www.inkthinkerblog.com — For those who haven’t found it yet, check out the Office Tweaks blog, written by Jerome Locson. Jerome tackles MS Office, open source programs, Web browers, PDFs, Mac and PC, and does it all in simple language and with flair. It’s a great read with tons of productivity tips that will help you get your work done more quickly and easily.
Here are 9 Office Tweaks posts that you may find useful:
- Some MS Office Adds-on
- Microsoft Office Keyboard Shortcuts
- Tips & Tricks: Mail Merge in Microsoft Word & OpenOffice
- OpenOffice.org Extension: Writer’s Tools
- Online Document File Converters, from one format to another
- Repairing Corrupted Microsoft Word Instantly
- Enso Words: Your new universal spelling companion
- Tips & Tricks: Microsoft Power Point 2007 Tip – Document Themes
- 15 must-know Firefox keyboard shortcuts for Mac
Any other great sources for software advice and shortcuts? Leave your suggestions in the comments.
Tags: freelance writing blog, freelance writing, freelance, writing, advice for freelance writers, productivity tips, software tips, software shortcuts, office tweaks, MS office, open office, open source, firefox, add-ons, keyboard shortcuts, mail merge, writers tools, file conversion, corrupted files, spelling, tricks, powerpoint, inkthinker, kristen king
Contents Copyright © 2006-2014 Kristen King
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Honestly, my biggest business timesaver is my Blackberry. I have my to-do list, calendar, and contacts at my finger tips and sync it with Outlook.
Three of my emails addresses come to my Blackberry. If it’s urgent, I can address it on the go. If not, I know what to schedule when I get back to the computer.
Carla’s last blog post..Hey . . . Are You Good With Computers?
Hi, Kristen! Well, I would highly recommend switching from MS Office to the much more stable and FREE OpenOffice productive suite. The best (and probably only) open source office suite on the market, it resembles MS Office’s template to such an extent that brand-new users will have no problems navigating it like a pro within minutes of downloading it. You can get it at OpenOffice’s Web site.
The only downside is that once you upload it and have it running, it does take a few seconds to open, even with a desktop shortcut. But the ease of use, stability and price are well worth the effort. Plus, although I admire Bill Gates and what he’s accomplished in bringing the PC to everyone’s homes (not to mention his philanthropic efforts), I think OpenOffice is the future of office productivity products.
Oh, and if you like that, check out Mozilla’s Thunderbird and Lightning products. Thunderbird is the email product while Lightning — which works with Thunderbird — is the calendar product. Together, they rival MS Outlook in terms of usability and stability. Plus, like OpenOffice, it’s FREE. Go here to download Thunderbird, and here to download Lightning.
I use both Thunderbird and Lightning and am extremely happy with it. I route all my Gmail accounts to Thunderbird so that I only have to open that app in order to check emails on all my accounts at once.
The only downside is that I don’t think they’re compatible with PDA’s yet. I don’t know if they’re working with Palm on that, but I would imagine that that will come eventually.
Cheers,
Marjorie
Marjorie’s last blog post..When a Publication is Being a D***head
@Carla – I had a Verizon Q for a while and quickly became overwhelmed with being constantly accessible! I’m glad it works for you.
@Marjorie – I like the idea of open-source solutions, but I feel like my lack of tech savvy keeps me from getting full functionality out of them, and I’m toast if I have technical problems. How to you handle that? Or has it not been an issue?
kk
I love the book Making Word Work for You. It’ll teach you all sorts of ways to speed upworking in Word.
@Katharine – Does that have tips for Mac users, or is it really PC focused?
kk
It’s not Mac oriented, but its author says that with a few adjustments here and there, Mac users will find it helpful.
@Katharine – Good to know! Thanks!
kk
Thank Kristen!
Jerome Locson’s last blog post..Microsoft Office Keyboard Shortcuts
Dear Kristen, my apologies for the delay in my response! I did want to make sure that I answered your question.
Re: OpenOffice. I’ve never, EVER had a single technical problem with the software program, not in the 20 months I’ve been using it. That’s the beauty of it: unlike MS Office, it’s very stable. The only downside, as I mentioned, is that it does take a second or two longer than MS Office programs to open. (Literally. I counted it.) If you have a slower processor, it can take a wee bit longer. However, given the cost of MS Office and the hassle of getting technical support, it’s worth the fraction of time to wait, IMHO. ;-)
Same with Thunderbird and Lightning. Indeed, Mozilla just came out with a newer version of Lightning that’s even more elegant and useful than its predecessor.
As I haven’t had any problems with them, I can’t speak for the usefulness of tech support systems in place on the OpenOffice or Mozilla forums. However, I daresay that if you do run across any issue, you won’t lack anyone willing to help you out on those forums. Open source guys tend to be a very passionate and fanatical bunch.
As for full functionality, I’m with you. I’ve yet to really explore all the things that OpenOffice can do. So far I’ve only really used Writer and Calc (the word processing and spreadsheet programs, respectively). They’re so similar to Word and Excel, however, that figuring out how to use them took all of about 10 minutes. I learn new things everyday, but most of the functions I use are fairly basic, the same kind of stuff I used Word and Excel for.
One of the best things I’ve found with Writer is that it can transform any doc you have into a PDF that itself can be opened by any PDF reader (including Adobe). Rather than having to buy a separate PDF creator, I just open a doc in Writer, click on the PDF icon, and voila! The PDF version of the doc is created as a separate file.
Anyway, as you can see, I’m a huge open source fan. If you have any questions, feel free to fire them my way.
Cheers,
Marjorie