Position your Word tables attractively on a page
Thursday, February 16, 2006 01:05 PM
Microsoft Word
Position your Word tables attractively on a page
Do your tables look out of place on the page? There's no need to try and click and drag them into place. Word's Table Properties makes it easy to position your tables so they automatically align with the surrounding text. For example, suppose you just created a table which by default aligns itself along the left margin with all surrounding text pushed below it. You would like your table to align at the right margin and the text to wrap around it. Follow these steps:
- Select the table.
- Right-click the selected table and click Table Properties.
- Under Alignment, click Right.
- Under Text wrapping, click Around.
- Click OK.
If the table borders have the text too closely wrapped around them, right-click the selected table again, and click the Positioning button from the Table Properties window. You can then adjust the spacing around the table, by increasing the Top, Left, Bottom or Right distance from the surrounding text.
Microsoft Excel
Check out font colors with the Cycle Font Color button in Excel
When you're working in Excel and not sure what color font you should use, you could click on the font color tool and then click on one of the colors to see how it looks on a selected cell. This can become quite tedious, as you have to click twice to view each different color till you come up with the right one.
One solution is to drag the Font Color box off the toolbar so that it floats and you only need to click the color. Or, you can add the Cycle Font Color button to your toolbar--it will let you cycle through each color until you come up with one you like. To add the Cycle font Color button to your formatting toolbar, follow these steps:
- Go to Tools | Customize
- Click the Command tab.
- Select Format under Category.
- Select Cycle Font Color under Commands and drag it to your Formatting toolbar.
- Click close.
Now you can click this button to see how each color looks with your selected text.
Microsoft Access
Use SQL to quickly summarize Access data by group
You can use a SQL statement to quickly summarize data in a table. For example, suppose you need to create a report showing the total number of hours each employee worked over a quarter. Follow these steps:
- Open the database containing the HoursWorked table for the quarter, then click Queries in the objects list in the database window.
- Click New, Design View and OK.
- Click Close.
- Go to Query | SQL Specific | Data Definition.
- Enter
the following statement:
SELECT DISTINCTROW [HoursWorked].[Employee ID], SUM([Hours Worked].Hours) AS [Sum of Hours]
FROM [Hours Worked]
GROUP BY [Hours Worked].[Employee ID]; - Click Run.
The results will show total hours worked grouped by Employee ID. This query can be saved and used to create the quarterly report.
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