Create professional-looking page borders in Word 2007

Microsoft Word

Whether you’re creating a flyer for your company bulletin board or the cover page for your quarterly department report, adding a professional-looking page border can help attract attention to your work. With Word 2007’s Page Layout Ribbon, you can quickly add a border to any page of your document.

For example, to add a border to the title page of your report, follow these steps:

1. Click anywhere on the title page.
2. Click the Page Layout tab.
3. Click the Page Borders command in the Page Background group.
4. Under Setting, select Box.
5. Scroll through the Style drop-down list and click a style of your choice.
6. Click the Color drop-down list and click a color of your choice.
7. Click the Apply To drop-down list and select This Section — First Page Only.
8. Click OK.

If you wish to use one of the built-in art borders instead, in step 5, click and scroll through the Art drop-down list and select the design of your choice.

Microsoft Excel

Let's say that each month you provide your sales team with a column chart that compares year-to-date monthly sales. You want to draw attention to the columns representing the months when the salespeople did not meet their goals. It would be great if you could change the color of those columns so they would stand out; unfortunately, Excel does not support conditional formatting of data series objects. You could set up your spreadsheet so that Excel will format those months as a separate data series with a different color. Follow these steps:

1. Enter Month in A1.
2. Enter January in A2.
3. Enter February in A3.
4. Enter March in A4.
5. Enter April in A5.
6. Enter May in A6.
7. Enter June in A7.
8. Enter Sales in B1.
9. Enter 1000 in B2.
10. Enter 500 in B3.
11. Enter 800 in B4.
12. Enter 900 in B5.
13. Enter 1100 in B6.
14. Enter 300 in B7.
15. Enter Meets Goal in C1.
16. Enter Below Goal in D1.
17. Select C2:C7.
18. Enter this formula in C2: =IF(B2>=600,B2,NA()).
19. Press [Ctrl][Enter].
20. Select D2:D7.
21. Enter this formula in D2: =IF(B2<600,B2,NA()).
22. Press [Ctrl][Enter].
23. Select C1:D7.
24. Press [Alt][F1].
25. Right-click any column and select Format Data Series.
26. Under Options, change the Series Overlap to 99% and the Gap Width to 0.

As you add rows to the chart, the column where the data automatically falls will determine its series color in the chart.

Microsoft Access

The more records output to an Access report, the harder it becomes to read. When you see your employees taking out their rulers to read your reports, it’s time to add some white space between the lines. To add a blank line after every five records, follow these steps:

1. Open your report in Design view.
2. Click the Text Box tool, and then click and drag below the fields containing data in the Detail section to create an unbound text box. Delete the text box label.
3. Click the Text Box tool, and then click and drag to create a small unbound text box beneath the first box. Delete the text box label.
4. Right-click the first text box and select Properties.
5. Click in the Name property box and type txtCounter.
6. Click in the Visible property box and select No.
7. Click in the RunningSum box and select Over All.
8. Click in the ControlSource box and enter =1.
9. Click in the CanShrink property box and select Yes.
10. Right-click the second text box and select Properties.
11. Click the Name property box and enter txtSpacer.
12. Click in the CanShrink property box and select Yes.
13. Click the drop-down list of the property list and select Detail.
14. Click in the CanShrink property box and select Yes.
15. Click the Event tab.
16. Click in the On Format property box and select Event Procedure.
17. Click the Build button and enter the following code at the prompt (be sure there is a space between the quotation marks):

    If (txtCounter Mod 4) = 0 Then
    txtSpacer = " "
    Else
    txtSpacer = Null
    End If

To adjust the amount of white space between the lines, simply resize the txtSpacer control to the desired height.