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McCombs Office Solutions and Tips

Archives for Windows

Change Worksheet Tab Size in Excel

Posted by  on Friday, April 13th 2012     

Sometimes I feel like the text on the worksheet tabs at the bottom of Excel is on the small side. Today I picked up a great tip from OfficeUsers.org, that tells you how you can increase the size of these tabs by increasing the size of your side and bottom scrollbars.

When you increase the scrollbar size, the size increases not just in Excel, but in every program you use. If you try increasing the size and don’t like it, don’t worry, you can always follow the same process and decrease the scrollbar size (17 is the default).

Increase Worksheet Tab Size by Increasing Scroll Bar Size

Windows 7

  1. Right click on your desktop and select Personalize.
  2. Click on Window Color (at the bottom of the screen).
  3. Click Advanced appearance settings.
  4. In the Item drop down box, choose Scrollbar.
  5. Set the Size box to a larger number. (I found 22 to be a nice size.)
  6. Click OK.

Windows XP

  1. Go to the Start Menu and select Control Panel.
  2. Double click Display and go to the Appearance tab.
  3. Click the Advanced button.
  4. In the Item drop down box, choose Scrollbar.
  5. Set the Size box to a larger number. (I found 22 to be a nice size.)
  6. Click OK.

Windows Vista

  1. Right click on your desktop and select Personalize.
  2. Click on Window Color and click Advanced appearance settings.
  3. In the Item drop down box, choose Scrollbar.
  4. Set the Size box to a larger number. (I found 22 to be a nice size.)
  5. Click OK.
category: Excel, Windows
tags: , , ,

Open Programs Faster By Creating Your Own Windows Shortcuts

Posted by  on Thursday, April 5th 2012     

Screenshot of Windows shortcut properties

Which Windows programs do you use day in and day out?  Most of us use the same three to five programs every single day.  If you are in the same situation, you can save time by creating keyboard shortcuts to open them.  I use shortcuts to quickly open Outlook and Firefox.  It saves me a couple of minutes every day, and those minutes add up to several hours of saved time over the course of a year.  Plus, pressing a few keys to make Excel open instantly makes me look awesome in front of co-workers.  And isn’t that really the point of technology?

To create your own shortcuts in Windows:

  1. Browse to the application in your Start menu, also known as the Windows button for Windows 7.  You might have to browse to the All Programs menu and find the application there, rather than finding the application in the ‘frequently used’ initial section of the Start menu.
  2. Right-click on the application name, and choose Properties.
  3. On the Shortcut tab, type a letter in the Shortcut Key field.  I find it easiest to use the letter that starts the application name.  For example, I use “E” for Excel.
  4. The new shortcut to open that application will now be Ctrl + Alt + the letter you chose in Step 3.  In my Excel example, I use Ctrl + Alt + E.

Occasionally, I find an application that does not let me add a keyboard shortcut.  In those cases, once you right-click in Step 2, choose either Pin to Taskbar or Pin to Start Menu to create a shortcut on either the Taskbar across the bottom of Windows, or the Start Menu, respectively.

If you pin a shortcut to the Taskbar, you can use a built-in keyboard shortcut to open that application instantly.  The shortcut is the Windows key and a number, where the number you press is the application’s position in the Taskbar.  The Windows key is the key with the Windows logo on it, usually found on the bottom row of your keyboard.  For example, in the screenshot below, I would press the Windows key, and then 2 to open Internet Explorer.

Screenshot of the Windows 7 taskbar

A word of caution: when choosing a letter in Step 3, do not create a shortcut already using the Ctrl and Alt keys.  For example, Ctrl + Alt + Delete brings up different Windows options.  Similarly, Ctrl + Alt + Arrow keys can change the orientation of your monitors.

Now go out there and show off your super speedy Excel-opening skills!

category: Excel, General, Keyboard Shortcuts, Office 2007, Office 2010, Outlook, PowerPoint, Windows, Word

Open Multiple Instances of Something From the Taskbar

Posted by  on Friday, January 20th 2012     

In Windows 7, opening a second instance of something, like the Documents Library or Internet Explorer got a lot harder. If you already have one instance of something open and click your shortcut on the Taskbar, a new window will not open. For the first few weeks after I switched, the only way I knew to open a second window was to right-click on the shortcut on the Taskbar, and select the name of the thing I wanted to open. Then a co-worker introduced me to a fantastic keyboard shortcut.

Here’s the secret:
Hold down the Shift key while you click on the Taskbar shortcut, and a new window will open.

category: Windows
tags: ,

Easy Access to Your Favorite Programs in Windows 7

Posted by  on Wednesday, September 21st 2011     

Most people have a few programs that they use frequently and a lot of other programs they don’t use very often. So it makes sense that we would all want the programs we use the most to be easy to access. In Windows 7, you can set a program to always be on your Start menu or your Taskbar (or both), making it easy to launch the programs you need. Microsoft calls this “pinning.”

 The Start Menu

The Start Menu is the menu that appears at the bottom left corner of your screen when you click on the Windows icon in that same corner. When you pin something to the Start Menu, it will appear above a grey line in the top left column at the top of the menu. It will always be there when you launch the Start Menu.

The Taskbar

The Taskbar is the bar across the bottom of your screen, starting in the left corner. When you pin something to the Taskbar, it will appear as an icon in that bar (see the image above). Just click on the icon to launch the program. Icons for any open programs will also appear in the Taskbar.

Pin a Program to the Start Menu or the Taskbar:

  1. Go to the Start menu (by clicking on the Windows button in the bottom left corner of the image above).
  2. Navigate to the program you want easy access to.
  3. Right click on the program and select Pin to Taskbar or Pin to Start Menu, depending on which you prefer.

 

Unpin a Program From the Start Menu or Taskbar

Have you stopped using that program you used to rely on? No problem. It doesn’t have to live on your Start Menu or Taskbar forever.

  1. On the Start Menu or Taskbar, right click on the program icon.
  2. Select Unpin this program from Taskbar or Unpin from Start Menu.

 

 

 

 

category: Windows
tags: , , ,

What to do When a Program Freezes in Windows

Posted by  on Friday, September 9th 2011     

The wisdom I’ve always heard about Windows computers has been, when a program freezes, press Ctrl + Alt + Delete. The problem is, nobody ever told me what to do after I pressed Ctrl + Alt + Delete, so my computer would just stay frozen. (An internet search probably would have helped me, but every time I thought of it, my computer was frozen.) Eventually, I learned the secret to Ctrl + Alt + Delete, and I’m going to share it with you today.

When your computer freezes, open the Task Manager. The Task Manager is where you can tell Windows to close the frozen program. Where does the Ctrl + Alt + Delete come in? That’s how you get to the Task Manager.

I can’t promise that the task manager will solve 100% of your frozen computer problems, but I find that it usually manages to shut down a program that is not responding.

When your computer is frozen, here’s what to do:

  1. Press Ctrl + Alt + Delete on your keyboard (all at the same time)*.
  2. From the menu that pops up, select Task Manager.
  3. Click on the Applications tab (if you aren’t already on that tab).
  4. In the column on the left you’ll see a task or program. In the column on the right, you’ll see whether the program is Running, or Not Responding.
  5. Select the task/program(s) that is not responding.
  6. Click the End Task button at the bottom of the window.

*You can also right click on the task bar (the bar across the bottom of your screen where the start button is, and select Start Task Manager.

 

category: General, Self Support, Windows
tags: , , , ,
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