Author: jason-dowd

How to Use “Slide Masters” to Customize Microsoft PowerPoint 365 Presentations

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Get Shift Done: Tips and Tricks

When you associate a slide master with a Microsoft PowerPoint 365 presentation, it stores information about that presentation’s visual theme and layout, including background images, fonts, effects, and placeholders. PowerPoint includes quite a few slide masters by default, but creating your own allows you to make global customizations to your entire presentation in a single stroke, saving an enormous amount of time and frustration.

Every presentation contains at least one slide master by default. To edit it, we must enter the Slide Master View. To do so, navigate to the View ribbon and select Slide Master within the Master Views group.


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It’s Hard To Do Advanced Search Inside Excel 365. But Here’s How (Stay With Us)

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Get Shift Done: Tips and Tricks

Large spreadsheets can quickly become unwieldy, especially when you try to find specific information buried within volumes of data. Since the Lookup Wizard was retired in Microsoft Excel 365, the easiest and most effective method of searching a spreadsheet is to use the powerful VLOOKUP and HLOOKUP functions. This article provides an overview of these functions and examples showing how to use them.

First is the VLOOKUP (Vertical Lookup) function. The sample worksheet uses a discount matrix for items purchased in bulk. We are trying to determine how much of a discount to give for a particular purchase order, based on the weight of the items purchased. The formula is:


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Static PowerPoints Are So Ten Minutes Ago: Use Motion Path In Powerpoint!

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Get Shift Done: Tips and Tricks

Do you want to spice up your Microsoft PowerPoint 365 presentation to include something more than static images? Looking for a more energetic way to tell an effective story in your presentations? Applying motion path animation effects to your slide deck is an easy way to liven up your presentation and give it a professional sheen. And it’s fun!

In the example below, we manipulate the static image of a rocket so that it flies around the screen. The solid image in the upper-right shows the starting point of the rocket, and the dotted line between the two images shows the path it takes when the animation plays. The transparent image in the bottom-left is where the image ends up when the motion path animation is done.


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Dropbox Messing With Your Local Storage Limits? We Got a Fix For That.

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Get Shift Done: Tips and Tricks


Are you unable to sync all your files stored in Dropbox because you’re running out of space on your hard drive? Even if you are getting ominous warning messages, you aren’t stuck. By exercising more control over what you sync, you can ensure a future free of storage space issues.

When you install Dropbox, the application creates folders on your local hard drive that mirror what is stored on your Dropbox.com account. If you add files to your local Dropbox folders, they are automatically uploaded to your online folders. Likewise, if you add files or folders via the web browser or mobile app, they are downloaded — or synchronized — to your local disk. While this Dropbox feature is fantastic for keeping files globally accessible, problems can arise when you run out of online space or local hard drive space.

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Excel 365: How to Protect Cells in a Shared Worksheet

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Get Shift Done: Tips and Tricks

Do you have a shared worksheet in Microsoft Excel 365 containing important data or carefully-constructed formulas you don’t want altered, accidentally or deliberately? Perhaps it’s the standard hourly rate. Maybe it’s equipment part numbers, or a shipping-cost calculation. Whatever it is, people should just keep their hands off it!

Fortunately, Excel makes it possible to prevent people from changing things. The following steps show how to protect critical data while allowing users to enter information in only the fields you want them to access.

Keep in mind that protecting worksheet data is different than protecting a workbook with a password. The latter security measure is to ensure no one can access a workbook without the proper credentials — a key to get in. Protecting the cells in a shared worksheet means that the cells or range cannot be modified.

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