Microsoft Office Blog by Chris Menard

Create a treemap in Excel to spot patterns

A treemap chart provides a hierarchical view of your data and makes it easy to spot patterns, such as which items are a store's best sellers.

Resize all images in PowerPoint

To reduce your PowerPoint file size, you should compress your images. You can compress all the images at one time by using Compress

Use Conditional Formatting with groups in Excel

Can you use conditional formatting with groups of data in Excel by creating a helper column and using the IsOdd and IsEven function.

Protect a worksheet range in Excel

Need to make sure your formula or functions don't get deleted along with other information? You can protect a cell range in Excel.

Use Icon Set in Excel - just two arrows by Chris Menard

Present data in three categories using icon sets in excel. Each icon represents a range of values. I show how to use two arrows in this blog post.

Use Sparklines in Microsoft Excel

Sparklines in Excel provide a fast way to see patterns at a glance. There are three type of sparklines in Excel: Win/Loss, Column, and Line.

Excel - make accounting, currency, and number style zero decimal places by default

Use the Control Panel to change the default decimal places to zero for accounting, currency, and numbers in Microsoft Excel. Video by Chris Menard

Mail merge letters in Micrsoft Word using Excel spreadsheet as data source

To perform a letter mail merge in Microsoft Word you need a data source. Excel is a great data source. This covers setting up your letters - Chris Menard

Add the filename and path to a Word document

If you put the filename and path in a Word document, when you need to update the file, you know exactly where you saved it.

Outlook mail merge - personalize email messages

Need to send emails to a group? Instead of sending to a contact group, you can do a mail merge and personalize each recipient's email.

Turn off Outlook notifications and alerts

Microsoft Outlook's desktop alerts are great when you are working alone, but if you are doing a presentation or one-on-one training, turn them off.