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TO ASK A QUESTION: If you have a question or need help with Office, please feel free to use the 'Click to Contact' link at the bottom of this page. You'll get a form that you can use to email a question to me. (I had been getting a ton of spam when accepting direct emails, so only emails that use this form will get through to me.)

Please be sure to mention the version of Office you are using when you send your question.

I answer all e-mails that I receive via this form, as long as they are polite :)

Since disabling comments on this site, I'm actually hearing from more of you with questions ... so, as it seems people prefer to email rather than comment, I'm going to leave comments disabled. As always, you can ask me any Office-related questions you have. If the question is outside of my expertise, I'll try to direct you to where you can get an answer.

I hope everyone enjoyed the PowerPoint diagrams session this morning ... I had a lot of fun :)

As promised, here are a few links for more information, review, etc ... including quick links to the additional resources I mentioned at the end of the session:

The Happiest Thing About PowerPoint: Perfect Is Easier than Close Enough!

Office Online Training - tons of free, self-paced, easy-to-follow courses on a wide variety of topics and a variety of levels, for all Office programs

Microsoft At Work - lots of great original content, and content collected from around Microsoft.com, for topics from getting started in new programs to better ways to get your work done. Check out my articles on this site -- including the PowerPoint article: 12 Tips for Creating Better Presentations. And, I have a new article on this site all about taking notes with the cool and fabulous OneNote (read more about that below in a post from earlier this week).

Tools for Your Job - a large assortment of articles, templates and tools specifically for the things you do in your particular job, every day

Also promised during today's session, below is a list of each feature I covered today along with where to find it ... in case your LiveMeeting connection was slow and you missed my clicks....

Turn the AutoShape menu into a toolbar: Just click and drag the dotted bar at the top of that or any pop-up menu that has that dotted bar. They're called tear-away menus.

Reshape an AutoShape: Click and drag the reshape handle -- which is the yellow diamond automatically visible on shapes that can be reshapes.

Rotate or Flip shapes: Several choices ... Click and drag on the green handle on any shape or picture in PowerPoint to rotate it freely. Hold down the Shift key to constrain angles.... Go to Format, Picture, Size to set a precise angle... On the Drawing toolbar, click Draw, and then click Rotate or Flip for the available options... Click and drag any handle past its opposite handle to flip objects.

Access the Slide Master: View, Master, Slide Master -- or press and hold the SHIFT key while you click the Normal View icon to the left of the horizontal scroll bar at the bottom of your PowerPoint window.

Align and Distribute Shapes: On the Drawing toolbar, click Draw, and then click Align Or Distribute for the available options. Available options will differ based on what you have selected on the slide.

Duplicate Shapes: On the Edit menu click Duplicate. Or, press CTRL+D on the keyboard. You can also hold the CTRL key while you drag to duplicate a shape (this works with any object in PowerPoint (including guides) -- and in other Office programs as well).

Use Connectors: Select from available connector types on the AutoShapes menu. Hover over any shape (once you've clicked a connector type in the menu) to see the available connection points. Click any connection point -- then move your mouse pointed to the second shape where you want to connect, and click another connection point to set.

Set AutoShape Defaults: With the shape you want to use as the default selected, on the Format menu click AutoShape. On the Colors and Lines tab of that dialog box, click Default For New Objects and then click OK.

Access Guides: On the View menu click Grid And Guides (or press CTRL+G). Click Display Drawing Guides On Screen and then click OK.

Edit Points: Available for any type of line or polygon drawing. Select the object and either right-click and select Edit Points from the shortcut menu or click Draw on the Drawing toolbar and then select Edit Points.

Save time by extracting shapes from the Diagram and Organization Chart tool: Click to access this tool on the Drawing toolbar.

WordArt: Click to access WordArt on the drawing toolbar.

Shadows and 3-D: Click to apply shadows or 3-D from their pop-up menus on the Drawing toolbar. On the Shadow pop-up menu, you can also click to access the Shadow Settings toolbar to customize shadows. And, you can click 3-D Settings on the 3-D pop-up menu to open the 3-D Settings toolbar.

Edit Color in Pictures (Clip Art, metafile pictures, and embedded objects such as Word tables): With the object selected, go to Format, Picture (or Object). On the Picture tab of that dialog box click Recolor.

Break Apart Clip Art: Right-click on the object and select Grouping, Ungroup. You will be prompted to convert the picture to an Office Drawing Object. Click Yes. Then, right-click and select Grouping, Ungroup one more time.

Save As Picture: Right-click on the object you want to save as a picture and you'll see the Save As Picture option on that shortcut menu.

For steps on importing an Excel chart into PowerPoint -- click here to go to my post last week following the Excel webcast.

If you have a question that isn't addressed here ... please post a comment!

Happy Thursday :)

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