Frequently Asked Questions - Microsoft Office Common Questions and Answers

The easiest way to do this is to first change your taskbar settings so your Excel files will show as separate entries on the taskbar. To do this right click on a blank spot of your taskbar and choose Properties. For Windows Vista uncheck the box that says Group similar taskbar buttons. For Windows 7 and up where it says Taskbar buttons, make it say Never combine from the dropdown list.

Now open Excel by itself from the Excel shortcut rather than double clicking an Excel file. Drag the empty Excel window to your secondary monitor and then open Excel again and keep in on your primary monitor. Now open your files from the Open option within Excel.

By default, Outlook will send your outgoing messages to the Outbox allowing you to have more control of when you actually send them out of the Outlook client to the Internet where you won’t be able to make any changes after they are sent. This way you can compose and send multiple emails and then make sure they are correct before finally sending them out.

Many people don’t like this extra step and prefer to have their email be sent out to the Internet right away after pressing send within the new email window. This option can be changed very easily so Outlook will send the email right away after pressing the Send button. The steps will vary depending on what version of Outlook you are using.

For Outlook 2010 and up click on the File tab and then choose Options. For Outlook 2007 and 2003 go to the Tools menu and then click on Options and select the Mail Setup tab. Now find the checkbox that says Send immediately when connected, put a check in it and click on OK.

Now whenever you click on the Send button from within a new email it should immediately send it out and not put it in your Outbox. Just keep in mind that you lose the option to go back to your Outbox and make any changes to your email before sending it when you choose this option.

If you go to the Insert menu and then choose Symbol and then choose More Symbols you can insert all kinds of shapes and characters including bullets. You can even choose different fonts from the drop down list and that will give you different symbol options to choose from.

To install clipart into a document simply add the clipart first then make a text box with whatever text you want inside the text box. You can insert a text box by going to Insert and then Text Box. Once you have the text formatted inside the box you can double click the outside border of the text box to bring up its properties. Then you can change the fill color to No Fill so that the text box will be transparent. You can do the same for the Line section by changing it to No Line. Then you will have only the text showing and you can drag it wherever you want on top of the clipart. You can also change the text color if needed.

You can go into the Word autocorrect options and turn off capitalization. If you use Word 2007 click the Office button, then go to Word Options, then Proofing and click the Autocorrect Options button. For Word 2010 and up go to File>Options>Proofing>Auto Correct Options and change the options to suit your needs.

The first thing to do is to make sure that the Insert key has not been accidentally pressed on the computer. This will cause text to be appended to the current text rather than replacing the text. Go into Word and try it again but this time try pressing the Insert key on your keyboard once and then see if it changes anything. You won’t see an indication on the keyboard but Word will display OVR in the status bar on the bottom when its activated.

Next you can go into your Word options and make sure that the Typing Replaces Selection option is checked. Go to File, Options and then the Advanced. Make sure the Typing Replaces Selection box is checked. The Typing Replaces Selection option deletes the selected text when you begin to type. If you clear this check box, Word inserts new text in front of the selected text and does not delete the selected text.

This error may be caused by the name of your file. If you are using certain characters such as #, % or ! in the file name then try to take them out and use only letters and numbers.

Another thing to try would be to turn off the Word AutoRecovery feature by going to File, Options and then the Save tab and unchecking the box that says Save AutoRecover info every:. Then close Word and do a system cleanup using the free CCleaner to remove all your temp files.

Next you can try to delete the Normal.dot file with Word closed. When you open Word again it will create a new Normal.dot file. You can do a search of your hard drive for the file but make sure you have the Show hidden files and folders option checked in your folder options.

If nothing seems to work then you can try a repair installation of Word. Go to Programs and Features and click on Word or Microsoft Office if you use the Office suite and then use the repair option to have Word repair any corrupt files. Or you can uninstall Word and then reinstall. I would suggest running CCleaner after the uninstall before reinstalling.

If you have the PowerPoint program you can open the slideshow in PowerPoint. Sometimes your computer will have just the free PowerPoint viewer which only allows you to view the slideshow. But if you have the actual program then you can save the attachment on your desktop or somewhere else where you can find it and open the PowerPoint file. Then all you need to do is right click on the picture and pick Save picture as and pick a location to save it.

It will depend on how the music was put into the slideshow and what format was used. Here is a method you can try.

1. Open your pps file in PowerPoint

2. Click on File, Save as HTML or Save as Web Page depending on your version

3. Follow the steps to convert the presentation to HTML in a new folder

4. Locate the folder you created for the files to be saved in. Look for files ending in .wav or .mp3 or other types of audio files. They may vary depending on the type of audio files imported into the presentation.

If you are trying to copy text from another program or website into Word here is something that may help. Instead of choosing Paste try choosing Paste Special and pick Text or Unformatted Text. That way it won’t paste any of the formatting that the other program may have within the text. You can also paste it into Notepad which will not copy any formatting and then copy and paste it from Notepad into Word.

It sounds as though the .doc file extension used by Word has become associated with Firefox somehow. Windows uses file extensions to determine what program to open certain types of files with. These can be easily changed manually or perhaps by some type of virus or spyware. If your computer is set to hide extensions for known file types then you wont see the .doc on the end of your Word documents. You can change this setting from the View tab under Folder Options.

You should check the file association for Word documents to make sure that its associated with Word and not Firefox.

Are you exporting your pst file from your original Outlook installation or just copying the pst file off of your hard drive? I would actually export your mail and contacts from Outlook using the export wizard and then try to import them into your current Outlook installation.

If you cannot export your file because you don't have the original installation of Outlook on your computer then you can try to repair your pst file and try to import it again.

If your current Outlook installation is an older version of the one that your pst file is from then that may cause a problem too. Or if your pst file is too big as in over 2GB (depending on your version of Outlook) then sometimes Outlook has a problem with that as well. Also right click on your pst file and go to Properties and make sure its not set to read only. If you are trying to import it from a CD then copy it to the hard drive first and then try to import it.

I would browse the CD itself and see if you can find the SKU011.cab file itself. If there are a lot of folders and sub folders then you may be better off doing a search for the file.

If you find it then see if you can drag/copy it to your desktop. This will show if your computer can read the file or not. If you get an error copying it then it may be a case of a scratch on the CD that corrupted that file. If you can copy it then when the computer asks for that file during installation you can browse to the one you copied on your desktop to get past that part of the installation. Then you will have to point it back to your CD to finish installing Word.

Another option is to see if you can make a copy of the CD successfully or copy it to your hard drive and then try to install Word from the copy.

Assuming you are using Word then you can change the name associated with Word itself. If you are using Word 2003 then go to the Tools menu, click Options, and then click the User Information tab. In the Name box, type your name or change the current name to your name.

For Word 2007 click the Microsoft Office Button and then click Word Options. Next click on Popular. Finally under Personalize your copy of Office, type your name in the User name box.

For Word 2010 and up click on the File tab and then Options. Under the General section where it says Personalize your copy of Microsoft Office you can put your name in the User name box.

When you save your Word documents make sure you default save setting is for .docx files rather than .html files. You will have a drop down selection next to Save as type where you can choose what type of file you want to save your document as.

You can also check your Word save options to make sure that they are set correctly to .docx rather than .html. Click on File, Options and then click the Save tab. Where it says "Save files in this format" make sure its set to Word Document (*.docx). If it already is then I would try a repair installation or completely removing, running Ccleaner and then rebooting. Then reinstall after that.

You can use the free Microsoft PowerPoint Viewer software to open PowerPoint files and slide shows such as pps, ppt and pptx files. It will open files created in PowerPoint 97, and higher It can be downloaded free from Microsoft and will run on Windows XP and up.

By default PowerPoint saves your presentation as a .ppt or .pptx file which is the standard file type to save PowerPoint files in with .ppt being the older type. You can start your slide show for your presentation with a file saved as this type but it's not the best choice if you want to use your file as a slideshow exclusively.

PowerPoint has an option to save your presentation as a slide show if you want to be able to show your presentation without actually having to open it in PowerPoint and then going to the slideshow option within the program. This comes in handy if you are e-mailing your presentation and just want the recipient to be able to double click the file and watch the show.

To do this all you need to do is have your presentation open and go to File and Save As. In the Save as type drop down box you can pick PowerPoint Show (*.pps) . This will save the file with the .pps or .ppsx extension which designates it as a PowerPoint slide show. It will not overwrite your original .ppt file. You can also open ..pps or .ppsx files within PowerPoint to make changes.

The end user can simply double click the .pps or .ppsx file and start the slide show assuming they have PowerPoint installed. If you don't have PowerPoint you can download and install the free PowerPoint Viewer.

All the Office programs let you click on undo to go back to the previous step if you have made a mistake. These numbers may vary depending on your version of Office and might vary depending on the version. Here are the defaults.

Outlook - unlimited undos
Word - unlimited undos
Access - 1 undo
Excel - 16 undos
PowerPoint - 150 undos
Publisher - 20 undos
FrontPage - 30 undos

You can change the number of undos in Access and Excel by editing the registry. We don't recommend this though.

PowerPoint is set to 20 undos by default but you can change it if you like. It is not recommended that you increase it too much because it may cause problems in PowerPoint. FIle, Options, then Advanced and from there you can change the Maximum number of undos up to 150.

You can make a shortcut on your desktop for Outlook sticky notes. Keep in mind that once you log off of your computer the note will go away or if you close the note and re-open it then it will be blank.

Here is how you do it.

Right-click the desktop, click on New, and click Shortcut.

In the Type the location of the item box, type the following path: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office16\OUTLOOK.EXE" /c ipm.stickynote.

The path will vary depending on your version of Outlook. For example Office 16 is for Outlook 2016 so you might want to just browse to your OUTLOOK.exe file and add /c ipm.stickynote at the end.

Then lick next, name the shortcut, and then click Finish.

If you don’t like the settings that are used in the default document or are always changing the settings then you can adjust the default document so it is setup the way you like it each time you start a new Word file.

The default settings are kept in a file called Normal.dotm for Office 2007 and up which is located in the C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates. To change the settings, open the Normal.dotm file and then adjust the document to the way you like it. You can change the font, margins, add headers and footers and so on.

After you make the changes, save the file in the same directory as the Normal.dotm file but with a different name. Make sure you have the .dotm extension on the end. Then close Word and browse to that Templates folder and delete the Normal.dotm file. If you get a message that Word is still running then you can use Task Manager to kill the winword.exe process. After the original Normal.dotm file is deleted rename your new file to Normal.dot and then that will be used for the default Word template when you create a new blank document. If you want to go back to the original settings simply delete your new Normal.dot file and Word will create a new one when you open the program.

Anyone who has spent any time writing documents in Microsoft Word has used the copy and paste feature that is available with most Windows applications that allows you to copy text from one program and paste it into another. But most of the time when you copy text its not in the same format as the text in your Word document.

So you may have noticed that when you paste text into your Word document from other documents or web pages it tends to take the formatting with it. Then you have to go back and change the newly pasted text to match the formatting of the rest of your document.

To get around this annoyance all you need to do is use the Paste Special function. For Word 2007 and up click on the Paste ribbon item under the Office Orb or Home tab. Then you will pick Unformatted Text. What this will do is apply the formatting of your existing text in your document to the text that you are pasting. Or you can right click where you want to paste in the text and choose the keep text only button (depending on your version of Word).

Another way to do this is to just paste the text into your document, highlight it and then click on the Clear Formatting icon on the toolbar to have it remove any formatting from the selected text.

There is a bug in Microsoft Office that will give you a message saying CiceroUIWndFrame not responding when you try and log off or shut down your computer. To fix this error you need to remove the Speech and Handwriting Recognition feature from Microsoft Office. Most people will never use this feature to begin with. To do so, do the following:

Open Control Panel
Double Click on Add/Remove Programs or Programs and Features depending on your version of Windows
Find Microsoft Office and click on the Change button
You may have to check the box that says Choose advanced customization of applications if you did a custom installation of Office
Browse to Office Shared Features, Alternative User Input, and then select for Speech and Handwriting recognition (both) and make them Not Available from the drop-down box and click on Update.