Empty your Inbox: 4 Ways to Take Control of your Email

If your email Inbox is out of control, you might want to rethink your methods for organizing your email and emptying your Inbox. Developing a new approach to processing your Inbox can help you to gain more control, improve your response time, and keep up with critical actions and due dates.

Continue reading this article at Microsoft at Work.

Google Drive Essential Training with Lynda.com

Google Drive incorporates the document creation features of Google Docs with a cloud computing solution that keeps your content updated and synchronized across the web, your computer, and your mobile device. In this course, author Susan Metz teaches the essentials for creating, formatting, sharing, and editing Google documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and forms. The course also introduces the new Google Drive homepage, the Google Drive sync folder, and file management on the online web drive.

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Did You Know?

If you place a wooden spoon over a pot of boiling water, it won't boil over.

Take Files Wherever You Go

Between the increasing demands of family, friends, work, community and life in a 21st-century world, today’s Windows user is always on the go. But just because balancing your schedule’s a juggling act doesn’t mean the process of transporting vital documents and files wherever you travel has to be a three-ring circus.

Click here to continue reading this article on Microsoft at Home.

Microsoft Excel 2007 - Save Shortcut

Did you know that you can quickly save data using a shortcut key in Excel? 

The key combination that can be used to save data is:  Ctrl + S

Try it.

Did You Know?

Cereal canisters make the perfect trashcan for your car.

Microsoft Word 2007 - Comparing Document Versions

Did you know that Word has a tool that allows you to compare two documents against each other?  You can do a comparison as follows:

1. Display the Review tab of the ribbon.
2. Click the Compare tool and then choose Compare. Word displays the Compare Documents dialog box.

When the comparison is done, Word shows the original documents and the compared document, which contains revision marks to indicate what has changed.

This tool is great when you have more than one person working on a document.

AutoCAD Essentials 5: Working with References with Lynda.com

Join author Jeff Bartels as he explores the world of references—a tool that allows you to link and reuse external content in AutoCAD. The course covers creating and leveraging block symbols, linking to external drawings or Xrefs, and inserting images into projects. The final chapter includes a drawing challenge, where designers are asked to incorporate references into a drawing, and a demo where Jeff shows how to solve the challenge.

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Create Strong Passwords

A strong password is an important protection to help you have safer online transactions. Here are steps you can take to create a strong password. Some or all might help protect your online transactions:

• Length. Make your passwords long with eight or more characters.
• Complexity. Include letters, punctuation, symbols, and numbers. Use the entire keyboard, not just the letters and characters you use or see most often. The greater the variety of characters in your password, the better. However, password hacking software automatically checks for common letter-to-symbol conversions, such as changing "and" to "&" or "to" to "2."
• Variation. To keep strong passwords effective, change them often. Set an automatic reminder for yourself to change your passwords on your email, banking, and credit card websites about every three months.
• Variety. Don't use the same password for everything. Cybercriminals steal passwords on websites that have very little security, and then they use that same password and user name in more secure environments, such as banking websites.

Click here to finish this article at Microsoft Safe and Security Center.

Did You Know?

If you break your blender jar you can replace it with a mason jar.

Personalize your phone and PC with Ringtones, Emoticons, and Wallpapers

Tired of boring desktop themes and a blah ringtone? There are many options available in the Windows operating system to customize your PC and phone.  Start with Windows 7 themes, or download free ringtones for your cell phone. You can even find emoticons for instant messaging, backgrounds for your Windows desktop, and clip art and photos to customize your folders.

Click here to continue reading this article at Microsoft at Home.

Managing Your Career with Lynda.com

What do you enjoy doing, and how are you uniquely qualified to build a rewarding career out of your interests, skills, and experience? In this course, author Valerie Sutton guides you through the process of proactively managing your career by identifying your options, needs, and interests.

Discover how to assess your experience, work-reward values, and qualifications, all with the goal of creating a robust career profile that charts your future growth. The course also shows how to fully investigate career options and perform a gap analysis in order to find key opportunities.

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The Longest Password Ever!

We laugh, but her ID is safe.

During a recent password audit by a company, it was found that an employee was using the following password: MickeyMinniePlutoHueyLouieDeweyDonaldGoofySacramento

When asked why she had such a long password, she rolled her eyes and said, "Hello!  It has to be at least eight characters long and include one capital."

Microsoft Word 2007 – How to Remove Recent Documents from Your Drop Down List

In a past blog post, I showed you how to “pin” important or frequently used documents.  But did you know that you can remove recent documents from your drop down list?

1. Click "Word Options" from the Office button.
2. Click "Advanced".
3. In "Advanced Options for working with Word" scroll down and enter a value of 0 in "Show this number of Recent Documents" in "Display.

Now go back to Word.  You will see that there are no recent documents displayed.

Did You Know?

You can mail anything that will take a stamp and weighs less than 13 ounces without a box?

Microsoft Excel 2007 - Converting Text to Its Proper Case

Sometimes a client sends me an Excel file where all the data is in CAPS.   Did you know that there is an easy way to convert that text to the "Proper" format?

In any column, use this formula:

=PROPER(A1)

A1 would be the cell that you want to reformat.

Windows Phone SDK Essential Training with Lynda.com

Discover how to build professional apps that encompass the 17 major feature areas of Windows Phone, from XAML to multimedia to network access. In this course, author Michael Lehman details the standard hardware device configuration, teaches how to navigate the development environment, and explores the Windows Phone APIs. The course shows how to build sample applications while learning Windows Phone concepts and frameworks, including the Metro design language.

Watch the Trailer.