Information management and technology assurance

Each year I take some of my prior-year Excel workbooks and delete all the old data except for the formulas—a tedious process. Is there a better way to do this? Excel has a tool for that. Highlight the area of the worksheet you want cleared. In this case, since the

I use a spreadsheet for my work that’s formatted in a very complicated way. So every time I open a new worksheet, I have to go through all the preliminary format setup steps to prepare it for my special requirements—such as columns with varying widths and even different colors for

Ctrl+1: Opens the Format Cells menu Ctrl+Shift+&: Places a border around a cell or group of highlighted cells Ctrl+Shift+-: Removes the border Ctrl+Shift+$: Turns a cell or highlighted row or column into a dollars-and-cents format Windows logo key+E: Opens Windows Explorer

I’ve been told that any time I make a major change in my computer—such as installing new software or new hardware— I should create a new System Restore point. But that function is buried under many layers, and so, when I’m busy, more often than not I fail to follow

I think the most effective way, and it’s my favorite, is to put the shortcut right in the Start menu so all you have to do to access the shortcut is click on the Start menu. The procedure takes a few seconds. Start by placing a shortcut to the target

To generate the list, place your cursor at the left side of the bottom of the worksheet screen, in the area of the black arrows, and right-click.

Under the Visibility heading, place a check next to Show location of pointer when I press the CTRL key. When you engage that function, you’ll see an animated shrinking bull’s-eye aimed at the cursor; it can’t be missed. There are other things you can do, too, to make the cursor

Here’s what it looks like in Vista—with the file listing on the left and the preview on the right: And here is what the preview function looks like in XP:  

Alt+F4 (in a program): Closes the window Alt+F4 (from the desktop): Opens the Windows Shutdown/ Restart dialog box Alt+Spacebar: In the active window, this brings up the corner dialog box Alt+Esc: Cycles between open windows in the order they were opened Shift+Delete: Permanently deletes an item (rather than sending it

Bonus: If you subsequently add or delete columns within that range, the color pattern will automatically adjust to the size you select. And if you replace the word ROW in the formula with COLUMN, the color scheme will be installed for every other column instead of every other row. In