maryannrichardson

Avoid the hassle of manually importing Word form data into Excel. With the help of an Excel wizard, you can quickly step through the process.

Copying formulas in Excel is a relatively simple operation – unless you need to copy down through dozens or even hundreds of cells. Here’s a foolproof little trick that will knock out the task for you.

Left to its own devices, Excel will convert your fractions into dates as soon as you enter them in your spreadsheet. See how you can work around this problem.

You can greatly enhance a form by having Access supply information based on the user’s selection. Here’s an example that will fill in an employee’s first name and phone number when the user chooses that person’s last name from a list.

You can have Access clear the selection from a combo box in a data entry form so that the user starts fresh with each new record. See how to make this user-friendly tweak.

Sometimes, it’s more efficient to take a task into your own hands. See how you can save a little time entering a PAGE field instead of making a trip to the Page Numbers dialog box.

With the help of a simple function, Excel’s Conditional Formatting feature can save you time and effort. Here’s an easy way to flag formulas in your worksheets.

Consolidate and streamline your Word document display to avoid the clutter of individual application windows.

There’s no need to manually scrawl your way through a paper form. Convert the form to an online image you can fill out using Word.

Totals queries can be a little limited in the information they include. Here’s a trick that will make them a little more useful.

This cool trick uses the REPT function in a slightly unorthodox way: to create a worksheet-style ‘progress bar’ that presents a quick visual comparison of data in specified cells.

Setting up a presentation to run all by itself — at a kiosk, say, or on your Web site — requires just a few steps. Mary Ann Richardson explains how to set slide transitions and configure the show to run on its own.