Monday Oct 31, 2011
Tricks of the trade: Things your trainer never told you
By Deanna Reynolds
Here at KeyStone, we have relationships with the best trainers in the business. These people operate at
a high level of energy with a true passion for both the software and sharing their knowledge with you
(or, really, anyone who will listen).
So, we asked them:
Q. What are your absolute favorite, jaw-dropping, applause-rendering, show-
stopping tricks that bring the house every time you share them in your
classroom?
We were not disappointed with the answers and we don’t think you’ll be either.
Our first tip is from Nona, a trainer residing in Virginia, USA. Nona writes:
“The standard "Select All" key doesn't work the way you think it does. Experienced Windows users know
that Ctrl-A is the shortcut key that selects everything in a window or document; the A in Ctrl-A stands
for All. Ctrl-A works this way in every application you can find—except Excel. When you press Ctrl-A in
a worksheet with data in it, you select the current region (that is, all connected cells), not the whole
worksheet. But wait—if you immediately press Ctrl-A a second time, you select the entire worksheet—
unless the worksheet contains a table, in which case your second press of Ctrl-A will select the current
region and the summary rows (typically the headers) of the current table. And if your second Ctrl-A
selects the current table and its summary rows, then you'll need to press Ctrl-A a third time to select the
entire worksheet.”
Our next tip comes from Nicole, a trainer residing in Germany. Nicole writes:
“In PowerPoint 2010 you can now get rid of the background or better “cut out a picture “ as you are
used to doing in Photoshop or Corel Draw. But what is great that you don´t need to click around the face
anymore to cut the background out…you simply need to just draw a line into the area you no longer
need. I really love this new feature in 2010.”
Nicole also likes to show her students how to quickly pin documents they use on a regular basis to the
File tab, on their Recent Documents list. She offers that by just right-clicking any document shown in
the list, you can choose “Pin to list” to always keep the selected document at the top of the Recent
Documents list regardless of the last time it was accessed.
Our final tip is from Alva, a trainer residing in California, USA. Alva shares:
“I absolutely enjoy creating formulas in [Excel’s] Name Manager. [That way] students can use the name
provided for the formula to further manipulate their data in Excel.
Alva’s right on target with this tip. Excel 2010 now allows you to name tables, ranges, cells, and formulas
for future reference. This works fabulously on larger spreadsheets as a name seems far easier to
remember than a complex list of cell addresses and/or ranges.
I wish I could fit all of our trainer’s tips into this article. They are so full of great advice. We would love to hear your tips as well; send us a message.
