I love what I do; I get to work with an outstanding team to help hundreds of people with their challenges. I’ve learnt a lot from the teams I’ve worked with, no matter the size or industry we all have challenges to overcome, difficult customers, creating a budget or keeping a project on track.
Cost Overview Reports Where is your spend going? Could your resources be better allocated? Cost Overview reports in MS Project are a great way of keeping track of your budget in a way that’s digestible and simple to share with colleagues and clients. The Cost Overview report shows the following prior to setting a baseline: […]
In years gone by, the Microsoft Office Suite would come pre-loaded on your PC or laptop. However, due to a host of market influences including increasing demand for cheaper hardware, many products were boxed and customers were invited to pay only for the applications they needed. In June 2011, Microsoft launched Office 365, a subscription […]
Project 2013 comes with a brand new set of pre-designed reports and dashboards to help you better understand your data. You can visualise performance and analyse resources in ways that weren’t previously possible in Microsoft Project. The burndown report is a much-requested feature that will be especially interesting to those of you practicing agile and […]
Introduced in Excel 2010, Sparklines create charts within a cell. It can help to show one figure in context with others and illustrate trends. In this example a blank column is created for the sparklines before selecting the adjacent data. In Excel 2013 the Quick Analysis feature has now brought Sparklines to the fore. Perfect […]
The Folder Pane and the Peek feature provide quick and convenient ways to open your email, calendar, contacts, and tasks. One of the new features in Outlook 2013 is the ability to peek at the details of the other Outlook objects such as Calendar, Tasks and Email. This is great for those times when you […]
The Timeline feature was first introduced to MS Project users in 2010. It helps to display a visual summary of a project. This post will detail the many functions of the Timeline feature and which benefits it can offer in addition to the normal Gantt view. In its simplest form, the Timeline can be used […]
Comparing and tracking changes in a spreadsheet is hard work. It’s utterly necessary but that doesn’t make it any easier. When you start adding in modifications to the VBA code underneath – which is not immediately obvious – there’s a mountain of things to screen. If a colleague has modified a module you’ll have to […]
One of the most common questions in PowerPoint training is “how can I see something different on my screen to the audience?” The answer is complicated and involves multiple graphics card outputs. The Presenter View was added in 2010 but has really come into it’s own in PowerPoint 2013. In Presenter View you can see […]
For users with the Office Professional Plus package, the Inquire add-in comes pre-installed on Excel 2013. Helping you to analyse, audit and review workbooks, this great new feature also has the potential to highlight errors and security concerns. We recently discussed, how to take back control of your spreadsheets by reducing “fat finger mistakes” and […]
Because appearance means everything in modern day business, you’ll want to make sure that you dress right for the occasion. Outlook 2013’s new Calendar view will give you all the information you need to plan your day’s schedule or your next trip. The temperature defaults to Fahrenheit which can be changed easily. How to: File […]
Previous versions of Word came with useful layout options optimised for printing and web viewing. Print layout and webpage layout were particularly useful in years gone by. The recent addition to Word 2013 sees the introduction of a new Read Mode. Optimised for tablets and touch, your document will adjust according to screen size and […]
A great way of preserving the look and feel of the original source document when sending to multiple devices, the PDF is a much loved office favourite. Compressing large file sizes into much reduced versions is one of the PDFs best features. However, up until recently, making changes to a PDF file in Word was […]
Social networking is an important part of modern day business. Microsoft have recognised this and redesigned Outlook around your favourite platforms, LinkedIn, Facebook and others. Get the updates that you want from the people that you trust, right on time. When you open an email in Outlook, the Outlook Social Connector is minimized as a […]
Save time and effort with Flash Fill for Excel 2013. Just one in a long line of nifty improvements to help you work more efficiently. Flash Fill for Excel 2013 notices patterns in your data entry and then auto completes the remaining, so there’s no need to use formulas or macros to do this. Data […]
So many times people pick the wrong chart type for their data. There’s a time and a place for pies, and lines aren’t for everyone. Picking the right one takes a bit of thought. The Charts option in the Quick Analysis gallery, a new feature for Excel 2013, allows the user to quickly view and […]
If you’ve got a lot of data, it’s not always easy to spot trends and to easily analyse your figures. Conditional Formatting can instantly show you patterns in your data by highlighting cells that meet certain conditions. So for example you might want to flag up sales below a certain threshold in red, or bold occurrences of […]
Poor Excel skills are costing UK businesses millions in lost revenue. According to an article in the Financial Times more than half of financial service groups have “poorly applied or no controls for managing business critical spreadsheets”. The article blamed losses in part due to “avoidable errors in MS spreadsheets”. So, what could thousands of UK […]
The Sigmoid Curve, or S Curve as it’s otherwise referred to, can represent any number of things. Its characteristics are easily recognisable with a period of slow initial growth, through rapid expansion and finally reaching a plateau. Its use varies from illustrating the lifecycle of a new product, the cost effectiveness of a training course, […]
Project management can be a daunting task, especially if you are new to the role. To ensure that you stay on top of things throughout the course of your project, whilst keeping everyone happy, we recommend using Earned Value Equations. This article will discuss the benefits of using Earned Value Formulae when conducting your projects, […]
For those of you that have been using computers since the 1990’s, you’ll likely remember a number of Easter Eggs embedded into a range of Microsoft applications. But do you remember all of them? This post will take you on a trip down memory lane to a time before the Trustworthy Computing Initiative of 2002, […]
Formerly named Business Productivity Online Suite, Office 365 sees the introduction of a host of cool features that have the potential to increase your company’s productivity. With the ability to take your Office suite and put it onto the cloud, there’s huge scope for businesses to work more efficiently. Your Office can be accessed anywhere […]
Passing your spreadsheet and database needs to an external company is all too appealing when looking for quick results at low cost. But, is this economically viable or is outsourcing slowing bringing Britain to its knees? Can the US President’s passion for insourcing make Britain Great again? Insourcing is the process of bringing operations back […]
We’re constantly looking for ways to increase productivity. The normal 9-5 no longer exists and you find yourself constantly managing content on the move outside of your ‘regular’ working hours. Of course the ability to save documents on a flash drive or locally on your laptop hard drive has been an effective, and mobile, way […]
A question that often arises with a newly launched version of an application is; Will the new file format be compatible with an older version? If you are a Microsoft Project user then this question is asked more often than with other Microsoft applications. If you have been sent a Project MPP file created in […]
When you open the Basic Flowchart template in Visio, the Basic Flowchart Shapes stencil opens too. Each shape on the stencil represents a different kind of step in a process. However, there is no standard, universal meaning for the shapes – any shape can carry whatever meaning is agreed on by the people who will […]
In a commercial environment you’re probably aware of the ever-deepening sea of paperwork that lands in your inbox or on your desk. Over time we develop skills in picking out key points from the entire document, but over time we also become passive viewers of content both at work and in our personal lives. How […]
This week we published an infographic detailing What’s in and What’s out in Office 2013. Click the image to see the full thing…
Cloud storage is everywhere Cloud based services are increasingly become a part of our day-to-day lives. During the early stages of using online storage users were unsure whether or not storing their private data on a remote server was a safe alternative to storing it locally. However consumer confidence has increased and the services have reached a maturity where they are viable options for file […]
After you’ve worked with VBA for a while, you’re going to want to prompt the user to open a file. Maybe they need to go and select the latest download from their database, or you need to import the contents of the latest sales data. Whatever the scenario, you’re going to need to access the […]
It’s important to stay ahead of the game and decent spreadsheet software such as Microsoft Excel is still regarded as one of the most empowering and flexible ways to track your SEO campaigns. In conjunction with important tools such as Google Analytics & Keyword Tools, Excel is able to help provide unrivalled analysis to aid […]
I used to work with a colleague who maintained a postal mailing list for a brochure we would send out. He used to spend some of his time cleaning up that list by removing repeat entries of customer email addresses who had signed up more than once. “De-duping” he called it. He would block out […]
Printing out Excel spreadsheets can be frustrating. Often you end up with one piece of paper with only one column of data on! If you are printing a spreadsheet that will take up more than one page, you have the ability to control were the page breaks. To do this you need to be in […]
Some people spend a lot of time working with Microsoft Office, performing the same actions over and over again. Using the mouse is a friendly and easy way to navigate around your presentations, but keyboard shortcuts can really speed up your workflow. Just a couple sprinkled throughout your week can add up to significant time […]
You’ve found the perfect image that illustrates the point you’re trying to make in your presentation, so you drop it in. Unfortunately it has a big white rectangle around it that really spoils the look. Or you’ve inserted the logo for your company’s new product but the black background makes it jar against the slide. […]
I even like the sound of it “zoom control”…I was so used to working in whatever view is set up, and then scrolling across endlessly to find the data I wanted to view…and if that didn’t work…I squinted. But I don’t have to. I discovered Zoooom control. I can access it using the Zoom control […]
Minor panic yesterday…I’d worked on an Excel file and quite possibly (you can take that as a yes) I hadn’t saved the changes. I was a bit distracted at the time and seemed to have forgotten the basic Save. Excel is very forgiving like this. It has a way that you can recover unsaved work. […]
Error checking is part of Excel’s auditing tools. It is set up to check your formulas for errors. Like spellcheck, the Error checker tool won’t necessarily find all errors, but it is a useful auditing tool as it works through your document to flag up the errors it spots. In the Formula tab, you have […]
Hyperlinks can add links to an Outlook email address to your Excel worksheet. Here is how to do it. In the cell you wish to add the email address, go to the Insert tab, and select the hyperlink button Type your preferred text into the cell (this saves space as email address are long). This […]
If you use mailmerge in Word, often the source of contact details comes from Excel. And there are times when you inherit contact details from another project or colleague, and the names may not be separated. This can be a heart-sink moment as you need to separate each name individually. Argh…this is going to take […]
When you have worked hard to set up and create an Excel workbook, which may include 3D formulas, pivot tables and links to other key worksheets, you will want to protect your work from unwanted changes. Excel allows you to protect your worksheets work and allow editing It isn’t just about stopping people from making changes to […]
PDF makes a document read only. This can be useful when you want to share information with colleagues, but don’t want them to have access to formulas or make changes to your document. It is one of several ways you can use to protect your Excel documents. To save your current Excel worksheet as a […]
It is possible to use Excel for data entry and miss out some of the tools that can make analysing and summarising data easy-peasy. For me, this was Pivot tables. I avoided Pivot tables because a) I didn’t know what they were and b) I thought it would be too difficult to use as they […]
Outline View I didn’t use this at all in 2003, but in 2010, this view can help me to plan the structure of my document. The Outline View allows me to insert headings for each section, including sub-headings, and even paragraph headings. This acts as the map of my document. Outline View is a great tool […]
Learning to use more shortcuts in Word can be a bit playing Top Trumps. Person 1: “Control + Y , redo, time-saving value of 6.5” Person 2: “Control + Z, undo, time-saving value of 9″, I win, hand over the card!” Ok, so I don’t actually play top trumps with shortcuts (it’s generally Ben 10 […]
I have proofread and copy edited a lot of different documents. Everything from policy documents, to articles and committee papers. They all had different content and specialist language, but all of them needed thorough and systematic proofreading and it can take ages. It’s one of the reasons I drink so much coffee. My old method […]
If you often scroll through large Word documents to edit text, you could save yourself time by splitting the screen instead of scrolling backwards and forwards. This way, you can see two sections of your Word document on one screen – which can be useful, for example, if you are comparing your introduction to your […]
Here is a quick skill to add to your Word repertoire – a little touch of Basildon Bond to your paperwork. Watermarks aren’t just to look fancy, they do perform a useful function of reminding the reader that a document is in draft, or it is confidential. To add a watermark to your Word document, you […]
Either you love them or hate them, but Christmas newsletters can be great fun to create and a good way of sharing news with colleagues or family and friends. If you volunteer for a charity or help out with your local school, you may be asked to sort out the newsletter. You can save […]
Documents evolve over time and with the input of others. Tracking changes is a perfect for editing Word documents as you can see any sections that have been deleted, had format changes or include new content. With tracking tools you can control the changes by accepting or rejecting suggestions and approve the final version. To […]
In a previous job, I compiled meeting agendas and papers, which were subject to changes right up to the moment the meeting papers were sent out. This would mess up bullet point numbering in the agenda and in the meeting papers. With many people working on the same agenda, I could have saved a lot […]