Fixing MS Office menus (so you can see all the options all the time)

steven — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 00:06:48 +0000

One regular annoyance with MS Office (the old, pre-ribbon, versions) is its desire to demonstrate it knows more about your work than you do. It does this by hiding most of the options when you try and select from a menu.

Thankfully it’s simple to remind it who’s boss.

From the menu, select Tools > Customize (sic).
If you need to expand the menu to find this option, say a quick thanks that this will be last time you’ll need to do that.
In the dialog, select the Options tab.
Check the Always show full menus checkbox.
Close the dialog. And relax.

All is well again.

Including MS Powerpoint images in MS Word documents

steven — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 04:34:15 +0000

The easiest method to include an image of a MS Powerpoint slide in a MS Word document is to use the Send To option in Powerpoint. This creates an MS Word version of your Powerpoint file with pictures of each slide automatically generated. The slides appear a standard size, complete with edge frame, as they would appear to someone viewing them. It is then straighforward to cut & paste those pictures into your MS Word document.

Sadly this option is not valid for the Mac version of MS Powerpoint from office:2004. When selected in that version the output is a text version of the slide contents, not the pretty pictures.

To create an MS Word version of your slides:

Open your Powerpoint file.
Select File > Send To > Microsoft Word from the menu
Click OK in the Write-Up dialog that displays.
This dialog allows you to choose where your slide notes are included in the output document. Since you only need the slide images it does not matter where the notes are put; however having them alongside makes your slide list easier to navigate.

Once you click OK an MS Word version of your overheads will be created. This will be a brand new document that contains a single table, one row per slide, with neat images of your overheads available for cut & paste.

One final tip. Do not click in another document while the Powerpoint export is being generated. If you do the slide pictures will be generated in the document you clicked in!

isambard » MS Powerpoint

Fixing MS Office menus (so you can see all the options all the time)

Including MS Powerpoint images in MS Word documents