Tips

Disable conversion of two numbers with hyphen as date in Excel

July 14, 2014 By Ravi Shankar Leave a Comment

Microsoft Excel has a feature that automatically coverts two numbers separated by hyphen in to a date formatted value. For example if you type 6-7 in a cell, Excel would reformat this in to a date value as 7-Jun. But if you do not want to reformat then you can use any of the below mentioned solutions to disable this feature.

Solution 1: Prefixing the values with apostrophe

The simplest solution is to add apostrophe before 6-7. This would display the typed value without reformatting it.

Solution 2: Change format to Text Format

Another alternate solution is to change the formatting of the cell to Text format. Select the cell (or columns), right click and pick Format Cells from the menu list.

In the Format Cells window, select Text Format under Number tab and click OK button to apply the changes.

Also See: How to prefix cell entry with zero in Excel 2013

Add tick mark to document in Word 2011 for Mac

March 24, 2014 By Ravi Shankar Leave a Comment

This short tutorial is about the steps required for adding check mark to word document in Microsoft Word for Mac. Word 2011 users can insert tick mark using the Symbol browser or Advanced Symbol options.

Symbol browser

Click Insert menu then navigate to Symbol and select Symbol Browser from the sub menu list.

In the Symbol Browser, click the All Symbols drop down and select Check Marks.

Now select your preferred check mark style to insert it to the document. Another alternate way to add a check mark is by using the Advanced Symbol Option under Symbol menu.

Select Windings2 in the Font list box and pick your desired check mark style. Then click Insert button to add the symbol to Word document.

How to add YouTube video to Word 2011.

August 8, 2013 By Ravi Shankar Leave a Comment

In this tutorial we are going to see the steps required for adding videos from Youtube in Word 2011 for Mac. In Office 2011 you can not directly embed YouTube video URL. If you want to insert videos then you need to the following.

first download the video using third party software
Insert the downloaded file using Media option in Word 2011.

Download YouTube Video using third party software.

Step 1: Open http://www.mediaconverter.org/ for downloading the video from YouTube (You can also use other third party software).

Step 2: Click Enter a link option and add the YouTube URL then click Ok button.

Step 3: In the media converter wizard, click go to the next step button.

Step 4: Select the type output file. Since this is on Mac, we have gone with MP4 format. After selecting the output file format, click start conversion button.

You should see the following status message on the media converter page.

Step 5: Click the download link to download the converted file on to your Mac.

Insert downloaded video file in Word 2011

Step 1: Launch Word 2011, click Insert menu and select Movie from file under Movie.

Step 2: In the “Insert Movie or Audio” screen, select downloaded YouTube video and click Choose button.

Now you should be able to see and play the video in your document.

How to import word document in to Publisher 2013

July 24, 2013 By Ravi Shankar 3 Comments

Microsoft Publisher automatically converts a word document in to Publisher File. Listed below are the steps for importing a word document using Publishing 2013.

Step 1: Launch Publisher 2013.

Step 3: Click File menu and select Open from the menu list.

Step 3: Now locate the word document that needs to imported in to Publisher using the Open Publishing window.

On clicking the Open button, Publisher will automatically convert the Word document in to a Publisher file with the following “Publisher is converting the file” message.

How to convert text to table in Word 2011 for Mac

June 10, 2013 By Ravi Shankar 2 Comments

Word 2011 for Mac has a feature that allow users to convert selected text to table. Let us see how to convert the below text to a table using Convert Text to Table feature.

Step 1: Select the text and click Table menu.

Step 2: In the Table menu list, navigate to Convert and select Convert Text to Table option. This would display the Convert Text to Table window as shown below.

Step 3: The example texts are separated using Tabs, navigate to Separate text at section and choose Tabs from the available option. This should automatically detect the rows and columns if the text are only separated by tab. If you are using other delimiters then choose appropriate separators for conversion.

Step 4: Choose the AutoFit behaviour and increase the table size if you are planning to add more rows and columns. Click Ok to confirm and save the changes.

How to add background for document in Word 2011 for Mac

June 1, 2013 By Ravi Shankar Leave a Comment

This tutorial is about the steps required to add background colour or picture to word document in Word 2011 for Mac.

Step 1: Launch the Word Application on Mac and click the Layout Option.

Step 2: In the Layout option, navigate to Page Background section and click the Colors option.

Step 3: The Color drop down will provide different option for changing colours, setting fill effects. The default page background is set to No Fill. If you are looking for other colours other than the theme colours or Standard Colours then click the More Colours option.

You can choose from Color Wheel, Color Sliders, Color Palettes, Image Palettes and Crayons.

Step 4: If you are interested set Patterns or select an image as background then click The Fill effects option.

You can go for Gradient, Texture, Pattern or set background image.

If you want to set background image for a paragraph instead whole document then select the paragraph and repeat the above steps.

How to launch Word 2013 with blank document

July 18, 2012 By Ravi Shankar Leave a Comment

Word 2013 by default displays the start screen during the launch. But if you find this feature not useful and want to always open blank document when launching the application then you can use the settings available part Word 2013 options.

Step 1: Launch Word 2013 and click the File menu.

Step 2: From the left hand sidebar, select Options from the list.

Step 3: In the Word Options window, navigate to Startup Options under the General tab.

Step 4: Unmark the check box with label as Show the Start screen when this application starts. Then click OK button to confirm and save the changes.

Now when ever you launch Word 2013 it will open a blank document.