Office XP Tips: Share Data Among Apps, Insert Pictures

Welcome to the premiere issue of Office XP Tips, a weekly newsletter featuring advice for users of Microsoft Office XP. I personally guarantee that every issue will bring you an Office epiphany of life-changing proportions, or you'll get a full refund--no questions asked! And now, on with the show.

Give the Task Pane a Chance

Remember Clippy, Office's default cartoon "paper clip" Assistant? Clippy was the PC version of The Simpsons' annoying neighbor Ned Flanders: ever chirpy, ever present. If you hated Clippy, you might justifiably be concerned about a new Office XP feature. The Task Pane is a wide, vertical toolbar that by default takes up the right edge of the screen.

You may find this toolbar intrusive in Excel and PowerPoint. For example, with an 800-by-600 screen in Excel, it obscures three columns and partially covers another. When dragged to its narrowest, the Task Pane still covers most of two columns.

But in Word, there's usually a generous expanse of empty white space on the right, allowing you to use the Task Pane without obstructing your view of the document. You really should give it a try. The Task Pane can often make cumbersome tasks easier, thus delivering where Clippy fails. This feature is enabled by default, and is also available under View, Toolbars, Task Pane.

The Task Pane is especially helpful if you routinely incorporate data from various Office applications in your documents. For instance, if you share information among Word, PowerPoint, and Excel, firing up the appropriate document, presentation, or worksheet from the Task Pane is quick and easy.

Unlike Clippy (who still lurks in XP, by the way), the Task Pane does a pretty good job of saving you from tedious Office menus, especially in Word and PowerPoint. And once you get used to its browser-style navigation buttons, the Task Pane can be a big improvement over pull-down menus and dialog boxes.

A Picture's Worth a Thousand Clicks

I love using Word to create HTML pages for my personal Web site--even though I don't brag about this to my Web-developer chums. I know Word inside and out, and it's great for creating quick-and-dirty Web pages. In previous versions of Word it was never hard to insert photos or clip art into a Web page, but it did take some clicking through menus and dialog boxes. To insert clip art, you had to select Insert, Picture, then choose Clip Art. Not exactly building Rome, but still, it's three clicks.

In Word 2002, just click the drop-down arrow in the Task Pane's upper-right corner, click Insert Clip Art, and there you are: instant pictures. You've accomplished in two clicks what used to take three, and the whole approach is more intuitive and accessible. The first time you access this function, you'll be prompted to run the Microsoft Clip Organizer, which finds and organizes image files on your hard drive. You can search for a specific file or by category (animals, say, or cars) by typing a file name or category into the Search Text box and clicking the Search button. When I searched for "cars," for example, Word presented this image.

If you're already running the Clip Organizer, you can browse for clip art by clicking its link in the lower-right corner of the Task Pane. With your pictures on screen, just drag and drop them right into your document.

Animating PowerPoint Slides

Although the Task Pane does cover a big chunk of the PowerPoint screen, it comes in handy for jazzing up your presentations. Using PowerPoint 2002's Task Pane, click the drop-down arrow to choose one of three Slide Design selections. You can experiment with animation by choosing the Slide Design--Animations Schemes selection.

Here you'll see a list of PowerPoint's built-in animations, which are suitable for adding to one slide or across your entire presentation. By the way, if you're looking for some alternative ways to jazz up your slides, check out Meyer's PowerPoint Backgrounds, a shareware add-on that will help you wow them at your next presentation. We have a copy in our Downloads library.

Quicker Searching

Although it obscures your view of the right side of a spreadsheet, the Task Pane can still come in handy with Excel, especially if you share a lot of data among files. The Search pane alone can save you a lot of time, letting you quickly locate files, specific text in files, or file properties. Find the Search pane option by clicking the drop-down arrow in the upper-right corner of the Task Pane. The Advanced Search option lets you get nerdy with your search, offering searches by author, creation-date, file-size, and a slew of other options.

Say you're crunching away in your Batting Averages worksheet and you need to refer to the Word file that contains the article you wrote about Manny Ramirez. Just click the drop-down arrow on the Task Pane and choose Search, type "manny" in the Search text box, and click Search.

Double-click on the file name in the resulting list and Office loads Word, then opens the file.

A Big Turn-Off

OK, so you love the Task Pane in some programs but hate it in others. What to do? Send it to Clippy's graveyard, that's what. In any application, just uncheck the Show at Startup option that appears at the bottom of the opening Task Pane. For instance, to ditch the Task Pane in Excel, turn off the Show at Startup option at the bottom of the New Workbook Task Pane. You can also select View, Toolbars, Task Pane to turn it off.

Small-Business Tools Fix

Alert reader Andy Rogers asked me to warn folks about a conflict between Office XP and Microsoft Small Business Tools 2000. If you use Microsoft Small Business Tools 2000, and you upgraded your computer to Office XP, you may be disappointed to find that the Custom Manager and Financial Manager tools won't work with Office XP. Well, buck up: There's an update that fixes this problem, and our shareware maestro Max Green has posted it online.

Thanks for the heads up, Andy.