Make Office Better
Top tips for MS Office & Libreoffice
LIBREOFFICE WRITER Add feedback to documents you’re collaborating on
One of the best ways to provide feedback or instructions on a document you’re collaborating on is by adding comment boxes that don’t change the original text.
To add a comment box to a document, first click the space where you want to add it. Alternatively, select any text you want to comment upon. Next, click the Format tab, then click the Comments option in the middle. Alternatively, click the orange speech-bubble icon at the top right (see screenshot below) or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+alt+c. You’ll now see a yellow text box linked to the space you’ve selected or the text you highlighted. Type your comments into the box.
If you’ve received a document with other people’s comments, right-click any comment box
on the right for options to delete that comment or delete all comments.
LIBREOFFICE CALC Format tables more easily
It’s fairly straightforward to format your tables by bolding up and italicising text, or colouring text and cells. Libreoffice Calc has a useful Autoformat feature that makes this whole process even easier.
To use it, first highlight the table data you want to format. Next, click the Format tab, then the Autoformat Styles option in the middle. In the window that opens, you’ll see a number of formatting styles on the left and a preview pane in the middle. The Formatting tickboxes at the bottom (see screenshot below) let you remove your chosen formatting from specific elements – for example Font, Borders, Numbers, and so on. Click OK to apply.
POWERPOINT Run text over images in your slides
By default, whenever you upload an image to an existing presentation, it will sit on top of existing text on your slide, until you reposition or resize it. But if you prefer you can have the text display over your image.
Open a presentation that contains text or type/paste something into a new presentation. To upload an image, click the Insert tab, click Pictures on the left, then navigate to and select the image you want, then click the Insert button.
Your image will cover your entire slide, including any text. To bring your text to the forefront, select the image, click the Format tab, click the Send Backward dropdown menu in the Arrange section at the top right, then click ‘Send to Back’ (see screenshot above). You’ll now see that your text flows over your image.