Apply a theme to your presentation

See how you can quickly change the look of your presentation by applying a group of slide layouts, that contain combinations of coordinating colors, fonts, and effects.

Demo: Assign an action to a built-in button or picture in your presentation

Watch as an action button is added to a presentation and then an action is assigned to it. The action can occur when a presenter clicks or mouses over the action button.

Use conditional formatting to add shading to rows or columns in an Excel worksheet

Shading can keep you from losing your bearings as you read or work with Excel data — and it’s easy to set up. Instead of manually applying shading, enter this simple formula in the Conditional Formatting dialog box.

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With conditional formatting, you can quickly add shading to your worksheet, making it easier to read and enter data. For example, say you would like to have every third row shaded gray. Follow these steps:

1. Open a blank worksheet.

2. Click the Select All button to select the entire worksheet.

3. Go to Format and then click Conditional Formatting. (In Excel 2007 click Conditional formatting in the Styles Group on the Home tab. Click New rule.)

4. Select Formula Is and enter =MOD(ROW(),3)=0.(In Excel 2007, select Use A Formula To Determine Which Cells To Format in the Select A Rule Type box. Click in the Format Values Where The Condition is True box and type: =MOD(ROW(),3)=0 (Figure A).

Figure A

5. Click Format.

6. In the Patterns tab, select gray and click OK twice. (In Excel 2007, Click the Format button and then click the Fill tab. Under Background color, click gray and then click OK twice.)

As Figure B shows, every third row is now shaded.

Note that instead of rows, you can shade columns. In step 4, enter the formula =MOD(COLUMN(),3)=0.

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Enable hidden Picture Frames in Pages ’09

Based on a previous blog post, I have discovered the location of the hidden Picture Frames used in Pages ’09 (and the other iWork ’09 apps), and the plist file that determines which ones are accessible. You can use Picture Frames by selecting an object in Pages, opening the Inspector, clicking on the Graphic button, and choosing Picture Frame in the Stroke drop-down menu. The Picture Frames that are available by default leave out a bunch of Picture Frames that are installed as part of Apple’s templates.

You can view the installed Picture Frames on your machine here: /Library » Application Support » iWork ’09 » Frameworks » SFRendering.framework » Versions » A » Resources » Frames. (This link ma…

Adjust ‘locked’ volume levels when using optical audo

When you use optical audio on your Mac, OS X locks the volume level to the highest setting, forcing you to adjust the volume level with your receiver. This “feature” is both annoying and unneeded. To get around this lock, you can simply install a free utility called Soundflower, which includes Soundflowerbed available in the link below.

After installing Soundflower, launch Soundflowerbed. This application runs as a menu extra, allowing you to quickly change your audio settings. Simply make Soundflower (2ch) your default output, and within Soundflowerbed, set the 2ch to output to your built-in output. Now you can change your volume with your keyboard or Apple Remote, instead of using your receiver’s remote.

Note: you have to adjust the volume and select Built-in Output on Soundflowerbed before you will get output; this is probably a simple bug with the audio settings, and it takes a small change to take effect. …

How to find duplicates in Excel

In the duplicate world, definition means everything. That’s because a duplicate is subjective to the context of its related data. Duplicates can occur within a single column, across multiple columns, or complete records. There’s no one feature or technique that will find duplicates in every case.

To find duplicate records, use Excel’s easy-to-use Filter feature as follows:

1. Select any cell inside the recordset.
2. From the Data menu, choose Filter and then select Advanced Filter to open the Advanced Filter dialog box.
3. Select Copy To Another Location in the Action section.
4. Enter a copy range in the Copy To control.
5. Check Unique Records Only and click OK.

Excel will copy a filtered list of unique records to the range you specified in Copy To. At this point, you can replace the original recordset with the filtered list (the copied list) if you want to delete the duplicates.

Finding duplicates in a single column or across multiple columns is a bit more difficult. Use conditional formatting to highlight duplicates in a single column as follows:

1. Using the example worksheet, select cell A2. When applying this to your own worksheet, select the first data cell in the list (column).
2. Choose Conditional Formatting from the Format menu.
3. Choose Formula Is from the first control’s drop-down list.
4. In the formula control, enter =COUNTIF(A:A,A2)>1.
5. Click the Format button and specify the appropriate format. For instance, click the Font tab and choose Red from the Color control and click OK. At this point, the Conditional Formatting dialog box should resemble the following figure:

6. Click OK to return to the worksheet.
7. With cell A2 still selected, click Format Painter.
8. Select the remaining cells in the list (cells A3:A5 in the example worksheet).

The conditional format will highlight any value in column A that’s repeated. If you want Excel to highlight only the copies, leaving the first occurrence of the value unaltered, enter the formula =COUNTIF($A$2:$A2, A2)>1 in step 4.

The conditional format works great for a single column. To find duplicates across multiple columns, use two expressions: One to concatenate the columns you’re comparing; a second to count the duplicates. For example, if you wanted to find duplicates of both first and last names in the example worksheet, you’d enter the following formula in cell D2 to concatenate the first and last name values:

=A2&B2

You could insert a space character between the two names if you liked, but it isn’t necessary. Copy the formula to accommodate the remaining list items.

Next, in cell E2 enter the following formula and copy it to accommodate the remaining list:

=IF(COUNTIF(D$2:D$7,D2)>1,”Duplicated”,””)

Notice that the worksheet has a new record (row 6). This record duplicates the first name, Susan, but not the last name. The conditional format highlights the first name because it’s a duplicate in column A. However, the formula in column E doesn’t identify the combined values across columns A and B as a duplicate because the first and last names together aren’t duplicated.

Don’t use Tab to indent paragraphs in a Word document

Most of the time, I press Tab to indent the first line of a new paragraph. It’s easy and I seldom write anything that requires more than just a few paragraphs. However, using Tab does introduce the potential for trouble. For example, if you combine two paragraphs, you have to delete the Tab at the beginning of the second paragraph. It’s not a big deal in a short document, but those tabs can add up if you do some serious restructuring.

The truth is, Tab just isn’t necessary. Instead, use Word’s indent feature as follows:

1. From the Format menu, choose Paragraph.
2. Click the Indents And Spacing tab.
3. In the Indention section, select First Line from the Special control’s drop-down list.
4. Specify the size of the indention using the By control’s drop-down list. Then, click OK to return to your document.

When you press Enter, Word assumes you’re starting a new paragraph and automatically indents the first line. You don’t have to press a thing. If you need to remove an indent for a single paragraph, just move the First Line Indent marker on the ruler for that paragraph.

Another method of Outlook to iCal data conversion

After a few hours of searching blogs on how to transfer Outlook calendars to iCal, I finally found a free online conversion tool. In Outlook, export the calendar that you want to use into a CSV file (you may have to update the translator, but go ahead) and save the file somewhere you can find it. On the above-linked site, in the CSV Format section, click Choose File (or Browse in Firefox) to find the CSV file, then click Convert and it imports straight to iCal (you may have to have iCal open; I am not sure). Repeat as necessary with additional calendars.

[robg adds: I haven’t tested this one. We’ve run other hints on converting Outlook calendars to iCal; you may wish to try one of these if you’re having troubles: 1 • 2 • …

An odd fix for uneditable iCal entries

I recently had a problem where I was unable to edit the events on my iCal calendars — neither double-clicking the entry or using Command-E worked. After quitting iCal, I removed its icon from the Dock, then dragged it back to the Dock and relaunched iCal. All was OK after that.

[robg adds: This hint came from anonymous without an email address, so I'm unable to get any additional details, such as whether the user had tried simply quitting and relaunching iCal prior to this Dock-drag solution. It doesn't make any sense to me that this solution worked, so I'm curious if anyone else out there has run into the same problem and had success with this solution -- if so, then it's something worth including in the troubleshooting bag of tricks.]

Round a number

Learn how to round a number up or down, or how to change the number of decimal places that are displayed without changing the number.

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