Information management and technology assurance

Key to Instructions To help readers follow the instructions in this article, we used two different typefaces: Boldface type is used to identify the names of icons, agendas and URLs. Sans serif type shows the names of files and the names of commands and instructions that users should type into

When I’m out of the office, other accountants often use my computer, which by itself doesn’t bother me. What does disturb me is that a few clicks will reveal the names of the last nine files I’ve opened, and that invades my privacy. Short of password-protecting my computer, is there

Why don’t computer manufacturers put an equal sign (=) in a more convenient place on keyboards? It’s such a pain to find that out-of-the-way key we use in so many Excel formulas. The answer is simple: Keyboard designers aren’t accountants. But cheer up, here’s a simple work-around. When you enter

Here are a few tidbits that readers might find useful: A gem of a calculator: Microsoft quietly introduced a powerful little conversion calculator that not only adds, subtracts and divides but also converts all the major world currencies to the currency of your choice. The exchange rates are current—downloaded in

Ctrl+1: Displays the Format Cells dialog box Ctrl+9: Hides selected rows Ctrl+0: Hides selected columns Ctrl+(: Unhides any hidden rows within the selection Ctrl+): Unhides any hidden columns within the selection Ctrl+~: Applies the general number format Ctrl+$: Applies the currency format with two decimal places (negative numbers in parentheses)

In theory, going paperless is a great idea. In practice, however, the biggest obstacle, at least in my office, is not the work to convert documents into electronic files; it’s finding them afterward and retrieving them. We try to get everyone in the office to agree on a unified way

I get into trouble when I want to print various pages or sections of a Word document. More often than not, I end up either printing the whole document or the wrong pages. Can you help me figure out the Print Range controls? Let’s start from the beginning. When you

Call me old-fashioned, but when it comes to things like address and phone directories, I prefer a paper book. Is there some way to print a little booklet of my Outlook contacts with phone numbers and addresses? Since I didn’t immediately know the answer to that question but realized it

I have a few files that open very slowly even though none is unusually large. Do you have any suggestions? First make sure that Track Changes is turned off; it can slow the opening of a file to a crawl. Then, as a further check, click on Tools , Options

I often repeat formulas in worksheets. I know I can save them as macros and then insert them anytime with a few clicks, but I really don’t like macros. Is there an easy alternative? There is, but I urge you to rethink your aversion to using macros. They actually are