Notes from the Help Desk…

If you are a user who has ever had difficulty explaining a tech support issue to a technician, or if you are a technician who has ever had trouble understanding a user’s problem, then you need…the Windows 7 Problem Steps Recorder.

This is a nifty little feature of Windows 7 that lets you automatically record screenshots of a problem you are having.  After the screenshots are recorded, Windows zips them up so you can send them to a technician, who can unzip them and view them in a browser.

To use the Problem Steps Recorder:

1. Type PSR in the Start Menu search box.
2. Windows will display the Problem Steps Recorder:



3. Click the Start Record button.
4. Perform all the steps you want to record.
5. Click the Stop Record button.
6. Windows will offer to save all the steps and screen shots in a zip file.
7. The zip file will contain an MHT file which can be viewed in any browser.

If you want to snap a window to the left side of the screen quickly (technically Aero-Snap), hold down the Windows key and press the Left Arrow Key.

If you want to snap a window to the right side of the screen quickly (technically Aero-Snap), hold down the Windows key and press the Right Arrow Key.

If you right-click a file in Windows Explorer, and then select Send To, you’ll see the standard list of Send To options.

To reveal a list of additional options on the Send To menu (in Windows 7), including often-used folders, hold down the SHIFT key before you right-click the file.

Get used to dragging things around in Outlook.

For example, if you drag an e-mail message to the Contacts button, Outlook will create a new contact for the sender, with Name and E-mail fields already filled in.  The body of the e-mail message will appear in the Notes field.

If you drag a Contact to the Mail button, Outlook will create a new e-mail message to that Contact.  Very cool!

Drag a Contact to the Calendar button, and Outlook will create a Meeting Invitation ready to be sent to that person.

Drag a Contact to the Tasks button, and Outlook will create a Task Request addressed to that contact.

All Office 2010 applications now include a screen capture utility to help you quickly capture any area of the desktop screen.

The tool will automatically take screenshots of all open applications on your desktop (that are not minimized), and let you insert them directly into your document.

Inserting a Full Screen Screenshot

To insert a full screen screenshot:

1. Click Screenshot in the Illustrations group on the Insert tab of the Ribbon.
2. Word will display thumbnails of all open applications that are not minimized.



3. Click the thumbnail you want to insert the screenshot in your document at the insertion point.

Office 2007 introduced a new graphics engine that lets you add special effects to text and graphics.  These effects have been expanded and enhanced in Office 2010.

Text Effects

To add special effects to text:

1. Select the text you want to change.
2. Click the Text Effects button in the Font group on the Home tab of the ribbon.



3. Click the effect you want, or select additional effects from the menus at the bottom (Outline, Shadow, Reflection and Glow).

Artistic Effects

Word 2010 includes a number of new ways to modify graphics in a document.  All of these options are in the Adjust group on the Picture Tools/Format tab of the Ribbon.

The options in this group are summarized below:

To select a cell in Excel, you have two basic methods: RANGE and CELLS:

Range ("A1").Select

Range("RangeName").Select

Cells(3, 4).Select   'Selects Row 3, Column 4, i.e. cell D3

Range works well for hard-coded cells. Cells works best with calculated cells, especially when you couple it  with a loop:

For i = 1 to 10
     Cells(i, 1).value = i   ' fill A1 through A10 with the value of i
Next i

Note that your focus does not change. Whatever cell you were in when you entered the loop is where you are when you leave the loop. This is way faster than selecting the cell, changing the value, selecting the next cell, etc. If you are watching the sheet, the values simply appear.

Slicers are a new feature in Excel 2010 that let you add a snapshot view of a pivot table to a worksheet.  Slicers are like visual filters.  You may want to use a slicer when you only need to display a section of a pivot table.

For example, the pivot table below shows conference registrations broken down by city and state.  You can add slicers to this pivot table to display the data from one state or from only one town from one state.

Sparklines are miniature graphs that fit inside single worksheet cells.  They can show you trends or changes that may not be easily noticed by viewing the values in the spreadsheet.

Although Sparklines can be located in any cell, they are most effective when placed next to the data to which they refer.

Note that Sparklines are only available in .XLSX or .XLSM files. The option is greyed out in .XLS files.

One of the techniques I have found very useful in writing Excel VBA code is to make the cell, row, and column references public constants rather than hard coding them.

Take a reference to a row and column:

   cells(4,27).value

If row 4 is the first data row and column 27 is the last column in the list, it is more useful to make them constants and refer to the constant:

   Public Const intFirstDataRow As Integer = 4
   Public Const intLastRow As Integer = 27

And then make the above reference:

    cells(intFirstDataRow, intLastRow).value

This way, when you add a couple of columns or move the first data row down, you change the constant once and the code all works the first time.

Searching and replacing 27 with 31 is fraught with problems since it is too easy to change values or longer numbers (12734 to 13134) inadvertently.