The Office 2003 bug is linked to OfficeArt shapes. If you open a document that was saved in a previous version of Office, the document may become corrupted or not open completely.

If you have Office 2000 or above, you can scan your system to see which patches are needed using the service provided on the Microsoft Office Product Updates site.  However, Office 97 users must manually download and apply the updates.  The following hyperlinks will lead to more information and instructions on how to obtain the patches:

Microsoft Office Product Updates site http://office.microsoft.com/productupdates/default.aspx

Vulnerability in Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel Could Allow Arbitrary Code to Run (831527) http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/security/bulletin/MS03-050.asp

Many spreadsheet modellers set up workbooks so that data is logically split across several sheets.  For example, you may dedicate worksheets to individual months or quarters.  When you use this approach, you often also create a summary sheet that consolidates the information.  If so, you may wind up creating a lot of long, cumbersome formulas, such as:

=SUM(January!D38+February!D38+March!D38+April!D38+May!D38+June!D38+

July!D38+August!D38+September!D38+October!D38+November!D38+December!D38)

Not only is this cumbersome but it makes it time consuming if you need to insert another worksheet.

However, there is a much better way to create such the summary sheet by using 3-D range references.  With 3-D references, the worksheets form the third "dimension" of the reference.  When you create the reference, the first element is the range of worksheet names. You simply specify the first and last worksheet, separated by a colon.  The formula in the example above can be rewritten to achieve the same result.:

Depending upon your set security level, Excel will usually warn you when you try to open a workbook that contains macros and provides you with the option to cancel the process. However, sometimes you may wonder what Excel is warning you about as the workbook in question does not seem to contain any macros.

Most likely, a macro was at one time associated with the file.  Even though the macro is now gone, the VBA module that it was stored in still exists.  The module is empty, but Excel displays the warning message whenever you open the file.

Before you try to eliminate this nuisance.  Make a copy of the workbook in case you accidentally make a change that prevents something from working correctly.  To modify the file check is to see if there is a VBA code module associated with the file.  To do this, choose Tools/Macro/Visual Basic Editor from the menu bar.  Look for a folder named Modules in the Project Explorer. If the Project Explorer is not visible, choose View/Project Explorer from the menu bar.

Assuming you find a Modules folder associated with your workbook, double-click on it to reveal its objects.  The folder can contain several module objects.  Double-click on each module.  If the macros were deleted, you should see blank code windows (although they might contain statements like Option Explicit, you shouldn't see any actual macro procedures). 

Many spreadsheet modellers, when needing to add worksheets to an Excel file will use the Insert/Worksheet menu command. 

It can be a real struggle to create functions based on the last day of any month, or the number of days in a variable month.  A useful trick that uses the DATE function returns the last day of a month. It even takes leap years into account.

The DATE function uses the syntax  =DATE(year, month, day).  A formula such as

=DATE(2003,9,17) returns the date for 17 September, 2003.

To find the last date in a month is to specify a month argument one greater than the month you really want and use a day value of 0.  For example, a formula of

=DATE(2003,3,0) returns the date February 28, 2003.

To calculate the number of days in a month, you can wrap the DATE formula in a DAY function.  For example, the formula of

=DAY(DATE(2003,1,0)) returns 31, the number of days in December.

The technique takes leap years into account.  For example, the formula

=DAY(DATE(2003,3,0)) returns 28, the standard number of days in February. However, the formula

In order to see a set of data displayed as several different chart types, it would be nice if Excel's Format Painter could be used to copy any customised formatting you've applied from chart to chart.  Unfortunately, if you make formatting changes to a chart like customised fonts and backgrounds, you need to make the same changes to subsequent charts you create to preserve a consistent look.

An example of how you can simplify the replication of chart settings might involve, say, creating a bar chart and a line chart based on the same set of data.  Create your bar chart and set up the formatting you need.  Select the chart and choose Edit/Copy from the menu bar.  Next, click in your worksheet and choose Edit/Paste from the menu bar to duplicate your chart.  Choose Chart/Chart Type from the menu bar, select the chart type you need, and click OK.  

When you create a cell comment in Excel by choosing Insert/Comment from the menu bar, Excel automatically formats the comment as a yellow rectangle.  You can change the way the cell comment appears although you cannot change the default style. 

While your insertion point is in a comment, you can change typical font attributes, such as font name or size, text colour, or underline formatting.  You can also change attributes affecting the comment box itself.  To start with, if necessary, choose View | Comments from the menu bar to display your comments.  Click on a comment box being sure to click on the edge of the box and not within it.  Next, choose Format/Comment from the menu bar to reveal the formatting options that are available.

If you want, you can even use a different shape for your comments by substituting one of Excel's AutoShapes in place of the default box.  To do so, select the comment box.  Then, choose View/Toolbars/Drawing if the Drawing toolbar is not already visible.  Finally, choose Draw/Change AutoShape from the Drawing toolbar and select the AutoShape you want to use.