The Contextures Blog Has Moved

This blog has now moved to my own domain, http://blog.contextures.com/, and no new posts will be made here.
Please join me at the new location, so you can continue to get the daily tips. I appreciate your support!

Block Distractions with White Noise

Note: This blog has moved to http://blog.contextures.com. Please check there for new posts.
If you’re trying to work in a noisy environment, some white noise might help block out the distracting sounds. I work from home, with an office that faces the street. It’s usually quiet, but when the kids are out of school for the summer, [...]

Customize Your Excel Toolbar

Note: This blog has moved to http://blog.contextures.com. Please check there for new posts.
In Excel 2003 and earlier versions, you can customize your toolbar. Add buttons for commands that you use frequently, to reduce the amount of time you spend digging through the menus and submenus. To make room, you can remove buttons that you never, or [...]

Create a New Message

To create a new message in Outlook, you probably click the New button in the Outlook toolbar.

If you’d like to save a few inches of mouse travelling, double-click on the empty space under the list of messages, as shown in the screen shot below. That will open a new message window for you.

If there’s no [...]

Convert Measurements in Excel

Last weekend I set up a little spreadsheet in Excel to compare the cost of a trip in a rented RV versus a small car. The only gas consumption numbers I could find for the RV were in miles per gallon. Since we use the metric system here in Canada, I needed to convert everything [...]

Get to the Point in Twitter

I recently signed up for Twitter, to see what all the fuss is about. A few anti-Twitter bloggers have recently posted positive articles, saying it’s a good way to learn new things and connect with different people. So I took the plunge.
To start, I found those bloggers, and a few internet marketing types, and followed [...]

Are You Hands Free?

Many of us have cell phones that we use hands free while on the road. When you get back to your desk, are you still hands free?
When I’m at my desk and talking to a client on the phone, I’m usually looking at a spreadsheet or database, to help my client with a question. A [...]

Prevent Links From Breaking

I have a secure upload site, and often send the link to my clients, so they can upload a large file for me to work on. Because the address is long, the link sometimes wraps in the email, and doesn’t work when the recipient clicks on it.
To prevent this problem, you can use a link [...]