The holidays are just about here. It’s the time of year when your productivity dips, your scale tips, and your to do list seems as if it will never be finished.

In the spirit of helping you get things done, we’re posting one of our favorite tips: How to create labels with mail merge. Whatever you use it for – holiday cards, end-of-year reports – it’s a time-saver and a headache-reducer. Plus, it’s the number one question our customers ask.

Mail merges make even the most nimble users shudder. That’s because they fail so often. 

Happy holidays.

Creating Labels with Mail Merge from a Data Source

Mail merges make even the most nimble users shudder. That’s because they fail so often. The most common type of merge involves taking data stored in Excel and bringing it into Word. 

If you are thinking of going beyond labels and writing full-on letters, this tip will still help you; the procedure for performing a mail merge to labels is similar to that of creating letters.

Word 2003:

1. Click the Tools menu, move your mouse cursor over Letters and Mailings, and select Mail Merge. Read more…

Jenny Sweeney How To, Time-Saving Tips Excel, mail merge, Word

As the seasons change throughout the year, we must adapt to the frequent changes in temperature and weather conditions. This might mean turning off the heat and opening the windows on a warm day, only to have to close them again the following day. Or you may find yourself donning and removing your jacket several times throughout any given day. Maybe you even put away your snow shovel and woke up the next day in the midst of a snowfall.

With software, these types of changes also need to occur; not seasonally, but by task. We have gathered some tips to help you get your software application windows to behave the way you want so you can quickly switch gears.

Tips compiled by PC Helps staff.

What Is the Windows Key Used For?

Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7

Have you ever wondered about that strange key between the Ctrl and Alt keys on the left side of your keyboard? It is commonly known as the Windows key, and can be used in conjunction with other keys to perform a variety of useful tasks.

First and foremost, it will open the Start menu; all you have to do is press it. Press it a second time to close the Start menu. Here are a few of its other uses: Read more…

Jenny Sweeney How To Excel, PowerPoint, Windows, Word

They say March Madness is the great workplace productivity killer. There’s a worse one: corrupted files. Often, when our callers reach us, they are just about to begin the onerous task of recreating damaged files from scratch. To that we say: “Hold on a minute!”

Here are some of the methods our tech support folks recommend before you retype:

They say March Madness is the great workplace productivity killer. There’s a worse one: corrupted files.

Using Open and Repair in Excel (2002, 2003, 2007, 2010)

If you open a file and notice something is amiss, or you simply cannot open the file at all, there might be a problem with the structure of the file itself. This is known as “corruption.” It is a generic term used to describe files that are no longer working correctly. If you think your file is shot, give the Open and Repair utility a try. It might save you from having to recreate the entire file.

Starting the process is slightly different depending on your version of Excel. Read more…

Jenny Sweeney How To Access, corruption, Excel, open and repair, PowerPoint, Project, Word

Hyperlinks make the world go ’round. They get us where we’re going more quickly and they help us present information in less time. Here are a few linking tips from our tech support consultants. Enjoy!

4 top tips for adding hyperlinks.

Creating a Hyperlink to Another Presentation or Web Page (Microsoft PowerPoint 2003, 2007, 2010)

During a slide show, you may find you need to either launch another presentation or access a web page. Here’s how you do it:

PowerPoint 2003 and older:

1. In your presentation, click an object or text that you want to use as the jumping off point or shortcut.
2. Click on the Insert menu and choose Hyperlink, or press Ctrl+K.
3. Enter the Web address or path and filename.
4. Click OK. Read more…

Jenny Sweeney How To, Time-Saving Tips Excel, hyperlinks, PowerPoint, Word

If there’s one thing to be said about Microsoft Office 2010, it’s that it’s poised to be a success. The year 2010 isn’t even over and corporations already are upgrading to the new version. (History has shown that a new version usually takes a few years to catch on, especially in business.)

In reality, business cannot be put on hold while users adjust to a new software version.

At PC Helps, the Office 2010 calls have quickly increased from a trickle to a stream. Most are coming from customers whose IT departments skipped an Office 2007 migration and were holding out for 2010. As with 2003-to-2007 migrations, 2003-to-2010 promises to throw a few challenges the way of end users and IT departments. Adjusting to the new ribbon interface is often the first obstacle. Once users adjust, plenty more follow.

Below we present the top five end user challenges so your IT department knows what to expect during the migration crunch. Read more…

Jenny Sweeney migration, Mobile Devices, Office 2010 Access, computerworld, Excel, Gartner, IT department, NetworkWorld, Outlook, pitfalls, PowerPoint, the Ribbon, user interface, Word

If you haven’t had a computer hard drive kick on you, or never have had a document go sour, you aren’t blessed. Your time will come.

Common sense, now that’s another story. There’s no app for that.

When I was in college 15 years ago, I learned about document corruption the hard way. You’ve heard a similar story, or even have had your own: I had a 25-page final paper due, and, as usual, I was pushing the deadline, frantically working to get it finished in time for class. A sage once told me to save every three minutes, so that’s what I did.

When I inserted my floppy (!) in the school PC for printing, the computer could not open the file. The floppy was corrupted. Thing is, I didn’t save a copy on my home hard drive; I simply worked on the diskette. This was my only copy.

I eventually recovered about 65 percent of my document — after hours of repairing the diskette sector by sector.

Thankfully, today’s technology offers dozens of methods to ensure our work isn’t lost — Google Docs, Dropbox, plain-jane e-mail attachments, vast backup drives, etc. Even if work is corrupted, recovery options abound. (Common sense, now that’s another story. There’s no app for that.) Read more…

Jenny Sweeney How To document corruption, Dropbox, Excel, floppy diskette, Google Docs, Word

We have lists on the brain, largely due to the recent debut of Twitter’s new “lists” feature, which enables users to create and share lists of people to follow. Twitter lists are like Follow Friday on Red Bull, and are the microblogging service’s logical next step.

Mashable.com’s Pete Cashmore writes this of lists on CNN.com: They cut down Twitter’s noise and arguably make it more useful.

Indeed, lists — and “how-to” guides and the like — enable you to break down large amounts of information into easier-to-use bits. And that’s the essence of what we do in software support. Some of our more list-like posts continue to get ample clicks, perhaps because of their utility. Among them:

4 BlackBerry Tips Every Manager Should Know

7 Productivity-Boosting iPhone Tips

5 Microsoft Word Formatting Tips

Windows 7: What IT and End-Users Need to Know

MORE INFO IN: Desktop Application Support | Contact PC Helps

Jenny Sweeney Lists BlackBerry, cnn.com, Follow Friday, iPhone, Pete Cashmore, Red Bull, Twitter, Windows 7, Word