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

Alex Barnes4 said:but if that's the case—why was I able to use Office 2003 and 2007 for free on my old computer? Now, suddenly, I’m being told I have to buy this 2010 version. To make matters worse, I actually bought this new PC several months ago, and this message just started popping up out of nowhere recently.

It is highly probable that someone installed pirated versions of 2003 and 2007 on your previous machine.

I suspect the notification begins appearing once the trial period—which, as I understand it, starts counting down from the very first time you launch the software—finally expires.

Look, Nicholas King, I went ahead and double-checked everything, tried printing from Adobe Acrobat too, and it’s the exact same headache—honestly, the spacing looks even more messed up than before.

So, I finally got some paper in there, and now those side guides are clamping down on the page, which seems to be doing the trick for now; I actually pulled out a ruler to measure it all. The only thing that's still tripping me up is this bottom margin requirement. It says it needs to be 3 cm, but I can't figure out if that's supposed to be measured from the very edge of the text block to the edge of the sheet, or if it's measured from the page number to the edge of the sheet. Because, if we're talking about the distance from the page number, then everything lines up fine, but if it's supposed to be from the bottom of the actual text, then I'm looking at a massive 3.5 cm gap, which makes zero sense.
The top, left, and right margins seem to be behaving themselves now, though.

Timothy Lee29 said:So, I just tried putting the paper in, and I noticed those side guides—you know, the ones meant to hold the paper tight—and I gave them a shot, and honestly, it seems to be working fine now.

I think I mentioned this as a potential fix earlier, if my memory serves me right. 🙂

The bottom margin is supposed to be 3 cm; does that measurement go from the edge of the text to the end of the page, or is it from the edge of the page number to the end?

A margin is simply the distance between the text and the edge of the paper. The distance between a page number and the edge of the paper is a completely different thing—that’s defined separately.

Now I’m back to square one again, and honestly, I feel like I’m about to lose my mind!
Everything seems fine everywhere else, but the bottom margin is just completely off—it’s supposed to be exactly 3 cm, but mine is sitting at around 4. It’s absolutely ridiculous, just totally nonsensical...

Timothy Lee29 said:Then it’s not working right again—I am seriously losing my mind here!
Everything seems fine everywhere else, but the bottom margin is all wrong; it should be 1.2 inches, yet I'm seeing closer to 1.5. It’s completely nonsensical...

Just because you set a bottom margin doesn't mean the text will actually reach that far on every single page (especially when things like Widow / Orphan control force a page break mid-paragraph).

How many pages did you actually check?

There is a chance that on the specific page you printed, the text simply hasn't reached the final line, which gives you the illusion of an incorrect margin. You should check how that page looks in Microsoft Office—turn on the text boundary display in Microsoft Office to see if the page is actually filled with text down to that last line, and then check the status bar in Microsoft Office to see what it says about that specific printed line.

So, I just tried printing this page where the text goes all the way down to the very bottom edge, and I’ve gone through the settings to make sure everything is set up right—I've got my margins at 3 inches for the top, left, and bottom, and then 2 inches on the right side. Everything seems perfectly fine except for this one issue at the bottom here:

http://speedy.sh/yQTY5/2.docx

If you have a second, could you try running this through your printer to see if it looks normal on your end? For me, it's just that bottom margin acting up, even though, like I mentioned before, the text on this specific page is pushing right up against the limit at the bottom.

The distance from the text to the bottom edge of the page sits at roughly 3.4 to 3.5 cm, which is perfectly acceptable given that the margins were set to 3 cm. There just isn't quite enough room left under the text for an entirely new line, but that certainly doesn't mean the text is actually bleeding into the margin itself.

If your estimate of "about 4 cm" actually refers to this same 3.4 cm range—give or take a millimeter—then everything is fine. I suppose when someone specifies "official margins," they aren't looking for microscopic precision down to the last millimeter; the main goal is just ensuring people don't submit documents that look like a complete mess.

Look, I’m just going to hit print and see what happens. Honestly, I don't think they're actually going to scrutinize every single millimeter this time, though I'm a bit skeptical given that my thesis was sent back for the third year in a row just because of one solitary sentence. But hey, fingers crossed it turns out fine.

Huge thanks to Nicholas King for handling the printing and double-checking everything; I really appreciate the explanations and all the advice you gave me. 😉

Timothy Lee29 said:Fine, I'll just print it like this and deal with the fallout. I doubt they're gonna be checking every single millimeter anyway.

If they actually start nitpicking, then your 1.25 PageNumber setting is totally off.
You've got an extra line in there somewhere.

How do I go about fixing this? What’s your take—do you think that’s what's causing the bottom margin to act up?

Timothy Lee29 said:How am I supposed to fix this? What do you guys think—is that the reason why the bottom margin keeps acting up?

In your specific situation, I really don't think the bottom margin is even part of the equation—honestly, having those two lines sitting that low shouldn't have any impact on it whatsoever.

You should fix it by navigating down to that second line of the two—just hit Backspace there—so you end up with only one single line in the footer.

Timothy Lee29 said:How do I fix this? You think the bottom margin is acting up because of that?

It's not the bottom margin, it's just how the PageNumber is measuring out.

Nicholas King already covered all that (same as the deal with Widow / Orphan Control basically regarding the number of lines in Word), so there's nothing left for me to say except here's the file back. Try printing it and see if that last line sits about 1.2 inches from the bottom edge of the paper. Just keep in mind it all depends on the text type or style (if what Nicholas King told you is right, there's zero room for another line).

So, I was wondering... how do you actually go about opening a .doc file using WordPad on Windows 8?

hi everyone.. I was wondering if someone could help me out. I have a few more formulas that I just can't seem to get right... I'm using an fx-com calculator, and you can see what needs solving in the picture. I've tried everything, but nothing is working. 🙂🙂🙂🙂
thanks so much 😍
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/211/86078281.png/
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/855/31554384.png/

The table currently only shows the totals.

Do you happen to know how one would go about calculating the rest of those values "by hand"—you know, without using Excel?

To be honest, I'm totally lost... math was never my thing, and I honestly don't even have a clue how this is supposed to look, which is why I'm asking for help... if you happen to know or if someone else does, I would be so incredibly grateful 🙂

And this too... just the part highlighted, if anyone could explain how to get it done
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/707/96114214.png/

boldscout11 said:Hey everyone... if someone could help me out, I have a few more formulas here that I just can't seem to crack. I have to work with an FX-COM calculator, and you can see what needs solving in the image. I’ve tried everything, but nothing is working.

The profit = percentage (it isn't perfectly precise, but that's how you interpret it) -> you calculate it using the standard percentage formula value/(sum/100)

Both types of earnings are calculated the exact same way (it's just that one is the retailer's margin, while the other belongs to the manufacturer)

For example, the formula for the retailer's profit on sold CDs would be -> br_pr_cd_pon*cj_jd_cd+br_pr_cd_uto*cj_jd_cd+br_pr_ cd_sri*cj_jd_cd+....

As for finding the minimum, maximum, and average earnings—I don't really have much to add there. If you don't understand what you're supposed to be looking for or calculating, I'm not sure what else to tell you. But basically, the minimum value is the lowest figure you get from summing total earnings, the maximum is the highest figure from those sums, and the average is when you take the sum of all earned values and divide it by the total number of items sold.

Regarding the number of items sold on Wednesday that are fewer than 15—that's where things might get tricky. It's solvable, though, so just go look up the if function in any programming language or software tool.

boldscout11 said:Same here... I just need someone to explain how to handle the highlighted part.
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/707/96114214.png/

The employeeID would basically act as a primary key within certain tables. Honestly, your best bet is to just do a quick Google search to find the definition of a primary key. Once you wrap your head around what that actually is, the whole thing becomes obvious.

To find the total number of items sold on Wednesday that have a quantity under 15, you’d just use the COUNTIFS function.

Besides, I suspect the whole point of this assignment was to teach us how to tackle these kinds of logic problems—not actually to get the specific numbers for this dataset 🙂.

Hey everyone!

Does anyone recognize what kind of chart this is in Excel? Like, how do I actually build something that looks like this? My data is just 5 columns by 19 rows.

Here’s a shot of my table:
View on imgur

And here’s the image of the mystery graph I'm trying to replicate:
View on imgur

If you guys don't know how to pull this off in Excel, can you suggest some other software where I might be able to make it happen?