Indiana University: IT Training Tips Blog

When working with a Style Set, you might experience unexpected results when you press the Enter key.  Style properties include a specific "Style for following paragraph."  This means that each style is automatically set up to be followed by a specific style. 

In the default Office 2007 Style Set, the Headings are followed by the Normal style.

But what if you wanted your Heading 1 to be followed by a Heading 2?  You could manually change the Style to Heading 2, or you could modify the properties of Heading 1 so that it is automatically followed by Heading 2. 

Modifying a Style

To begin modifying the Heading 1 style, in the Style Gallery, right-click the Heading 1 style.  From the drop-down menu, choose Modify. 

The Modify Styles dialog box opens.  One of the properties of Heading 1 is "Style for following paragraph."  This property is currently set to Normal. 

The "Style for following paragraph" can be changed by clicking the drop-down arrow and choosing the style you want to follow Heading 1.  In our case, this is Heading 2.  Click OK to close the dialog box. 

After making that change, when we type a Heading 1 and press Enter, the next paragraph will be a Heading 2.  We made no change to Heading 2, so it will still be followed by Normal.

In Word 2007, Styles and Themes play a much more prominent role.  Styles have been placed in the middle of the Home tab of the Ribbon and Themes are hard to miss on the Page Layout tab.  At first glance, it may be difficult to see the differences between the two features.  They both greatly affect the document.  However, Styles and Themes have been designed to work together and have different purposes.

Styles are a predefined combination of text and paragraph attributes which include font, size and line spacing, as well as indents, alignment, borders and shading.  Styles can be used to quickly and consistently format a document.  Styles are also necessary for some advanced work in Word, including outlines, tables of contents, and document maps.

Themes control the overall colors, fonts, and effects that are used in a document.  Each theme has twelve colors and two fonts.  Theme effects determine how effects are applied to your charts, SmartArt graphics, shapes, and pictures. (Themes are available throughout Microsoft Office 2007 so it is possible to create consistent documents, presentations, and spreadsheets.)

What it boils down to is this: The Theme gives Word 12 colors and 2 fonts to work with and the Style determines exactly how the colors and fonts are used. Or, in other words, the Theme is the list of ingredients and the Style is the recipe.  (more...)

Conditional formatting can be a great tool to enhance the data in your spreadsheet.  There are several options for formatting a cell given the value of that particular cell.  But what if you want to format multiple cells in a row based upon the value of one of more other cells?  Well, that's not so straightforward!

Let's suppose that we have an Excel spreadsheet containing student data, but we want to be able to look down the list and quickly view all freshmen who are female chemistry majors:

(more...)

Have you ever needed to chart noncontiguous dates in Excel?  Often, Excel will attempt to fill in the missing pieces of the series.

This example shows the total number of items sold on a weekly basis:

If we select the data and create a column chart, it looks like this:

Excel has attempted to fill in some of the missing dates; However, because of the size of the chart, Excel is just showing the even numbered dates.

(more...)

Combination charts can be used to highlight different types of information in a single chart.  Using a combination of a column chart and a line chart can give a more specific visual representation of the data and help to make data easier to understand. Combination charts are particularly helpful when the values of the data vary greatly or when you are working with mixed types of data.

(more...)

When using the Address Block or Greeting Line features of Mail Merge, the fields have to be specific.
• For the Name fields, you may use either “First Name,” “FName,” or even simply “First” to cause Word to recognize that the data in the field is associated with a first name.  The same varieties apply to the Last Name field.
• Use the full words “Address,” “City,” and “State.”  Abbreviations of these words are not recognized by Word.  However, “Zip” is recognized for “Zip Code.”

In a perfect world, everyone would be aware of, and follow, these naming conventions.  However, you may have a data source which uses different field names.  In these cases, the Address Block and Greeting Line features may not work as expected.  If this happens, you can tell Word exactly which fields should be used and where they should be placed.
(more...)