Chapter 20

Almost Ten Ways to Make Office 2013 Easier to Use

If you haven’t noticed by now, there are plenty of features buried in Office 2013 that you probably don’t need most of the time. However, if you’re a die-hard Office 2013 power user, you may want to peek at some of the more advanced features buried inside the operating system.

Although these advanced features may take time to learn and master, you may find the effort worth it to make Office 2013 behave exactly the way you want it to. Best of all, you can learn these new features by playing with them at work — so that way, you can learn something new and get paid for doing it at the same time.

Build Your Own Apps for Office

If you’re like most people, you probably just want to use a program, make it do what you need it to do, and then go home afterwards. However, if you find yourself wishing Office 2013 could do something more, then you may want to take some time to develop your own apps for Office 2013.

To create apps for Office 2013, you just need to use industry-standard programming languages like HTML5, JavaScript, CSS3 (Cascading Style Sheets), and XML. By creating your own Office 2013 apps, you can extend Office 2013’s capabilities. If you create a particularly useful app, you can even sell or give it away to others. To learn more about creating your own Office 2013 apps, visit the Microsoft site (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/apps) that provides a brief tutorial on how to create your first Office 2013 app.

Collaborating with the Review Tab

If you’re the only person who needs to edit, view, and use your Office 2013 documents, you can safely skip over this section. However, if you’re like many people, you need to collaborate with others.

The old-fashioned way of collaborating meant printing paper copies, sending them to others, and writing directly on them, but with Office, you can highlight, mark up, and edit documents electronically so that you can distribute files by e-mail or through a network. Each time someone makes a change to a document, Office 2013 tracks these changes with a different color and even identifies the contributor by name. Now you can see who wrote what, and you can selectively keep those comments that are most valuable and ignore the ones you don’t like.

Some of the more useful commands hidden on the Review tab include

New Comment: Lets you insert a comment directly into a document without affecting the existing text.

Track Changes: Highlights any new text or data that someone adds to or deletes from an existing document.

Compare: Examines two files and highlights the differences between the two. This tool also gives you the option of selectively merging the changes into a single document.

By using the features stored on the Review tab, you can send multiple copies of a file to others, let everyone make comments, mark up the text, move data around, and then merge everyone’s comments and changes into a single, final version.

Using Word’s References Tab

Most people use Word just to write letters or short reports. If you need to create longer documents, then you may be interested in using the features buried on Word’s References tab, such as

Table of Contents: Creates a table of contents based on the header styles used in a document.

Insert Footnote: Creates a footnote at the bottom of the page.

Insert Endnote: Creates a list of notes at the end of a document.

Insert Caption: Automatically numbers figures, tables, or equations.

Insert Table of Figures: Creates a list of figures, tables, or equations that you created using the Insert Caption command.

Mark Entry: Tags words or phrases to appear in an index.

Insert Index: Creates an index based on words or phrases tagged with the Mark Entry command.

Using Excel’s Data Tab

Most people type data directly into an Excel worksheet and then manipulate that data through formulas or other commands. However, you can also design a worksheet and then import data from another location (such as stock quotes that you retrieve from a website), from a text file, from an Access database, or even from a database file created by another program (such as an ancient dBASE database).

Some of the features available on Excel’s Data tab include:

From Access: Retrieves data from an Access database.

From Web: Retrieves data stored in a table on a web page.

From Text: Retrieves data stored as an ASCII text file.

From Other Sources: Retrieves data stored in other sources, such as an SQL Server or XML file.

Saving and Sending Files

The traditional way to send a file to someone is to save your file, load your e-mail program (such as Outlook), create a new message, attach your file (if you can remember where you stored it), and send it over the Internet.

Here’s a faster way to send a file:

1. In the file that you want to send, click the File tab.

2. Click Share.

The Share window appears.

3. Click E-mail and click one of the following:

• Send as Attachment: Attaches the Office 2013 file. Recipients will be able to view and edit this file only if they also have Office 2013.

• Send a Link: Sends a link to a file when you’re collaborating over a local area network.

• Send as PDF: Converts the file to PDF (Portable Document Format) before attaching it to the message. Recipients who don’t have special PDF-editing software will be able to view the file only, but not edit it.

• Send as XPS: Converts the file to XPS (Open XML Paper Specification) format before attaching it to the message. Recipients will need a program that can open and display an XPS file, which preserves formatting and works similar to a PDF file.

Encrypting a File

After creating a file, you may want to show it to others, but not let anyone else modify it. You could trust that nobody will mess up your file, but a better option is to password-protect it so nobody can modify it without your permission.

To password-protect a file, follow these steps:

1. Click the File tab.

2. Click Info and then click the Protect button (such as Protect Document or Protect Presentation).

A menu appears.

3. Click Encrypt with Password.

An Encrypt Document dialog box appears.

4. Type a password and click OK.

If you forget your password, you won’t be able to access your own file, so make sure you remember your password. Many third-party companies sell password-cracking tools for retrieving the password to Office 2013 files. These tools can be useful if you forget your own password, but they can also be used by malicious people to peek at documents that you may not want them to see, so don’t think that passwords alone can protect your Office 2013 documents from prying eyes.

Checking File Compatibility

Not everyone may be using Office 2013, so if you need to share files with people stuck with older versions of Microsoft Office, you need to make sure your files can be opened by others. Otherwise you risk creating a great document that goes unnoticed because nobody else can see what you did.

To check your file’s compatibility with previous versions of Office, follow these steps:

1. Click the File tab.

2. Click Info and then click the Check for Issues button.

A menu appears.

3. Click Check Compatibility.

A Compatibility Checker dialog box appears, listing any parts of your file that may not be compatible with older versions of Office.

Ignoring the Silly Office Ribbon

Although the Office Ribbon represents a more visual way to use Microsoft Office, some people still prefer the classic pull-down menu interface of previous versions of Microsoft Office. For those who don’t want to give up their familiarity with pull-down menus, you can buy an add-on program dubbed Classic Menu for Office (which is available at www.addintools.com).

This program essentially gives back your pull-down menus so you can choose between the Office Ribbon and the traditional pull-down menus. Now you can have the best of both worlds without giving up either one.

The main drawback with this add-on program is that if you have to use someone else’s copy of Office 2013 that doesn’t have this add-on installed, you may feel lost trying to use the Ribbon alone. For this reason, it’s a good idea to become familiar with the Office Ribbon and use this Classic Menu for Office add-on program to help you make the transition from an older version of Office to Office 2013.