FireFox Quickie: keywords can be "smart" as well

Building on my previous FireFox Quickie, keywords in the FireFox browser can be even more useful: by adding "%s" at in the bookmarked URL, you can make them "smart". The "%s"will be replaced with whatever you type after the keyword.

FireFox comes with some built-in smart keywords:

• google -> http://www.google.com/search?q=%s
• dict -> http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=%s
  
• stock -> http://www.google.com/search?q=stocks:%s
• wp -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=%s

So you can type dict quickie to find a definition of the work quickie :-)

The easiest way to add a smart keyword is to right-click in a search field on a web page and choose “Add a Keyword for this Search.”This will pop up a dialog for you to add a bookmark name and keyword.
Now I can search for a word in the Dutch version of Wikipedia by typing "wpn" and the search term(s) in the address bar (pressing CTRL+L will move the cursor to the address bar). For example:will bring me immediately to the Dutch Wikipedia page about Ajax.

Looking at the bookmark Properties, the location that is used is http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciaal:Zoeken?search=%s

FireFox Quickie: use keywords for quick access to websites

If you use the FireFox browser, there's an easy way to quickly browse to a website that you use often. After bookmarking the site, right-click the bookmark in your Bookmarks menu and select Properties. In the Keyword field, add a word that you want to use as shortcut for the website.
After doing that, getting to the website is as easy as typing that keyword in the address bar and pressing ENTER.

For example, I regularly have a look at the Spry Framework page of Adobe. Instead of trying to remember the URL or even selecting the bookmark, I added the keyword spry to the Properties of that bookmark:Now, the only thing I have to do is to type spry in the address bar of FireFox and press ENTER.
This will load the bookmark URL. Cool!

SharePoint 2007 Quickie: Adding Lists to a Meeting WorkSpace

In a previous post, I complained about the fact that SharePoint 2007 is not intuitive enough. With this Quickie, I want to share the best way to add a List to a Meeting Workspace:

• The way not to do it: I thought you needed to select Site Actions > Edit Page and then Add a Web Part to add a Custom List to a Meeting Workspace.However, if you do that, you get a list of Web Parts that you can add, but not the list you would expect (or at least, the list I expected). I was looking for a way to add a Custom List, but just a few predefined Lists (Attendees, Directions, Discussion Board, ...) appeared. There was no way to add a Custom List:
  
  
• The way to do it: Simply select Site Actions > Create to add a Custom List to the Meeting Workspace. If you do that, you get the full list of things you can add:The List will be added to the left hand side at the bottom, but after creating it, you can select Site Actions > Edit Page to move the List somewhere.

OK, I have to admit that it isn't that illogical after all to use Create for adding a list, but then again, it would have been nice if you could do the same when using Add a Web Part.

Excel Quickie: Using mm instead of inches for margins

Yesterday I encountered another of those pesky issues that can drive you crazy. I was working in Excel, and needed to change the margins. I wanted to use precise numbers in millimeters, so I clicked the margins button on the Page Layout tab and was confronted with a dialog screen that only showed numbers, no units:Apparently the system was using inches by default. It took me more than an hour of searching on how I could change this into mm... only to find out that you don't define this in Excel, or in the Printer Options. Excel (and the other Office products), use whatever is specified in the Regional and Language Options in the Control Panel.

I was using the English (United States) setting, which also makes Office use inches as default units:
You can change that by clicking the Customize button, and select Metric as Measurement system:Restarting Excel gave me cm instead of inches:Apparently the same applies for Office 2003.

Word Quickie: Insert Quick Part

If you repeatedly need to add some text in Word, the new Quick Parts button on the Insert tab will save you time.

Initially, the Quick Parts menu allows you to insert the main Document Properties, or a Field:

You can easily add items to the Quick Parts menu, by selecting some text and clicking Save Selection to Quick Part Gallery.

This will give you a dialog box, where you can add some details of the Quick Part you're adding. Categories can be defined, and in Options you can select whether you want to Insert the content only, Insert it in its own paragraph, or on its own page:
Once defined, you can insert it with just 2 clicks:
Obviously, any other item can be saved as well, like the SmartArt about Training in the screenshot above.

To change or delete Quick Parts, open the Building Blocks Organizer. It contains your Quick Parts, and you can change the properties of other building blocks as well:

There's a training on the Microsoft Office site that explains this in more detail.

PowerPoint Quickie: Replace Fonts

When I started this blog a few months ago, I promised myself I would not let it die after a few weeks, unlike many other blogs. But I have to admit, keeping it alive has been more of a struggle than I thought. It just takes a lot of time and energy to regularly publish something that is worthwhile reading. I'm not running out of ideas, I'm just having difficulties finding the time to put them into quality posts.

Anyway, at least this is another Quickie for you. Sometimes, when you receive a PowerPoint presentation or some Powerpoint slides that you want to reuse in your own presentation, the fonts of text boxes don't match. The previous versions of PowerPoint had a nice feature to replace a specific font with another one for all slides of your presentation.

PowerPoint 2007 still has that feature, but I couldn't find it. So I went to the Office website and looked at the Interactive Guide for PowerPoint that shows where to find a command in office 2007 if you know where it was in Office 2003.
It turned out it was surprisingly straightforward: it's on the Home tab of the Ribbon, in the Replace-button.

Don't click the button itself, but the drop-down arrow next to it, and you'll be able to replace fonts quickly.

Office Quickie: View your document in multiple windows

Ever wanted to look at another slide in the same presentation while creating it? Or looking up another paragraph in the same document while working on another? Sure, you could split the window in Word 2003, but that was somewhat cumbersome and you only had a vertical split.

Enter the world of Office 2007. In Word, Excel and PowerPoint, you'll find a neat new option in the View Ribbon: New Window. One click and it opens a new window containing the same document.

You can now rearrange both views manually, or use the Arrange All button to quickly put the documents next to each other.

So now you can easily work on a slide in PowerPoint and keep an overview of where it fits in the whole presentation, e.g. by keeping the Slide Sorter view and the slide you're working on, next to each other:

Word Quickie: Document Properties

When creating Office Documents, is'a good idea to fill in Document Properties. This metadata (like Title, Subject, Category, Keywords, ...) not only describes the document better, but it also will make it easier to find the document afterwards, as most desktop search programs will use the metadata to index the document.

In Office 2003, you could get to the Document Properties by selecting the Properties... from the File menu. In Office 2007, I expected it to be in the View or Review tab of the Ribbon, but it is somewhere else: you need to click the Microsoft Office button and select Prepare:

The idea behind the Prepare button is to consolidate all actions you might want to take when a document is ready to be published. There's some logic to putting the Document Properties there, although I would recommend starting with defining the Properties when creating a new document, rather than filling them in when the document is final, almost like an afterthought.

When selecting Properties, you get a pane at the top of the document for the common properties:If you need custom properties, you click the Document Properties button, to get to the Advanced Properties:
This will open a dialog box that looks very much like the Office 2003 one, with a custom tab for custom properties, but also other information like Statistics:

Office Quickie: Minimize the Ribbon

The Ribbon does not take (a lot) more screen real estate than the toolbars in previous versions of Microsoft Office, but sometimes you might want to have as much space as possible.
There are 2 quick ways to minimize the Ribbon:

• double-click the active tab on the Ribbon, or
• press CTRL+F1

Repeating the same will restore the Ribbon.

Word Quickie: Edit header or footer

Don't worry, the top 10 will be on this blog... in the near future :-)
It's just a bit busy these days, and I am sidetracked by a new toy, the Behringer BCD2000.

But I don't want to leave you empty handed this week, so here's a Quickie for Word 2007: I was looking for a quick way to edit the header or footer of a document. Using the Ribbon, you have to go to the Insert tab, click the Header or Footer button, and then move to the bottom of the list to select "edit Header" (or Footer). A rather cumbersome process.

However, if you just right-click in the header or footer area, you can switch to editing the header or footer immediately. A (small) time saver.

And while you're in that editing mode, the Ruler automatically switches to the Header and Footer design tab, which gives you immediate access to add common elements like the Page Number, current Date, the Subject or Title of the document. All these are just 2 clicks away. Nice :-).