Switching back and forth between worksheets can make your eyes spin around in their sockets (a great party trick but something your optometrist would advise against). Keep those baby blues steady when you use Excel 2007:

1. On the View tab, in the Window group, click New Window.
2. On the View tab, in the Window group, click View Side by Side .
3. In the Compare Side by Side dialog box, click the worksheets that you want to compare.
4. To scroll both worksheets at the same time, click Synchronous Scrolling in the Window group on the View tab.

— Crabby 

I tell you, I learn new things—sometimes even elementary things, that even typing monkeys already know—about Office programs every day and today I'm offering the newest one. 

I'm going to make this short and sweet today. You can thank Kathy, a Crabby reader who posed this question:

"In Excel, when I hit enter the cursor moves to the right, which is what I want (most of the time).  How can I change it to move down?"

I just figured that there was a default setting and that the user couldn't change it. Boy was this old dog wrong. Time to learn a new trick...

I work for a very large company in which not all employees are in the same building, let alone the same city, state, country or time zone. So when we need to communicate something really quickly, we use Communicator.

Now, by itself, Communicator is a great tool: You can IM, you can share your desktop of any number of conference participants, and you can even hand over control of your desktop (a handy feature when the help department can't understand just what you're trying to explain).

And now, with Outlook 2010, Communicator has insinuated— I mean integrated — itself quite nicely. It's everywhere you are...

Last week, Doug's Office Casual video was about the Outlook Social Connector (for Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.). I sent Doug an email telling him how much I LOVED the video. (I really did; he's a clever boy and a bit of a smarty-pants.) So, if you saw Doug's post and video, it's not like I'm telling you anything new. But a little birdie (and no, it wasn't the Twitter birdie) told me that not ENOUGH of you are trying this out.

And why is that? Fear? Apathy? Laziness? Yes, yes, and...yes? Well, guess what? I haven't even installed  it or even tried it yet. And I am NOT making this up, my fellow Haven't-installed-Outlook-Social-Connector-ites. It's Tuesday afternoon, it's 1:26 p.m., my young dog is dreaming and twitching, my old dog is dreaming and farting, and I'm just...sitting here, trying to write tomorrow's post about how great it is to use Facebook with this Outlook Connector thingamabob...

And you know what? That isn't me. I just can't write about things I don't know anything about. But more than that, if I hate a feature or find it unnecessarily taking up my space and my time (and you can bet there are some of those), I don't write about it. (I also don't dis it; I do like having a job, and a good one at that.)

So why can't we do it together, you and me, right now? I can't think of a reason why not (although I may after I get started and in that case you wouldn't be reading this anyway). So, just like cooking, we're going to gather up our ingredients and tools...and off we go.

(Please note that unlike Doug, I am not a video expert, although I am learning more and more every day and one of these days WATCH OUT! One of my audio podcasts will magically transform itself...)

Not long ago, I booted up my laptop, typed my network password and...nothing happened. I tried again. Nothing. I made sure the CAPS LOCK button wasn't pressed. It wasn't. I couldn't believe it, and I couldn't get into my computer without completely reinstalling Windows (not that I wouldn't like to spend a nice afternoon doing just that...).

I did find a solution (and a simple one at that)...

Updated! See the end of this post for the newest how-to-embed info.

Last July I told you about the new Office Web Apps, where all your documents are created, edited, and stored on a server...a server located somewhere in the clouds (hence the term "cloud computing"). Since then more than 20 million folks have used Office Web Apps  to work with  Office documents from anywhere with a browser and an Internet connection.

We also asked for your feedback and feed it back to us you did, in the manner of more than 25,000 comments. One of the MOST requested features was the ability to embed things in your web pages and blogs. (By "things" I don't mean gravel or finishing nails.) And so now I'm happy to let you know that you can now embed Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations (the "things") right into your web page or blog

Sometimes working with software in general becomes way too complicated and more process-oriented than is necessary. Can things just be simple?

Here's what I mean, put in a real life situation: Say I'm at the library and I strike up a conversation with someone I like, someone on the same page as me, so to speak. Say I invite this person to a party I'm having that weekend just to see how we get along, how we talk together, how they fit in with my friends. Am I asking this person to bring their fancy clothes, their wacky accessories, their creepy relatives, and move their whole life into my apartment? Of course I'm not— jeez.

So why is it when I want to copy some information that I find somewhere—maybe on a web page, maybe in an Access database—and paste it into, say, an Excel spreadsheet to see if it make sense with what else is in there, why does all that information's fancy fonts, font relatives, and weirdo formatting have to come along too? All I want is the information—not all its BAGGAGE!

Is there an easy way to get info from one thing into an Excel spreadsheet? Relax, cha-cha; of course there is!

If you've been using Office 2007, you're probably intimately familiar with the ribbon, which, as you can see, replaces the old menus and toolbars so that you can find what you need a lot more quickly.

In earlier versions, you often had to use the Tools | Options menus to hunt for what you needed to do. And sometimes the command you needed wasn't even there, and so you had to continue your search. With the ribbon, everything — or mostly everything — that you need to do is organized in logical groups. And if the ribbon, as it is, doesn't provide enough options for you, you can create a Quick Access Toolbar (QAT), which contains any command available in Word. It's like your own personalized ribbon.

And now that Office 2010 is out there waiting to be snatched up, you should know that in addition to Access, Excel, Word, PowerPoint (and certain aspects of Outlook), several other programs also have the ribbon: InfoPath, OneNote, Publisher, Project, Visio, and all of Outlook. There's no better time than right now to get started on that QAT; that way, when you need it, all of the features you need most will be front and center

You may think you know all there is about Excel--I mean, you've been using it since its inception in the mid-80s. (Well, okay, maybe you haven't. I sure haven't; my parents bought me my very first computer in 1995—a PowerMac--and it had Excel 5.0 on it. So...that makes it 15 years for me.) 

But even so, an old hat (like the Hogwart's sorting hat) can discover new tricks that it didn't know were possible. Excel 2010 has some really great new additions as well as improvements (I probably shouldn't use that word--improvements--but everything and everybody can fashion some room within themselves in order to to squeeze some in...right?).

And then one day the clouds part and Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and partying AND  fertility--which, in our context here, means productivity--smiles his sweet, naughty, benevolent smile down at you and y ιδού * you are anointed! But with what?

Read on to find out...

You know when you save for a whole year to buy the hottest Manolo Blahniks only to discover two days later that a whole new line of his shoes is being released (and the pair you own is looking like nurse shoes to you)? No? Me neither (with my fallen arches??).

How about this then: You've been making it through grad school with Office 2000, and although it was workable, some things were becoming intolerable and you were really feeling left behind. So off you (finally!) go to your nearest retailer to purchase Office 2007. As you proudly ferry the package out the door, an ad on the wall catches your eye: