Key to Instructions
To help
readers follow the instructions in this
article, we use two different typefaces.
Boldface type identifies
the names of icons, agendas, URLs and
application commands. Sans serif
type indicates instructions and commands
that users should type and file names.
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icture this: You type a name into a
document and a tiny icon instantly appears next to
it. When you pass your cursor over the icon, a
menu unfolds that offers you options such as:
Insert the person’s address and phone number, send
him or her an e-mail or schedule a meeting. The
icon even gives you the opportunity to tell the
software never to interrupt you with these
suggestions again. If you’ve upgraded to
Microsoft’s latest office suite, XP, chances are
you’ve seen the icons, called Smart Tags, popping
up uninvited in your documents and spreadsheets.
The goal of this article is to introduce you to
the new technology and show you how, if you wish
to use them, they can improve your productivity.
Or, if you object to such high-tech intrusion,
we’ll show you how to get rid of them.
PERSONAL ROBOT
Smart Tags are all
about providing quick access to information. They
recognize text, numbers, actions and objects that
frequently could be enhanced with more facts. When
triggered, they act like personal robots that will
cruise far and wide to seek data in your computer
or, if you’re connected, on your network or the
Internet.
Say you’re in Word and you type
Jennifer M. Mueller. XP instantly
recognizes the words as someone’s name and
triggers a Smart Tag—the letter “i” inside
a small square—into action. It looks like
exhibit 1, at right, on the screen. |
Exhibit 1
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If you decide the targeted words don’t need
further attention—such as adding an address or
sending that person an e-mail—you simply ignore
the tag, type on and it will disappear. But if you
hover over the icon, a down arrow will appear and
if you click on it, the menu in exhibit 2, below,
will unfold.
You don’t have to do anything
to launch the Smart Tag function. It’s
automatically turned on when you install
Office XP. Smart Tags are not limited to
Word; they operate in Excel, Outlook,
PowerPoint and FrontPage.
Paste. This
function is evoked in Word, PowerPoint,
Excel, Outlook and FrontPage. In those
applications a Smart Tag will appear
when you paste text or other objects. It
will offer various formatting choices,
depending on the application, such as
keeping the style of the source from
which the information was copied or
matching it to that of the destination.
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Exhibit 2
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AutoCorrect. It’s been
available in earlier versions of Office
applications—Word, PowerPoint and Outlook. A Smart
Tag appears when AutoCorrect
makes an automatic fix, offering to undo
it and even change the AutoCorrect
settings on the fly, so to speak. Before
Smart Tags, a user who was unhappy about an
AutoCorrect change had to go
into the setup menu to alter the default.
AutoFit in PowerPoint.
Smart Tags appear when a user enters text
into a placeholder on a slide and offers
formatting options such as fitting the text to the
size of the placeholder or splitting the text
between two slides.
AutoFill in Excel. It’s triggered
when you click and drag data from one cell to
others. The Smart Tags menu offers to copy the
contents, fill in the series, fill in the format
only, or fill in the series without formatting.
Error Checking in Excel. It
appears when a cell contains a formula error or
invalid reference and offers help on the type of
error in the cell and error-checking and debugging
options.
Office XP contains quite a few more
Smart Tag functions, but they’re “asleep”
and need to be awakened in order to work.
Smart Tags for recognizing names,
addresses, dates, times and stock symbols
can be awakened by checking the boxes for
the particular tags in the
AutoCorrect dialog box
(more on this later). For example, if
Jennifer M. Mueller’s e-mail and postal
addresses were in your Outlook Contacts
file and you clicked on Insert
Address in her Smart Tag menu,
the text in exhibit 3, at right, would
appear. |
Exhibit 3
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Clicking on Send Mail produces
the fully addressed e-mail form in Outlook shown
in exhibit 4, below. Exhibit 4
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| If you want to
mark a calendar date, click on Schedule a
Meeting and you produce Outlook’s
partially filled-in appointment-creation screen as
shown in exhibit 5, below. Exhibit 5
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| Within Excel,
the Smart Tag technology recognizes stock ticker
symbols and, at your command, retrieves a stock
quote, a company report, recent company news via
the Internet from MSN Money Central or even a
refreshable stock price (see exhibit 6, below).
Thus, CPAs doing financial planning can prepare
spreadsheets that track both trading and news
activity. Likewise, auditors could develop
spreadsheets that list their public audit clients
and easily retrieve daily company news.
Exhibit 6
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| A caveat to
using the stock symbol Smart Tag: It’s limited in
the information it can retrieve, and the various
functions are rather clumsy and take several
steps. For a more efficient way to perform these
functions, see “ The Limits of Smart Tags
,” below.
The Limits of
Smart Tags Sometimes Smart
Tags aren’t all that smart. For
the time being at least, Smart Tags can
recognize only some stock symbols. They
can’t recognize most symbols of mutual
funds. Also, the information returned
about a stock is limited both in what
can be retrieved and how it is
displayed. Fortunately, there’s a work
around: You can download a free add-in
function for Excel as an alternative,
accomplishing the task of inserting
refreshable stock-related information
into a spreadsheet. Both the function
and the data are available from MSN
MoneyCentral at http://officemicrosoft.com/downloads/2002/Msnsqaspx
. The function is defined as
follows: For example, if the
ticker symbol for the Fidelity Capital
and Income mutual fund is typed into
cell A1 as FAGIX, and you wish to return
the last price to the neighboring cell,
B1, the function would be entered into
B1 as =MSNStockQuote(A1, “Last Price”,
“US”). When you download and
install the add-in function, an optional
toolbar becomes available in Excel with
buttons for entering it into a cell
through a wizard. The spreadsheet in the
screenshot below illustrates the toolbar
and the function that is entered into
D3.
The add-in function can
retrieve 25 types of refreshable
information—including last price, day’s
high, size of last sale, earnings per
share and price-earnings (P/E) ratio.
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EVEN SMARTER TAGS
So far we’ve
illustrated how to work with the built-in, default
versions of Smart Tags. More specialized and
powerful ones are available but may require a
subscription fee. Various companies have partnered
with Microsoft to create Smart Tags for a variety
of information needs. Although some Smart Tags are
very specific to certain industries, several can
help CPAs in public and industry accounting. All
are available for download from the Internet. Here
are some of the more popular ones:
BridgeInSight. When you
type an InSight vehicle symbol (for example, us;
IBM) into Word or Excel, Smart Tags provide
continually refreshed stock price data on the
company that vehicle symbol represents: stock
history, analytical charts and Bridge Financial
News headlines. BridgeInSight provides information
from more than 200 exchanges in over 100 countries
( http://insight.bridge.com
).
WestCiteLink. By typing a
law citation in a Word document, the Smart Tag can
retrieve the full text, the history for a case or
statute, and other cases and statutes. It can also
provide a table of authorities and convert the
citation to a Westlaw hyperlink ( www.westlaw.com/citelink
).
LexisNexis. Three types of
Word Smart Tags work with LexisNexis. The Legal
Case Name tag can search for a case name, news
articles, law reviews and verdict information. The
Person Name tag adds to Outlook Contacts results
of searches for a legal biography, property
records, judgments and liens, bankruptcy records
or addresses. And the Address tag adds to Outlook
Contacts results of searches for addresses of
people, property records, judgments, liens and
bankruptcy records ( http://support.lexisnexis.com/lndownload
).
Euro Currency Converter.
This Microsoft product tracks 12 European
currencies and the euro. Its conversion function
works in Word, Excel and Outlook. The Smart Tag
menu then provides various conversion options ( http://office.microsoft.com/downloads/2002/Eurost.aspx
). In addition, there also are
downloadable City Name Smart Tags for general news
and weather about a city provided by MSNBC ( www.msnbc.com )
and flight, hotel and other travel information
from Expedia ( www.expedia.com
). Microsoft’s eServices Web site ( http://office.microsoft.com/Services
) offers links to more than 20 downloadable
Smart Tags, some of which are free.
CLOSE TO HOME
Smart Tags also can
link to your own company or client information.
Microsoft provides a free Smart Tag software
development kit complete with code samples in
Visual Basic or Visual C++. However, if you aren’t
proficient in those programs or would prefer not
to write code, Keylogix ( www.activedocs.com
) has developed software (ActiveDocs) that
lets you customize Smart Tags through a wizard
format. The process is analogous to developing a
Web site using FrontPage rather than manually
coding the HTML. The wizard takes you through a
series of steps to define the location of the
data, the data fields and the Smart Tag menus.
Distracted by Smart Tags popping up in
documents? With a few exceptions, most Smart Tags
can be disabled in the AutoCorrect
dialog box. To get there, go to
Tools and AutoCorrect
Options . Select the Smart Tags
tab to see a listing that includes those
you have downloaded or developed. Clear the check
boxes of any Smart Tags you wish to disable (see
exhibit 7, below).
Exhibit 7
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| If you decide to
keep Smart Tags, several other settings may help
suit your preferences. One formats how the
recognized information is visually tagged. In
Excel, you may choose either to have the action
icon appear whenever you point to the recognized
cell, or in addition to the icon, you may want to
flag the cell with color to identify it easily. In
Word, recognized text will be marked with a faint
dotted underline that remains visible at all
times. You may decide to have the action icon
appear when you point to recognized text. For
details on how to evoke those defaults, see “ Smart
Tags Available in Office XP ,”at the end of
this article. In both Word and Excel, you
can choose whether to save or embed the Smart Tags
in the document or workbook. If you choose not to
embed them, Smart Tags will not tag previously
recognized information when the file is reopened.
You may adjust this setting by clicking on the
Save Options button beneath the
Smart Tags tab within the
AutoCorrect dialog box.
Finally, at any time, you may remove all Smart
Tags from the document or workbook or choose to
recheck the document or workbook for any
recognized information. That may be useful before
sending the document to someone else or when
checking one you did not create. If you
have not already upgraded to Office XP, the new
Smart Tag technology may persuade you to take the
step. If, however, you’re already on the XP track,
check out Smart Tags; they are well worth a
test-drive. You may find the tags put valuable
information right where you need it—in a specific
document or spreadsheet. JENNIFER M. MUELLER, PhD, is
an assistant professor at Auburn University’s
School of Accountancy in Alabama. Her e-mail
address is jmueller@business.auburn.edu
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