Susan Harkins

Word offers a variety of standard ways to enter and format page numbers in a document. But these advanced tricks will let you achieve far more control and flexibility for your specific needs.

Excel 2007’s new table feature eliminates the need to copy formulas; once you define a data range as a table, Excel will do it for you!

Microsoft Excel’s fill handle tool won’t create an alphabetic list by default, but there are a few tricks you can use to make it work.

Populating a combo box isn’t hard, but getting the combo box to communicate with a constantly changing list is a little more difficult. Learn how to populate your combo box with a dynamic list.

Learn how to identify formula cells the easy way using VBA, and then combine VBA and conditional formatting for more permanent identification.

The superiority of surrogate versus natural keys is a hotly debated topic among database developers. Susan Harkins offers some insights into when — and why — you might choose one over the other.

By adding a macro to a template’s New, Open, and Close event procedures, you can automate a number of tasks, making you more efficient and productive.

PowerPoint’s motion paths don’t always take the route you expect. When that’s the case, simply move the motion paths!

Don’t struggle to pass strings. Instead, apply these five simple rules when working with embedded strings in VBA.

Even your least technical Access users can improve the performance of their databases. Susan Harkins shares some basic tips those users can put to work right away.

Copying data from one Excel column to another often means an additional task; you must adjust the target column’s width. Fortunately, there’s an easy way to do so using Paste Special.

Excel’s ascending and descending sort options are powerful tools, but they won’t always sort values in a familiar and meaningful way. When this is the case, you might need a custom sort.