Closed without saving?? Never fear!

Did you ever accidentally close a document that you had worked on for a while and clicked “no” when prompted to save changes? Good news! The applications in the Microsoft Office 2010 suite have the ability to recover these documents. Instead of gnashing your teeth, try this!

First, make sure that AutoRecover is turned on!

1.  In the backstage view (File tab), click Options. In the Save category, make sure that the check box for Save AutoRecover information every xx minutes is selected.

Note: This must be enabled separately for each application (Word, Excel, PowerPoint)!

     2.  Test it! When you close a document, you should see the following warning:

           “Do you want to save changes…?
            If you click “Don’t Save”, a recent copy of this file will be temporarily available.”

Recover an unsaved document:

1. Open the backstage view (File tab).
2.  From the Info category, click Manage Versions. The Recover Unsaved Documents button will appear.

          Alternately, choose Recent from the backstage menu. 

          Near the bottom of the window, click the Recover Unsaved Documents button!

      3.     Open the unsaved document from the UnsavedFiles folder.

      4.       When the document reopens, don’t forget to save it properly!
             You can thank me later :-)

Give your SmartArt "bounce" with PowerPoint 2010!

You can add a lot of pizazz to your presentation by applying custom animations to SmartArt.

After creating the desired SmartArt, select the object by clicking on it. The object will appear in a frame.

 

From the Animations tab on the ribbon, select an animation for the SmartArt. By clicking on the More button you can see the entire library! As you slide your mouse over a selection, you will see a live preview of the way the animation will appear.

Once you have chosen an animation, a number will appear to the left of the frame indicating that the object is animated.

Click the Effect Options button on the Animations tab to build the slide one piece of the object at a time.  Click the Preview button on the left end of the Animations tab to review the effects you have chosen. 

For even more control over the effects, click the Animation Pane button and a task pane will open on the right side of the Window. Each part of the animation will be listed, and by clicking on the drop down menus, you can select even more options! (The numbers in the task pane correspond to the numbers that appear to the left of the SmartArt object.)