Technology Q&A

by Stanley Zarowin

Add extra text box to a chart…Use Office Clipboard to
control selective copying…Should you leave your
omputer running 24/7?…Identify files with
customizable information…Convert hyperlinks to text…
Anchor an Excel range without $ signs…Excel shortcuts.

ADD EXTRA TEXT BOX TO A CHART
When I create a chart in Excel, I often need to add another box inside the chart—such as a note of explanation. But since the box is not part of the data points, I can’t figure out a way to do this. Any ideas?

There are two very neat ways to do it. One is to use the Drawing toolbar by clicking on View, Toolbars, Drawing. Now click on the Text Box tool. Notice how the mouse pointer changes to cross-hairs; you then can click and drag to outline the text box you want to create.

The second way is to use the Formula bar. First click on any part of your chart (except a title or data label) and then go to the Formula bar and start typing the material you want to appear in the text box, like this:

When you press Enter, the text you typed gets placed in a text box. You then can move and resize the box.

USE OFFICE CLIPBOARD TO CONTROL SELECTIVE COPYING
I can copy a word or a group of contiguous words and paste it in another location in a document. But is there a way to copy a bunch of words in different parts of the document and then selectively paste them in different places?

Say hello to the Office Clipboard. It’s one of the most underused tools in Microsoft Office because its default mode is to stay hidden unless you purposely summon it to appear. What’s neat about the Office Clipboard is that all words, numbers or images you copy or cut can be pasted into any Office Suite program—including Word, Excel, Access and Outlook. Let’s take a close look at this versatile Clipboard.

If you click on Edit, Office Clipboard in any of those programs, this panel will appear on the right side of your screen:

You can control how Clipboard works by clicking on the Options button on the bottom of the panel and placing a check next to the variable you want to activate (see screenshot).

If Clipboard is showing when you copy (Ctrl+C) or cut (Ctrl+X) material, that material will appear in the Clipboard panel. You can copy anything in the panel (whether it was copied or cut) by placing your cursor where you want the copy to go and then clicking on the target material in the panel. You can do this as many times as you wish.

SHOULD YOU LEAVE YOUR COMPUTER RUNNING 24/7?
Should you turn off your computer at day’s end? This question is being hotly debated in my office. The split seems to be between those who drive gas guzzlers and those with economy cars.

You are raising a much bigger issue than energy conservation. You surely save electricity by turning off your computer at night even though you “waste” a bit when you launch it in the morning because computers draw an extra surge of electricity each time they start up. The savings balances out to about $100 a year. The downside to repeatedly turning it off is the extra strain on the electronics—though I’m not aware that the cost of that strain, measured by an earlier breakdown, has ever been quantified. In any case, computers become obsolete these days before they fail.

The best reason for turning off a computer at night is that it clears its temporary memory (not the hard disk); as a result, it will run somewhat faster when you fire it up again.

The conservationists in your office have two other energy-saving options: Standby and Hibernate. Standby runs the computer on low power and blanks the monitor; when you want to resume, it starts up instantly. Hibernate is just a small step before a complete shutdown. Before it goes into hibernation, it saves all open files to the hard drive and remembers the last configuration, so when you start up again, everything that was running is fully restored.

To get to Hibernate, click on Start and you’ll see this screen:

To adjust when you want an inactive computer to automatically go into either Hibernate or Standby, open the Power Options Properties screen by clicking on Start, Control Panel, Power Options. Once you make your adjustments, you can save the settings under Power Schemes (see screenshot below).

As you can see from the above screen, which shows my settings, I save electricity by setting my computer to turn off its monitor and hard disk after 15 minutes of inactivity. However, because I find it annoying, I don’t use automatic Hibernation or Standby after a certain period of time. But if I know I’ll be away for more than a day, I usually turn it off.

IDENTIFY FILES WITH CUSTOMIZED INFORMATION
We have something like 75 different spreadsheets containing various studies and reports circulating in the office at any one time. While it’s usually possible to identify each author because of the subject, I’d like some easy way to label each file without putting the information directly in the worksheet. Any ideas?

Every Office Suite program has a hidden Properties section in which you can enter all kinds of identification data. To access it, click on File, Properties. The opening screen that defaults is Summary (see screenshot below).

Any data you fill out in the Properties screens always stay with the file. To add other information not listed in the Summary section, click on the Custom tab. Also, check out the Statistics page; it provides a wide range of data about the file that you might find useful.

CONVERT HYPERLINKS TO TEXT
I often receive documents that contain many hyperlinks—links to Web sites and e-mail addresses. I have to go through the entire document and convert the hyperlinks to regular text one at a time. Is there a faster way to do that?

For those who aren’t familiar with hyperlink elimination, here’s how it’s done: Highlight the hyperlink

and right-click, which evokes this screen:

Then click on Remove Hyperlink and the hyperlink is converted to text:

If you have many such links, press Ctrl+A to select the entire document and then press Ctrl+Shift+F9 to eliminate the fields that support the hyperlinks, converting them to text.

ANCHOR AN EXCEL RANGE WITHOUT $ SIGNS
Here’s a tip sent by reader Mike Hendricks, CPA, cost accounting manager of Yarnell Ice Cream Co., Searcy, Ark.:

If you have a range of data you need to keep together—for instance, a lookup table—you can anchor it without using dollar signs, such as in $A$1:$Z$50. Do this instead: Highlight the target range of values. Then click in the Name Box (in the top left corner of the window) and name the range.

EXCEL SHORTCUTS
F1: Help
F2: Edit mode
F4: Repeat last action
F5: Go to
F7: Spell check
F9: Calculate all
F11: New chart
F12: Save as

Stanley Zarowin, a former JofA senior editor, is now a contributing editor. His e-mail address is zarowin@mindspring.com.