Microsoft Office Q&A: Ask anything (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.)

Go over to the References tab, then hit Insert Caption. Once you're in that little pop-up box, just type the image title right there in the Caption field (it’ll show up after Figure 1), and then click OK. That's it.

Hey everyone,

I need some help here. I just picked up a machine with Windows 7 Home Premium and Office 2010 Professional installed, but everything is set to American—well, technically, everything is stuck in a different language and I need it in English.

It’s making things unnecessarily difficult. What’s the best way to swap out the language settings for both Windows and the entire Office suite from this current setting over to English?

Thanks in advance for the assist. This has been a total headache—I've been messing with it all day without any luck, especially when it comes to changing the language for the whole Office package...

Hey everyone.
I’ve already picked a few brains—mostly IT folks, though nobody really wanted to dive deep into the weeds to actually fix things—and I'm still stuck.
I’m trying to figure out why the search function in Outlook just completely quit on me. It was working flawlessly until a couple of days ago, and then—poof—nothing. Now it’s just dead, which is a massive headache because I rely on it constantly for work. If anyone has any ideas or specific steps I could try to get this sorted, I’d really appreciate the help.

Cheers.

rustyrider99 said:It’s all getting way too complicated for me. How am I supposed to switch everything from American to English—both the Windows language and the Office settings?

Look, you change the Windows language through the Control Panel, and as for Office? You usually have to pay for an upgrade to swap the language pack. Why make it harder than it needs to be? Just do a quick search online and you'll find exactly what you need.

Hey

Can anyone tell me if this was actually built in PowerPoint, and if so, what’s the trick?
Was every single element designed in some other software just to be imported into PowerPoint later on?
Link1
Link2
Link3
Link4
Link5

electricotter6 said:I’m trying to wrap my head around why the search function just quit on me in New York City. It was working flawlessly one day, and then—boom—nothing. Now it's completely dead, and I desperately need it to get through my workday. Does anyone have any actual ideas or specific steps to fix this? I'd really appreciate some help.

I haven't figured out a real fix yet, but if I were stuck in my own shoes, I'd probably just bypass the broken interface entirely by using the keyboard shortcut ctrl+f (control find)

Betty Hayes10 said:Hey there,

Can anyone tell me if this was put together in PowerPoint? And more importantly, how did they pull it off?

I can't say for certain, but my money is on yes. It looks like someone just went in and heavily customized their own master template.

Check out this link; it should give you the roadmap you need:

http://www.highschool-chicago.edu/presentation_tutorial.pdf

Dana Diaz8 said:I can't quite nail down a fix for the issue itself—though I have a thought on how I might just bypass the headache entirely. It’d be much easier if I could just trigger the search using my keyboard—you know, by hitting ctrl+f (control find)
instead of hunting through menus.

Thanks, I'll give that a shot.

Dana Diaz8 said:I can't say for certain, but I'm pretty sure the answer is yes; they likely just customized their own template.

If you check out this link, you should be able to figure it out:

http://www.highschool-chicago-district.edu....powerpoint.pdf

Thanks.

Here’s a new headache for you.
Does anyone happen to know an Excel formula that would let me increment a number in a column—say, column N—but have everything automatically adjust itself if I end up deleting a row?
For instance, if I'm typing out a sequence like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and then I delete row three, wouldn't I want the remaining rows to shift up and maintain a perfect 1 through 5 sequence, so that when I finally add a new row at the bottom, it just automatically assigns itself the number 6?

This might sound a little silly—but here I am—whenever I try to run a calculation using certain conditions, Excel shows me a perfectly fine value in the preview, yet the second I hit enter, the cell just spits out a #VALUE! error.
http://s1357.photobucket.com/albums/q757/Sam Martinez8—so I won't bore you with too much unnecessary detail—
I'm also trying to get a rating in the next cell based on this formula:
=IF(J14=1;1;INT(J14+0,5))—but nope, that’s giving me a #VALUE! error too.
🙂
Where am I going wrong?

Look, when you're trying to type out a formula like =IF(C14:G14=1;1;I14/H14), you can't just hit Enter and expect magic to happen. You actually have to mash Shift+Ctrl+Enter
. It’s one of those little quirks that drives me up the wall, honestly. I spent twenty minutes staring at my screen last Tuesday thinking I’d broken the entire spreadsheet before I realized I was just being lazy about the keystrokes.
But this other formula? That one works just fine.

hollowskipper11 said:So, if these dates of yours are actually...

October 1, 2012
September 25, 2012.

That is to say—they were written in this specific format. Month/day/yearAlright, then this should be the exact formula you're looking for:

If you’re trying to parse out a date string like that in Excel, this formula should get the job done—though it's a bit of a mouthful, isn't it? I used a similar workaround back when I was cleaning up messy data sets at my old firm in Chicago; just make sure those cell references are spot on before you hit enter.

Let me clarify:

The formula you're looking for is =DATE(year, month, day). Just make sure to use commas instead of semicolons if you're running this on an American version of Excel.
To get the year—reading from right to left—you'll want to grab the first four characters of the string located in cell R441.
Month = from left to right: the first n characters of the string in cell R441 where it is...
The formula `n = FIND("/", R441) - 1` is essentially just telling Excel to locate that first forward slash in cell R441 and then back up one spot—basically grabbing everything before the slash. It’s a classic little trick I used to use back in the day when cleaning up messy data sets at my old firm in Chicago. Simple, effective, and gets the job done without any fuss.
The FIND function identifies the starting index of a specific string within a cell. It’s quite straightforward—useful for those times you need to pinpoint exactly where a certain character sits in your data. The first instance of the "/" character was located. Then we just subtract one from that total—it’s a simple enough trick to get rid of that slash in the calculation.
To extract everything between "x" and "y" within the string located in cell R441—I've found that using a combination of MID and SEARCH functions usually does the trick, though it can get a bit messy if the string structure changes unexpectedly.
The formula is straightforward—it’s just everything from the first decimal point onward, plus one.
The formula should basically be the total character count in cell R441, then you just subtract the length of the year, the length of the day, and finally subtract 2 to account for those two forward slashes in the string.

Unfortunately, that formula isn't working—I'll try to patch it up, though I can't say I'm exactly trusting my own brain with this one. 😁

Take this example, for instance—it isn't actually functional: "10/2/2012 9:40:00 AM... (plus some other text here)."

It looks like I may have misspoken earlier—you weren't just looking at a date in that cell, but there was some extra text tucked in behind it after all. My mistake!

Man, I just can't wrap my head around this without losing my mind,

Well, I guess simplicity is the name of the game—haha.
Since we're always dealing with the current year, I’m just going to hardcode "2024" into the first part of the formula and call it a day.
It’s a total hack, but it'll get the job done.

And when 2025 rolls around, I'll just swap it out for 2025.

Thanks again for the help.

....

Still not working, though—maybe it's a formatting issue or something, who knows.

If anyone could lend me a hand with this, I’d really appreciate it.
I feel like I've exhausted every possible angle here, yet I still can't seem to nail down the "winning combination."

I'm also a bit stumped regarding how the cell containing my formula should actually be formatted.

To make matters worse, TechCrunch actually messed up—they didn't use the standard month/day/year format, they used day/month/year instead...

I even gave the formula from Ivanna Charles's site a shot, but no luck there.

Just to be more specific, I'm not sure if it matters that my cell content starts out like this (with a single quote at the beginning)

'9/12/2012 7:35:00 AM in the US/

I think I finally cracked it—here’s the formula that actually works for me: =DATE(MID(A2;SEARCH("/";A2;4)+1;4);LEFT(A2;SEARCH("/";A2;1)-1);MID(A2;SEARCH("/";A2;1)+1;SEARCH("/";A2;4)-SEARCH("/";A2;1)-1))

Though, looking back at it, I might have messed up a formatting setting somewhere along the line.

Thanks so much, everyone!

There is just one thing I can't wrap my head around. Every single time my OS crashes—whether it’s a Blue Screen of Death, a sudden power outage, or whatever else—all my conditional formatting seems to vanish when I relaunch Excel, as if they were never there to begin with.

The strange part is that they work perfectly fine under normal conditions. It’s been a real headache for me. Even though I use some automated backup software to help out, those conditional formats still seem to slip through the cracks every now and then.

Hello everyone.

Could someone please recommend a book or some online courses for learning this software?
Anything suitable for a beginner?
Thank you.

James Hughes3 said:Hey!

Can anyone point me toward some books or online courses to learn this software?
Anything good for total beginners?
Thanks

Check out these visual guides with examples for newbies

- Excel 2003 for beginners

- Excel 2007 tutorials with examples