Tech Tip: AutoFormat Word dashes/Compare Excel text values/Publish an Access report

Word: AutoFormat dashes

You don’t have to memorize complicated shortcut
keys to insert dashes into your documents. Word’s AutoCorrect
feature lets you insert them by typing one or two hyphens. First,
activate the feature in AutoCorrect by following these steps:

1. In Word 2002, go to Tools | AutoCorrect Options (or AutoCorrect in
   Word 2000).
2. In the AutoCorrect dialog box, select the AutoFormat As You Type
   tab.
3. Under Replace As You Type, select the Hyphens With Dash (or Symbol
   Characters With Symbols in Word 2000) check box, and click OK.

Once
you’ve activated this option, you can insert a dash between ranges
of numbers or dates by typing the first number or date, a space
followed by a hyphen, and the second number or date. To insert a
longer dash, type the text and type two hyphens followed by the
rest of the text.

Excel: Compare values in text fields using DCOUNTA

Excel’s DCOUNTA function finds and counts the
number of records that meet specific criteria, such as how many
employees were hired before Jan. 1, 2000, or how many customers
live within the 08053 ZIP code.

For example, to find out how many people in an
employee spreadsheet live in the state of New York, follow these
steps:

1. Insert two blank rows above the range, and copy and paste the
   column headings into the first blank row.
2. In the second blank row, enter New York in the cell under
   the State field.
3. In another cell outside the criteria range, enter
   =DCOUNTA(
4. Type the range or named range. For example, if the range is named
   Employees, enter that name as the first argument to the
   formula:
   =DCOUNTA(Employees,
5. Type the field name that you want counted. For example, if you want
   to count the number of records that have an entry in the Last_name
   field and whose City field contains the text “New York,”
   enter:
   =DCOUNTA(Employees,”Last Name”,
6. To complete the formula, enter the criteria range, which in this
   example is A1:L2, and press [Enter]:
   =DCOUNTA(Employees,”Last Name”,A1:L2)

The total number of employees living in New
York will be displayed.

Now that the criteria range has been set, you
can use DCOUNTA for other ad hoc reporting functions; just enter
different criteria.

Access: Publish an Access report as a Word document

Not all users who need to work with Access
reports will have Access on their machines. To ensure that all
users can open an Access report over a network, publish it as a
word processing file before sending it.

Follow these steps:

1. In Access 2002, open the report in Print Preview, or select its
   name in the Database window.
2. Go to Tools | Office Links | Publish It With Microsoft Word.

Word opens to reveal the published report saved
as a rich text format document in the My Documents folder. (When
using this tip with Access 2000, the file is saved to the default
database folder.)

Because Word automatically saves the report
with most of its formatting as an .rtf document, users don’t need
to have Access, Word, or a Word viewer to open it. Almost any word
processing program can read the .rtf format.