Chris Menard is a Microsoft MVP. He is certified in Excel, Word, Outlook, and PowerPoint. His YouTube videos have over 25 million views.
Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word comes with plenty of predefined text watermarks. Among them are Draft, Confidential, Do Not Copy, Sample, Urgent, and ASAP. When you create a watermark it is in the center of the page by default. You can change the font, size, and color of any watermark. If you don’
Microsoft PowerPoint
PowerPoint has a new feature called QuickStarter. I think it is awesome! PowerPoint QuickStarter solves this problem by building an outline for you with suggested sections, talking points, and properly attributed Creative Commons images to help get you started. It doesn’t create a finished product for you, but it
Microsoft Excel
When you enter zip codes in Excel, the leading zeros will get dropped. Here are some examples. Massachusetts starts with 01 and 02. Hew Hampshire is 03, Maine is 04, Vermont is 05, Connecticut 06, and New Jersey is 07 and 08. So when you type in the zip codes
Microsoft Excel
Conditional formatting is one of my favorite features in Excel. I like it because I’m a visual person. Excel has a lot of predefined rules in Conditional Formatting, but it is very easy to write a formula if the predefined rules don’t have what you need. An Executive
Microsoft Excel
You can use data validation to restrict the type of data or the values that users enter into a cell. An example would be if you have a column for Departments, and someone puts in Accounting but another person types in Acct. (abbreviating Accounting). Data validation keeps bad data from
Microsoft Excel
There may be times when you do not want a cell reference to change when filling cells. Unlike relative references, **absolute references** do not change when copied or filled. You can use an absolute reference to keep a row and/or column **constant**. The keyboard shortcut for absolute reference is
Microsoft Excel
Excel has built-in custom lists. You can sort data by days of the week or months of the year. Or create your own custom lists to sort by any other characteristic that doesn’t sort well alphabetically, such as July to June; October to September; S, M, L, XL. With
Microsoft Word
If you want your Heading 1 paragraphs to start at the top of the next page, you can accomplish this with a page break, but a better option would be to use Word’s paragraph feature to do this. 1. Right-click your **Heading 1** style and select **Modify**. 2. Now
Microsoft Outlook
You can delay the delivery of an email message and have the message held in the **Outbox** for a specified time after you click **Send**. Delayed Delivery is a great feature if you are emailing out proposals or doing an email campaign. Applies to: Outlook 2016, Outlook 2013, Outlook 2010,
Microsoft Outlook
Do find yourself typing the same message over and over, perhaps a weekly reminder for projects, progress reports, or your availability? Outlook Quick Parts can help you with your Canned Responses. Set up a canned response in Outlook 1. Start a new mail message in Outlook. 2. Click in the
Microsoft Excel
When the numbers in your Excel file vary widely from data series to data series and you want to create a chart, the chart to create is a **Combo** chart. You would also use a combo chart when you have mixed types of data (for example, revenue and net income
Microsoft Excel
Need to calculate the weighted average for work or school? There are two ways to do it but the easiest is to use the sumproduct function in Excel. It is easy to calculate the average. Just use the average function in MS Excel which will show you the calculated “central”