pc support newsletter Systems Development The University of North Carolina at Charlotte February 2006

Contents · ITS Message Center · Outlook Calendar Tips · Outlook: Turning off Autosuggest (Email) · Excel: Paste Options Problem · Excel: Users cannot see comments on worksheet · Excel: Separating First and Last Names

IT’s Message Center

IT has created a message center where you can find up to date information about down time, server problems, etc. Here is the link

http://www.its.uncc.edu/MessageCenter/Alerts/

Some Calendar Tips

To make your calendar visible to other users by default:

• Click the Calendar icon to display the calendar
• Click “Share my Calendar” to display the Permissions tab.
• Complete the Permissions dialog box in this manner: Select Defaut, then under Permissions, change the Permission Level from “None” to “Reviewer”. Click Apply, then click OK. This action will cause your calendar to be viewable by all other Outlook users. However, if you select “Private” when placing an appointment on your calendar, that appointment will not be visible.
• To display more than one calendar day at a time: Press ALT+1 to see only the current day, ALT+2 to see the next two days, ALT+3 for the next 3 days, etc. up to ALT+0 which displays 10 days.
• To display non consecutive days on the calendar:
• Click the "one day" icon on the calendar toolbar.
• From the small monthly calendar on the right side of the screen, select the first day you want displayed.
• Select additional days by holding down the Ctrl key and clicking the desired day(s).
• NOTE: This "view" does not "stick" if you exit the calendar and return to it, click the "one day" icon to display the current day if desired.

• Use the Calendar to Schedule Email Responses: If you are unable to respond to an email message when you receive it, you can add it to your calendar so that you can be reminded to respond at a later date.  Simply drag the message from your Inbox to the Calendar icon on the Outlook shortcut bar.  Outlook creates an appointment  that includes the text of the message.  Be sure to enter start time, etc. and make sure the Reminder box is checked, and that the “appointment” is Private. Save and Close the "appointment" when you are done. This can also be helpful if you receive an email asking you to “stop by to discuss” something with someone. Drag the email to your calendar so you don’t forget!

Outlook Email: Turning off AutoSuggest for Email Messages/Deleting Unused Addresses from AutoSuggest

When typing in the "To", "Cc" or "Bcc" fields of an email message, Outlook reads the first few letters that you type and then makes a suggestion as to whom the recipient is.  If you would prefer Outlook not do this, the feature can be turned off.  From the Outlook Inbox menu, select Tools, Options.  On the Preferences tab, click Email Options. Click Advanced Email Options.  Uncheck "Suggest Names while completeing To, Cc and Bcc fields,." then click OK.

Instead of turning off the AutoSuggest feature, you might want to delete some of the addresses that Outlook suggests to you. When the suggested addresses display, scroll to the one you want to delete using the arrow keys, then press the Delete key to delete it.  The "deleted" address remains in the global address list, but won't be suggested to you by Outlook.

Actual Problems/Questions: Excel: Paste Options Problem

Problem: The user was attrempting to paste a selection (values only) from one workbook to another. When the user selected Paste, Special, she did not see the “normal” paste options dialog box, instead she was asked if she wanted to paste the data as a link.

Solution: This is caused when you have more than one instance of Excel open. Normally, you open Excel, and open each workbook using the File Open command (or File New to create a new workbook). In this case however, the user opened Excel and opened the first workbook, then double clicked the Excel icon in the launcher (thus opening another instance of Excel) and opened the second workbook. Two instances of Excel were running at the same time. To correct this, the user closed all workbooks, closed both instances of Excel, then re-opened Excel and used the File, Open command to open all workbooks.

Problem: The user inserted a comment into an Excel worksheet that was located on the file server. However, when other users opened the worksheet, they were unable to see the comment.

Solution: The users who could not see the comments needed to select Tools, Options from the Excel menu and in the Comments section of the View tab select either “Comment Indicators Only” or “Comment & Indicator”

Excel: Separating First and Last Names in a Worksheet

The worksheet below contains a list of names that need to be placed in separate columns. You can use a formula to accomplish this.

The following formula extracts the first name: =LEFT(A1,FIND(“ “,A1))

The following formula extracts the last name: =MID(A1,FIND(“ “,a1)+1,LEN(A1))

(Note that there is a space between the quotation marks in the formulas)

Click here for more details.

Questions or comments? Contact jtfreed@email.uncc.edu