Sunday, August 30, 2015

Too Many Slices

More data than the pie will hold


A pie chart displays the per cent of the whole is represented by the component elements. Four salesmen, four slices of pie.

The problem arises when there are 10 or so components that vary in size. The labels begin to overlap and the chart is difficult to read:


One suggestion that Chris Weber offers is to rearrange the order of the slices:


The article uses MS Graph in Access, but the techniques are applicable in all the other applications that can use graphs.

SmartAccess:
Easy as Pie. . .

"Chris Weber provides you with a generic method to control the data for pie charts that are actually readable."

(A downloadable example file is also provided


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Friday, August 28, 2015

Redact That!

Redact that!

Weapon of Mass Obfuscation


"Redaction is the careful editing of a document to remove confidential information.

The Microsoft Office Word 2003 Redaction Add-in makes it easy for you to mark sections of a document for redaction. You can then redact the document so that the sections you specified are blacked out. You can either print the redacted document or use it electronically.

Sensitive government documents, confidential legal documents, insurance contracts, and other sensitive documents are often redacted before being made available to the public. With the Word 2003+ Redaction Add-in, users of Microsoft Office Word 2003+ now have an effective, user-friendly tool to help them redact confidential text in Word documents."

The redacted document can be protected and saved. The add-in creates a copy of the original, so original material is still available.



Hide Information:
OfficeWatch.com

Word 2003 Redaction download


Word 2007 Redaction Tool


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Friday, August 21, 2015

Wildcards

Seek and find


When you are looking for a particular word or file, wildcards can be used to refine the search.

An asterisk (*) can be used to represent any number of characters. A search for pop* would return popsicle, popcorn, pop1, pop2, pop37, pop29, and pop's favorite chair.

A question mark (?) is a stand-in for a single character. Popc??? would bring back only the word popcorn. Pop? searches for pop1 and pop2, but not pop37 etc.

That's a simple look at wildcards. Word has a rich variety of symbols that can do quite complex search and replace operations.

Here are some links to more detailed discussions:

Word MVP:
Using Wildcards

Felgall Pty Ltd:
Sydney, AustraliaWildcard information

Graham Mayor:
Find and Replace


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Tuesday, August 11, 2015

Custom Dictionary

Spell it the way you want to!


Although Office has its own dictionary, it probably does not contain all the words and jargon that you use. If this is the case, you can add your own frequently used terms, and names to the dictionary.
  1. Open Word
  2. From the Tools menu, click Options
    (See link below for 2007)
  3. Select the Spelling and Grammar tab
  4. Click the Custom Dictionaries button
  5. Place a check beside the dictionary you want to modify
  6. Click the Modify button
  7. In the Word field, type in the word you want to add to the dictionary and click the Add button Click OK
  8. Click OK to close the Custom Dictionaries dialog box
  9. Click OK to close the Options dialog box
If you want to remove a word from the dictionary, complete steps 1 through 7. Select the word you want to remove and click the Delete button.
The Custom.dic file is a text file. You can create it or edit it using notepad.
Multiple dictionaries can be created for special purposes, like a list of employee names.
The Custom.dic file is used by all of the Office applications that do Spell checking.
How to add a custom dictionary in Word

About.com: Working With Dictionaries in Word

Microsoft.com How to create an exclude dictionary in Word

Copy the Custom Dictionary to a Floppy Disk and Use It on Other Computers

Error when you add a word to the custom dictionary


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