Here’s a quick tutorial I hope you will enjoy. Let’s face it, what Grandma doesn’t want a picture of their little pride and joy hanging on their wall? A photo calendar can be both useful and cherished gift. They’re also a breeze to create using Microsoft Word. Just follow these simple instructions.

First open Word. I am using Word 2010 for the purposes of this tutorial. Click the “File” tab, select “New”, and then choose “Calendars” under Office.com Templates heading. See the picture below.

Next, choose the appropriate year.

For this tutorial I have chosen the “Basic 12 month Photo Calendar”, as pictured below.

When you double click the selection, Word will download the template and then present you with 24 pages. You can see an example of this pictured below. Each month has a picture page and a calendar page.

The pictures are just stock photos that sort of act as place holders until you replace them. To replace the pictures with your own, click on them. You will see an example of this pictured below.

When the sample picture is selected, you will get an option in the top left corner to replace the picture. Click the icon in the left corner. This will open up a dialog box which will allow you to choose a picture from your computer. See the example below.

Select the picture you want to add to the calendar and choose the “Insert” button. Now you will see the selected picture on the page.

Just below the picture is a caption box. If you click on it, you can add a caption to your picture. Now, all you have to do is repeat these steps on the other calendar pages and you will have a sweet little calendar to give Grandma!

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. Feel free to comment or ask questions. I love hearing from my readers!

Have you ever needed to create an instruction manual and wished you could insert screenshots? There are lots of software options out there that will help you to do this. One of those options is probably sitting right under your nose and you haven’t noticed it. Microsoft Word 2010 has a screenshot feature that will allow you to take a picture of your desktop screens and insert them into your documents as pictures. In this article, I will show you the steps to do this. Let’s get started.

In Word 2010, click the “Insert” tab and then click the “Screenshot” button. In the picture below, you can see that when you click the “Screenshot button”, you get several options. First, you will see the “Available Windows” area. This shows you a representation of all of the windows that you have open. In this example, I wanted to insert a screenshot of an installation I was doing. I chose the appropriate window from my choices below. The second area I would like to call to your attention is highlighted in purple below. It is called “Screen Clipping”. This option will allow you to highlight a specific region on your screen that you would like to insert into your document. For instance, you might see a logo on a web page that you would like to clip into your Word document, simply click the “Screen Clipping” button and highlight the logo. When you release the mouse button, the highlighted area will automatically be placed into the document.

Once you have inserted your screenshot into your document, you can edit it just like any other picture you would insert. You will see your picture with selection handles (dots) all around. Clicking and dragging these handles will allow you to resize the picture. You will also notice, at the top of the picture, a green dot. This green dot will allow you to rotate your image 360 degrees. You may also choose to use Microsoft Word’s drawing tools to put arrows and text boxes on your image like the one pictured below.

When it comes to writing tutorials, it helps to have pictures to illustrate what you’re writing. I guess this is supported by the old adage “a picture is worth a thousand words”. I hope you find this tutorial useful. If you have any questions or comments I would love to hear back from you.

Have you ever tried to come up with one of those cool organizational charts only to discover that it can be a real pain to do? All of the rectangles and lines going in every direction can get a little frustrating. A lot of people use a program like Visio to get this done. Visio is nice, but it can be a little complicated to use. Never fear, this tutorial will show you an easy way to create organizational charts in Word.

First things first; let’s open up Word 2010. Doing an organizational chart in Word requires a new feature called “SmartArt”. This is a great new feature in the Office 2010 family. To insert “SmartArt” into the Word document, click the “Insert” tab, and then click “SmartArt”. See the picture below for an example.

Once you click on “SmartArt”, you will see several options. In the picture below, you can see that there are several categories of “Smart Art”. The one that we will be using in this tutorial is filed under “Hierarchy”. We are going to use the one labeled “Picture Organization Chart”. I really like this chart because it not only lets you show the hierarchy, but it also let’s you add a person’s picture beside their name.

Once you have selected the picture organization chart, click OK. You will now see the screen pictured below.

Notice that you get several options when you insert the chart. At the top of the screen there is a “SmartArt Tools” tab with many options on the toolbar below. In the body of the document, you will see a small chart ready for you to fill in. To the left of the chart, you will see a window where you can type the text you want in each block of the chart. You will notice, above, that I typed my name in the first block. You can continue typing and the font will get smaller to fit in the block. There is also a small picture icon located to the left of the name block. If you click the icon, a dialog box will appear where you can insert the person’s picture in the block. See the example below to see how this looks.

You have a lot of options for changing the appearance of the organizational chart. If you want to add additional subordinates under a person, right-click their name on the chart, then find the “add shape” option from the menu that pops up, and finally, click where you want the new block to go. In this case, since we want a subordinate, we would choose “Add Shape Below”. See the picture below for an example.

By default, this chart was blue, however, there are many choices so you are not stuck with that color. If you look at the toolbar at the top of the page, you will see that you can change the layouts and the colors. Pictured below, you will see an example of some of the color changes you can make to your chart. Notice that as you mouse over the different options, the chart changes to show you how it will look with that change applied. There are more advanced options on the toolbar as well. For instance, you can change the shape of the blocks if you like. It’s all available on the “SmartArt Tools” bar.

I hope you find this tutorial helpful. Now you know an easy way to create a beautiful organizational chart, and you don’t have to spend a fortune to do it. Using Word’s “SmartArt” feature, you’ll look like a pro around the office!

If you find this tutorial helpful, please recommend us to a friend. As always, we love to get feedback from you.

Today, I would like to share a really cool trick that you can use in Word. A lot of people are familiar with using the buttons that position paragraphs to the center or to the right. It isn’t rocket science. You click in the paragraph you want to center, then click the center button (or CTRL + E if you like keyboard shortcuts), and there you have it. The real trick comes when you would like some of your text left aligned on one side of the page, but then you want other text right aligned on the other side of the page. Here is a perfect example. Let’s say Mona has a flower shop, and she would like to make a brochure that shows her goods on the left side of the page, but she would like the prices to be on the right side of the page. Not only that, but she would also like the decimal points to line up nice and neat. Let me show you a little-used feature that can help her accomplish this task.

The first thing that we need to do is to make sure that the rulers are visible in the Word document. In Word 2010, click the “View” tab, and then select the  checkbox  that says “Ruler”. See the picture below to see it highlighted.

You should now see the rulers on the top and left sides of the page. Hit the “Tab” key on your keyboard. Notice where the cursor lines up in relation to the top ruler. By default, it should normally line up in half inch increments. This is called a tab stop. However, you can affect the behavior of the tab stop and that is exactly what we’re going to do to get Mona’s flower shop brochure all fixed up.

If you look to the far left side of the screen, just above the left side ruler, you will see the button pictured below. This is the tab stop button.

By default, it will have an “L” shape. This denotes a “Left” aligned tab stop. If you click this button you will notice that there are several tab stops from which to choose. Clicking the button doesn’t insert a tab stop, but, rather, sets it to the type of stop which you want to add when you’re ready to add the stop. To add a tab stop, choose the type that you want, then click with your mouse on the ruler at the top of the screen, and your new stop will be added. Let’s say, for example, that you choose a left aligned tab stop. If you click on the 1 inch mark on the top ruler, a little “L” symbol will be added to the ruler. Now, you have changed all the rules for the “Tab” key on your keyboard. Now, when you hit “Tab”, instead of the half inch increment, it will jump to the new stop you inserted. Also, any text that you type at that stop will be left aligned. If you hit “Tab” again, it will revert back to its default stops unless you add another tab stop to the ruler.

If you click on the tab stop button a couple of times, you should get a backwards “L” shape which denotes a right aligned tab. Once you have the right tab stop, click the 5 inch mark on the top ruler to add your stop. See the picture below for an example.

Now that you have added this tab stop to the ruler, when you hit the “Tab” key that cursor will move to the 5 inch mark. Also, when you type, the text will be right aligned. Look at the example below.

Here, you will notice a couple things. Notice that the item names in the left column are left aligned, but the prices in the right column are right aligned. I’ve added a black line to add emphasis to how the numbers line up under the right tab stop. Another really nice thing about this setup is that the decimals all line up neatly. You may ask, “Why didn’t you just type the item and then hit the right align button on the toolbar and type the price?” Well, if you hit the buttons on the toolbar the entire paragraph aligns right, not the particular piece you are typing. Tab stops allow you to align a portion of the paragraph a certain way. You may also want to know how to get rid of a tab stop. All you have to do is click the tab stop on the ruler and drag it off. This will make it go away.

I hope you find this tip useful. It is one of those seldom used, but very handy, little tricks that Word has included. If you have any questions or comments please feel free to respond. I appreciate hearing back from our readers.

Recently, I was tasked to update our “Techie Buzz Keyboard Safety Manual”. As self appointed Safety Manager, I was concerned about the rash of keyboard related injuries many of our staff were incurring. When I began to work on the manual I noticed something very strange. The person that saved the original manual had saved each section as a separate Word document. At first I panicked. What do I do? Did I seriously want to copy and paste each document into the master document? Fortunately, I remembered a trick that made this as easy as pie. Today, I would like to show you that trick.

Open the document you wish to add other documents to in Word. In the image below, you will notice section one of the manual.  One thing to decide before you insert another document is whether you want the other document’s text to appear in the body of the current page, or below in its own page.  In this example, we’ll be adding a page break so that the imported document’s text will appear on its own page. Below, you will see a graphic with the “Insert” tab highlighted. Click the “Insert” tab on the ribbon toolbar.

On the “Insert” tab, you will see a “Page Break” button. The “Page Break” button is highlighted in the picture below. Clicking this button will insert a new page into the Word document.

Now that you have a new page to work with, you can insert another Word document. On the same “Insert” tab there is an “Object” button.  It is usually found on the far right side of the ribbon toolbar in the “Text” group. If you click the downward pointing arrow beside the “Object” button, you will see an option that says “Text from File”. See the picture below.

When you click the “Text from File” button, a dialog box will pop up.  In the picture below, you can see the various Word documents that need to be inserted into this master document.

In this dialog box, you can select one or all of the documents that you wish to insert into the master document. Hold down the “Ctrl” key on your keyboard and click each file that you want to insert. In the bottom right corner of this dialog box, there is a button that says “Insert”. Click the “Insert” button to combine these files into your master document.

Now all of your documents are combined into one. Producing your finished product is now just a matter of formatting and tweaking the paragraphs a little.  It is certainly faster than opening each document individually and copying the text. I hope you find good uses for this little tip.

Everyone knows what Microsoft Word is. Its an amazing word processor made by Microsoft. A downside to Microsoft Word is that it is very expensive and not everyone can afford it.

Even though you might not have Word, there are a ton of awesome alternatives available on the web. Here are some word processors you might not have known about:

OpenOffice: Open Office is a free open source office suite. Just like Microsoft is has its own version of Word, PowerPoint, Excel and more.

Google Docs: Google Docs allows you to upload your own files to it and edit them and or view them. It also allows you to share your work with the world. Docs allows you to create documents, spreadsheets, presentations, drawings and forms.

AbiWord: AbiWord is a free word processor similar to Microsoft Word.

ThinkFree: ThinkFree lets you view documents, and has its own version of Word, PowerPoint and Excel.

Zoho: Zoho lets you view and edit documents.

Atlantis: Atlantis is a fast, compact word processor.

Q10: If you want to get productive Q10 is your best bet. Its a full screen text editor which basically makes you focus on the task at hand (writing) and doesn’t let you get distracted.

Did I miss any other programs? What do you think of the ones above? Leave your opinion below!

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About the author: Edwin is young blogger that gives awesome internet, blogging and computer tips on his site Guide Goods. Learn something new today!

[Windows Only] I don’t have anything against Microsoft Word, except the price. Most businesses will pay the big money that MS wants, but a home user will usually use whatever is already installed on their PC. That does not have to be true. There are several free Word alternatives that will happily do the same job. I found one free replacement that looks great and will even run quickly on older PCs. It’s called DeVicky Word.

DeVicky Word not only does many of the things that MS Word does, it has a few unique features that make it worth downloading.

Here’s a list of some of the features:

* Bullets and Numbered Lists – completely customizable
* Character and Paragraph Formatting – full WYSIWYG
* Document Sections – add as many sections as you need
* Headers and Footers
* Hypertext Links – inside and outside links
* Multi-Level Undo / Redo
* Page and Document Settings
* Page Columns – any number of columns
* Printing – what you see is what you get
* Search and Replace
* Spell Checking
* Tables – add tables within tables if needed
* Text Frames – add boxes of text anywhere
* Doc Reader – listen to you docs

Supported File Formats

* Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) Export
* Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) Import
* Adobe Portable Document Format Archive (PDF/A) Export
* Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)
* Image Formats – TIFF, WMF, BMP, JPEG, PNG, GIF
* Microsoft Office Open XML (DOCX)
* Microsoft Word (DOC)
* Rich Text Format (RTF)

Download DeVicky Word:
http://www.devvicky.com/products.php

Techie Buzz Verdict:

After using it for a short while, I decided that I liked DeVicky better than the Word alternatives I’ve tried in the past. It seems more responsive and launches much quicker than the other full featured apps.  It also has very good built in help files.

Techie Buzz Rating: 4/5 (Excellent)

Let me start this review by saying that the new Word is nothing short of awesome with an assortment of irritants, of course. Sure, the annoying (for me) ribbon has been retained from Word 2007; however, with practice it does become quite efficient. The software integrates very well with the Windows 7 taskbar and performs as admirably fast as I have grown used to the word processor. The features are solid while editing is a charm!

While the program at a glance looks and feels like dear old Word 2007, there are subtle yet effective differences. Primarily, the Backstage view (click on File and you go to the Backstage view) has been enhanced very well. This applies to the entire package!

Here is the ubiquitous blank document in all its glory.

Backstage view. The entire package has been spruced up!

Backstage view for the New option. Notice the handy Blog Postbutton!

The sharing options have been enhanced mightily. Especially useful is the send as PDF options. Integrates very well with Outlook and…

OneNote! The print to OneNote option is really neat and handy!

One of the neatest features included is the easy paste-options pop-out. This appears as soon as you hit Ctrl-V and shows the preview of the pasting option as you hover your mouse over it. This one kept its original formatting (from Facebook).

The screenshot button will prove to be undoubtedly useful when writing articles such as this one! (Although I used OneNote’s super-handy WindowsKey+S screenshot function mostly)

The remove background feature is the most talked about in the internet about Word 2010. Here’s a short sequence of screenshots showing how it works.

The picture is the stoic WordPress.com logo. Selecting it will highlight the picture format tab in the ribbon, clicking which will show you the option to remove the background.

Click the Remove Background option and the Background Removal tool starts operating. Just select the areas you want to keep (or delete, whichever is simpler) and click Keep Changes…

And voila, here is the logo! Photoshop, be wary, you have a competitor! (Not really, but it works for these simple situations)

WordArt is back! Close enough, anyway. This is an easy and painless way to make a killer document for that college poster title, among other things.

That pretty much wraps the short screenshot review of Word 2010 and its new features. The application is polished, fast and effective. It is a great tool for writers like me and presenters like you! Word 2010 beta comes free with a Starter Pack of Office 2010. Go for it!

In a severe jolt to Microsoft, a Texas judge has ordered Microsoft to stop selling any Word Products within 60 days, unless they make changes to the custom XML code which is patented by a company called i4i of Toronto.

Judge Leonard Davis, of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, ordered a permanent injunction that "prohibits Microsoft from selling or importing to the United States any Microsoft Word products that have the capability of opening .XML, .DOCX or DOCM files (XML files) containing custom XML," according to an announcement by the plaintiff, Toronto-based i4i Inc

In addition to that Microsoft has also been asked to pay $290 million in damages to i4i, however Microsoft plans to appeal the ruling, which is but obvious.

This lawsuit has apparently been file in March 2007 and is not the first one that Microsoft has lost.

If you were looking forward to use Word you might want to try out one of the Free Microsoft Word Alternatives we put up for you earlier.

[via Seattle Pi & Life Hacker]

Have you ever accidentally closed a word document without saving it? Yes, we have all been through those typical OMG situations.

However did you know that there is a way to recover unsaved word documents, or create a provision to automatically backup documents?

Also Read: Microsoft Word Alternatives | Microsoft Office Alternatives

Microsoft Word 2007 and above has an option to setup auto recovery of documents.

Go to the Word option (Microsoft Word 2007) from the word menu and navigate to Advanced tab, you will find various unchecked boxes, now check Always create backup copy then Allow background saves that will help you to recover files automatically in the future. The backup of word files are saved with .wbk extension.

In addition to that you can also recover documents from temporary file locations, here is where you might want to look at.

• C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Microsoft\Word
• C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Temp

Thanks to Rockstar Sid, for this useful hacks and mods tip.

Don’t Forget to Check Out Some Free Alternatives for Microsoft Office And Tips and Tricks for Office

• Free Microsoft Office Alternatives
• Free Microsoft Word Alternatives
• Free Microsoft PowerPoint Alternatives, Presentation Software
• 7 Awesome Alternatives To Microsoft Word
• How To Recover Unsaved Word Documents?
• Free DOCX and XLSX Viewers
• Get Classic Menu in Office 2007 & 2010