Microsoft Office Q&A: General Discussion (Word, Excel, PowerPoint...)

I have a quick question regarding Word.

I’m looking to create a single line of text about 5 feet long—essentially a stencil—that I plan to trace out and then spray paint onto a wall.
The issue is, I can't quite figure out how to get Word to just keep printing as long as there is text, similar to how those continuous roll printers in retail stores work when they're churning out long receipts.
I tried playing around with Word 2007, but it seems to cap my page length at about 22 inches...
Is there any way to bypass this and actually achieve something like that...
Thanks, and best regards to everyone

I am currently attempting to construct a table of contents within Word 2007—essentially something resembling the index found in a standard textbook. My objective is to list various headings and have a series of dots extend from the title to the very end of the line, followed by the corresponding page number. I am quite desperate to find a way to achieve this without manually typing out individual periods all the way across the page; if I attempt that, I find that once I view the full document, the page numbers fail to align perfectly vertically.

If someone might be so kind as to provide an answer sometime today, I would be immensely grateful, as I really must have this finished by this evening. 🙂

Anthony Kern80 said:I'm trying to put together a table of contents in Word 2007—something that looks like what you’d see in a printed book. Basically, I need to list the chapter titles, have a line of dots stretching all the way to the margin, and then show the page number at the very end. Is there a way to do this without manually typing out periods? Every time I try to type them myself, the numbers don't align vertically when I look at the full page...

If anyone could get back to me today, I’d really appreciate it, as I'm under a bit of a deadline to wrap this up by tonight 🙂

If I'm following you correctly, you're just looking to build a standard table of contents.

Maybe take a look at this guide and see if it helps you navigate the settings It should walk you through the right steps...

ironcanyon18 said:If I have interpreted your request correctly, you are looking for actual content.

Look, perhaps you could find what you need by browsing through this

Well, yes, but I have actually already drafted the content myself; I just need to implement some bullet points and numbering, so I suppose this link isn't particularly helpful to me.
My computer science professor once demonstrated this to me, though I must admit I have forgotten the specific steps.
I seem to recall there being rulers displayed (both at the top and along the left side of the page), and there was this little square icon situated just above the left ruler—when I hovered my mouse over it, it supposedly indicated "right tab"—and then one would use the top ruler to determine where the numbers should sit. However, I can't quite remember how to make those little dots appear.

Michael Jackson10 said:Alright, I guess it’s my turn to step up and play the expert after handing out so much advice lately! 🤦

So, here’s my question regarding Excel 2010:

Actually, you pretty much answered your own question 🙂, though I have to admit I've never actually needed to do something like that in a real-world scenario.

- It just occurred to me, when you hold down ALT plus ENTER, you can create line breaks within a cell to shift text around—like making the entry sit in the top third of the cell, for instance. But isn't the catch that it messes with things like sums? It only really works if you manually increase the row height, which I doubt would actually satisfy what you're looking for... or would it?

Anthony Kern80 said:Yeah, but I've already finished writing all the actual content. All I need now is to add those little dots and page numbers, so that link doesn't really help me much.

Why did you bother writing everything out manually if the software can just automate the whole thing—including the bullet points—like Kyle Johnson2 explained in the instructions?

Just click References -> Table of Contents; it solves all your problems instantly. Why struggle with it?

Benjamin Wilson7 said:There really isn't any reason to manually type out all that content if the software can handle the bullets and formatting automatically, just as Kyle Johnson2 explained in the guidelines...

If you simply use the Table of Contents feature under the References tab, it settles all those headaches for you, so I'm not quite sure why you're struggling with it...

Could someone tell me if it's actually possible to set something like this up in Word? I believe I already posed this question back in post 1444...

Trying to work with anything larger than an A3 sheet in Word is just pure chaos—it’s like the software is actively fighting you.
Maybe give PowerPoint a shot if you want to design a poster?

p.s. Just try searching Google (or YouTube) for "how to print poster size document" and see if any of those methods actually work for what you need.

ironcanyon18 said:I need a sign about 5 feet long. Thinking about tracing the outline and then just hitting it with some spray paint on the wall.

You probably have Microsoft Publisher, too.
Just pick an A4-sized template to start with.
Drop in your text or image and print it out. You'll end up with a bunch of standard sheets. Tape them all together, trim the edges, stick 'em on the wall, and spray away.
Get creative





btw: check out a tutorial for Microsoft Publisher

Well, I appreciate you all getting back to me with those answers. I think I'll give it a shot and see how it goes... best regards

Hey there... sorry to jump in, but I’ve got an urgent question here.

Can anyone walk me through how to build this flower graphic—or better yet, whip one up for me quickly? I just need the circle and those petal shapes without any of the existing text; I want to use it as a template with internal dividers. Essentially, I need to swap in my own images and text, which means I’ll need exactly 15 segments to accommodate 15 different photos. Thanks in advance... I'm in a bit of a time crunch on this one.

Can someone tell me if it's actually possible to turn an Excel chart back into an Excel table?
Thanks in advance.

Terry Cook48 said:Hey everyone... sorry to bother you, but I have an urgent question...

Can someone tell me how to make this flower graphic? Or better yet, could someone just whip it up for me really fast? I just need the circle and the petals without all that existing text—I want to add my own images and text inside the segments. I need exactly 15 sections because I have 15 photos to fit in there. Thanks in advance... please, I'm in a huge rush here...

The first thing that comes to mind is AutoCAD. You might not have even heard of it, but you could knock this out in a matter of minutes using that. 😍

You could also try Microsoft Paint. Just load the image as a background, draw your lines over it, and then save it as a document file.

There are endless ways to do this if you actually take a second to think about it...

Benjamin Wilson7 said:Actually, you pretty much answered your own question 🙂, though I gotta admit I've never really needed to do something like that in real life.

- just remembered, if you hold ALT and hit ENTER, you can force a line break inside a cell to push the text down—like keeping it in the top third of the cell. But the catch is that math won't work right then, and it only works if you manually increase the row height, which I doubt will satisfy you, or will it?

..., or will it?😂 (sorry, I know a similar joke, so it popped into my head)

Nope, that's not what I'm looking for.

What you're suggesting is just a quick-fix way to wrap text.

What I actually want is precise positioning—like placing a single digit at exactly 2/5ths the height of the cell, or maybe making sure it stays exactly 3mm from the top edge, something like this...



This is a context menu from LibreOffice (and an older version at that).
As you can see, there's an option to set padding (basically the space between the cell border and the content) for all four sides, plus you can sync them up so they're identical on every side.
Since it's a context menu, any settings you pick here apply specifically to the selected cell, a group of cells, or even the whole table if you want...

Basically, it's the exact same concept as setting page margins, except we're talking about cell margins. In LibreOffice, you can set this property locally for whatever you select, meaning you could have a ton of different margin settings all on one single sheet.
Plus, you can define these "margins" in specific increments provided by default—like 0.5mm—or you can manually type in a value with precision down to 0.01mm (man, I wish Microsoft Excel offered even a 1mm increment!)

I can't find that in Excel: setting a left or right "offset" using globally defined increments, or having vertical alignment options beyond just centering...

I totally get where you're coming from, but you won't find that in Google Sheets. Honestly, you might as well have just told a joke instead. 🙂

Hey,

I've run into a bit of a snag while processing some data.
Basically, I have two tables in .txt format, each containing about 1.2 million entries.
The issue, of course, is that Google Sheets just can't handle a dataset this massive.
What I actually need to do is this:
Both tables share two common columns, but the second one has a third column that I need to map back to the first set based on those two.
The logic I'm looking for is basically:
IF A & B (from the first workbook) equals A & B (from the second workbook), then insert C (from the second workbook).

If this weren't such a huge amount of data, it wouldn't be a big deal. I could just sort columns A and B in ascending or descending order and manually paste column C from the other file.
But the whole problem is that the volume of data I need to import/link exceeds what Google Sheets allows.
Does anyone have any ideas on how to tackle this?
To make things slightly more complicated, column A has some duplicates (around 30 or so), while column B has roughly 60k unique values. It’s crucial that column C from the second file maps exactly to the corresponding A and B columns.
One thing I forgot to mention is that the first workbook has its own additional column C.

Book 1 contains:
MSISDN TEXT SN

Book 2:
MSISDN TEXT STATUS

And the end result should look like:
MSISDN TEXT STATUS SN

Does anyone know a way to pull this off, or maybe suggest another program that can handle this kind of scale?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Honestly, using a database just feels more natural when you're dealing with that much data and all those different types...
What exactly is a delimiter in a .txt file anyway? And does importing them into databases actually work?

Is this actually doable?
The text from cell New York City...pulling it into a comment...in cell B1?....
So, the comment would end up living in cell B1..

restlessheron19 said:Is this actually possible?
Taking the text from cell A1...and pulling it into a comment...in cell B1?....
So, the comment would live in cell B1..

You can simply paste this code into the VB editor and run the macro.

Sub Macro1()

Dim a As Variant
a = Range("A1").Value
Range("B1").AddComment range
Range("B1").Comment.Visible = False '(or True, depending on whether you want the comment visible or not)
Range("B1").Comment.text text text :=a

end Sub

electricdriver93 said:Sub Macro1()

Dim a As Variant
a = Range("a1").Value
Range("b1").AddComment range
Range("b1").Comment.Visible = False '(or True - depending on if you want the comment visible or not)
Range("b1").Comment.Text Text:=a
End Sub

Nice... yeah... it works...
To add to that... I’d actually prefer to have all my comments sitting on a single sheet... say in column A... one comment per row. Then, each specific comment would be called into cells on other sheets where they're needed...
Why go about it that way? Just so I can manage them more easily...

Maybe, if we could tweak this macro to handle a larger batch of comments at once...
The workflow would be simple: I'd use one macro to wipe all existing comments from the various sheets... then use this new macro to drop the updated comments right back into their designated spots...