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Office Apps

...You could make your Office documents sleeker and safer by removing hidden information? Whenever you save a Word, Excel, or PowerPoint document in Office XP or 2003, you save all sorts of personal baggage along with it, including Smart Tags, hidden text, a list of everyone who worked on the document, and all of their comments. Download a free Office add-in from Microsoft that removes the data. Close all your Office apps before installing the tool. When you reopen them, you will see a new entry on the File menu: Remove Hidden Data.

Bonus tip: To save Word files in which all your tracked changes, comments, and personal data have been stripped out, select Tools, Options, Security and make sure that both 'Warn before printing, saving, or sending a file that contains tracked changes or comments' and 'Remove personal information from this file on save' are checked. Note that this option doesn't remove as much hidden information as Microsoft's Office add-in does.

...Word could remind you about what its function keys do? I'm a big fan of keyboard shortcuts, but I have a heck of a time remembering all but the most basic combinations. At least I've got some help when it comes to figuring out Word's function keys, and it's from an unlikely source: the program itself. In all versions since Word 2000, you have instant access to an on-screen display of all of its function-key combinations--and the program has dozens. Choose Tools, Customize, Toolbars, scroll to and select Function Key Display, and click Close. From then on, whenever you hold down the Alt, Shift, or Ctrl keys on your keyboard--either individually or in combination--the function key toolbar options on the bottom of the screen change as well. If the toolbar takes up too much screen real estate, simply grab the vertical bar at the left end and drag it to another location on the page.

Bonus tip: Every time you type text into an Excel cell (for a label or heading, for example), it shows as one long string of characters. To get a new line, press Alt-Enter. When you're done, press Enter again to close the cell.

...You could zip file attachments in Outlook automatically? Believe it or not, many of my computing buddies are still on dial-up. (I can't decide whether they're cheapskates or they're just not in any hurry.) To avoid losing their friendship, I compress big files before attaching them to the e-mail messages I send their way. A great tool for this is BxAutoZip, a free Outlook add-in that compresses e-mail attachments with one click. Remember, however, that if your recipients don't have an unzipping program installed on their system, you'll have to use BxAutoZip's self-extracting archive option. The program works with versions of Windows from 95 through XP, and it's compatible with all flavors of Outlook. (A version for Outlook Express should be available by the time you read this.)