The following tips and tricks were submitted by Office users just like you. If you would like to see your tip—and your name—on this page in the future, enter our "T-Shirts for Tipsters" contest, and if we pick your tip, you'll find it here.

Use Outlook to Track Long-Distance Calls
From Kyle Hommes, Kansas City, Missouri

At my job, I must keep track of my long-distance telephone calls and then bill clients for the cost of those calls. I have found the Phone Call feature in my Microsoft Outlook® Journal to be the best way to gather this information.

To track your calls in the Journal:

1. Go the Contacts folder and double-click the contact you are going to call.
2. On the Actions menu, click New Journal Entry for Contact.
3. When you begin the call, click the Start Timer button. While you're talking, you can record notes from your call in the space provided in the Journal Entry.
4. When you're done, click Pause Timer and save your entry.

Now, when I need to submit my calls to accounting, I just print out the list of phone calls from my Journal or copy and paste the list of calls into an Office document.

To view a list of all the phone calls in your journal:

1. Go to your Journal folder.
2. From the View menu, choose Current View, and then click Phone Calls.

Editor's Note: In Outlook 2000, you can also use the new Contact Activity Tracking feature to get a list of all the phone calls, e-mails, or meetings related to a contact.

To view all the Journal items related to a contact:

1. Open the contact you want to view.
2. Click the Activities tab.
3. In the Show list, click Journal.

Quickly Zoom In and Out of Your Office Documents
From Dan Allen, Silver Spring, Maryland

If you have a Microsoft IntelliMouse® pointing device, you can use the wheel button, the third (middle) button, to quickly zoom in and out of an Office document.

Simply hold down the CTRL key as you rotate the wheel button forward or back.

Editor's Note: This tip works in the latest versions of Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint®, Microsoft Publisher, Microsoft PhotoDraw™, and Microsoft Project, as well as many other Microsoft Windows® programs. You can also use it in Internet Explorer to increase or decrease to size of text on the screen.

Schedule E-mail Responses in Your Outlook Calendar
From Michael Swain, Bermuda

If you receive an e-mail message in Outlook and you don't have time to respond to it immediately, you can easily add it to your calendar and schedule a block of time when you will be able to reply.

To turn an e-mail message into an item on your calendar:

1. Drag the message from your Inbox onto the Calendar icon on the Outlook Bar or onto your Calendar folder. This will create a new appointment item.
2. Enter the date and time you want to reply and specify any additional options you want. (The body of the e-mail message is automatically added to the appointment.)
3. Click Save and Close to add the appointment to your calendar.

Outlook will automatically notify you when it is time to respond to that e-mail.

Editor's Note: You can drag items between all Outlook folders: Inbox, Tasks, Calendar, Contacts, Notes, and so on. For more options, right-click before you drag.

Use Your Keyboard to Quickly Change the Case of Text
From K.Venkatesh, Tamil Nadu, India

Here's how you can use your keyboard to quickly change the case of text in Microsoft Word:

Select the text you want to change and press SHIFT+F3. Each time you press the F3 key, the text case switches between Title Case, UPPERCASE, and lowercase.

Paste Using the INSERT Key
From Chody Trajano, Springfield, Virginia

Did you know that you can assign the Paste command to the INSERT key on your keyboard? That means you only have to use one key to paste the contents of your Clipboard into your document.

Here is how to set it up:

1. On the Tools menu, click Options, and then click the Edit tab.
2. Select the Use the INS key for paste check box to enable this feature.
3. Click OK.

Now, each time you press the INSERT key, you will paste the contents of the Clipboard into your document.

Editor's Note: Choosing this option disables the default function of the INSERT key in Microsoft Word that enables you to switch between insert typing mode to overtype mode.

Increase or Decrease Text Size
From Ajit Ambekar, Maharashtra, India

To quickly increase or decrease the size of text in Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint®, Microsoft FrontPage®, or Microsoft Publisher, first, select the text you want to resize. Then, to increase the font size, press CTRL+SHIFT+>. To decrease the font size, press CTRL+SHIFT+<.

Quick-Start Your PowerPoint Slide Show
From Bradleigh Young, United Kingdom

Want a quick and easy way to launch a Microsoft PowerPoint® presentation? Save it as a PowerPoint slide show file, and when you double-click it, it opens right up in slide show view. No need to fumble around inside PowerPoint when you just want to give a presentation, not create one.

To save your presentation as a slide show file:

1. Open the presentation you want to save as a slide show.
2. On the File menu, click Save As.
3. In the Save as type list, click PowerPoint Show. Your slide show file will be saved with a .pps file extension.

Use AutoFill to Quickly Copy Formulas and Formatting in Excel
From Aaron Warner, Saline, Michigan

Would you like an easy way to extend a series of numbers in Microsoft Excel without typing each one individually? With AutoFill, you can quickly copy data, formulas, or formatting to adjacent cells. This brief tutorial will show you how:

1. Select the cells that you would like to copy.
2. Move the cursor to the bottom right corner of the highlighted cells. Your cursor will then turn into a black plus sign.
3. Click and hold down the right mouse button and drag across the cells you want to fill.
4. Release the mouse button, and when the shortcut menu appears, click Fill Series.

By following these steps, you will be able to save a lot of time creating your spreadsheets.

Get an Office 2000 Tip a Day
From Michel Osborne, Montreal, Quebec

Want more tips and tricks? You can get a tip of the day delivered to you by the Office Assistant.

To get your daily tips:

1. Click the Office Assistant. If the Assistant isn't visible, click Show the Office Assistant on the Help menu.
2. Click Options.
3. On the Options tab, select the Show the Tip of the Day at startup check box.

Use Word 2000 to Do Your French (or Spanish) Homework
From Marcial Lapp, Bloomfield, Michigan

I am a student in high school and engaged in French language courses. The fact that Office 2000 can tell me when I have misspelled a word, or even if my French grammar usage is wrong, is extremely time saving and it gets me an A on the papers I write.

Editor's Note: Microsoft Word 2000 automatically detects whether you are typing in English, French, or Spanish, and uses the appropriate spelling or grammar checker for that sentence.

Forward an Outlook Contact to Someone Else
From Gyan Shrosbree, Boise, Idaho

If you have contacts stored in Microsoft Outlook® that you'd like to send to other people, it couldn't be easier. Just go to your Contacts folder, right-click on the contact you want to send, and then click Forward. A brand-new e-mail message will be created with that contact included as an attachment. Just enter the e-mail address of the people you want to forward it to and click Send.

When the recipients receive the contact, all they have to do is to drag the attachment onto either the Contacts icon in the Outlook Shortcuts bar or onto the Contacts folder in the folder list; it will be added automatically to their contacts list.

Find a Contact Quickly in Outlook 2000
From the Office Update Tips and Tricks Center

Trying to find an Outlook contact but can't remember the person's last name? Or do you remember a contact's catchy e-mail address, but can't remember her name? Use the Find a Contact box on the Standard toolbar in Outlook to quickly locate the contact without even opening your Contacts folder.

On the toolbar, type the name of the contact you want to find in the Find a Contact box. You can enter a partial name, such as "Judy L", a first or last name, or an e-mail alias. To quickly open a contact you previously searched for, click the Find a Contact arrow and select a name.

Strip Out Text Formatting in FrontPage
From: Chris Mann, London, England

Text imported from word processor files or copied from another Web page into Microsoft FrontPage® often contains unwanted formatting such as fonts, colors, and font sizes. To quickly remove all such formatting and revert to the default FrontPage settings:

1. In page view, select the text.
2. On the Format menu, click Remove Formatting. Or press CTRL+SPACEBAR.

Show or Hide the Formulas in an Excel Spreadsheet
From Rifkin Young, San Francisco, CA

When you're working in an Excel worksheet, you can alternate between viewing the values in the cells and displaying the formulas. To toggle between the different views, press CTRL+` (single left quotation mark).

Editor's Note: If you're having trouble finding the single left quotation mark, it's on the same key as the "~" symbol. On most keyboards, it's the key directly to the left of the "1" key.

What's This? Find Out What Formatting is Applied to Text in Word
From William Holmes, United Kingdom

To find out what formatting (fonts, style, alignment, etc.) is applied to a paragraph in Word:

1. On the Help menu, click What's This?.
2. When the pointer becomes a question mark, click the text you want to check. Then a message will appear describing the formatting in that section.
3. When you have finished checking your text, press ESC.