I am too polite to (repeatedly) tell people who send me Zoom notices that it is actually easier for everyone to send it as a calendar invite, so here is how to add Zoom to your calendar. 


This is from the Zoom Site BTW.

You can install the Zoom for Outlook add-in for your own use if installing add-ins is permitted by your Office 365 admin.

1. Go to Zoom for Outlook in the Microsoft App Store.
2. Click Get It Now.
3. Follow the Microsoft App Store prompts, to complete the installation. 

Here are the main instructions:
Zoom for Outlook 

I downloaded a lot of cute fonts today but ... eek! That is a lot of opening and installing.  I used the PC.

So - the solution.

1. Make a folder for all the fonts.
2. Download and install Winzip. 
3. Inside Winzip, you can unzip them all at once. 
   1. Select All 
   2. Under Actions - Unzip All.
4. In the file explorer of windows, right click and choose Install.

Boom!  Now I have a lot of cute new fonts.  

I found them on Abstract Fonts - it is kind of hard to tell which download to press.  Choose the download button aligned to the top of the words, not the bottom.

I have been working on a series of documents that require special formatting for our university.  Sometimes I work on a Mac and sometimes I work on a PC, and it frustrates me to open up the documents and not have the styles I created available.

If you don't know how to create a style, you are a step behind these instructions.  You need to at least format some text and save it as a style.  This is on the home tab, Styles.

My problem is that I was only using styles from the HOME tab.  I needed to go to the design tab and choose "Save as New Style Set".  This prompted the template window. Now there is a file that can be shared between computers and opened to apply to other documents.

As I am working with documents (and working with professors who are working with documents), it is clear that there needs to be an easy tool to make sure our handouts and writing will adapt to screen readers and people who are using alternative fonts for reading needs.

• The basics of Accessible design include:
• Use the Style Pane to create navigation tools with the Headers, Lists, and Normal Text.
• Make sure that the colors used have a strong contrast ratio.
• Use a color checker to see how different color-blindness will be affected by your color  choices.  I take a screen shot of the text and upload it.
• Use Alt-Text for tables and images.

Microsoft Word has an accessibility tool that you can add to your toolbar.  To do this,

1. Go to the File>Options (PC) or Word>Preferences (Mac) and look for tools that are not in the toolbar.
2. Find the Accessibility Checker and add it in.

When you are working on your document, periodically run the accessibility checker. If you have not yet developed a sense of accessibility, use this tool frequently.  It isn't like pell-check, do NOT wait until the end.  If you are creating something incorrectly, it is much easier to stop and learn before you get to the end and realize that you need to add alt-text for every table.

The National Center on Disability and Access to Education has a great collection of cheatsheets on creating accessible content.   I recommend and use these frequently!

I love Excel and use it daily.  Working with dates can frustrating if you don't know the keyboard shortcuts and functions/formulas.

=NOW() and =Today()  insert the current time/date and update whenever the sheet updates.  This is good if you have a report and you want to show the date when it was last updated.
=DAY(TODAY()) is the current day of the month.
=MONTH(TODAY()) is the current month.

If you want the dates to stay put, use CTRL and ; (semi-colon).  The time is CTRL + SHIFT + ;.

I have two tables in Access that I want to join together to help sort information for Quarterly Reports.  One way is to run a query, but another way is to use the calculated data type in the table.  

Since I don't want to have to run an append query multiple times a day, I decided to use the calculation feature.   I may regret having done this instead of a query, but for anyone else who wants to combine two columns in the same table:

In Design View:

Name the Field 
Choose Calculated
In Expression [Name of Column1]  &  [Name of Column 2].  Obviously if you have a space, add in &" " after the first [Name of Column].

It works, but it was so simple that I am suspicious.  Access is never simple for me.  I am using Access 2016, btw.

AHH!  I have been working on a handout and when I copy the words from one page to another, there is a white highlighting.  I have marked "no highlight" ... but still, it highlights.

Here is the solution I found.

Choose  "Clear Formatting".  It removes all the formatting so I had to redo the Heading 2 Style that I was using ... but it worked.  It is on the home tab and looks like a little eraser, and in the Styles Pane.

Having been lucky enough to be an Excel Trainer for many years, I can't believe I forgot how to do this and had to look it up!

I was tracking how many different times people attended training, but I wanted Excel to tell me how many people were unique and give a count for each person.

It is under Data - Sort and Filter - Advanced.

Then I had it copy the data to another row and only show unique values.  Then I ran a count of the names, and it was done!