Legal Office Guru

Why I use web video as a teaching tool

by The Guru

Legal Office Guru’s peculiar conceit is its use of web video as a teaching tool. Truth be told, I stumbled on it quite by accident a couple of years ago, and it turns out that what I found to be true about the power of video as a teaching tool is what the founder of Khan Academy, Salman Khan, also found when he started uploading math tutorials to YouTube for his cousins. Check out this cool video of Khan talking about how video is uniquely powerful for teaching new skills. Inspirational stuff.

Weekly Roundup: Signature lines, Out of Office, shortcut keys

by The Guru

This week’s Roundup of Microsoft Office tips from other blogs: better signature lines, where the heck Outlook’s Out of Office is hiding, and some shortcut key love from South Africa.

Guest post @ Lawyerist: Using Microsoft Word Styles

by The Guru

How my recent “primer” on Microsoft Word’s Styles feature over on the Lawyerist blog has turned into a series … and how your documents can benefit.

Guest Post @ Lawyerist – Microsoft Word Text Selection Tricks

by The Guru

There’s more to selecting a block of text – to copy, delete, or format – than just dragging your mouse from one end to another. Click through to read about more text selection tricks that can make document editing easier (including how to copy vertical columns of data in Microsoft Word documents).

Guest Post @ Attorney at Work – Handy Keyboard Tricks

by The Guru

If typing speed is important to you, you want to minimize the amount of time you spend reaching for the mouse to access common commands like font formatting, paragraph justification, etc. Learn a few critical hotkeys (key combinations that give you instant access to commands you’d otherwise have to click through the menu system to use), and your typing speed (and productivity) can increase dramatically.

Microsoft Word’s got tons of hotkeys, but over on the Attorney at Work blog, I’ve listed what I think are some of the most important for increasing your typing and editing speed. Memorize two or three of these at a time, use them enough to make them second-nature, then go back to the list to pick up a couple more.

Click through for a link to the full post.

Guest Post @ Legal Practice Pro – 3 Formatting Diagnostic Tools

by The Guru

If you’ve ever wondered why *this* paragraph looks a little different from *that* one, or couldn’t figure out how to get some text you’ve inserted into a document to just behave, you need some serious formatting diagnostic tools. Fortunately, in Microsoft Word, there are several available to help with both diagnosing and fixing these head-scratchers.

In my recent guest post on Legal Practice Pro, I show you three indispensable tools for not only figuring out what’s wrong, but leading you to precisely the right menu option to fix the problem. The post includes instructions on setting these up so that whenever you encounter a formatting issue, you can know, at a glance, what’s required to fix it.

Click through for a link to the entire article.

Guest Post @ Lawyerist – Recycle text with Quick Parts and AutoText

by The Guru

Got a lot of texts you use over, and over, and over? Then you’ll be interested in my guest post over at Lawyerist entitled “Recycle Text with Quick Parts and AutoText.” In it, I show you exactly which feature is a better choice (answer: depends on what kind of typist you are, among other things), how to set these features up, and how to gradually build up a library of document building blocks you can use to instantly access those recycleable texts you love.

Click the “Read More” button to for a link to the full article.

Summarizing Excel data with Pivot Tables

by VideoTutor

Got a large spreadsheet you need to make sense of? Don’t waste time trying to sort and manually manipulate those kabillion rows and columns. Create a pivot table to group and summarize your data with just a few mouse clicks.

Guest post @ Lawyerist – Preventing Metadata

by The Guru

If you’re interested in doing everything possible to ensure you’re not leaking metadata via Word documents you’re sending out via email otherwise, be sure to check out my guest post at Lawyerist entitled “Metadata Defense in Microsoft Word.” In it, I show you several software settings you need to be sure you’ve covered so you’re not inadvertently creating confidentiality-busting metadata.

Click through for information about the post and a link to the full article.

Customizing the Quick Access Toolbar

by VideoTutor

If you want one-click access to the Microsoft Office commands, you need to use the Quick Access Toolbar. Here’s a video showing you two easy ways to add commands so you have quick and easy access to them as you work.

Taming naughty footnotes, pt. 2 – separators

by The Guru

Here’s how to change the footnote separator, the footnote continuation separator, and the footnote continuation notice in Microsoft Word.

Instantly access boilerplate text with Quick Parts

by VideoTutor

Don’t keep copying commonly-used blocks of text from old documents – that cut-and-paste routine will inevitably get you into trouble when you forget to edit out client-specific info. Instead, use Quick Parts to store generic text blocks like Certificates of Service, Signature Blocks, etc. Here’s a video to show you how.

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