Just Tips

Resort your documents by type

Mon, 06 May 2013 15:33:00 -0600

Resort your documents by type by using the "Arrange by" option in Windows Explorer.

Change the size of Icons in Windows 7

Mon, 06 May 2013 15:30:00 -0600

Change the size of icons on your desktop to make them easier to read with this quick tip.

Disable Automatic Update Feature in Excel

Mon, 06 May 2013 15:25:00 -0600

Excel, by default, automatically updates formulas that refer to cells in other workbooks. Prevent Excel from updating these cells by following the instructions in this video.

Email web pages in Internet Explorer

Mon, 06 May 2013 13:50:00 -0600

With Internet Explorer, you can easily send a link to a website in an email or you can copy an entire webpage into that email without copying and pasting the URL.

To send a link via email:

From Internet Explorer, click the File Menu (if the file menu isn't visible, strike the alt key to make it appear.)
From the drop down menu, go to Send
Select Link by e-mail to send a link
Or select Page by e-mail to send the page in the body of the email.
An Outlook screen will pop up and you simply fill in the email address for the recipient.

Note: You can also use this feature to create a shortcut to the website on your Desktop.

Building a team with remote employees

Mon, 06 May 2013 12:50:00 -0600

Distributed workforce employees often struggle to feel included in the company and team. Many remote employees feel left out when they hear of their office or others have company events like ditch days, breakfast or lunch brought in, costume contests, birthday celebrations, happy hours, or bring your pet or child to work day.

These social engagements help build community within an office, but there are steps a remote manager can, and must, take to build that culture and community for their team, as well.

Some managers create virtual water coolers to help the team cohere. All that time-consuming small talk that happens at the "water cooler" in office environments has an important purpose that is missed in distributed teams: It builds team camaraderie and culture. A remote manager can find ways to create virtual environment to foster this "small talk."

Plan a small amount of "open time" at the beginning or end of team conference calls for small talk. Use ice breakers, openers, and getting-to-know-you exercises and games during team gatherings, calls, interactions, etc. This also can include a virtual bulletin board to post "getting to know you" related info about team members. One company sent Starbucks gift cards for their team call so everyone could have "breakfast together" on the call.

These are some other ideas for bringing your team together.

Create and encourage inter-team communication – Communication among distributed employees helps build camaraderie and strengthens the team by fostering an environment of reliance on each other for help, support, and ideas. It builds trust within the team and promotes internal team partnerships to make it stronger and more productive.
Partner remote employees for projects – Find reasons to partner team employees on projects, especially those that do not always work together. This can include mentoring, developing best practices, or preparing topics to present to the rest of the team on a conference call.
Re-live the past – Find opportunities to re-live shining moments from the team's past. This brings back positive memories of the group and will help to renew and reinforce that feeling. This can be highlighting team-wide or single-employee accomplishments or experiences--even funny things that happened when they were last together.

A common team-building mistake made by new managers is to pit the team against another in comments and remarks, such as "our team is better than theirs," or "this is the best team in the company." This alienates other co-workers and the company. Although competition can be a strong motivator, this approach within the company can have potential future negative effects. What if a member of another team becomes a member of yours, or vice versa? It will be that much harder to assimilate. Managers should complement their team without denigrating anyone else.

Please contact us for more information on Remote Employee Management.

Discovering SharePoint Webinar series

Mon, 06 May 2013 12:42:00 -0600

In April, we hosted the first in a series of SharePoint webinars. We received an enthusiastic reception with over seventy people registering for the event.

The webinar introduced SharePoint 2013, talked through best practices for implementation, and demonstrated some of the impressive new features. View a recording of this webinar here.

We will continue the series on June 13th with SharePoint Business Intelligence.

Analyze your critical business data with interactive dashboards and key performance indicators
Integrate with Excel for interactive charts, graphs, and spreadsheets within a SharePoint window. Automate business processes with workflows
Expand your access to company information when traveling with robust mobile access through tablets and phones
And more...

There is no cost for the event and it is open to all.

Discovering SharePoint Webinar recording

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 11:32:00 -0600

SharePoint 2013 has many new and enhanced features. This recording of our April 18th, 2013 Discovering SharePoint 2013 webinar demonstrates some of the changes Microsoft made to SharePoint with the new edition and discusses several SharePoint Business Intelligence features.

MCS provides SharePoint training and consulting to businesses in Colorado and across the country. Please reach out to us for more information about SharePoint or our services.

Discovering SharePoint 2013

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 11:18:00 -0600

Join us April 18th for our free webinar Discovering SharePoint 2013

SharePoint 2013 is a considerable upgrade from previous versions of the software. Whether you are new 2013 or to the software in general, join us on April 18th for our free Discovering SharePoint 2013 webinar.

What does SharePoint do?

Microsoft SharePoint is an intranet platform for solving communication problems electronically. It's been very heavily adopted since 2007 because it is intuitive to use and can solve complex business problems inexpensively.

Companies frequently use SharePoint to manage common documents and information, to create automatic workflows, and to host collaboration space for meetings, documents, events, clients, or anything else.

See our article 3 big uses to see how SharePoint solves business problems.

What's new in SharePoint 2013?

SharePoint 2013 is a significant upgrade from previous versions because of its improved usability and the addition of several new features.

SharePoint 2013 offers better mobile device support than previous versions.
Searching and general usability have also been improved.
SharePoint MySites, the social computing part of SharePoint, has also been improved. It's now easier than ever to discover coworker competencies and engage in online collaboration.
Project site templates make managing projects and collaborating easier.
SharePoint 2013 more seamlessly integrates with Office 2013.
Dashboards and BI have also been upgraded.

Our Discovering SharePoint 2013 webinar

Join us for our Discovering SharePoint 2013 webinar to learn what's new with this release and how the product can help your business.

What does SharePoint 2013 do out of the box?
What are the new features in the 2013 release?
How can this be applied to my business needs?
When is SharePoint not the right answer?

This webinar is free of charge and open to anyone. Register now as enrollment is limited.

Advanced Searching in Outlook

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 11:04:00 -0600

The search feature in Outlook is a very powerful tool that can be enhanced by using the More command to further define a search and add more fields to the process.

Click in the Instant Search box (located at the top of the Inbox email list) to display the search contextual ribbon.
Click on More in the Refine group.
Choose any of the additional search fields on the More gallery to build your search profile.
As you enter the search criteria in each field, Outlook builds the search statement in the Instant Search box.

You can remove a field from the Query Builder by clicking on the X to the right of the field.

Searching for Special Characters in Word

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 10:53:00 -0600

In Microsoft Word, the Find and Replace feature will locate not only text but formatting characters as well. These characters include items like paragraph symbols and the non-breaking spaces that sometimes appear when you copy text from a Mac.

To find and replace these special characters:

Click on the Home tab.
Click on the drop-down arrow next to the Find button in the Editing group and choose Advanced Find.
In the Find and Replace dialog box, click the More button in the lower left corner. This will open additional search options.
Click the Special button at the bottom of the dialog box.
Select the special character that you would like to search for in your document. The code for that character will be added into the Find what: line of the dialog box.
You can then move to the Replace tab to complete the process.

Copy and paste worksheets into different workbooks in Microsoft Excel

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 10:37:00 -0600

With a few clicks you can copy a worksheet from one workbook and paste it into another. This video tip will show you how.

Screenshot and Screen Clipping into a Word Document

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 10:30:00 -0600

The Screenshot feature in Microsoft Word can be used to capture a picture of any open window, or a part of any open Window.

Copy Text from a PDF

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 16:38:00 -0600

Do you need to copy some text from a PDF to paste into a Word document or email? You can do so quickly from Adobe Acrobat.

Click on the Select Tool button
Click-and-drag to select text
Right-click the selected text and choose Copy or Cut
Paste into desired Word document or email with Control + V.

PowerPoint Actions

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 16:30:00 -0600

PowerPoint Actions can queue a variety of events after clicking on or hovering over a picture. As a simple example, this video shows how to link to a URL.

For more information, please see our PowerPoint training classes.

Create a drop-down list in Excel 2010

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 16:12:00 -0600

Create a drop-down list in Excel, so that others can select from a list of options to populate a cell, using a feature called a Data Validation.

Select cells in which you want the drop-down list to appear.
On the Data tab, in the Data Tools group, click the Data Validation button, then select the Data Validation menu option.
On the Settings tab, set the Validation criteria, Allow: criteria as List.
Click in the Source field then select cells that contain the list items (or type the items in the source field, separated by commas).
Make sure that both the Ignore blank and In-cell dropdown check boxes are checked.
Click OK.

For more information please see our Excel Training Classes.