Here are some miscellaneous shortcut best practices to use with the MS Office Programs (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio, and Project)

• When you right click in the toolbar or menu bar area, it will display a list of toolbar selections. Click on the tool bar that you want to open.

• If you ever wanted a list of shortcut Keyboard Assignments for MS Word you can print them out. This is not available in Excel or PowerPoint. To print them out, click on File | Print, select Keyboard Assignments from the Print What dropdown, then click on the print button.

• When you are developing your slide show presentation and want to see what the slide will look like as you are working on it, you can easily pop into the slide show view. Press CTRL and Click on the SlideShow view button to preview your slideshow while still editing your presentation

• Perhaps you want to use an existing document as a basis for a new document or you have some ideas for enhancing the existing document but don’t want to risk losing its original integrity. You could open the new document and save it under a new file name but although your intent is good, your discipline may be lacking. (I can’t tell you how many times I have forgotten to do this and have saved over my original document.) The best way is to open the original document as a copy. You can then edit the copy as much as you want without losing the substance of your original document. To open a copy of your document, right click on the file in the Open dialog box of your program, select Open as a Copy from the shortcut menu.

• Did you know that if someone is waiting for a return “Read Receipt” on a message they sent you, the receipt does not send until the message has been marked as read. Many people will use the preview pane to read messages and delete them immediately before moving to the next message. In this case, the message never gets marked as being read (i.e., the envelope icon is still showing unopened). The sender will receive a receipt telling them that it was deleted without being read under these circumstances. The preview pane provides an option to automatically mark messages as being read after 5 seconds.
To Set the Preview Pane Option
• Click on Tools | Options
• Click on the "Other" tab
• Click on the Preview Pane or Reading Pane button (depends on which version of Outlook you are running)
• Put a check mark in the Mark Messages as Read in Preview | Reading Pane
• Set the time option (I set mine to 3 seconds)