I’ve been asked this question by many readers, and I’m surprised that Microsoft hasn’t more actively promoted its builtin menu function to first-time users. That function does a good job of revealing their locations.

To access it, press the Alt key in any Office 2007 application, and an alphanumeric menu that includes many of that app’s functions is displayed, providing quick keyboard ways to open them.

If you’re in Word, for example, and you tap your Alt key, here’s what happens…

All those little numbers and letters are called KeyTips. If you press Alt plus the appropriate letter on your keyboard, all the related functions of that letter will be displayed. For example, if you’re in Word and you press Alt+R (for Review), all the functions related to reviewing text will be displayed (see screenshot below).

The numbers and letters below the ribbon (that’s the Quick Access Toolbar) provide the keyboard shortcuts that open specific functions. For example, Alt-OE opens a Normal Word Document.

KeyTips may not be as artfully designed as the rest of Office, but it works and it’s simple—two attributes that trump artful design. I suspect that many users would complain less about Office 2007 if KeyTips were better known.

But the real advantage of KeyTips is that they provide a speed advantage over mousing because they let you keep your hands on the keyboard instead of moving to the mouse, searching the ribbon, and then returning to the keyboard.

In my business I have to assemble a wide range of scenarios so we can prepare negotiations on pricing certain projects, and since the scenarios usually contain many variables, that job can take hours. Any ideas for speeding the process?

Sure enough, Excel has a perfect tool for that job, and you probably won’t be surprised to learn it’s called Scenario. It lets you create an ensemble of basic circumstances and then, as you make adjustments in any of the parameters, you can save the calculated scenarios and call them up from a menu in your toolbar—just perfect to provide the key numbers at your fingertips during presentations.

But before I walk you through the setup steps, I suggest you add Scenario to your toolbar. To do that, go to Tools, Customize, click the Commands tab and under Categories, go to Tools, and under the Commands tab, go to the Scenario: icon that contains the dropdown menu (see screenshot below) and drag it into your toolbar.

Now we’ll create a short scenario, from which I’ll show you how to easily build a menu of variations that you can then access with a single click. Open a new Excel spreadsheet and, using the text in the screenshot below, fill in the information from A2 to A8. In B6, enter =B2*B3; in B7 enter =B4*B5; and in B8 enter B7-B6.

For this example, we’ll create a menu of scenarios in which the Number of attendees will rise from a minimum of 12 to a maximum of 100, and the Scenario will display the financial impact of those changes in Total profit.

To do that, highlight cells B2 to B5 (the variables in this scenario) and go up to the Scenario: icon you just created in your toolbar, typing in Minimum attendees and press Enter (see screenshot below).

Now we’ll change one variable, increasing Number of attendees to 100 and again select B2:B5, and in the Scenario: box this time type Maximum attendees and press Enter (see screenshot below).

Clicking on the down arrow in toolbar’s Scenario lets you select which scenario you wish to view. And if you go to Tools, Scenarios (see screenshot below), you can edit your selection.

All I wanted to do was copy a bunch of hyperlinks from one worksheet into another. But often when I highlight the cell containing the hyperlink, the link gets triggered before it can perform the copy task. Is there a way to prevent that?

Yes, there is a little trick to it. Say the link is in cell B1. Rather than clicking on B1, click on any adjacent cell and then use your arrow keys to expand it to B1; that action won’t trigger the link, and you can then copy it.

It doesn’t look very professional to print an Excel worksheet displaying those little error symbols (#DIV/0! or #N/A). And even though I know they are harmless, I don’t want to have to explain them to a client. How can I keep them off my printed sheets without having to go through the trouble of rewriting those unimportant formulas to eliminate them?

They print because Excel is defaulted to print them, but you can change the default easily. In Excel 2003, click on File, Page Setup and then on the Sheet tab (see screenshot below). In Excel 2007, display the Page Layout tab of the ribbon and then click the small icon at the lower-right of the Page Setup group to display this dialog box.

When you go to the dropdown list next to Cell errors as, notice you have several choices: displayed prints the error values as shown in the worksheet; <blank> hides the error values; - - replaces the error value with two dashes; and #N/A replaces all error values with #N/A.

And while you’re there, notice that you can adjust the defaults for how comments are displayed: (None), At end of sheet or As displayed on sheet (see screenshot below).

A proper place for the mouse: Since I’m a lefty, I guess I’m biased, but I think the right place for the mouse is on the left of the keyboard. That leaves your right hand free to work the number pad. Hard to make the switch from right to left? Many right-handers who did switch say it took them just two or three days to get comfortable using the left hand. Try it.

If you get frustrated when you try to select text with the mouse past the bottom of the currently visible page and it leaps past the place you want to go, forgo the mouse and use the Shift key plus the down arrow key. It’s fast and accurate.

To select a word, double-click on it. It picks up any space immediately after the word but ignores punctuation. Select a sentence by pressing Ctrl and clicking anywhere in the sentence. To select a paragraph, triple-click within the paragraph or move the mouse just past the left margin of the paragraph, and when the pointer changes to a right-pointing arrow, double-click to select the whole paragraph.

If you work with a lot of open, overlapping documents, cycle between them quickly: Ctrl+F6 to jump forward; Ctrl+Shift+F6 to go backward.

If you want to open a document and return to the exact place you left off, press Shift+F5—but you’ve got to press those keys before you do anything else in the newly opened document. Sorry Vista users, this shortcut only works in Word before 2007.

To delete the contents of all the cells in a Word table, select the table and press Delete—not Backspace. Pressing Backspace deletes the text and the table.

To create a Word 2003 style on the fly and format a paragraph the way you want it, click on Format, Styles and Formatting, type a name in the Style box on the Formatting toolbar (see screenshot at left) and press Enter. In Word 2007, you must first add the Style dropdown list to the Quick Access Toolbar.

Stanley Zarowin is a contributing editor to the JofA. His e-mail address is stanley.joatech@gmail.com.