Office Hacks

Paste to Word without the Crap

When copying text from Web pages into their MS Office documents, most of the time you just want to capture the words, not all the formatting as well.. Fortunately, MS Office provides a special command to paste the contents of your clipboard as unformatted text. Follow these steps.

  • Choose Edit > Paste Special. A dialog box opens. (If you do not see this command listed, Personalized Menus may be enabled. Click on the expand menu icon (>>) at the bottom of the Edit menu to reveal hidden menu items.)
  • Select “Unformatted Text” from the scrolling “As:” section.
    (In some Office variations, the choice is “Text” rather than “Unformatted Text”.)
  • Click OK. MS Office pastes the text after removing all formatting information.

Auto-insert your Office2k serial number

I really really hate having to find the serial number every time I re-install something from the Office2k CD? You too huh?
Here is how to have it automatically sitting there in the setup.

On your Office2k CD, there’s a file named SETUP.INI.
Open it, and look for the [Options] section. Modify it to look like this:

[Options]
; If a value is present, the [Options] section gives the values of properties to apply to
; this installation. Specify them in the format:
; PropName=PropValue
; Remember to uncomment both the section name and the value names.
;
USERNAME=Customer
PIDKEY=ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXY

Use your name for USERNAME, and of course your own serial number for PIDKEY.
Make sure you uncomment [Options], USERNAME, and PIDKEY else they won’t get read (you can leave USERNAME commented if you want, but you MUST have [Options] uncommented for the PIDKEY value to be read).

Remember if it doesn’t work it was your fault. You pressed enter not me.

MS Office Tip: Use Word Wraps and Line Breaks in Excel

Sometimes, a simple phrase won’t do. People often need to add more text to an Excel spreadsheet than a word or two. Getting that text to fit into a cell can prove problematic. Here are two ways to take control of the way your words fit in a cell.

Use Word Wrap. Select the cells you want to adjust and choose Format > Cells. The Format Cells inspector opens. Click the Alignment tab and check the Wrap text checkbox. Click OK. Add your text to the cells. Excel now automatically wraps the text and resizes the cell as needed.

Use Forced Line Breaks. When you want to enter hard carriage returns rather than letting Excel wrap your text, force a line break instead. Press alt-Enter at the end of each line. Excel moves to the next line–but not the next cell–adjusting the height of the cell as needed to include your text.

Got some table elements to dispose of? The delete key won’t hack it. Pressing Delete just clears table contents.
Use the Backspace key instead.
Backspace doesn’t just clear cells. It deletes the entire selected table structure. It can kill a row, a column or the entire table.
You select it. Backspace removes it.

Want to kill an entire table? Make sure your selection includes the end-of-row/column/table marker
If you turn on the formatting marks, it makes things a little easier still. Be sure to grab that end of row section marker and delete away with the row.