Internet Fixes Weekly Office XP Newsletter

May 07, 2004Keeping you up-to-date every week!

Restoring Excel 2002's task pane at startup!

By default, Excel 2002 displays the New Workbook task pane when you launch it. This task pane lets you quickly access recently opened files or create a new workbook file. However, you may find that the task pane mysteriously stops appearing when you launch Excel--particularly if you followed our recent tip regarding Excel's Personal Macro Workbook.

The first thing to check if Excel's startup task pane doesn't appear is that it's actually configured to show when you launch Excel. To do so, select Tools | Options from the menu bar and click on the View tab. Ensure that the Startup Task Pane check box is selected and click OK.

If the Startup Task Pane check box is already selected, it probably means that the Personal Macro Workbook is preventing the task pane from being displayed. By design, Excel hides the task pane if a workbook is opened at the same time that Excel is launched. For example, if you double-click on a workbook file icon, Excel assumes you already have what you need to start working and doesn't bother to display the New Workbook task pane. When you set up a Personal Macro Workbook, Excel launches a file named PERSONAL.XLS, even though the file is hidden from view.

Most likely, you don't want Excel to treat the workbook that stores your macros the same as a typical workbook--and losing the easy access to the New Workbook task pane effectively eliminates the productivity benefit that this highly touted feature is meant to supply. You can re-display the task pane by choosing View | Task Pane from the menu bar, but a more efficient solution is to add a simple VBA procedure to your PERSONAL.XLS file that ensures the task pane is displayed.

To add the code, choose Tools | Macro | Visual Basic Editor from the menu bar. In the Project Explorer, expand the PERSONAL.XLS node and double-click on the ThisWorkbook icon. Then, select Workbook from the Object dropdown list. By default, a skeleton procedure for the workbook's Open event should be created. At the insertion point, add the following statements:

On Error Resume Next
Application.CommandBars("Task Pane").Visible = True

Then, close the VBE. When you exit Excel, be sure to click Yes when prompted to save changes to your Personal Macro Workbook file. From now on, the task pane will be displayed when you launch Excel (although it will still be hidden if you launch Excel by double-clicking on an existing workbook icon).

Visit Our Windows XP Database Full Of Tips!

Keep the Toolbox control button active in Access 2002!

When you add controls to forms and reports you'll often need to add several of the same type, such as when creating a group of option buttons or a series of unbound text boxes. In such cases, repeatedly moving between the Toolbox and the object you're designing can quickly become tedious.

Fortunately, you can make the process easier. When you select the control you want to add from the Toolbox, double-click the control button. Doing so lets you add as many controls of that type as you need. When you finish, click the button again to disable the control tool.

Use the Office Clipboard with other applications!

Office XP lets you dock the Office Clipboard in the Windows taskbar so that you can use it with any application. As long as the Office Clipboard remains open in the taskbar, users can cut or copy multiple items from any file and paste one--or all of them at once--into any Office application.

For example, suppose you found three items on the Web that you want to save to a Word document. Using the system Clipboard you would need to copy and paste each item individually, but that's unnecessary when you use the Office Clipboard.

Follow these steps to cut and paste between applications:

1. In Word XP, press [Ctrl]C twice to dock the Office Clipboard icon in the status section of the Windows taskbar.

2. Minimize Word on the desktop.

3. Open Internet Explorer and copy the first item. The following message is displayed next to the Clipboard icon: "1 of 24 - Clipboard item collected."

4. Continue copying items. As each item is copied, Office displays a message indicating the number of the item on the clipboard.

5. Open the Word document into which you want to paste the items and, in the taskbar, double-click the Clipboard icon to display the task pane containing the items copied to the Clipboard.

6. In the Word document, position the cursor where you want the copied items to appear.

7. Click Paste All to paste all items at once. To paste one item at a time, position the cursor where you want the item to appear in the document, and double-click the desired item in the task pane.

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