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Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for the ‘Office’ Category

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Office 2010/2007: Ribbon minimize mode: maximize space by “Auto-Hiding” the Ribbon in Office (via: How-To Geek)

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/06/08

The ribbons in Office 2010/2007 take up a lot of sceen estate.

Luckily, it is easy to maximize space by “Auto-Hiding” the Ribbon in Office 2010/2007: put the Ribbon in “Minimize Mode”.

The Ribbon will un-hide when you:

  • click on one of the Ribbon tabs
  • press the Alt key followed by a letter corresponding to a Ribbon tab

How-To Geek explains (with screen shots) how to put the Ribbon in “Minimize Mode”:

To put the Ribbon into minimized mode, just right-click an open area on the Ribbon and choose Minimize the Ribbon.

Edit:

In addition to that (thanks Matthijs!) you can switch the Ribbon to/from auto-hide behaviour by double-clicking on a ribbon tab.

–jeroen

via: Maximize Space by “Auto-Hiding” the Ribbon in Office 2007 – How-To Geek.

Posted in Excel, Office, Power User, Word | 2 Comments »

.NET/C#: reading/writing Excel workbooks and worksheets

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/06/06

Basically there are many ways to read/write Excel workbooks and worksheets:

  1. Use the open source EPPlus .NET assembly (which is based on ExcelPackage)
  2. Use the open source ExcelLibrary which seems to be derived from PHP ExcelWriter
  3. Use OleDB to read/write Excel with either the JET (Office <= 2003) or ACE (Office +> 2007) drivers
  4. Use COM/OleAutomation/Interop/VSTO

The latter is used by many many people, and has two big drawbacks:

  • it requires Excel to be installed
  • it is painfully slow

The others can run server side as they do not require Excel to be installed. They are also much faster.

I’ve used OleDB, and it is sort of OK, but hard work.

EPPlus is much faster and versatile and seems to be the most active open source project.

–jeroen

Posted in .NET, .NET 4.5, ASP.NET, C#, Development, Excel, Office, Software Development | 2 Comments »

Excel 2010/2007: Convert text to a table or vice versa (via: Word – Office.com)

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/05/21

The introduction of the Ribbon in Office 2007 and 2010 often makes me ask “why are things so complicated now, that were so easy until Office 2003”.

One of the things that were very close together in Word 2003, was converting text to and from tables: they were in adjecent menu items.

Not any more, as you can see in the Convert text to a table or vice versa  topic on the Microsoft site. There is even a Dummies article on this topic.

Summarized:

Convert text to a table

  1. Tab Insert,
  2. Group Tables,
  3. click Table,
  4. then click Convert Text to Table.

Of course the keyboard shortcuts are “easy” to remember: Alt, N, T, V

Convert a table to text

  1. When you have a (portion of a) table selected, you get a new contextual tab set called Table Tools.
  2. Tab Layout,
  3. Group  Data,
  4. click Convert to Text.

Of course the keyboard shortcuts are “easy” to remember: Alt, J,L, V

Word 2007/2010: Convert Table to Text

–jeroen

via: Convert text to a table or vice versa – Word – Office.com.
Naming of ribbon UI elementsNaming of ribbon UI elements

Posted in Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, Office, Power User, Word | Leave a Comment »

Microsoft Excel 2007/2010 – Protecting Workbooks and Worksheets

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/05/04

One of the things about the Office 2007 and 2010 Ribbon is that it makes the things that you have remembered for 10+ years go into hard to find places.

My point is that according to the ribbon documenation:

A ribbon can replace both the traditional menu bar and toolbars.

Microsoft has decided to read the “a ribbon can replace” as “the ribbon replaces”. Thereby also introducing a whole new naming for the UI elements used in ribbons (see at the bottom).

Tab "Review"; Group "Changes"; Commands "Protect Sheet" / "Protect Workbook"

Tab “Review”; Group “Changes”; Commands “Protect Sheet” / “Protect Workbook”

Protecting a worksheet and workbook have been in the menu “Tools”, submenu “Protection” forever. But alas: No more “Tools” menu, and accompanying keyboard shortcut productivity (and I needed “unprotect workbook” because you cannot copy workbooks inside a protected workbook).

As “password protect worksheet” shows, it is now under:

  1. Tab: Review
  2. Group: Changes
  3. Commands: Protect Sheet / Unprotect Sheet / Protect Workbook / Unprotect Workbook

–jeroen

via: Microsoft Excel 2007 – Protecting Workbooks.

Naming of ribbon UI elements

Naming of ribbon UI elements

Posted in Excel, Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, Office, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Start a New Line Inside a Spreadsheet Cell in Excel | Excel Semi-Pro

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/03/16

Unlike most tools where you use Shift-Enter to add a line break character (ASCII 10: line feed), Excel is different:

Sometimes it’s necessary to have more than one line inside a worksheet cell, which is easily done with a line break.

Add a new line by holding down the Alt key while you press enter. It’s the keyboard shortcut Alt+Enter. In Excel 2008 and 2011 for Mac use Cmd+Option+Enter.

–jeroen

via: Start a New Line Inside a Spreadsheet Cell in Excel | Excel Semi-Pro.

Posted in Excel, Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, Office, Office 2000, Office 2003, Office 2007, Office 2010, Office 2013, Office 2016, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Ref: Microsoft Word Help FAQ. How to create heading numbering and outline numbering in Microsoft Word

Posted by jpluimers on 2010/03/16

I’m always fighting with numbering and formatting headings in Word. Legal documents, manuals, etc, all benefit when the headings are numbered and formatted right.

In Word, I love styles, so the best thing to get this right is to modify the styles of your headings.

Shauna Kelley wrote a great reference titled Microsoft Word Help FAQ. How to create heading numbering and outline numbering in Microsoft Word on this topic.

No need to add anything to that :-)

–jeroen

Posted in Office, Power User, Word | Leave a Comment »

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