Entries from April 2007 ↓
April 3rd, 2007 — email, Techno Mumbo Jumbo
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Ok, you have all these names in your contact database in Outlook. What can you do with them? Did you know you can send out form letters to all of them? Put them on Mailing Labels? Below are a few steps to make this happen. Practice makes perfect, just try this and some different things with the Mail Merge function…It could eventually save you some time…
These steps are only to show you where to find everything. You will have to cancel the menu to go back to make some choices that I mention below.
- Open up your Contacts
- Click “Tools” in top toolbar.
- In the drop down you will see “Mail merge”
This will have your options on what you want to do next. Do you want labels or letters? I am going to explain labels. You can play with creating letters on your own. You can see you have a few choices in your Contact section. Do you want to create labels for everyone in your database or did you only have a few in mind? Document file? That’s for letters for the most part. (If you typed up a fabulous letter to one client and would like it to sent it others in your database, you would find and select it here)
Contact data file. Did you want to keep this group of contact, grouped together to use again? You will need to give it a name and a location to save. This does not remove them from your database, only makes a copy.
Merge options. This is where you make the choice of labels or letters. (envelopes or catalogs) Envelopes are similar to labels, but it prints right on the envelope. Merge to… New document. If you save to a new document you can retrieve the document later and print more labels. The other options are printer and email. They go straight to the printer or email, as they suggest.
OK, cancel out of this. Now you know what you questions to ask yourself… What am I doing and who am I sending it to?
You can see I categorize my contacts. (a little OCD) I think it makes it easier to view. In this case I want to send something to all of the Home Inspectors in my Contact database. I click on the first one in the list and then hold the SHIFT button and click the bottom one. That selects the whole list. You can sporadically select contacts by holding the CTRL button while clicking the contact. Now you have them selected go back to the Tools>Mail merge menu. You then need to select “Only selected Contacts” and all fields. Drop down to the bottom and select Mailing Labels. Click OK and then it will open up Microsoft Word. You will have a pop up telling you select “Setup” on the next window. When you select “Set up” it will be looking for what type of labels will you be printing to. Most common is Avery 5160. This in the 3 wide and 10 high sheets of labels. Now click “Close” at the bottom.
Next, you can start making the labels look like you want. You should now be looking at a blank sheet with the cursor blinking in the upper left hand side. This is label number one. This will be the only one you work on. Here you will set the Font, the color, the format for the rest of them. Make up your mind NOW before you proceed…It is much easier going thru this once than having to back and fix.
Above is the tool bars on your document. The bottom one should be used for your merged data. Hoover over top of each button. Here you should see one that says “Address Block” This is the quickest way to build the list. Otherwise click “Insert Merged Fields” and insert the data fields that you want to be on the mailing label. YOU WILL NEED TO FORMAT THE LABEL AS YOU WERE TYPING IT. Like spaces between first name and last name. Enter after the names and enter after the property address. Commas after the city and spaces after the State. The “Address Block” will show you this menu.
Pick and choose what fields you want on the address block. The example will show in the preview window. IF YOU DON’T WANT THE CUSTOMERS NAME, uncheck the block. But now you will have to type either… Current Resident, Neighbor or Friend etc. On the line above ((Address Block))
Now does it look like you want? If not, change it. Next find the button that says “propagate labels” Wahlah!!! If you click the “view merged data” button and you will see what your labels will look like. Next you will need to print. Click Merge to New Document button on the Mail Merge tool bar. It will create a document of labels with all of your data on it. It will give you the option to merge all of the data or certain number of labels. When you are done you can save this file and print again later.
Play around and see what you can create. This will not ruin your database in your Contact list.
April 3rd, 2007 — Techno Mumbo Jumbo
Today’s class I covered some basic tools in Publisher. Here is a sysnopsis of the tools that I covered. The tool bar on the left looks very much like what you
u see on Publisher. Starting from the top; (if you hoover your mouse over the tools in Publisher, it will have the name) Pointer, Text Box, Table Box, Word Art, Picture Frame, Line, Arrows, Ovals, Rectangle, Autoshapes, & Design Gallery. The pointer is pretty much the default tool. The text tool, once selected, you will move you cursor back over to your work area and it will have changed to a Big Plus Sign (or cross hair to the more technical crowd) You will need to draw a box using your mouse with a left click (HOLD IT) and move the mouse down and to the right until you have the size of text box that you want. You can resize this by clicking and dragging one of the circles on the box that outlines your text box. (this also applies to the Word Art, table box, picture frame and so on)
Remember left click is like the enter button, and the right click is to pull up menus.
Table box is created similarly, but it has other options. A pop up will be asking how 
many columns, rows and how do you want the the table to look like. Play with this one to see what you can create. Word Art tool will have a pop up with a series of preformatted designs. Select the one you like and the next pop up will have the box with “Your text here” highlighted. Type in what you want the word art to say. Once you click OK, it will mostlikely be very large on your work area. Resize as described above.
Picture Frame tool is the best way to add your personality to your creation. Once selected you need to make a choice. Clip Art or from File. Clip art will open a window where you will search numerous photos or cartoon like photos. Type in the keyword that you are looking for an wah-lah. Sometimes hundreds of choices. Click the picture you want and it automatically inserts on your work area. Now you have to resize to fit your spot. If you select from File, you will then have to go to your work area. The cursor will turn into a big plus sign. Draw a box where you want the picture. Next the file window will open up and you will need to find the picture that you want to insert. You may have to resize it again. Once you have selected either clip art or picture from file, a new tool bar will appear;
You can adjust your picture from here. Make it lighter, darker, crop (cut the edges off) and even make it transparent. You will have to play around with all of the little features. Remember practice makes perfect.
You have AutoShapes and lines that you can add to your creation. Use them very similar to the picture tool. Have fun… If you have any questions you know how to reach me. But now you have atleast the very basics on starting to use Publisher…
April 2nd, 2007 — Blogging, Techno Mumbo Jumbo
April 1st, 2007 — Techno Mumbo Jumbo
Tired of typing all of the links in on your webpage? Me too. I found a shortcut…
Create folders in your Favorites for your website (i.e. “Useful Web Links”) Surf the internet for your version of useful links and book mark them in your new folder. After you find all the sites you could possibly want on your website, click the “favorites” button at the top of your browser. A side bar on the left should open up with all of your saved websites including your new folder. Open your folder and look at the names of the sites you saved. Some of them will not look right or just have a lot of garbage instead of a real name for the link. Right-click the link and click “Rename” Give your link a new name that better describes the content and you may want to shorten some of the names.
Now you will want to export these. In the top left of your browser you will see the word “file”, click so and drop down to “Import and Export”
The wizard will walk you thru a few steps. Key things to remember on these steps are 
- Export Favorites
- Select the new folder that you previously created
- “browse” the location that you save this file (So you know where to find it later)
- If you don’t change the file…it will be call “bookmark.htm”
Now open the file you just exported. Open up the “My System” webpage and go to the manage content page. Click on “page” The editor page should be open and you can now. Go to your “bookmark” file and highlight all of the links on that page. COPY it and then paste in your 
Webpage editor. Click apply at the bottom and you should now have a links page on your web site with all of your useful links.
Hopefully this all made sense … if not, don’t call me!!!! Just kidding. Send me an email or ping me and I will try to help you out.
OK, cancel out of this. Now you know what you questions to ask yourself… What am I doing and who am I sending it to? 
