Monday, 27 July 2009

The 19th Carnival of Computer Help and Advice

Welcome to the eighteenth monthly Carnival of Computer Help and Advice - a digest of recent blog articles offering advice on safer and easier computing.

We start this month with a couple of articles about Microsoft Office applications. Excel Matic author Mohit Khurana presents a tutorial explaining How to calculate subtotals using Array functions; and, MrGroove shows How To Delay or Schedule Delivery of Email Using Outlook at groovyPost.com.

For those of you considering purchasing a new computer, Michel of Computer spot/Tech zone offers the first part of a series of articles offering advice about How to buy a computer without getting ripped off. Meanwhile, MikeM presents a Netbook Computer Primer posted at HTS Tech Tips - Computer Tech Tips for Non-Geeks.

Microsoft recently launched their new search engine called Bing. To help users get the most of the innovative features offered by this new search engine, Margaret Garcia published 50 Tips & Tricks for Researching with Bing at Becoming a Computer Technician.

We finish with some practical advice from Mick Hart for anyone wanting to improve their digital photographic portraits. See his tutorial Adobe Photoshop CS4 Tutorials - Creating Awesome Eyes posted at Photoshop Revealed by David Peters.

Many thanks to all those who contributed articles for the carnival.

If you have posted an article offering computer advice that you want to submit to the carnival then use the form over at our Blog Carnival page to submit it for consideration. If you would like to host a future carnival then please leave a comment on this post or on the carnival page. If you don't wish to have the responsibility for selecting articles or writing the carnival post, don't worry I can do that for you.

Thursday, 9 July 2009

Customising the Quick Access Toolbar

In a recent post about adding buttons to the toolbars in Microsoft Office applications I pointed out that there is no way to add buttons to the new 'ribbon' that has replaced the old toolbars. Nevertheless, it has come to my attention that there is still one customisable toolbar in the latest versions of Word, Excel and Powerpoint. This is called the 'Quick Access Toolbar'. If you wish to add extra buttons to this toolbar you can do so by following the instructions on the 'Microsoft Office Online' pages. [http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word/HA012341051033.aspx]

I do not have a copy of MS Office 2007 myself, so I do not know whether you can add a button for the useful 'Past Special' function. If you have a copy of any of the Office 2007 applications, please let me know how you have got on when adding buttons to this toolbar.