Microsoft Office 365 for Beginners: 12+ Hours of Excel, Word and PowerPoint Training Course

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Hello everyone and welcome to Excel 365 for beginners. My name is Deborah Ashby. I'm a Microsoft MVP and course instructor, and I am so excited to host this course for you.

Excel 365 is Microsoft's Evergreen version of Excel. It's part of Microsoft 365, a subscription service that ensures you always have the latest version of Excel with the latest features. No more lagging behind with old versions and no more having to purchase a new version of Excel to get the latest features.

Microsoft 365 also comes with a handy online portal that allows us to access and use Excel and other applications on the go, wherever we have an internet connection. So we no longer need to be using the desktop version of Excel in the office to work on our files.

And you want to know the really good news? Well, if you're already familiar with older versions of Excel, then upgrading to Excel 365 will be a complete breeze. Many of the features and utilities are the same, but we have so much more available to us in Excel 365 now.

This course is a beginner's course and it's designed for people who are brand new to Excel in general, or people who are new specifically to Excel 365. It would also be perfect for anybody looking for a refresher on some of the basic but fundamental Excel skills that we all know and love.

Now, the only thing you need to complete this course is a working copy of Excel 365. So if you haven't already, now would be a great time to sign up for a Microsoft 365 subscription, which in turn is going to give you access to Excel 365. And that is pretty much it. I think we're ready to dive in to our first lesson.

One of the biggest advantages of using Excel 365 is that unlike the standalone versions of Excel, we have access to a really handy online portal. And you can access the online portal through any browser wherever you have an active internet connection. So the first thing we're going to do here is we're going to fire up a browser. I'm going to use Microsoft Edge, but if you prefer to use something like Google Chrome, then that's not a problem. And then we can either go to microsoft.com or office.com. Now, I'm going to go to office.com simply because that's what I'm used to going to.

Now, notice that mine logs me straight into my online portal. It might be that you get taken to a sign-in screen where you'll be asked to enter in your email address and your password. And the signing credentials that you use is basically the email address that you assign to your Microsoft 365 subscription during the setup phase. So type in your email address and your password, and it's going to jump you to the screen that I'm in now.

Now, once again, yours might look slightly different, or it will look different to mine because this main page is kind of like a hub that shows you all of your latest activity. Now, if this is the first time that you're logging into Microsoft 365, then it might be fairly empty in here. You're not going to have any recommended documents. You might not even have any recently opened in the list below. But in general, this is what you're going to see. You're going to have a recommended section at the top, and again, these are just files that I've opened recently.

We then have a quick access area at the bottom with various different filters to allow us to find files that we might want to open quickly. Notice we have a recently opened list, files that have been shared with us, and we can also add any file into our favorites list. Notice that I also have an Excel filter just here. So if I click this, it's going to show me only Excel files because remember, when you're working in the Microsoft 365 portal, this includes all files, so things like Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, not just simply Excel. And if we click the plus here, we can set up more content filters to filter that list of files. For example, if I want to have a filter that filters just Word documents, I can set that up as well. So I can toggle between just seeing Excel files and just seeing Word documents.

Also, notice at the top, we have a search bar. This is a universal search. So whatever keywords we type in here, it's going to search across all applications in Microsoft 365 for content that matches. And that might be files. You can see here I have all the files that contain the word "sales". It might be bookmarks, so obviously I've got the word "sales" included in here somewhere. It's also found any people that have the word "sales" in their job title, and it's also found a couple of SharePoint sites which contain the word "sales". So don't forget that this is a universal search when you're working in the hub.

Now, the hub is a centralized area that you can come to to access all of the online versions of your applications. Notice on the left-hand side, we have a big long list of different apps that we can access. And if we click the app launcher, which is that little thing that looks a little bit like a waffle in the top left-hand corner, that's going to show us all of our apps. Now, the list of apps that you see in here will vary depending on the type of Microsoft subscription that you signed up for. For example, I have a Business Standard Microsoft 365 account, which includes things like SharePoint and Teams applications that are more geared to business use. If you have a personal subscription, you'll find that you won't have things like that, but you will always have access to Outlook, Word, PowerPoint, Excel, so on and so forth. So just to be aware of that, the main point is your list might not look exactly the same as mine.

So we can use this apps list to open any of our applications in a browser. So let's open up Excel because what you'll notice is that a new tab opens and I'm basically taken to Excel online. And this is why Excel 365 is more flexible than the regular standalone versions of Excel. With those versions, we can only access Excel on our computer. Whereas with Excel for Microsoft 365, we can simply do exactly what we've done here: fire up a browser, go to the portal, and launch Excel. So if I'm sitting on a train, as long as I've got a Wi-Fi connection, I can still work on my documents without having to be at my desk.

So from here, I could fire up a blank workbook, and it takes me into a pretty comprehensive version of Excel. Now, there's a couple of things to be aware of when you're working in the online versions. You might not necessarily have access to all of the functionality that you'll find in the desktop version. And I will say this has greatly improved over the years. More and more features have been added to Excel online to bring it more in line with the full version. But I will say that if you're just wanting to take a look at spreadsheets, make minor edits, we can do all of our formatting from here. We can insert pivot tables, charts, pretty much most of the things we're going to want to do when we're on the go, we can find in this version. But you will find that some of the more complex stuff isn't always available.

The other thing to know about working within the online portal is that everything automatically saves. So what you'll notice is that if we click the File button, we don't actually have a Save button, we only have a Save As button. And that's because if I start typing in here, so let's just say I type in "Date" and we'll say "Product", everything saves automatically back to the cloud. So I don't have to remember to press Ctrl+S to save, save, or go to File, Save. What we do need to do, though, is rename the file because notice here it just says "Book2". But if we click up here, we can do that very simply. So I'm just going to call this "Test1". Notice the location it's saving it into my OneDrive, into my Documents folder. And I can hit Enter to give that file a name.

When we close down this Excel file, and we just do that by closing the browser window, if we were to now go back to our Office 365 home page and let's take a look at all of our documents, notice there is "Test1" at the top. If I want to jump back into it to edit, I can simply click to open it up and I can make my changes. So let's just make these headings bold again. Everything saves. I don't need to do anything else. I can simply close it down and those changes will be saved. So when you're working in Excel for Microsoft 365, just be aware that everything saves back to OneDrive, to the cloud, and all changes are automatically saved.

For the next section, you'll want to download the course exercise files. Click the link below in the video description to get these. You can also scroll through the details to find timestamps for each section in this course. If you're enjoying this training, please leave us a comment.

It's time now to do Exercise One. And as you can imagine, we don't have a great deal to do in this exercise because we've only just started the course. So the idea of this exercise is really just to set yourself up ready to begin the first lesson. So I'd like you to ensure that you have a working Microsoft 365 account that has access to Excel 365. I'd like you to sign in to office.com and ensure you're familiar with the Microsoft 365 interface and where to go to access applications, including Excel online. And if you'd like to follow along with me, I want you to make sure that you've downloaded both the course files and the exercise files from their respective folders. That is it. There is no answer to this exercise. Just make sure you've done those things, and I will see you in the next section.

In the last lesson, I showed you how easy it is to work in Excel online. We simply log in to the Microsoft 365 portal and launch Excel from the App Launcher. But it's safe to say that if you're sitting at your desk working in your office, you're probably going to want to use the full version of Excel. And indeed, that is what this training course will be conducted in predominantly. So how can we launch the desktop version of Excel? Well, as we've already seen, if you do sign up for a Microsoft 365 subscription, you have the opportunity to install the full versions of all of the Microsoft 365 applications onto your PC, and this is where you'll get that full desktop version. So if you haven't done that already, go to "Install apps" on the homepage of the portal and click on "Microsoft 365 apps". That will kick off the download process and download all of the applications.

So once the applications have downloaded, how do we access Excel? Well, this is very much going to be determined by the operating system that you're using. I'm using Windows 11, and if I push my mouse down to the bottom of the screen, notice the icons that I have. You can see that I have the Excel icon pinned to the taskbar. Now, Excel isn't pinned down here by default, so you're going to find it underneath your Start menu. Now, for me, I access my Start menu by clicking on the Windows icon just here, or alternatively, I can press the Windows key on my keyboard to pop open the menu. Now, if you can't see Excel, Word, and PowerPoint amongst these icons here, you can simply click in the search bar at the top and search for the application that you're looking for. So if I'm looking for a new installation of Excel, I can just type in "Excel". There it is at the top, Excel app. I can either click to launch the application directly, but what I would suggest you do is that if Excel is an application that you use every day, you do pin it down onto your taskbar. What we can do is right-click and we can choose to "Pin to taskbar". Now, notice that mine says "Unpin from taskbar" because I already have it pinned, but if you don't, it's going to say "Pin". So I highly recommend you do that because it means you're always going to have access to Excel pinned to this taskbar at the bottom, and you can see I've pretty much repeated this process for all of the applications that I use frequently.

So once we have it pinned, to launch Excel, it's a simple case of just clicking on the icon, and this will take you to what we call the start page. Now, you only ever see this start page when you first fire Excel up every single day. And from here, we can choose to create a new blank workbook, we could possibly start from a template, and then underneath, we have a list of all of our recent documents to make them super easy to open and access. We can see any documents that we have pinned, and we can see any documents that have been shared with us by other people. So this recent list will constantly be changing as we work and open new files, those will go to the top of this list. So my recommendation is that if you do have maybe a spreadsheet that you work on every single day and you don't want that to keep moving around in this recent list, I do recommend that you pin it. So let's just say that I always access "budget analysis.xlsx". If we take a look towards the middle here, we have a little pin icon. So I could click on the pin, and you can see that that's now pinned to the top of the recent list, and I can also find it under the "Pinned" section. You can see there, there it is.

Now, there's lots more to explore in here, and we're going to get into that in the next few lessons. But for the time being, that is how you can launch Excel.

We ended the last lesson by firing up Excel and just having a quick look at the start page. And in this lesson, we're just going to get ourselves a bit more comfortable with the Excel interface. So to do that, we're going to just very quickly create a new blank workbook. Now, when it comes to creating new blank workbooks, there are a couple of different methods that you can use. Notice on the start page here, we have "Blank workbook". We could click to select that. Alternatively, if we go to "New" just here, we have the option to select a blank workbook from here as well. Now, if you're somebody that loves keyboard shortcuts, you might be trying to use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+N just here to create a new blank workbook, but notice if I press it, it doesn't actually work when you're on the start page. So we're going to need to click to select the blank workbook.

Now, a couple of things to note when you first create a new workbook. Notice the terminology that I'm using there. You may hear people refer to workbooks and worksheets. So what is the difference between the two? Well, if you take a look right at the bottom here, we have a tab that says "Sheet1". So this grid structure that we're looking at right now, this is called a worksheet. Now, we can have multiple worksheets, and if you notice to the left, we have a little plus where we can add new sheets. So these are all worksheets, but the container, the file that contains all of these worksheets, is what we refer to as a workbook. So just make sure you have those two pieces of terminology straight in your mind.

So I'm going to click on "Sheet1" and let's just do a quick tour of the interface. So right at the top, in the title bar, notice this is where we have the title of the document. Now, when you create a new document, you're just going to get the default title, which is going to be Book1, Book2, Book3. Now, of course, that is very generic. I would highly recommend that you do rename your documents. So we can rename this file by simply clicking in the title area, and then we can change the file name. So I'm going to call this "My First Workbook". We can choose a location to save. Now, notice by default, it's going to save into OneDrive. And the advantage of saving it into the cloud is that every time you make a change, it's going to automatically update. You don't have to keep pressing save. It also means that you can access this file from anywhere through the online portal. So in general, I would always recommend that you start saving your files into the cloud.

Now, I'm not going to worry too much about any of the rest of this stuff at this stage. Let's just get this workbook saved. I'm going to click on "Save". Notice that the title changes at the top. Now, as soon as we named this workbook, another thing happened. You may or may not have seen it, it was pretty quick. The autosave button just here toggled itself on. Previously, this was toggled off. So this means that now every time we click and start typing and working in this workbook, all of the changes I'm making are constantly saved back to the cloud. So this file is always up to date. Also, notice that we do have a little save button just here, but it has this little cycle, this little green cycle icon on it because this now acts as more of a refresh between what we're working on and the cloud.

So now we have this workbook saved. Underneath the title bar, this is where we have our tabs and our ribbons. If you're used to using older versions of Excel, you might remember that we used to have drop-down menus to access all of our commands. But in around 2010, that completely changed, and we now have these horizontal ribbons with all of our commands on them. So our commands are organized logically onto different ribbons. We have Home, Insert, Draw, Page Layout, Formulas, Data, Review, so on and so forth. So the Home tab, for example, will contain commands that are most common. These are the things that people use most when they're working in Excel. And you can see that all of our commands are then divided into different groups, and at the bottom, we have the group name. So we have Clipboard, Font, Alignment, Number, Styles, so on and so forth. And you'll find that pattern across all of the ribbons. We always have groups that contain our commands.

Now, if you're brand new to Excel, it is going to take a while to kind of really get to know where all of your commands are located on these ribbons because there are so many different commands in Excel. And I might add, not all of them are on the ribbons. Another thing that you should be aware of is that with some of these groups, you'll see that they have a little diagonal arrow in the bottom corner. For example, the Alignment group, we have this little diagonal arrow. If I hover my mouse over it, we can see the screen tip pop up there that says "Alignment Settings". And if we click this, it's really going to open up more options related to this specific group. So if you can't find what you're looking for in the Alignment group on the ribbon, click the diagonal arrow to reveal more options. And you'll find that that follows through. If we go to the one for Font, we have more font options underneath there. So don't forget we have those little hidden dialogue boxes underneath these diagonal arrows.

Another thing to be aware of is that when you have your mouse over any of these commands, you're going to get what we call a screen tip, and that's just really a helpful little popup that's going to tell you the command name and also give you a brief description. So this is super useful if you're not really sure what a command does, and you can always click "Tell me more" underneath to open up the help file related to this command. So tabs and ribbons are a really important aspect of working in Excel.

Now, underneath our ribbons, notice that we have this mostly empty horizontal bar, but we do have some icons on this bar on the left-hand side. This is where we have that autosave toggle. And currently, I have a save button, I have undo, and I have redo. Now, both of these are grayed out at the moment, so I can't click them because I haven't actually done any work to undo. If I was to type something, I'm just going to type "hello" in here. Notice that they're now accessible, and if I want to remove that, I could click on undo or I could press the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Z to undo my last action. So undo and redo, really useful.

Now, this little group of icons is referred to as the Quick Access Toolbar, and we have a whole lesson dedicated to customizing this area. This is basically somewhere where we can add commands that we use frequently to make them easy to find, so we don't have to go hunting through the ribbons looking for specific commands. So we're going to talk a lot more about this in a couple of lessons' time.

Underneath the Quick Access Toolbar, we have the Name Box, and that's going to display whatever cell I'm clicked in. So it's telling me I'm clicked in cell D4. If I click somewhere else, it's telling me I'm clicked in cell F7. Now, there's a lot more you can do with this Name Box, which we'll get into a bit later on in the course. And then next to that, we have the Formula Bar. So this is where we come to type formulas and also edit formulas. And then the main part of this screen is taken up with our worksheet. And all worksheets in Excel are based on columns and rows, which gives this kind of grid structure. We have columns labeled with letters and rows labeled with numbers, and this makes it super easy for us to reference specific cells. For example, if I click here, I can see that that is cell H8. Notice column H is highlighted in gray, and so is row 8. I can also see in the Name Box that I'm currently clicked in cell H8. And we use these cells to have our text, numbers, and other information.

And then right at the bottom, this is where we have our different worksheets. As I said, you can have multiple, and by default, they're going to be named generic names, so Sheet1, Sheet2, Sheet3. Now, of course, we can rename our worksheets to make them more meaningful, and again, we'll look at that in another lesson. But just be aware, this is how you can switch between your different worksheets. You can either click on them, or alternatively, if you like keyboard shortcuts, you can move through the different worksheets by pressing Ctrl+Page Down to go to Sheet2, Page Down again to go to Sheet3, Page Up to go the other way. On the right-hand side, we have a scroll bar, a horizontal scroll bar, I should say. And then running right across the bottom, this is where we have the Status Bar. So the Status Bar is where you're going to find different pieces of useful information, and what you see down here will change depending on what you're doing. This is also the area that houses the different views because there are different ways that we can view a worksheet in Excel, and you can see those over on the right-hand side, and we can switch between them simply by clicking on the icon. Now, these aren't going to make much sense to you at the moment, so we're just going to stick with "Normal" view. And then finally, we have this little Zoom slider. So the default is 100% zoom. If we click the plus, it's going to zoom in. If we click the minus, it's going to zoom out. So that is entirely personal preference. But those are the main elements that make up the interface when you're working in Excel.

So since the last lesson, I've gone in and I've added some data and an image into my worksheet. Now, I don't want to skip ahead too far here because we haven't even spoken about data entry or how to insert images, but I wanted to get something in this worksheet so that I can demonstrate to you contextual menus and contextual ribbons.

Now, what do we mean when we say contextual menu? Well, pretty much what it says on the tin. It's contextual to wherever we clicked. So if I click in my table of data just here, I'm going to click on cell B4, and in B4, I simply have a piece of text. It's an order number. Now, aside from being able to do things with this piece of text, so maybe I want to go up and change some of the formatting options from the ribbon, we can also right-click on the cell and we get a contextual menu. Now, the reason why this is contextual is because the items that we see in this menu are very much based on the type of data that we've clicked on in the cell. So what we see in this menu when we're right-clicked on a piece of text is going to be different if we clicked on, let's say, a picture, for example. I have a picture just here. Let's right-click. The options I get are different and are related to the picture. For example, we have "Save as picture" just here. But when I'm clicked on text and I right-click, we don't have that option in here. So the point I'm trying to make is that depending on what you've right-clicked the mouse on, you're going to get different menu options.

Now, along the same vein, we also have contextual ribbons. So if you take a look at my ribbons at the moment, where we have Home, Insert, Draw, Page Layout, running across the top, we will also see up here from time to time other ribbons as well because not all ribbons show as tabs by default. For example, this data set that I have here, that's showing these products and the prices, this is actually an Excel table. And again, we haven't spoken at all about Excel tables at this stage, but just be aware that I've put this into a table. Now, keep your eyes on these ribbon tabs at the top, because when I click in the table, notice I get a new ribbon called "Table Design". So this is in effect contextual as well. When I click on it, I'm going to see all of the commands related to Excel tables. For example, I can change the table style from here. I can do some various things with the table style options. I can insert slicers, which are like filters. I can create pivot tables and charts. So everything on this ribbon is contextual.

Now, when I'm not clicked in this table, so for example, if I click in a blank cell just somewhere else on the worksheet, that contextual ribbon is going to disappear. So this is pretty good because it prevents your ribbons from being too cluttered. We don't have everything visible all the time. Things appear when they're needed and relevant. The same thing will occur if you insert a picture into your spreadsheet. So I have a picture just here. Again, keep your eye on the tabs at the top. When I click on the picture, I get a "Picture Format" ribbon. When I click on that, I have all of the options related to formatting, resizing, and managing pictures. If I click away, it disappears. So you'll find that with lots of elements when you're working in Excel. For example, if you've inserted a chart and you click on the chart, you're going to get a few extra ribbons up here related to formatting, editing the data, and designing your chart. If you click on a pivot table, you're going to get ribbons related to pivot tables. So don't forget when you're clicked somewhere to glance up at these tabs just to make sure that you don't have a contextual ribbon with more options that you didn't know were there.

And the final thing to point out in this lesson is that we also have panes that will open up on the right-hand side. For example, if I click on the picture, right-click, and go to "Format Picture", at the bottom, it's going to open a "Format Picture" pane. And again, this is something that you'll commonly see. There's always going to be some kind of format option that will open a pane. For example, if I click in the data, right-click, I don't have "Format Picture", but I do have "Format Cells", and this time it pops open a dialogue box as opposed to a pane. So just be aware of these right-click menus, hidden contextual ribbons, and also panes that can pop up at any time depending on what you're working in in your Excel spreadsheet.

In a previous lesson, we briefly spoke about the Quick Access Toolbar. And just a reminder, in case you've forgotten, you'll find the Quick Access Toolbar lurking underneath your ribbons. It's this little thing here where we can see autosave, save, undo, and redo icons. Now, as I mentioned, this is an area that we can customize. So this is brilliant if you have commands that you use frequently and you don't want to have to hunt through the ribbons in order to find them, because we can customize this with whatever commands we like to make them easily accessible. So in this lesson, we're going to take a look at the different methods you can use to add commands to your Quick Access Toolbar, and then I'll leave it to you to customize your own.

Now, by default, you're always going to have autosave, save, undo, and redo on your Quick Access Toolbar. So if you launch Excel straight out of the box, this is what you're going to see. But of course, we can add to that. And the simplest way to add any command to the Quick Access Toolbar is to find the command on the ribbon. For example, let's say that I always use bold font formatting. Right-click on the command and choose "Add to Quick Access Toolbar". As soon as I click that, you can see there it is, easily accessible. Maybe I want to add something else. So let's go across to the Data tab. Maybe I'm always sorting data, so I'm going to right-click on "Custom Sort" and choose "Add to Quick Access Toolbar", and there it is. So we can build up a long list of commands that we use frequently. So I'm just going to add a few onto here.

Now, aside from adding commands that way, notice that at the end of the Quick Access Toolbar, we have this little drop-down arrow. When we hover over it, it says "Customize Quick Access Toolbar". So when we click this, it's going to pop open a menu. And notice in here, we have 20 or so commonly used commands. So these are the commands that Microsoft think will be most useful to you to add to the Quick Access Toolbar. Now, the ones that we already have added have a tick next to them, but we could add any of these others simply by selecting them. So, yeah, I'm always spell-checking my spreadsheets, so maybe I want to add "Spelling". Maybe I want to add "Quick Print". Maybe I want to add "New". So that is another way that you can add your commands. Incidentally, if you want to remove commands from the Quick Access Toolbar, you can simply right-click and choose "Remove", or alternatively, if you added them by this method, you can just deselect them from the list.

Now, it's worth noting that not all commands in Excel are available on these ribbons. There are many other commands that kind of lurk in the background which aren't as accessible as others. It also might be that you want to add a specific command to the Quick Access Toolbar, but you can't actually find it on the ribbon. If that is the case, what I would recommend is that you click this drop-down and go to "More Commands" just here. What that's going to do is it's going to jump you across to Excel Options, and again, this is an area that we'll look at a bit later on, and straight to the Quick Access Toolbar section, because what we can do from here is pull up a list of all commands available in Excel and add them to the Quick Access Toolbar that way. So on the right-hand side, this is where we can see the commands that we currently have on the Quick Access Toolbar, and you can see all of the ones that I've just added. And then on the left-hand side, this is where we can choose commands to add to the Quick Access Toolbar, divided down by category. So currently, I'm displaying in this list all of the most popular commands, but if I want to see everything, I could click the drop-down and choose "All Commands", and then I get a list of absolutely everything that's available in Excel. And fortunately, these are listed alphabetically, so if you're looking for something specific, it makes it a little bit easier to find. Mind, so maybe I want to add, let's add some alignment options. I would just select the command and click on the "Add" button in the middle to put it over on the Quick Access Toolbar. So I'm going to add a few. Let's just add a few alignment commands, like so. Really nice and simple. Similarly, if you want to remove items from the Quick Access Toolbar, you can select. So let's go for "Convert Text to Table" and click on "Remove". And also, when you're working in this view, it's very simple to rearrange or reorder our commands. If I want "Flash Fill" to be further up the top, I can simply click the up arrow to the right-hand side to move it, or I can move it back down again.

And the final thing that's quite useful in here is that we can give our Quick Access Toolbar a little bit of structure by adding separators. Now, I already have two separators on my Quick Access Toolbar, and you can see them just here. It's these lines. So these serve as a visual way of grouping together commands of similar type. And what you'll find is if you want to add a separator, if you scroll up to the top of any of these lists, you'll have the option to add a separator. So if I add a couple into here, I can then arrange them how I want them to be arranged. So I'm going to grab this separator, I'm going to move it down because I want undo and redo to be grouped together. I'm going to grab this separator and I'm going to move it up because I want to separate my formatting from my sorting and filtering. And maybe I want to take this separator and place it just there, so that all of my alignment options are grouped together. So how you arrange these is very much personal preference. Let's click on "OK", and it's going to rejig our Quick Access Toolbar, and you can see that that now looks a little bit more organized.

The final point to mention here about the Quick Access Toolbar is that you can change its position. So mine is currently underneath my ribbons, but if you don't like it there, you can choose to display it above your ribbons as well. If we click the drop-down again, notice that we can "Show Above the Ribbon", and it's going to put the Quick Access Toolbar up here. Now, it's not my preference to have it up there because I tend to forget it's up there when it's shoved in the corner like that, so I like to have mine shown below the ribbon. And if you don't like the Quick Access Toolbar at all and you think you're never going to use it, you can simply turn it off by choosing "Hide Quick Access Toolbar". It gets rid of it, and you get a little bit more screen space back. If you want to get it back, if you cast your eyes all the way over to the right-hand side, notice on the ribbons, we have this drop-down arrow that says "Ribbon Display Options". If I click this, this is how I can bring back the Quick Access Toolbar. So this is a super useful way of customizing your copy of Excel.

Using keyboard shortcuts in Excel is the best way to improve your efficiency and productivity. Keyboard shortcuts are just a series of keyboard strokes that will execute commands, meaning that we don't have to use our mouse and click around on the ribbons. And a lot of people find that simply working with their keyboard is a lot quicker than constantly reaching for the mouse or switching between the two. Now, if you're anything like me, you're probably use a combination of both. I use my mouse for a lot of things, but I also have a set of keyboard shortcuts that I commonly use. So I would highly recommend learning some basic keyboard shortcuts that will execute common commands quickly. So in this lesson, I'll demonstrate a few of my favorite keyboard shortcuts, but I'll also show you a couple of places you can go to print out a full list of all keyboard shortcuts available in Excel. You can then print this out, have it on your desk, and over time, you'll commit some of the most popular to muscle memory.

Now, keyboard shortcuts generally involve holding down the Control or the Shift key, or in some cases both, and pressing a number or a letter. For example, if I wanted to select all of the data within this table, I can click inside the table and press Ctrl+A, and it's going to select everything. If I want to select just this column of data, I can press Ctrl+Shift+Down Arrow. If I want to select the entire row of data, Ctrl+Shift+Right Arrow. And of course, the opposites of these work as well. So if I'm clicked at the bottom, I can do Ctrl+Shift+Up Arrow to select all of the data. If I'm clicked on the right in the last cell, Ctrl+Shift+Left Arrow to select the entire row. Now, if we're not clicked within data, maybe we're just down here in a blank cell, I can press Shift+Spacebar to select the entire row, or Ctrl+Spacebar to select the entire column.

And then of course, we have some of the most popular keyboard shortcuts for things like copying and pasting. So if I want to copy, let's say I want to copy this section of this table, I can press Ctrl+C to copy. Notice as soon as I do that, I get these little marching ants, that's what we call them in the Excel world, around the outside my selection. And I can then scroll somewhere else and press Ctrl+V to paste that data in. If I want to undo my last action, Ctrl+Z will do that. And if we have a selection still flashing like we do here, we can press the Escape key to deselect that selection area.

We have formatting shortcuts. So I can select some text. I'm going to select this row. Ctrl+B will make it bold. Ctrl+I will make it italic, and Ctrl+U will underline. And we can simply press all three of those keyboard shortcuts again to remove them. So Ctrl+U will remove the underline, Ctrl+I will remove the italic, and Ctrl+B will remove the bold.

Now, there are so many other shortcuts other than those simple ones that I've just shown you just there. So let's take a look at a few ways that we can find out more about our keyboard shortcuts. If we jump up to the Home ribbon, and if I hover my mouse over Bold, for example, notice that it's showing the keyboard shortcut in brackets in the screen tip. So you'll find that for some of these commands, you can find out what the keyboard shortcut is simply by looking at that screen tip. Now, this doesn't apply to everything. If I hover my mouse over "Middle of line", you can see it's not showing the keyboard shortcut. So this is a little bit hit or miss, but for a lot of things, you will be able to see the shortcut in the screen tip.

Now, another really popular way of using keyboard shortcuts, and this has really come more into prominence over the last couple of years, is to use Alt key tips. So what are those? Well, if we press the Alt key on our keyboard, check out what happens to our ribbon. I now get a letter or a number assigned to all of my tabs. Now, to come out of this mode, we can press Escape, and it's going to get rid of those letters. So what I'm going to do here is I'm going to select this row, Ctrl+Shift+Right Arrow. I'm going to press Alt, and I want to make this row bold. So I can go to the Home tab by pressing H. Notice I then get a different set of shortcuts for each of the commands, and I can see that the number 1 is assigned to Bold. So I can then press 1, and it's going to apply that formatting. So by pressing Alt+H+1 keyboard shortcut, I've managed to apply bold. Alt+H+1 again is going to remove bold. So you have all of these different keyboard shortcuts. We can jump across to other ribbons. So if I go to the Insert ribbon, I can press N just here. If I want to insert a picture, I can go to P, so on and so forth. Escape to come out of that mode. So don't forget about those as well. Again, you'll find that you'll have a few combinations that you commit to memory, and you'll use those most often.

Now, what if we just want to see a big long list of all of the keyboard shortcuts in Excel? Well, we have two options. The first thing we can do is jump into the Help files by pressing the F1 key on our keyboard. Notice it opens Help in a pane on the right-hand side, and we can simply search for "keyboard shortcuts in Excel" and hit Enter. It's brought up a list of search results. I'm going to select the top item just here. We get some information about keyboard shortcuts, and if we scroll down, you can see that we have our shortcuts divided into different categories. So if we go to "Frequently Used Shortcuts", it's going to jump us down to that section of the document, and you can see here we have a list of all of the keyboard shortcuts to close a workbook, Ctrl+W, open a workbook, Ctrl+O, so on and so forth. So this is quite a nice way of being able to find your keyboard shortcuts.

But the other way that we could use, the much more modern way, I might say, is to utilize ChatGPT. And I'm sure by now, there's been so much buzz about ChatGPT that most of you are familiar with exactly what it is. And ChatGPT can be brilliant for things like this. So I've simply fired up a browser, I've searched for ChatGPT, and it is worth noting that you will need to create an account in order to use ChatGPT, but you can use GPT 3.5 for free, which is the version that I'm using. So all we need to do down here, where it says "Send a message", we can type "Please show me a list of all keyboard shortcuts in Excel". Hit Enter to send that through, and it's going to go away, it's going to give us some information, but then it will start to produce all of those keyboard shortcuts. Now, there's a lot of keyboard shortcuts in here, so we're not going to sit here and wait for this to finish. I'm just going to choose "Stop generating" because what we could then do is scroll up to the top, and notice we have a "Copy" button just here. So I could choose to copy this information and maybe paste it into something like a Word document. So I'm just going to open Word online from the Microsoft 365 portal. Let's create a new blank document, and then I can simply press Ctrl+V to paste all of those shortcuts in. Now, you're probably going to have to do a little bit of formatting here, but once you've got these in here, you can then save this file, you can print it off, and you can have it on your desk. So those are some useful keyboard shortcuts and some different methods for accessing the full list of keyboard shortcuts in Excel.

It's time now to do Exercise Two. And in this exercise, we're going to practice some of the skills that we've learned in this section of the course. So the first thing I'd like you to do is to launch the desktop version of Excel and simply create a new blank workbook. Now, once you have that workbook open, I'd like you to be able to identify the following interface elements: the status bar, the ribbons, the title bar, the grid, and the Quick Access Toolbar. Make sure.

You know where all of those are located. Next, I'd like you to add some commands to the quick access toolbar. Now, I don't mind which commands you add, but just as a suggestion, you might want to add print preview and print, auto format, and sort. And I'd also like you to add a separator that separates those commands from the other commands on on the quick access toolbar. And the final part of this exercise is to know which keystroke will show key tip shortcuts on all of the ribbons. That is it for this exercise. If you'd like to see my answer, then please keep watching.

So, the first thing I asked you to do was to launch the desktop version of Excel. Now, you're going to find Excel either pinned to the taskbar at the bottom, as mine is just here. Alternatively, you might have to search for it underneath the start menu. Now, how you search for Excel will differ depending on if you're using Windows 11 or Windows 10. So, just do your normal search that you would do to find any application. As long as it's installed, you'll be able to find it. So, I'm going to click on the Excel icon just simply to launch Excel 365 on my desktop. And I simply asked you to create a blank workbook. So, in the new area up here, let's click on blank workbook.

The next thing I asked you to do was to identify certain elements of the Excel interface. Face, for example, the title bar. That is this area in green that we have running across the top. Our ribbons are just below that, and we can click to switch to different ribbons. Remember, the ribbons house at commands. I asked you to find the status bar, and the status bar is this bar that runs across the bottom. Currently, this is where we can go to change our zoom levels and also switch between different views. I asked you to be able to identify the grid. That is our big worksheet in the middle, just here. And finally, I asked you to be able to identify the quick access toolbar. And you'll either find this below your ribbons, like mine is here, or you might have it above your ribbon, like that.

The next thing I asked you to do was to customize this quick access toolbar and add some commands. And I don't mind which commands you added, but I did give you some suggestions. Now, as always, there are a few different ways that we could do this. For example, you can click on any command, right-click, and choose add to quick access toolbar. Alternatively, you can click the drop-down and you can choose one of the commands from this list. Print preview and print. And if you can't find the command that you're looking for, you can jump into more commands and you can choose what you want to add from one of these menus. So, I'm going to add, let's add email. Let's add it across to the quick access toolbar. I also asked you to add a separator. We find our separators at the top of each list. We can simply click on add and then we can use our up and down arrows to move that into position and then click on okay.

The final thing I asked you to do was make sure that you know which keystroke you press in order to bring up all of those key tip shortcuts. And if you recall from the lesson, we need to press the ALT key to bring those up. That's it for this exercise. I will see you in the next section.

So far in this course, we've seen how to create a brand new blank workbook, but there are lots of other methods that we can use to save time. And one of those methods is to use templates. So, we're going to close out of this file that we've been working on. Now, when it comes to closing files, there are a couple of really important points to know because I know from experience that this can trip people up. A lot of people think that to close the workbook that they're working on, they click on the cross in the top right-hand corner. Now, just be aware, this will close all of Excel, not just the workbook that you're working on. So, if you accidentally do this, it means you're going to have to restart Excel and then reopen your files. If you want to just close the workbook but leave Excel open, you need to go to file and you have a close button just here. Another way that you can close is to simply use the keyboard shortcut, Ctrl W. Notice it's closed the workbook, but it's left Excel open.

So, this time we're going to create a new workbook, but we're going to use a template instead. Now, we get to our template simply by going to file and then we can jump to new. Alternatively, we could use keyboard shortcuts to do this. We could press Alt F and N. That's going to take us to where we need to be. And I'm going to press the Alt key again to get rid of those keyboard shortcuts. You can press Escape or Alt. Now, not just at the top there, we have new blank workbook. That is by far the most common template, I guess, that you're going to select. But if we scroll down, check out what we have. We have a tab called office, and then we have all of these online templates. And these are templates provided by Microsoft which are prepopulated with formatting and information to give you a head start when you're creating spreadsheets. So, which one of these templates you choose really depends on what it is that you're trying to do. You will see that they are organized into different categories. So, we have business, personal, planners and trackers, so on and so forth. Or alternatively, you can simply click at the top here and type in what you're looking for. So, maybe I'm looking for an invoice template. I'm going to type in invoice. I can press enter or click the magnifying glass. It's going to search through all of the online templates and produce a list of all of the ones that match invoice. So, I can then scroll through and I can find one that I think looks quite nice. Let's go for this one, just here. When we click on it, we're going to get a little bit of information about the template. We can see the download size, and then we can click on create. That's going to download the template and open it up in Excel. And the cool thing about these templates is that a lot of them are pre-populated with things like formulas, so that you don't really have to do anything yourself. For example, this is an invoice template. So, what I'm probably going to do down here is I'm going to enter the quantity, the description, the unit price of whatever service I'm invoicing for. But check out where we have line total. If I click in this cell, if we look in the formula bar, can you see there's already a formula in here? And this formula is going to calculate what the line total is based on the quantity and the unit price. The template also comes nicely formatted, so we don't have to spend any time designing a nice looking invoice. All we would probably do here is insert our own logo, go and if we wanted to change the colors, we could come in and we could do that. Everything in here is customizable, but it just gives you a really nice base to start from.

Now, if this invoice template is a template that I want to use over and over again for different clients or customers, it's beneficial to save this blank invoice as a template that we can reuse over and over again. So, if we go up to the file menu, this is where we need to go into save as. Now, when you come to this save screen, it can look a little bit complicated at first, but what you should see in here is your OneDrive account that's associated with your Microsoft 365 account. And if you have a SharePoint site, you're going to see that in there as well. So, you can see I have access to my OneDrive and also my site in SharePoint. So, I can choose to save into either of these locations. Alternatively, if you're more familiar with saving via File Explorer, then if you click the browse button, just here, that's open up the File Explorer window that might be more familiar to you, and you can navigate to whichever folder you want to save this template into. Now, one thing to note here when you're thinking about where to save your template, notice underneath we have save as type. And currently it says Excel workbook. All Excel workbooks, when you save them, will have the default file extension of XLSX. Now, if you want to save something as a template, you need to change this to this file type, just here. Excel Template. XLTX. Now, when I select this type, it jumps me to a very specific folder. Notice that I'm now in Documents, Custom Office Templates. And in here, this is where I'll find all of my Excel file templates. Now, I would highly recommend that you save your templates into this default folder that it takes you to, and I'll show you in a minute why. Let's just give our invoice a name. So, I'm going to say customer invoice template and click on save.

So, now that we have this saved, let's close it down. Ctrl W. And if we go back to file and new, if I want to reuse that template, all I would need to do is click on the personal heading, just here, because underneath personal, this is where we can see all of the templates that we've saved. So, I have quite a few in here. This is the one we just saved. When I click to open it up, you can see there it is, and it's automatically been given a name of customer invoice template 1. So, any changes we make here are not going to overwrite the original because we saved it as customer invoice template. So, that is the reason why I will always save into that custom folder to make it easy to access from underneath personal. So, don't forget about these office templates. There are so many useful ones in here. As I said, they are brilliant for giving you a head start when creating Excel worksheets.

In this lesson, we're going to take a look at how we can work with worksheets in a workbook in a little bit more detail. Now, currently, I don't have anything open in Excel. So, let's reopen the file that we were working on earlier. Now, to open a file, we you can either go to file and open. Alternatively, we can press the keyboard shortcut, Ctrl O. And that's going to jump us to where we need to be. Now, if you're looking to open a file that you've accessed recently, then if you cast your eyes over to the right-hand side of the screen, notice that we have the workbooks tabs selected at the top, and then we have our most recent files. They're divided down into groups. So, you're going to see any files that you've pinned to the top of the list first. Then you're going to see all of the files that you've open today, this week, and then older. So, we're looking for the file, my first workbook. I open that today, and there it is, just there. So, let's click to reopen.

Now, as we mentioned previously, a workbook can contain multiple worksheets, and you can see that within this workbook, we have five worksheets at the bottom. I showed you how to add them by clicking on the plus, just here, to add more. Now, notice that when I've added two more sheets, six and seven are now appearing out of sequence. It goes sheet one, sheet six, sheet seven, sheet two. So, how can we move these worksheets? Well, it's a simple case of dragging and dropping. And if we need to move multiple, we can simply hold down the control key and select the other worksheet, in this case, sheet six, and then we can drag all the way across to the end and drop them. And now everything is back in order. So, really simple to move your worksheets around via drag and drop.

What else can we do with these worksheets? Well, we can rename them. And I would highly recommend that you rename your worksheets to make them more meaningful for not only yourself, but anybody who's looking at this workbook. Now, to rename a worksheet, again, there are two different ways that we can do this. We can right-click on the worksheet and choose rename. Or alternatively, we can simply double-click on the sheet name and then overtype. So, I'm going to call this product sales and hit enter. And you can go through and you can rename your worksheets whatever you want to name them. So, I'm just going to name a few of these.

What else can we do with our worksheets? Well, if we right-click on the first worksheet, we do get a contextual menu with other options in here. For example, we can change the tab color. Now, not only does this make your workbook look a little bit more colorful and interesting, it's also quite useful for grouping together worksheets of similar type. For example, I have three worksheets here called chart one, chart two, and chart three. So, these are all charts. Maybe I want to visually indicate that by making all of the tabs the same color. So, once again, I can hold down control and select all of the tabs, right-click, go to tab color, and then I can choose whatever color I like. I'm going to go for this purple color. Maybe maybe I want pivot and dashboard to be the same color. Again, we can hold down control to select them and then choose color from the palette. And for these ones, I'm going to give budget an orange color. And for product sales, let's go for this blue. So, using color to group your worksheets together is a really nice way to visually indicate data that kind of belongs together.

Now, what about if I wanted to make a copy of a worksheet? So, I've got data on this product sales worksheet. Maybe I want to reuse this data but just update the order dates. So, instead of creating a brand new worksheet and retyping all of this, I can simply copy the worksheet. Now, when it comes to copying, if we right-click on this tab and go to move or copy, we need to make sure that we select create a copy at the bottom because notice we come to this same area to move or to copy. So, if we don't have this selected, it's going to move the worksheet. If we select this, it's going to create a copy. We can specify where we want to move it to. So, I want to keep it within this workbook, but I want to move it to the end. Let's click on okay, and you can see exactly what we get. We now have product sales 2 because we can't have two worksheets named the same thing. So, you could go in and rename this, or you could just leave it as product sales 2. So, very easy to make a copy. And if we want to delete this worksheet, once again, we can right-click and we have a delete option in here. Now, if we go back to here and go back into move or copy, if we don't select create a copy and just choose move to end, it's going to actually move it as opposed to making a copy. But it's also worth noting that we don't have to use the right-click menu to move or to copy. If I want to move a tab, I can simply click and drag, as we saw at the beginning of this lesson. And if I want to create a copy, I can simply do the same thing, but add in the control key. So, if I hold down control, click and drag, I'm going to get a copy as opposed to just moving the worksheet. So, really nice and straightforward.

And the final thing to mention here when it comes to adding worksheets, we've already seen one of the methods. We can click on the plus at the end, and I would say that tends to be the method I use most often. But we could also right-click and go to insert. That's going to insert a worksheet. Or alternatively, we could go to the Home tab, into the sales group, and underneath insert, we can insert a sheet from here as well. Notice I do that, it's called sheet 11. I can then move it to the end and rename it to whatever I like. And notice if we go back to insert sheet, we do also have a keyboard shortcut which provides us with another method. The keyboard shortcut is Shift F11. So, when I do that, notice I now have another sheet called sheet 12. Now, I don't want either of these sheets, so I'm going to hold down control, select them both, right-click, and then choose delete. So, a few different options there when it comes to renaming, changing the tab color, and also moving, copying, and deleting worksheets.

In this lesson, I just wanted to take the opportunity to explain a little bit more about how saving Excel files into OneDrive works because I find that this tends to be a bit of a sticking point for some people. Now, when you're working in OneDrive, you're effectively working in the cloud. And cloud storage has been around for a number of years now. One of the advantages to saving your files into the cloud is it makes them easily accessible to other people. So, it means we're not having to attach files to emails if we want to share them. We can simply save them to a shared cloud folder and everybody can access the file that way. And the best thing about it is that whoever opens that file and makes changes, all of those changes automatically save back to the cloud. So, you're always going to have the most up-to-date copy.

Now, OneDrive is installed onto your PC when you work through the setup process for Microsoft 365. So, what you should find is that when you're working in Excel, if you go to file and go down to save a copy, you should be able to see your OneDrive sitting just here. So, you can see mine is called OneDrive. It has MSFT after it because there are two different types of OneDrive account. You can have a personal OneDrive, which goes with personal Microsoft 365 subscriptions, or if you have a business subscription, you're going to have the business version of OneDrive, and that's exactly what I have here. Now, I'm clicked on it in this list, and then on the right-hand side, I can see all of the files and folders that are located within my my OneDrive folder. And what I'm going to do here is I'm going to create a new folder and I'm going to call it course files. Let's click on okay. So, now if I wanted to save this workbook, I can simply click on course files and either keep the current name or I can rename it as something else. So, I'm going to call this product sales and click on save. So, notice now this document's name has changed in the title bar, and this is saved into OneDrive.

Now, if we close down this file, Ctrl W, and then go back to file and into open again, notice we have quick access to OneDrive, just here. So, to reopen, I would just select my drive, go to the folder, and there is my file. I can double-click to open. But it's also worth noting that if you're somebody who tends to work predominantly in File Explorer, you tend to to do a lot of your file opening from there, your OneDrive folders get synced to File Explorer. So, if I open up my File Explorer, you can see at the top here, these are my different OneDrives. The one that I've been working in is Deb MSF. If I click this, I can see all of the folders and all of the files. If I double-click on courses files, there is that product sales workbook. Now, I'm going to go back a level because I want to rename this. So, let's rename this course files as opposed to courses files. That's a little bit better.

Now, what you'll notice is that when you're working with OneDrive files within File Explorer, we have this status column, just here, and this will basically tell you what status this file or this folder is in terms of the cloud. So, when we're making changes to things, you might see a little circular icon, just here. For example, if I just go in and rename again, I'm going to change this to, let's just change it to course files one. Notice what happens when I hit enter. That icon changes to a little refresh icon, and that shows it's synchronizing with the cloud version to keep everything up to date. Whether we're accessing our files online through the portal or on our PC, when we have a green tick, it means it's fully synchronized with the cloud. Now, notice that some of these other folders just have a little cloud icon next to them, and that means that these are actually stored in the cloud only. So, I can still see them in File Explorer on my PC, but when I double-click to open, it basically needs to download from the cloud first of all. And of course, when we save our files into OneDrive, it means that we can open them through the Microsoft 365 portal as well. So, if we go to the app launcher and open up OneDrive, we should find that underneath recent, right at the top here, there is our product sales workbook. So, it doesn't matter where I open this from, it's always going to be the most up-to-date copy. So, that's just a little bit more information about how to work with OneDrive and Excel files.

In this lesson, we're going to start actually working in Excel, and we're going to begin in this lesson by taking a look at some of the rules and quirks of entering in text, numbers, and dates into cells, cuz there's some really important things that you need to know here. So, we're still working in our product sales worksheet, but notice that I've removed all of the data that I had in here previously. So, in cell B4, we're going to start by entering in an order number. Now, to start typing into cells, all we need to do is basically click on the cell and start typing. So, I'm going to enter in my order number, OD-01. Once you've finished entering in your information, you have a couple of different options. If you then want to move across to the order date column, you can press the Tab key, and it will move you straight across. Otherwise, if you press Enter, it's going to move you to the cell below.

Now, if I now wanted to go in and maybe make an amendment to what I have in this cell, I can either double-click to go into edit mode. You can see my cursor is now there, and I can make changes like so. Or alternatively, we can press the F2 key. That's also going to put into edit mode, and we can go in and make whatever changes we need to make. Now, if I'm in edit mode and I don't want to tab across to the next cell, and I don't want to go to the cell below, maybe instead I want to stay in the cell that I'm working in, we can press Ctrl Enter. It will take us out of edit mode, but keep us in the same cell. So, that's another really handy little shortcut. Now, I am going to press Tab to go across to the order date column. So, I'm currently working working in cell C4. Remember, we can see that in the name box. Now, when it comes to entering dates into sales, this can seemingly be a little bit quirky sometimes. And just for the record, throughout the balance of this course, I'm using US date format and US currency. So, let's say that this is July the 12th, 2023. Press the Tab key. All looks good so far. I can then enter in the items. So, we're just going to type in product A and press Tab. Quantity, let's say three. The price is $5, and the total, we're going to leave for the moment because that's going to be a calculation of quantity multiplied by price.

Now, we haven't had too many issues there when we're entering in our data, but there are a few things that you need to be aware of. Now, we're going to delve into this topic in more detail a bit later on, but notice here for the quantity and price columns, I don't really like the way that these numbers are displaying. I don't just want five in there. Maybe I want to have 5.0. That might look a bit better. Or maybe I want to have the currency symbol at the start. Well, this is where we get into the realm of number formatting. And if you go up to the Home tab, you'll notice that we have a group called number, where we can find all of our different number formats. And we have various different number formats in here. So, General is no real specific format. We have number, currency, accounting, short dates, long dates, so on and so forth. I don't want to go too far down a tangent into number formatting because we have a whole lesson dedicated to this later on, but just to show you an example, I want the price column to show as currency. So, I'm going to choose the currency option, just here, and you can see what we get. We get a dollar symbol, and we get two decimal places. So, that looks a lot better. Now, quantity, that's fine. I just want it to say three. Product A, that's fine as well. But notice the difference between text and numbers. Text in a cell will always be aligned to the left of the cell, whereas when we have a number, such as the quantity, just here, numbers are always aligned to the right. Notice in column C that we have our dates aligned to the right as well.

Now, another little quirk that you sometimes come across when you're entering dates into a spreadsheet is that you'll type the date in, and it won't look like a date. You'll get a strange number. So, let me show you what that looks like. So, let's say you type a date into a cell, and instead of getting the date, you get a number that looks like this. Now, again, this is related to number formatting. It just means that you have the wrong number formatting applied to the column or the cell. If you check out the number formatting that I currently have applied, it says General at the top here, and what I really want this to be is date. Now, just as a side note, if you're wondering what this strange looking number is, this is actually the number of days past the 1st of January 1900. That date is kind of day zero for Excel. And to Excel, dates are simply numbers with formatting applied over the top. So, we are 45,119 days past the 1st of January 1900. So, to fix this, if you do see a column of numbers that look like this, we simply just need to go in and we can apply either short date or long date format. If I was to choose long date, that's what it looks like. Most of the time, you're going to prefer to have short dates.

Now, in column B, we have an order number, and this is one of those pieces of data where we have a mixture of different things. So, we have text, but we also have numbers. Now, because text is the first thing in the cell, it's aligning it to the left, as if it's text. Now, what about if I was to edit this cell, double-click, and remove, remove O-H? Check out what happens when I do this. I'm going to remove it, so we just have 00001. Press Enter. Excel changes it to one, and that is an expected behavior in Excel. It always removes leading zeros. Now, there are a couple of different ways that you can get around this. The most common one is people will put an apostrophe, and then have their three zeros in there. And what that will do is effectively turn this number into text. And we can see that it's now text because it's aligned to the left-hand side of the cell. So, just be aware of that when you're inputting numbers that start with zero.

Now, so far, when we've been editing and entering information into these cells, we've been working in the actual cells themselves, but it is worth noting that you can come up to the formula bar up here, and you can make changes in here. So, sometimes this is a bit easier because you've got quite a wide area, and you can see exactly what you're typing. It's not going to run into any other columns. So, I'm going to change this back to -001 and hit enter. So, those are some of the basics of entering text, numbers, and dates into cells in an Excel workbook.

Custom lists are a great way to make data entry quick and simple, and Excel has quite a few different inbuilt custom lists ready for you to use, but of course, you can also build your own custom lists. Now, if you're not sure what I'm talking about, let me show you an example. So, I'm currently working on the budget spreadsheet, and I just have some column headings in here. Now, if I enter in a day, let's say Monday, and press Ctrl Enter to stay in the same cell, notice that in the corner of the cell, I have this little green square, and this is what we call the autofill handle. When we hover our mouse over it, notice that the cursor changes to a small black cross. That means we're in autofill mode. So, if I have a spreadsheet and I need to fill down the days of the week, instead of typing those all out, I can simply type in the first one, hover over the corner until I see that black cross, click and drag down, and check out what happens. It's going to fill in all of those days for me. That's a custom list that's inbuilt in Excel. This would also work the same if we were using the short version of the day. So, if I type in Mon and press Ctrl Enter, and do the same thing, hover over the mouse and drag down, it's going to fill those in just the same way. And this will just carry on looping around until you choose to stop filling. We have the same thing for month. So, I can type in January or Jan, whichever I prefer. Ctrl Enter to stay in the same cell, and then I can drag those months down. Makes data entry so quick.

Now, notice here, it doesn't quite work the same when it comes to years. If I enter in, let's say I'm going to go for 2008, Ctrl Enter. If I just drag down, it just repeats 2008 over and over again. And that is because years are not set up as a custom list in Excel. Now, of course, you could create your own custom list, which I'll talk more about in a moment, but there is an alternative method when it comes to autofill. So, if we delete this out, let's just type 2008 again. What I can do is if I drag all the way down and let go, notice that I get this little tag popup with some autofill options. So, if I click this drop-down, I can choose fill series, and that will fill in those dates. So, don't forget about that little autofill handle. We will be using that quite a bit more in later lessons in this course. The same thing when it comes to numbers. If I enter in number one, and then number two, you'd think that would be fairly straightforward to drag this down, but it works in exactly the same way as the years. We would need to click the autofill option and choose fill series to get those to input correctly. So, again, neither of these two are custom lists, but we can get around that by using autofill options.

Now, just sticking with this topic of custom lists, let me show you where these live, and then I'll show you how you can generate your own. Now, if we jump up to the file menu, we're going to find our custom list buried down in our Excel options. They're under the advanced page. And if you're wondering what this whole Excel options area is all about, this is where we can come to kind of personalize our copy of Excel. So, if we scroll all the way down to the bottom, notice we have something here called edit custom lists. So, this is going to open up and show you all of the custom lists that you have access to. So, you can see the ones that are built into Excel. It's these top four here: Sun, Mon, Sun, Monday, Tuesday, Jan, Feb, M, January, February, March. The ones that you see underneath there are custom lists that I've created. So, you can see here I created a custom list that shows all of my work colleagues because quite often I have to enter all of their names into a spreadsheet, and I just want to be able to do it by dragging that fill handle down. The first name in this list is Brian Goling. So, if I click on cancel, just here, let's click on okay. If I needed to enter in staff members' names, I could type in Brian Goling, and then because once that's a custom list, I can simply use the same method by clicking the fill handle, dragging down, and it's going to fill in those names. So, we can effectively create our own custom lists. So, let's say I have a list of companies and I want to set these companies up as a custom list. Well, what we can do is go to file, options, advanced, scroll all the way down, and go to edit custom lists, and then we can choose to import from cells. So, if we click down here, I can just select the cells in my worksheet, click on import, and it's going to import those list entries. So, now when I click on okay and okay again, I can delete these out of the spreadsheet. I can type in the first one, Gaggle, Ctrl Enter, and I can use the autofill handle to drag those down. So, very easy to create your own custom lists.

And the final thing to point out when we're in this custom lists area, we don't necessarily have to import lists from cells that we have in our worksheet. If we don't have the list that we want to use in cells in the worksheet, we can simply type the list entries up here. So, if I just type a few names and click add, I can then use that in the same way. Ctrl Enter and drag to fill down. So, that's the basics of custom lists. As I said, you do have four which are included in Excel out of the box, and then if you want to use a custom list for anything else, you can very easily create your own.

It's time now to do exercise three, and in this exercise, we're going to practice some of the skills that we've learned in this section of the course. So, the first thing I'd like you to do is to create a new workbook based on the template monthly bank reconciliation, and I'd like you to save into the default custom templates folder, and make sure that you understand the advantage of doing this. I'd then like you to create a new blank workbook and save it into a folder of your choice in OneDrive, and I'd just like you to name the workbook your initials-practice.xlsx. I'd then like you to open the file exercise_03.xlsx from the exercise files folder, and I'd like you to apply some bold formatting to the heading row, and then using the students listed in column K, I'd like you to create a custom list, and I'd like you to use that custom list to fill down the student names in the table. So, a few different things to do there. If you you'd like to see my answer, then please keep watching.

Now, the first thing I asked you to do in this exercise was to create a document based on the template monthly bank reconciliation. So, we're going to jump up to file, we're going to go into new, and we're going to search our templates. There it is, just there. Let's double-click to open this up and load it into Excel. I then asked you to save this template into the default custom templates folder. So, we're going to jump up to file, we're going to go into save as, and we're going to choose browse. Now, the first thing we need to do here is we need to change the save as type drop-down because we're saving this as an Excel template. And you'll see that the moment that we do that, it's going to jump us to the custom templates folder. I didn't ask you to rename this, so we're going to leave it as monthly bank reconciliation and simply click on save. I also asked you to make sure that you understood why it's advantageous saving it into this custom folder as opposed to a folder of your own choosing. Well, it just means that if we want to create a file based off of this template, we can go to file, new, and then underneath this personal tab, we're going to be able to find our template, and you can see there it is, just there, monthly bank reconciliation.

The next thing I asked you to do was to create a new blank workbook and save it into a OneDrive folder of your choice. So, we're going to go up to file, we're going to say blank workbook. You could have pressed Ctrl N to do this, and we're going to save it into OneDrive. I'm going to put mine in my course files folder, and I'm going to name it my initials-practice and click on save.

Next, I asked you to open up the file exercise_03 from the exercise files folder and apply some bold formatting to the heading row of this table. So, we're just going to select it, and we're going to click on bold. I then asked you to create a custom list of all of the students listed in column K. So, for this, we need to jump up to file, go down into options, and then into advanced, and if we scroll all the way down towards the bottom, this is where we have our edit custom list button. We're going to import our list from cells. I'm going to select the cells that contain my list and click on import, and click on okay. And then asked you to use the custom list to fill the student names down in column B. So, when we have a custom list, we simply need to type in the first one, and then we can literally just drag the autofill handle to fill those names down. And that is it. I hope you gotten okay with that, and I will see you in the next section.

So, now that we have the basics of Excel covered, it's time to move on to exploring formulas because formulas are the backbone of Excel. They allow us to perform different types of calculations. We can analyze data with formulas, we can tidy up data, and so much more. And if you're new to formulas and functions in Excel, then don't worry, we're going to start from the beginning so you completely understand what you're doing. Now, there are over 450 functions in Excel. Notice I'm using the terminology functions, and you'll hear people use functions and formulas interchangeably, but what is the real difference between the two? Well, functions are what we use in a formula, and in Excel, we have a number of inbuilt functions ready for us to use. Now, you'll find all of the functions on the formulas tab in this group here, function library, because all of the formulas are divided down into different categories. So, we have some functions in here related to financial calculations. We have our logical formulas underneath here. You might have heard people speak about IF and TRUE FALSE, LAMBDA, things like that. We have a text group for all of our text functions, a date and time group, lookup and reference. This is where we have things like VLOOKUP, HLOOKUP, XLOOKUP, MATCH, OFFSET. And then finally, we have a math and trig group, and then underneath more functions, we have more groups. But I would say that these ones underneath more, these are more niche to specific industries. You also have a recently used drop-down, just here, and this is going to show you the last 10 or so functions that you use, making them super easy to find again.

Now, in the next lesson, we're going to use some of these functions to create a simple formula, but before we get on to that, it is important to understand some basic principles of working with formulas in Excel because it's really important to understand the order of operations. And this lesson is probably going to take you all the way back to your math lessons at school. Notice I have written out here in the spreadsheet BODMAS and PIDMAS. Now, the reason why I have both of these is because in different countries, different terminology is used. For example, in the UK, where I'm from, when I was growing up, we used the BODMAS rule, whereas I know in other countries, you might see it written as PIDMAS or even PEDMAS. Basically, the same thing, we just use different words for some of these items. For example, in the UK, we tend to say brackets, whereas in the US, they tend to say parentheses. Now, for the purpose of this demonstration, I'm going to call it BODMAS, simply because that's what I'm more familiar with. And if you're not familiar with the BODMAS rule, let me show you how this works because this carries through all Excel formulas.

Now, in my B, I have a series of numbers in A cells. So, let's say I've got six and I've got three. Now, if I wanted to add these two numbers up in Excel, that's a very simple calculation. Now, we need to tell Excel that we're doing a calculation, so we do that by typing equals into the cell. Now, I could type 6 + 3 and hit enter. That's going to work and give me the correct result. Now, when we type numbers directly into the formula, we call this hardcoding. We're hardcoding these numbers in, and it means that if either of these numbers up here change, so maybe this one goes to five, and this one goes to two, the formula down here isn't going to update because we've hardcoded the numbers into the formula. So, in general, the way that we work with calculations in Excel is that we use the cell reference as opposed to the actual number. So, instead of typing in those numbers, I would do equals G5 + G6 and hit enter. Because now, if I were to change these numbers, you can see that the formula updates because it's referencing the cell that the number is in. So, the number one rule of creating formulas is to always make sure that wherever possible, and it's not possible in all scenarios, you use the cell reference as opposed to hardcoding the number.

So, that's all good, but where does this BODMAS rule come in? Well, let's say we were doing a calculation that was a little bit more complicated. So, let's say I wanted to do 10 + 2 / 2. So, the answer in my head that I'm looking for here is six. 10 + 2, which gives us 12, and then divide by 2, which gives us six. So, let's see how Excel calculates this formula. Let's hit enter. We get 11. Why are we getting 11? Well, if we take a look at this, what Excel is doing is 2 / 2, which gives us 1, and then it's adding the 10. Now, the reason why it's calculating that way is all down to this BODMAS rule, because this is the order that Excel will perform calculations in. So, it will calculate everything that is contained within brackets or parentheses first. It will then do any orders or indices, so things like square roots. Then division, then multiplication, and then finally addition and subtraction. So, because division comes before addition in the BODMAS rule, it's going to do the part of the formula where we have that divide symbol. So, it's going to do 2 / 2, and then it's going to add the 10. So, in this case, it's not the answer I was hoping for. This formula is wrong. So, how could we change this according to BODMAS to make this calculation correct? Well, what we could do is we could add brackets and let Excel know which part of that formula we want it to calculate first. So, I could type it like this instead. We can say equals, let's open a bracket, I want it to do 10 + 2 first of all, we can close the bracket, and then I wanted it to divide by two. So, according to BODMAS, it's going to do what's in brackets first, and then it's going to do the division.

and that then gives us the correct answer. So this is the basic principle that runs through all Excel formulas, and it's really important to get your head around this before you move on to starting to use Excel functions and building out your own formulas.

And another thing to note when you're working with formulas in Excel is that if you want to do an addition, we use a plus; a minus is a DH; a multiplication is the asterisk symbol; and division is a forward slash. So the order of operations is a really important point to get your head around before you move on to more complex calculations.

In this lesson, we're going to take a look at how we can construct a very simple formula in Excel. And as we mentioned in the last lesson, we can find all of the functions that we use in formulas on the Formulas tab. So we're going to use one of the inbuilt functions to simply calculate the revenue and profit in this spreadsheet. So I'm going to start out with the revenue. Let's click down in the total column, cell C26. Now we mentioned in the last lesson that in order to add numbers together, we preferably select the cell reference as opposed to hardcoding the numbers in. And if you have a longer list of numbers like this – and this is a pretty small data set, if I'm honest with you – typing in all these numbers manually would take forever. Even using the cell references would take forever if I wanted to add up all of this revenue. By using the cell reference, I would need to type equals, then select the first one, plus, then select the second one, so on and so forth. Now that is extremely slow. Imagine how slow it would be if you had 20,000 or 30,000 rows of data. Fortunately, there is a much better way to do this. If you want to just add up a single column, we can use the SUM function. Now the SUM function is probably the most commonly used function in Excel; it simply adds up a list of numbers. Now if you're looking for the SUM function, you're probably going to find it underneath your recently used. As I said, we use it so often, it's normally in here; you can see there it is for me. But the SUM function is actually a Math & Trig function, so if we scroll down, we'll find it in this list as well. Now what if you're looking for a function and it's not in your recent and you don't know which group it's going to be in? Well, we can actually search through the function library for what we're looking for. So notice the first button that we have on the Formulas bar is Insert Function. This has a keyboard shortcut of Shift+F3. If we click to open, it's going to produce this little dialogue box where we can type in a brief description of what we want to do, and it's going to present us with a list of formulas that match. So I'm going to type in "sum a range of numbers", click on Go, and you can see it's returned a few different functions here, but the top one is SUM. So once you find the function that you're looking for, if you double-click, it's going to open up the Function Arguments box. So this is great if you're new to working with formulas because it sort of gives you a guide as to what needs to go in where. So with this SUM formula, we need to provide the numbers to add together. So what I would do in here is simply select everything in this column. Now notice what it's put in there: C6 to C25. Now this is what we refer to as a cell range. We're going from one cell to another cell, and those two dots in the middle basically mean to C6 to C25. And that's all we need. We can click on OK, and you can see it's given us the total in cell C26. Now cast your eyes up to the formula bar; check out what we have in there. It says =SUM( then we have a bracket, C6 to C25, close bracket. Now instead of actually opening up the Insert Function dialog box and doing it this way, you could simply type the formula into the cell. And for a lot of people, this is their preferred method; it's definitely my preferred method as well. So let's delete out that total and take a look at typing formulas directly into cells. So if we're going to do this calculation again, we're going to say equals, and we're going to say SUM. Now check out what happens as soon as you start to type in the formula: it pulls up a list underneath – and we call this Intellisense – of all of the formulas that match what you've just typed. And we can use our arrow keys to scroll through them, and as we do, we're getting a little screen tip pop up which gives us a bit of an explanation as to what this function is going to do. So we want to use SUM; it adds all numbers in a range of cells. Now the next thing that we need to put in – and this is usually the case after you enter in a function – is we need to open a bracket. Now you can type the bracket, or alternatively, if we press the Tab key, it's going to put the bracket in for us. Now check out what happens – and you'll see this no matter what formula you're using – underneath you're going to get this little screen tip pop up which kind of gives you a guide as to what needs to come next in the formula. So you can see here it's basically saying number1, number2, and it will carry on number3, number4. We need to enter the numbers that we want to sum. Now where we have number1 and number2, we call these arguments; that's the terminology when you're working with formulas. So our first argument here – this formula requires a number to add. Now it has number1, number2 there because we could go like this: select one number, press comma, and then you see it moves across to number2; we could add another number, press comma, number3, press comma; we could do it that way. But we can also utilize cell ranges. So instead of typing those in individually, I can just select the entire column; it's going to put in C6 to C25. Close the bracket, hit Enter, and we get our total.

Let's do the same for the profit. We can do =SUM, press Tab to put in that bracket, and then we can select the profit range of sales. Now we can also use keyboard shortcuts to make our selection. So instead of dragging your mouse all the way down to select the range, you can click in the first one and press Ctrl+Shift+Down Arrow; that will select everything. Close the bracket, hit Enter, and we have our total. So a couple of points to remember there: if you're brand new to formulas, remember you can go to the Formulas tab, you can use the Insert Function dialogue box if you find that easier, or you can type directly into a cell and you have the formula arguments there to guide you in the right direction. So that's the basics of a simple formula.

In the next lesson, we're going to start to take a look at six of the most popular formulas that you'll use when you're working in worksheets. So now we understand the basic principles behind Excel formulas, it's time to take a look at the six most popular. And in general, these are the six functions that people tend to learn first when they're learning Excel, but they're also some of the most useful. You'll find yourself using these formulas on a daily basis, so it's a good idea to understand exactly what they do right off the bat. And fortunately, these are very simple formulas. So I'm working with the same data set that we were working with in the previous lesson: we just have a list of company names – and these are completely made-up company names – we have their revenue, and then we have a column containing the profit. And what I've got in column F are the six formulas that we're going to be taking a look at.

Now the first one, SUM – we took a brief look at this in the previous lesson, so we should be reasonably familiar with how this one works. SUM just simply adds up a range of numbers. So if we type equals into the cell to let Excel know that we want to type a formula, we can then type in SU, press Tab to select it from the list, and put in that first bracket, and then we can select whatever it is that we want to add up. Now in these examples, we're going to add up the revenue. So I'm going to click in the first cell, Ctrl+Shift+Down Arrow to make my selection, close the bracket, hit Enter, and – oops, what do I have here? Well, if you ever see these hash symbols in a column, it simply means that the column is not wide enough to display all of the numbers. So all we need to do is widen out this column. Now notice if I hover my mouse between columns G and H, I get a little double-headed arrow cursor. So I can either click and manually drag back and forth, or alternatively, if I double-click, it will auto-expand that column to the width of the value that's in the cell. And now we can see the sum.

Now the next most common function is COUNT. So what exactly does COUNT do? Well, COUNT will allow you to count the number of items in a selected cell range. So for example, if I wanted to know how many companies I have in this list, I could use COUNT. But there is a caveat to this: when you use COUNT, it will only count the number of items in a column that contains numeric data. So if I type in =COUNT, again press the Tab key to select it from the list, if I decide that I want to count the number of companies and then I go in and I select this range just here, and close the bracket, and hit Enter, it's going to tell me that there's zero. And that is because the column that I've used contains text as opposed to numbers. Now we can do this; we just simply need to count one of the other columns. So I'm going to select this column instead, close the bracket, hit Enter, and it's telling me that I have effectively 20 items in this list. And 20 items in this case would relate to 20 companies. So just remember: COUNT only counts numeric data. If we did want to perform the same calculation on a text column, that is where we use COUNTA, because COUNTA stands for count all, and it will count everything no matter if there are numbers or text in the cell. So if we use COUNTA for this one, Tab to select, I could then count the number of companies, close the bracket, hit Enter, and of course I get 20. So just remember that distinct difference between these two.

AVERAGE – well, that works pretty much in the same way. So maybe I want to find out what our average profit was across all of these companies. I can type in =AVERAGE, select the profit column, close the bracket, and hit Enter, and I can see that the average profit was 26,386.

Now the next one is MIN, and what MIN will do is it will produce the lowest value in a range of sales. So if I want to find out what the lowest profit is in here, I could use MIN. So we can type in =MIN, press the Tab key, select the profit column – I'm going to use the keyboard shortcuts this time: Ctrl+Shift+Down Arrow – close the bracket, hit Enter, and I can see that 9,535 is the lowest amount of profit. So Cotch Solutions had the least profit.

And if I want to do the opposite of that and find out which company had the most profit, I could use MAX. Again, it's the same deal: Ctrl+Shift+Down Arrow, close the bracket, hit Enter – 44,142 is the highest profit, and that is this one just here: Quantum Wear Technologies.

So these are the six most basic formulas that you can find in Excel. Now the final thing that I want to mention in here is that for these big six functions, we also have access to this information in the status bar. So what do I mean by that? If I select the entire profit column, cast your eyes down to the status bar right at the bottom. Notice what we have in there: we have all of the answers that we have in the spreadsheet. And if you're wondering why the sum value is different in the status bar to what we have in the spreadsheet, it's because for the first one I summed the revenue as opposed to the profit, and we currently have the profit column highlighted. So these are brilliant because it means that I don't actually have to do the calculation in order to see those totals. So you can imagine if I'm sitting at my desk and my manager comes over and says, "What's the total of all of the revenue?" I don't have to sit there messing around with formulas; I can simply go Ctrl+Shift+Down Arrow and I can tell him the total simply by looking down in the status bar. Now if you highlight a range of cells and you can't see any of these, right-click on the status bar and make sure that you have a tick next to Average, Count Numerical, Count, Minimum, Maximum, and Sum. Once these are ticked, you'll be able to see those values in the status bar. So that's a very quick rundown of the six most basic formulas that you'll use in Excel.

Another really important thing to understand when you're working in Excel is the concept of absolute versus relative referencing. So what exactly does that mean? Well, let's start out by talking about relative referencing, and we're going to start there because relative referencing is the default when you're working with Excel formulas. So if we take a look at this data set that we have in the worksheet, you can see that I have some order numbers, some customers, order date, the product that they've ordered, then we have the quantity (so the number of items that they've ordered), and then the price. And we have two columns, columns H and I, at the end here which don't have anything in them; we need to complete those. So the first one that we need to complete is we need to work out or calculate what the total is going to be for each customer. So this is a reasonably straightforward calculation in Excel: we just want to multiply the quantity by the price to get the total. Now there's a couple of ways we can do this. We can type in equals and then we can simply use the cell references; we don't actually have to type in SUM in order to get this to work. And another thing to remember is that you don't necessarily have to use your mouse to click on these cells; we can use the arrow keys on our keyboard. So if I want to select the quantity cell, I can use the left arrow, press it twice to go to cell F5. I then want to multiply it, so we're going to put in an asterisk there by cell G5. So again, if I press the left arrow on my keyboard, I can select cell G5. Now that's all we need to do; hit Enter and we get our answer. Incidentally, if you do use SUM, it will still work. So if we type in =SUM, we can do exactly the same thing: we can select F5, multiply it by G5, close the bracket, and hit Enter, and it's still going to work. So for very basic calculations where you're just multiplying or adding one number to another, you don't necessarily have to have SUM at the start there; you can just use the cell references.

Now one of the cool things about formulas is that once you've typed the formula once into a cell, you don't then have to go to the cell underneath and type the same formula. You can simply copy this formula all the way down the column, and we do that by using the autofill handle. So if you take a look at this cell just here, notice the little green square in the bottom right-hand corner. If we hover our mouse over it, we get that little small black cross – and we actually saw this in a previous lesson. Now what I can do is I can either click and drag the formula down, or alternatively, I can simply double-click, and it's going to copy the formula down. So now you can see all of these calculations are correct. Now the important thing to note here is that this is utilizing relative referencing. So what do we mean by that? Now I've copied this formula down, which means that Excel has had to make an adjustment to the formula each time it moves down a row. For example, if we double-click on this one just here and take a look at the formula, you can see that it's multiplying F12 by G12, and that is absolutely correct; you can see the cells there highlighted in blue and red. So every time we drag this formula down one, Excel modifies the cell reference and moves those down one as well, and that is what we call relative referencing. Now in a lot of situations, relative referencing is going to be what you need. But sometimes we don't want to use relative referencing; we need to use something called absolute referencing, and that is kind of the opposite. When we utilize absolute referencing, it means we're locking the formula to a specific cell, so when we copy down, it doesn't actually move down. So a scenario where we might have absolute referencing would be if we wanted to work out the sales tax for these totals. So let's say that we have our totals here in column H, but we want to work out what the total is going to be when we add on 20% sales tax, and we have the sales tax value in cell I1. So the formula to work this out would be equals – I am going to do a SUM here; let's press the Tab key – and we want to do the total multiplied by the sales tax. Now if I was just to leave it at that and hit Enter, it's going to give me the tax amount. But what I want is basically the total plus the tax. So if we double-click to edit the formula, I need to add on to the end here plus the total again. So we're utilizing brackets based on the BODMAS rule: I wanted to calculate H5 multiplied by I1 first of all, so it's going to work out the tax amount, and then I want to add it to the total. So when I hit Enter, I get the correct result. Now if I was just to drag this formula down in the same way – I'm going to double-click – check out what happens: it all goes a little bit crazy, and we've got lots of value errors in here, and these formulas are just incorrect. And that is because if we choose one of these down here as an example, check out what's happening: it's calculating cell H15, the total, which is correct, but when it comes to the sales tax, it's using I11. And that's because by default we use relative referencing, and when we drag the formula down, it's going to move the cell references down. Now in this instance, we always want this formula to refer to cell I1, and that is what we call absolute referencing. So let's do this again; I'm going to delete out everything. Let's do our formula one more time. I'm going to type in =SUM, we're going to do the total multiplied by the sales tax, but we need to lock this cell in place so it doesn't move when we copy the formula. Now the way that we do that is to put a dollar symbol in front of the row and the column. Now a quick way to add in dollar symbols is to simply press the F4 key on your keyboard; that basically says lock the column, lock the row. So now I can close the bracket, we can do plus the total. I'm going to do Ctrl+Enter to stay in the same cell, and this time when I copy the formula down, the formula is going to be correct. If we double-click to take a look at one of these formulas a bit further down, you can see it's now referring to the correct cells. So H – we haven't locked because we're fine for it to move those cell references down as we drag the formula down; it's only I1 that we need to lock in place. So that is the difference between relative and absolute cell reference referencing. There is also a third option, which is called mixed referencing, and that's where we either lock the row or the column. That's a little bit more advanced, so we'll be taking a look at that a little bit later on. But for now, this is one of the fundamental concepts in Excel that you need to be comfortable with, so it's definitely worth having a practice.

In previous lessons in this section of the course, we've spoken quite a bit about the SUM function in Excel, and there is good reason for that. The SUM function is by far the most common function that you'll most likely use on a daily basis. Now due to this, Microsoft have a little feature that makes it even easier for us to execute the SUM function quickly, and that is called AutoSum. So if you take a look at the spreadsheet just here, you can see that I have four small tables of data, and these simply represent Q1 to Q4 sales for three companies: Gagle, Gazon, and Oracle. Now maybe what I need to do here is I need to add up the totals for both the column and also the row. So we want to see the totals for the company for that particular quarter, but we also want to see the totals for January for each company. So we need to basically do a SUM calculation in these cells just here and also these cells just here. Now what we could do is we could click in the first cell and we could say equals, and then we could do SUM, select this cell range, close the bracket, hit Enter, and then we could copy that down. And then we could do exactly the same thing over here: we could say equals SUM, we could select the numbers that we want, close the bracket, hit Enter, and then we could pull the autofill handle to copy that across. Now we could do that for each of these tables, but that is pretty slow, particularly if we have a lot more tables than we have here. So let's get rid of this and take a look at a much quicker method.

Now if you notice, if we go up to the Formulas bar, we have an AutoSum button just here. And when we click the drop-down, notice that not only can we utilize AutoSum for performing the SUM calculation, we can also use it for Average, Count, Max, and Min. But the difference here is that with SUM, we also have a really useful keyboard shortcut, and you can see that in the screen tip just there: Alt+=. This will automatically add up all of the selected cells. So what we could do here is I could select everything including the blank cells, press Alt+=, and it's going to perform all of those calculations. How cool is that? I can even do it on multiple tables at the same time. I could simply make my selection, hold down the Control key, make my second selection, keep the Control key held down, make my third selection, then press Alt+=, and it's going to perform all of those calculations. How quick was that? This is such a time-saving utility. Now it's not quite as quick if you want to utilize it to do Average, Count, Max, and Min because we don't have that helpful keyboard shortcut. So if I was – let's delete these out – if I wanted to do the average instead, I could select all of the cells, go to AutoSum, select Average, and it's going to perform that calculation. So it's still a lot quicker than typing in the formula; we just don't have that uber-quick keyboard shortcut. Now I'm going to undo that because I actually want the SUM in here instead. So don't forget about that AutoSum button and also the keyboard shortcut.

Now I want to finish off just by showing you a quick instance where AutoSum doesn't quite work as expected. Now AutoSum is built to add up numbers that are either above, below, or to the side of it. So if we delete out all of these totals again, and maybe instead of January, February, March I had in here 2021, 2022, and 2023 – so maybe we have years in there instead. Now Excel doesn't know the difference between a year and a number that we want to add up. So when we select our cell range just here and press Alt+=, it performs the calculation; it doesn't include the years in the calculation, but it's showing this little green triangle in the corner of these cells. So what exactly is that green triangle? Well, when you see a green triangle, it basically means that there's some kind of warning or error on the cell. And you'll always have this little warning triangle next to it. If I click the drop-down, it's telling me "Formula omits adjacent cells". Now it's giving me this little warning because it's recognized that there are numbers above my selection, and those numbers in this case happen to be the dates that I added – the years. So basically, Excel is recognizing that I have numbers next to my selection that I haven't included in the formula. It doesn't realize that these are years and I don't want to include them, so it's giving me this little warning telling me that the formula omits adjacent cells. Now in this case, that doesn't matter; I don't want to include these years in these formulas, so I can simply select the cells which have an error, click the yellow triangle, and choose Ignore Error. So if you see that little green triangle in the corner when you're working with your formulas, just remember that that is always some kind of warning that you should investigate further.

Being able to input data quickly into a spreadsheet is going to be one of the most useful things you can learn when working in Excel. And in Excel, we have a couple of different features that are really going to quicken up this process. So we're going to explore both of those in this lesson, and we're going to start out by talking about AutoFill or Fill Down as it's most commonly known. Now we've already seen in earlier lessons that Excel contains inbuilt custom lists to help you input common data quickly. If we just refresh ourselves on that, you can see here in cell A3 I have the column heading "Months". If I wanted to fill down the months of the year, I can either type in Jan or the longer January, and simply use the little fill handle in the bottom corner – that's this little green square that you can see – drag down, and you can see it's automatically going to fill those months in for me because this is a built-in custom list in Excel. The same applies to days: so I can either type in M or Monday, I'm going to press Ctrl+Enter to stay in the same cell, and then I can use my autofill handle to fill down the days of the week. Now those are the only two inbuilt lists that you have in Excel. If you want to utilize this method for other things, such as dates or maybe sequences of numbers, then you need to get familiar with the Fill Down option.

Now let's add another column of data, and we're going to call this one "Dates". And I'm going to type in let's just go for the 1st of the first 2023, Ctrl+Enter to stay in the same cell. Now if I just want to have a sequential list of dates, then I can simply grab the autofill handle and I can drag it down, and you can see by default it just puts these in sequential order, so we have January the 1st, January the 2nd, January the 3rd, so on and so forth. But we do have some other options. Let's Ctrl+Z and drag down again because notice off to the right we have a little autofill tag. So when we click on this, it's going to show us more autofill options. So I now get a menu where I can choose exactly what I'm interested in filling. So currently I just have sequential dates, but maybe I'm only interested in showing dates that are weekdays. So effectively, I want my list of dates to exclude the weekends. So if I go down to the "Fill Weekday" option, watch the data very closely: did you see that some of those numbers changed? Because we're now excluding weekends. So I know that the 1st of January is actually a Sunday, so then we have Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and then it skips over Saturday and Sunday, and then we start back again on Monday the 9th. Let's Ctrl+Z to undo. Now what if I had a background fill color applied to this cell? So let's just select turquoise accent 4. When I now drag down and click on my autofill options, I can choose if I want to "Fill Formatting Only" or "Fill Without Formatting". So if I choose "Fill Formatting Only", you can see what that does: it carries across the formatting but not the value. If I select this again and choose "Fill Without Formatting", it's going to do the opposite: it's going to fill sequential dates down but it's not going to carry across that formatting. So we have a couple of different options in there; that autofill menu can be really useful.

Now what about if we need to fill down numbers in our spreadsheet? Well, we could go 1, 2, 3, 4, so on and so forth. And if we just have a few numbers to fill out, that might be okay. But what about if I want to fill down numbers for a thousand rows or 10,000 rows? That's going to be really tedious. Now the other way we could do this is we could type in the first two numbers, select both of these, and use the autofill handle to drag down. But if I've got 10,000 rows to fill in, I'm going to be dragging down and down and down for a long time. So let's take a look at a better way of doing this. Ctrl+Z to undo. What we can do instead is we can type in number one; I'm going to press Ctrl+Enter to stay in the same cell. And let's say that I want to fill down a number for every day of the year, so down to 365. What we can do is make sure we have the first cell selected, go to the Home tab, and in the Editing group we have a Fill Down button, and we want to select Series. And this is going to open up the Fill Series dialogue box. So the first thing we need to specify here is if we're filling across the row or down the column. So we're filling down the column. We then get to choose our type. Now if it's just numbers that we're filling down, we just want to make sure we have "Linear" selected in here. We can then determine the step value: so by how many numbers do we want it to go up each time? If we're just doing a sequential list 1, 2, 3, 4, the step value is just one. And then we can add in the stop value. So for me, that's going to be 365, but you could have 10,000, 100,000, 200,000 in here. And then when we click on OK, you can see it automatically inputs all of those numbers so quickly. So we've saved ourselves a lot of hard work. Now it's also worth noting: if we type one in again into this cell, if we wanted to fill these across – so running horizontally – again, if we go to Fill Down and go into Series, this is where we would choose the "Rows" option just here. Again, we're going to do Linear, and I'm just going to do 5, click on OK, and it's going to fill those numbers across. So don't forget about those little Fill Down options that you have in here.

So now that we understand how to use AutoFill, let's move on to probably one of my favorite things in Excel, and that is Flash Fill. Now Flash Fill is often referred to as the superhero utility in Excel because it is so useful and so time-saving in many different situations. And I just have three very small data sets just to demonstrate this to you. Now notice here in the first little table, we have a list of first names and a list of last names. Now maybe my boss has asked me to combine the first name and the last name into one column just to save a bit of space in the spreadsheet. So I basically want a full name column here where we have the full name combined into one column. Now doing this manually – particularly if you have a lot of names to fill in – is going to be time-consuming. So we can use Flash Fill to help us out with this. Now the way Flash Fill works is it recognizes patterns. So we need to provide the first pattern that we're looking for, and that basically means just typing out the first record as we want it to look. So I'm going to type in "Brian Golling", I'm going to press Ctrl+Enter to stay in the same cell, and then there are a few different ways that we can invoke Flash Fill. By far the easiest is simply to use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+E, and check it out: it recognizes the pattern and it applies it to every record in our data set. How quick was that? We can then, if we wanted to, delete our columns B and C, and we have everything combined into column D.

Let's do it again, but in a slightly different way. In this second table here, I have a list of products and if they are "In Stock" or "Out of Stock". And you'll see this quite often: you might be sent a data set where numerous different pieces of information have been combined into one cell. And in an ideal world, we always want to make sure we just have one piece of data in a column. So I want to break this up so that we have the products listed in this column just here and whether they're "In Stock", "Out of Stock", or "Pending" in this column just here. So we effectively need to split this data up. Now again, we can use Flash Fill to do this. So we're going to give it our pattern: the first product here is "Alarm Clock", and is that in stock? Yes, it is; we're going to type in "In Stock". And then we can use Flash Fill. Now I could simply press Ctrl+E on both of these columns, or alternatively, I could go up to the Data tab, and in the Data Tools group here is the Flash Fill button. If I click this, it's going to copy it down. I can click in the next column, click Flash Fill again, and it's going to copy that information down. How simple is that?

Now there is a third way that we can do this. So in the final table at the bottom here, you can see I have some SKUs, and this SKU is made up of a catalog number at the beginning, we then have a country code, and then we have a part number. And I want to separate out the country code and the part number from this SKU. So once again, I could type in the first one – so GBR in this case – and another way of invoking Flash Fill is to simply click in the cell below and just start to type the second one. As soon as we do that, Excel recognizes the pattern, and can you see it ghosted the rest of those down? So if that is correct, I can simply hit Enter, and it's going to Flash Fill down. So simple. And then finally, the part number: we're going to type in 222, Ctrl+Enter to stay in the same cell, and this time I'm just going to use Ctrl+E to copy those down. Now Flash Fill is brilliant; it does have a couple of drawbacks. One of them being that you can't have any blank columns in the middle of your data. So if I show you what I mean here – I'm just going to delete out this information up here and we'll add in a blank column (Ctrl+Shift+Plus to put that in). Now if I have this blank column in here and I try to do a Flash Fill – so let's type in "Alarm Clock", Ctrl+Enter, Ctrl+E – it's not going to work because it needs to have the data right next to it. If I delete out this column and then try and do Ctrl+E, it's back to working. So just to be aware of that; there are some disadvantages when it comes to Flash Fill where you might need to consider other methods, such as Text to Columns or maybe using a formula to split up your data.

It's time now to do Exercise 4. And in this exercise, we're going to practice some of the skills that we've learned in this section of the course. So the first thing I'd like you to do is to open the exercise file "Exercise 4.xlsx". Now this exercise has two parts. And in Part 1, I'd like you to use Excel formulas to answer the questions listed in column I. And in Part 2, I'd like you to calculate the new term fee for each student. So open up the exercise; all of the instructions are in there. If you'd like to see my answer, then please keep watching.

So you can see in Part 1, we're practicing basic formulas. And we have a table below that shows some students and the mark or the score that they achieved in four different tests. And I asked you to answer the questions that we have listed in column I. So the first question here: "What is Prep's total score out of 400?" Because they have a maximum of 100 points available for each test. So this is a very basic SUM calculation. We can type in =SUM, press the Tab key, and then we want to make sure that we select all of Prep's scores. Close the bracket, hit Enter, and you can see he scored 347 out of a possible 400. Well done, Prep. The next question: "What is Adele's total score for test two and test four?" So again, we're going to do a SUM calculation, but our selection needs to be a little bit different because Test 2 and Test 4 are not next to each other. So our first number – let's just find Adele, there she is – we're going to select Test 2, and you could have put a plus symbol in here, or you can simply do a comma and select Test 4. Let's close the bracket, hit Enter, and you can see the answer is 134 points. The next question: "How many students sat a test?" So we simply want to count the number of students in this list. So I'm going to use COUNTA because I want to count the text; remember, when you use COUNT, it's only going to count numeric values. So I'm going to make my selection of all of the students, close the bracket, hit Enter, and we have 14 students in the list. The next question: "What was Cressa's average score?" So for this, we're going to use the AVERAGE function, and all we want to do is find Cressa – there she is, right at the bottom – select all of her scores, close the bracket, and we can see that she's got an average score of 81.25. The next question to answer is: "What was the overall minimum score for test three?" So for this, we want to use the MIN function, and we're just going to select all of the scores in test three, close the bracket, hit Enter, and 45 was the minimum score for this test. And then finally: "What was Olivia's maximum score?" So for this one, we're going to use MAX. Let's find Olivia – there she is – and we're going to select all of her scores, close the bracket, hit Enter; her maximum score across all of the tests was 77. So that part of the exercise got you to have a good practice of some of those basic formulas.

Now Part 2 of this exercise is where we practice absolute referencing. And again, we have a list of student names, we have the amount they pay for their term at University, and over in cell G24 we have a fee increase next year of 5.2%. So I asked you to calculate what next year's term fee is going to be with this increase. So for this, we need to do a SUM calculation, and we're going to do the term fee multiplied by the fee increase (the percentage). Now because we want to drag this formula down, we need to lock this cell in place because we don't want it to move; remember, that's the difference between absolute and relative referencing. So I'm going to press F4 to lock those cells in place, close the bracket, and then I'm going to add on top of this the term fee. Let's hit Enter, widen out that column, and then we can double-click to copy down. And now we have the new term fee for each of those students. So that is it; that is what was required for Exercise 4. I hope you got on okay with that, and I will see you in the next section.

In this section of the course, we're going to start to take a look at named ranges, because again, these are something that you'll come across frequently when you're working in Excel. So what exactly is a named range? Well, if I'm honest, it's pretty much what it says on the tin: it's a name that we give to a range of cells. So as we've already established, when we click in a cell, that cell effectively has a cell reference, I6. And we can also select ranges of cells. So I can click my mouse and drag; this is effectively a range H5 to H13. And if I was to go to my table of data and select everything in the revenue column, again this is a range of cells, but this time the range is C5 to C24. Now instead of referring to these cells by their cell references, we could give them a user-friendly name instead. So instead of this range being effectively called C5 to C24, I could simply name this range "Revenue". Similarly, I could name this range of cells here "Profit" instead of D5 to D24. And that is effectively what a named range is. So what is the advantage of using named ranges? Well, we're going to get into that in more detail in the third lesson of this section when we take a look at formulas and named ranges. But in general, they make your spreadsheets a lot easier for not only yourself but other people to interpret and understand.

Now in the next lesson, I'm going to show you all of the different methods you can use to create named ranges, because there are quite a few of them. But once you do create a named range, you can access that named range in a couple of different ways. You can access it by typing the name into the cell, or alternatively, we can access them via the Name Box. If you recall in an earlier lesson, next to the formula bar, just to the left here, we have a little Name Box. If we click the drop-down, this is going to show you any named ranges that you have set up in your workbook, and you can see that I have one in here called "Blank_cells". Now if I click on this, it's going to show you the range of cells that that refers to, and you can see it is just a bunch of blank cells K5 to K10. So you can also use named ranges to effectively navigate around your workbook because it will jump you directly to wherever that cell range is. Now let's say I added some numbers into this "Blank_cells" cell range; so I'm just going to add numbers 1 to 7. So now that this cell range is populated, I could use the named range in a calculation. So if I wanted to do a SUM, I could say =SUM, and then I could just start to type the named range; you can see there it is in the list, "Blank_cells". I can press the Tab key to select it, close the bracket, and it's effectively going to add up all of those numbers. Now I'm not going to linger too long on this because we are going to do a lot more on formulas and named ranges a bit later on, but that's the general concept. So in the next lesson, I'm going

To show you the different methods you have to create named ranges. In the previous lesson, we started discussing named ranges, and I briefly showed you what a named range is. So now it's time to create some named ranges in our worksheet, and then in the next lesson, I'm going to show you how to use them in formulas.

So, we're working with our profits for Q1 table over here, and you can see that this table is made up of three columns. We have company, revenue, and profit. Now, maybe I want to name this range of cells "Company," this range of cells "Revenue," and this range of sales "Profit." So, let's take a look at the different methods.

Now, probably the simplest method is to simply use the name box. What I could do here is select this range of cells, go up to the name box, and click in it, and then just type what I want to call this range of sales. So, I'm going to call this "Company." Now, it's worth noting that when you are naming ranges, you can't have any spaces in the name. So, if I wanted to call this "This Company Name," I would either need to separate the two words with an underscore or I would need to make them all one word like that. Now, I'm not going to have "Company Name," I'm just going to have "Company." But we must also remember to hit Enter to get that name to set. And then when we click the drop-down, we can see that there is the named range.

If I'm clicked elsewhere on the worksheet and I quickly want to jump back to this range of sales, I can click the drop-down and select "Company," and it's going to move me to that area. So, named ranges are really good for navigation as well. So that's the first method to create a named range. We can simply use the name box.

Now, the next way that we can do this is we can select the range that we want to name, go up to the Formulas tab, and notice we have a "Defined Names" group in the middle. So, what I can do here is click on "Define Name." And if you cast your eyes down to the bottom where it says "Refers to," it's picked up the cell range that I've selected. So now, all I need to do is give this a name. But again, it's picked up that I have the word "Revenue" above, and I might want to use that. So, in this case, that is true. If it wasn't, I could simply overtype with a new name. Let's click on OK and check the name box to make sure it's there, which it is.

Now, in both of those examples, I've just selected the actual data. I haven't selected the header when I've been naming my ranges. Now, the third method includes the header. So, we need to select the header and all of the data. We can go up to the Formulas tab and we can choose "Create from Selection." Because what this will do is it will recognize that we have a header, and it's going to say, "Do you want us to create the name for this range based on the information in the top row?" So, if I want to name this range "Profit," and I have "Profit" in the top row, I can simply click on OK, and it's going to create that named range called "Profit."

Now, there is another way that we can do this, and this time we're going to select the entire data set just here, and we're going to go to the "Name Manager" button. Now, the Name Manager serves as a few different purposes. We can come in here to take a look at all of the named ranges we've set up, or we can create a new range from here by clicking the "New" button. So, I'm going to call this "All_Data" and click on OK.

Now, whilst we're in here, it's worth noting that this is where we come if we want to make any changes to our named ranges. So, if I want to change the cell range that these refer to, I can click on the named range, click the "Edit" button, and then I could change the cell range that this is pointing to. I can also delete named ranges from here as well. So, if I don't need them anymore, I have a "Delete" button.

So now I have four new named ranges in this drop-down list. And as I mentioned, we can use them for quick and easy navigation. But the best way to use these is when you're working with formulas, and that's exactly what we're going to do in the next lesson.

In the previous lesson, I showed you some different methods for creating named ranges in your worksheets, and in this lesson, I'm going to show you how simple it is to use them in formulas. Now, we can see the named ranges that we've created by clicking the drop-down arrow in the name box, and you can see we have "All_Data," "Company," "Profit," and "Revenue." "Blank Sales" is one that we created in a previous lesson that isn't really relevant for this particular lesson, so we're just going to focus on these four.

Now, once you've created your named ranges, you can use those as opposed to cell references when you're putting together a formula. For example, if I wanted to sum the "Revenue" column just here, instead of typing in equals SUM and selecting this range of cells, I could simply use the name. Now, there's a couple of different ways that you can do this. If you know the name of the range, you can simply start to type it. So, I've typed in "Rev," and you can see underneath it's recognized the named range "Revenue." I can simply press the Tab key to select it, and you'll see that it will highlight the corresponding range in the table of data. I can then simply close my bracket, hit Enter, and it's going to perform that calculation.

Similarly, if I wanted to count the number of items in the "Profit" column, remember with COUNT, we can only count numerical values. I could type in equals COUNT. Now, I could start to type in "Profit," there is the name range. But what about if I can't remember what the name of the range is? Well, another method that we can use is to simply press F3. What that will do is bring up the full list of named ranges in your workbook. So, you can then take a look through these and select the one that you want. So, for me, that's going to be "Profit." Close the bracket, hit Enter, and I now get my count.

Let's do one more. Let's type in COUNTA. This time, I am going to count the companies. So, I can use "Company," press the Tab key, close the bracket, hit Enter. So, hopefully, you get the idea as to how these work.

Now, if we just look back at these formulas that we've created here, another advantage of using named ranges is that they're a lot easier for people to understand. If I was to send this spreadsheet to my colleague down the corridor, and it just had some and then some cell references, it's not immediately obvious what those cell references refer to. They'll have to look in the worksheet and marry up the cell references with what they're seeing. Whereas if we just have SUM Revenue, it's fairly obvious that we're summing the revenue column. So, it really does add to the readability of your worksheets.

And of course, we can use more than one named range in a formula. So, let's say I wanted to add up the "Revenue" and the "Profit" columns. I could type in equals SUM, and I could say "Revenue," let's select it, comma, and then I could choose "Profit." Close the bracket. And remember, if we want to check if this number is correct, we can simply select both of these columns and glance down in that status bar at the sum total.

So, named ranges are super useful, not only when it comes to navigating around your worksheets but also for putting together readable formulas. It's time now to do exercise five, where we're going to practice some of the skills that we've learned in this section of the course. So, the first thing I'd like you to do is to open the exercise file, exercise_05.xlsx. I'd like you to create named ranges for each of the columns in the table, and I'd like you to name the ranges according to the column headers. I'd then like you to use those named ranges in formulas to answer the questions in column I. See how you get on with that. If you'd like to see my answer, then please keep watching.

So, the first thing I asked you to do here was to create named ranges for all of the columns in this table. Now, there are numerous different methods that you could have used, but I'm going to do it the quickest way, which is to select all of the columns like this, jump up to Formulas, and choose "Create from Selection." So, I'm going to say use the top row as the name for the named ranges and click on OK. Now, I'm just going to check to make sure those have worked by clicking the drop-down in the name box, and you can see we have "Amount," "Customer," "Date," "Description," and "Invoice Number."

So, now I can use these named ranges in these calculations in column J. So, the first thing we need to do here is we need to calculate the total invoice amount. So, we basically want to sum the "Amount" column. So, we're going to type in equals SUM, open the bracket, but this time we're going to use the named range. So, if I start to type in the named range, which is called "Amount," there it is. I can select it, close the bracket, hit Enter, and we get our total. And I'm just very quickly going to apply some dollar formatting so that it's the same format as the table.

So, next, we need to find out the total number of invoices. So, for this, I'm going to use COUNTA, and we could use any column just here. So, I'm just going to pick a column. Let's pick the "Description" column. Now, I'm going to use the named range again, but this time I'm going to press the F3 key on my keyboard, and I'm going to select it from here. So, let's choose "Description." Let's close the bracket, hit Enter, and we have 22 invoices in the list. And that's how we solved this exercise. I'll see you in the next section.

In this section of the course, we're going to take a look at how we can format our worksheets and make them more readable. And we're going to start out in this lesson by taking a look at something really important, and that is number formatting. And we've briefly touched on this in previous lessons, but now it's time to really do a deep dive so you can understand how some of the most important number formats work.

Now, the first thing you need to remember about number formats is that they are simply a mask. Number formats don't change the underlying number; they just apply formatting on top of the cell. For example, if I click in any cell that contains a number, so I'm going to go for B6, if you take a look in the formula bar up here, you can see that it says 2,000. It's reflecting exactly what's in the cell that I'm clicked in. And you'll see in a moment when we apply formats to these numbers, even if the number looks different in a cell, maybe it has a currency symbol in front of it, when we click on the cell and take a look in the formula bar, the number is always going to be 2,000, no matter what formatting we've applied over the top. So, the number underneath will always stay the same.

Now, why do we apply number formats? Well, a lot of the time when you type a number into a cell, we want it to look a little bit different. If we're dealing with currency, maybe we want to have the currency symbol in front of it, or maybe we want to apply date formats or time formats, or maybe we want to make numbers look like a percentage. We can do all of this using number formatting.

Now, you'll find your number formatting options on the Home ribbon in the Number group just here. And notice we have a big old drop-down with quite a few different formats in here. We can also click "More Number Formats" at the bottom, which will open up the "Format Cells" dialogue box. And this dialogue box, we're going to use this throughout the entire balance of this section. And on the Number tab, this is where we have more details about each of these different number formats.

So, let's go through and start applying some of these, because there are a few little things that you need to know when you're working with your number formatting. So, if we take a look in column B, you can see that we just have a list of plain numbers. Now, if I just want my numbers to look like this in the cells, that's absolutely fine. I can leave them. Notice that currently I have the "General" number format applied. Now, "General" is something that gets applied to most cells when you first type something into them. It doesn't have any specific format. Pretty much what you type, that's what you're going to see in the cell. But notice underneath, we have a specific format for numbers. So, if we click on this, notice what it does. We now have two decimal places and a dot in the middle.

Now, if that's what you want this number to look like, then you can leave it as it is. But we could also do some modifications to the way that this looks. For example, if I don't like the number of decimal places, I can go up to the Number group and notice I have two little arrows here to increase the decimal or decrease the decimal. So, if I decrease, I can take that down to one, or I can take it away entirely. Or I can click the other one and increase the decimal places. So, this is really entirely up to you. Also, notice that if I want something completely different, I have a "Comma Style" separator. So, if I click this, it's going to put a comma between the one and the zeros. And again, I could take those decimal places down if I wanted my numbers to look like that. So, you have a few different options in there when it just comes to formatting plain numbers. I generally like to have mine with a comma separator.

Let's move on to the next column, where maybe we want to format these as currencies. So, once again, I'm going to select everything. Let's do Ctrl+Shift+Down Arrow this time, and I'm going to click on the little diagonal arrow to jump me into the "Format Cells" dialogue box, and I'm going to choose "Currency" from here. Now, it's worth noting that you don't have to come into this "Format Cells" dialogue box. If you take a look at the Number group again above, notice I have a little currency symbol just here. So, I could simply click this to apply whatever my default currency is. But I like to come into here because I get a few additional options that I can adjust.

So, the first thing to do here is really to select the currency symbol that you want to use. Now, the default for me is the dollar symbol, but if you click the drop-down, you have all of the different currencies in here, and we can choose how many decimal places we want. Notice just above, we have a little preview. If I were to take these down, it's going to show me in the preview what that's going to look like. So, I'm actually going to have two decimal places this time, and I can also choose how I want to format negative numbers in this list. So, if I had some minus figures in here, I could choose if I want to format those in red, or if I want to have them in brackets, or maybe even red in brackets. Now, in this list, I don't have any, so we're just going to stick with our two decimal places. Click on OK, and that's what it looks like.

Now, "Accounting" format. This is an interesting one. Let's Ctrl+Shift+Down Arrow again. We're going to open up "Format Cells," and if you want a quick way to get into that "Format Cells" dialogue box, you can press Ctrl+1 on your keyboard. Now, "Accounting" format is pretty similar to "Currency" format. We come in here when we want to apply a currency symbol to the front of our number, and we can also adjust the number of decimal places. But the big difference here between "Accounting" format and "Currency" format is that "Accounting" format will line up in the column the decimal place. So, if I click on OK, you'll see that it does look slightly different from "Currency" format. If I widen out these columns to make it more obvious, "Currency" format has the currency symbol pushed right up against the number, whereas "Accounting" format has the currency symbol flush with the left-hand margin. And what you'll find is that no matter what number you type into here, whatever the length of the number is, it's always going to line up the decimal place.

Now, the idea behind "Accounting" format is that it's really been built for accountants who maybe have to read down long lists of numbers. The decimal place being in the same place makes the number easier to read and also easier to perform calculations. So, that's the difference between "Accounting" format and "Currency" format.

The next one that we have is "Date." So, let's Ctrl+Shift+Down Arrow. Now, if we were to click the drop-down here, notice that we have options of "Short Date" or "Long Date." So, I currently have "Short Date" applied. If I was to apply "Long Date" and just widen out that column, you can see that that's what I'm going to get. If we go into "Format Cells" and go into "Date," you can see we have many more different formats we can choose from in here. So, if I want it to display the year first, then the month, then the day, I can click on OK, and it's going to apply that format. So, lots of different date formats for you to choose from.

The same thing goes with "Time." Ctrl+Shift+Down Arrow again. If we click the drop-down, we have "Time" in here, or alternatively, Ctrl+1 to see more options. Let's go into "Time." We can choose the time format that we want. So, maybe you want to have these on a 12-hour clock but want to specify if it's AM or PM, you can select this one just here, click on OK, and it's going to put in that AM and PM text.

Now, when it comes to percentages, this is where it's a little bit different. I've got some just regular numbers that I've typed into the cells, and maybe I just want to convert these into percentages. So, you might think that you can just make your selection, Ctrl+Shift+Down Arrow, go up to the Number group, and notice we have a percentage icon just here. Now, if I click on this, check out what happens. This isn't really what I wanted it to look like. So, let's Ctrl+Z to undo. Why isn't it just giving me 5%, 10%, 15%? Why is it putting in all of these extra zeros? Well, it's because percentages work a little bit different in Excel. If you want to simply apply percentage style to a list of numbers and have them look correct, your numbers need to be written out slightly differently. So, instead of five, we would need to have 0.5 in the cell. You can see as soon as I do that and click on the percentage symbol, I then get 50%.

Now, that can be a little bit of a pain if you have a long list of numbers already written out like this. Do you need to go back in and convert them, essentially divide them by 100? And the answer is, yes, you kind of do. So, how can we get around this? What if we have numbers like this in our spreadsheet and we just want to apply percentage style and have these look correct? Well, there is a little trick using Paste Special. Now, we haven't got to the section on cutting, copying, and pasting in this course yet, so we're going to revisit this once we've learned a little bit more about those features, and I'm going to show you how you can quickly convert all of these to percentages.

Another note about this is if you have percentage formatting applied to the column before you put the numbers in, then it works fine. So, if I was to select column I and choose the percentage style, if I was to then go in and type in 50%, that's going to work no problem. So, if you don't have any numbers in the column, you can apply percentage style first, and you can just type your numbers in. If you already have numbers in here and you're just trying to convert them to percentage, you're going to get these weird numbers. So, just be aware of that. We will revisit this a bit later on.

Now, the final column that I have in this table is just a mixture of positive and negative numbers. If we Ctrl+Shift+Down Arrow and press Ctrl+1 to open up "Format Cells," we can go to "Number" formatting, and as I said, we can choose if we want to apply negative number formatting as well. So, I'm going to say that I want zero decimal places, I want to use a thousand separator, and I want any negative numbers to show in red and in brackets. Let's click on OK, and you can see how that applies formatting to those numbers.

And as I mentioned, with any of these number formats that we've applied, if I click on any cells, so let's go for H6, notice in the formula bar, it doesn't have the formatting up there. It just has the actual number that's underneath in the cell. The same with cell C6, you can see it just has the plain number; it doesn't show the formatting because the formatting is just a mask that sits on top. And the formatting is applied to the cell. So, if I was to delete out all of these numbers and start typing other things, the formatting is still going to be there. So, whatever I type into these formatted cells is going to take on that number formatting.

Now, the final thing to note here is notice that I have a little phone number over in cell K4. Now, there is a format specifically for things like phone numbers, zip codes, and Social Security numbers. Now, this very much applies to the US only. If we press Ctrl+1 to open up "Format Cells" and go to "Special," down here, notice we have these four in here. So, other countries don't necessarily have zip codes. For example, in the UK, we have postcodes that take on an entirely different format to the US. Also, our phone numbers in the UK are a completely different format. So, if you're in any other country other than the US, then this section is pretty useless. But just for all of the US viewers, if you do have a list of phone numbers, you can simply select the phone number formatting in here, click on OK, and it will apply that formatting. Now, you can see it hasn't changed a great deal, but if I maybe had numbers which didn't have the dashes in there, you can see now it updates.

Now, there are other formats in this list which we haven't taken a look at as yet. For example, "Custom" formatting is where you can basically build your own formatting, and this can be really useful. Now, it's outside the scope of this course because this tends to fall under more advanced topics, but just be aware of all of the different number formats that you have in here and have a little play around with them. But those are the basics of number formatting in Excel.

In this lesson, we're going to take a look at how we can make our worksheets look a little bit more interesting and engaging by applying formatting to cells, columns, and rows. Because we have so many options when it comes to formatting, I'm going to start by taking a look at how we can manually format our worksheets in this lesson.

So, if you take a look at the worksheet on the screen, you can see that I have a little table of data, but it looks a little bit strange at the moment. Notice that all of the columns are kind of collapsed on top of each other, and you can see that for some of these columns, we have these hash symbols, which means there isn't enough space in the column to accommodate whatever's in the cell. Now, quite often, you'll see worksheets that look like this where you need to widen out all of the columns. And a common mistake is that people try to do this manually. So, what they'll do is they will, let's take the first column for example, they'll move their mouse until they're between columns B and C, notice the little black double-headed arrow, and they'll click and they'll drag the column out to widen it.

Now, there isn't anything particularly wrong with that. You could go through and do all of your columns in the same way. It's just very tedious and slow. My data set here is pretty small, but imagine if you had a lot more columns than this, going through and manually changing this is going to take up time. Fortunately, there is a much quicker way of doing this. What we can do is select all of the columns, and we do that by hovering our mouse over the first column until we see that little black downward-facing arrow, click, and select all of the columns. And then we simply can hover our mouse over any of the column boundaries. I'm going to hover mine between E and F and double-click. And that is a quick way of autofitting all of the columns.

It's worth noting that that little double-click trick is also available on the Home ribbon. If you go to Home, go to Format, notice you have "Autofit Column Width" just here. So, if I was to undo, let's Ctrl+Z to put everything back, I could go up to Format and choose "Autofit Column Width," and it's going to do the same thing. So, either of those two methods are brilliant for quickly autofitting all of your cells.

Now, looking at this data set, what else might I want to do to it to make it more readable? Well, I can see that the column headings just here, they don't really stand out from the rest of the data. So, what could I do here? I could apply some bold formatting. Maybe I want to apply a background fill. Now, if I want to apply bold, again, on the Home ribbon, we have all of our font formatting options. I have the Bold option just here, but as we know, there is a keyboard shortcut of Ctrl+B. That's quickly going to apply bold.

Now, notice as soon as I apply bold formatting, column F, "Price Per Unit," is now cut off because when you apply bold, it effectively makes the font a little bit bigger. So, you might have to go in and just double-click again to adjust that column width. What else could I do? Well, let's select the heading row again. This time, I'm going to use keyboard shortcuts. Ctrl+Shift+Right Arrow. Maybe I want to apply a background fill. So, I can click the little paint bucket icon, and notice that I get a palette of theme colors and standard colors. Now, I'm not going to go too much into what the difference is between these two at the moment, but just be aware that when you're working in Excel, you have a default theme which controls the fonts that you use in your worksheets and also the colors. So, I'm using just the default standard theme for Excel, and these are the standard colors. So, I can go in and I can choose anything from the palette just here. We have what we call standard colors, or if I want to be very specific about the color that I'm using, I could go to "More Colors." I can choose a color from this little color palette just here, or alternatively, if we click across to the custom tab, we could click around in this to find the color that we want, or alternatively, if we know what the hex code is, we can type it into here. A lot of the time, if you're working at a company, they'll have very specific branded colors. It might be the colors of the company logo, and your organization might like you to use those very specific colors in your spreadsheets, and a lot of the time your marketing department will have a list of all of the hex values for those colors, so you would simply just copy and paste it in if you needed to be very specific.

Now, I'm not going to use any of these colors. I'm just going to choose one from the standard palette. So, let's go for this dark purple. So, now that I've done that and applied that dark purple fill, it's a little bit harder to see those column headings. So, I'm going to select them again. Ctrl+Shift+Right Arrow, and this time I'm going to change the font color. So, we can click the little font drop-down, and I can choose the color from the palette. I'm going to go for white to make those stand out. So, just with a few clicks, we've very quickly been able to make this look a little bit more readable.

What else might we want to do here? Well, maybe we want to apply some borders to our data. What else might we want to do here? Well, notice at the top here, I have "2023 Order Summary." So, this is kind of a title, and I really want this to be running across the top of my data, but I want it to be in the middle. Now, notice on the Home ribbon, you do have an Alignment group just here, and this will allow you to align text within a cell either vertically or horizontally. If I give you an example, I'm just going to make this row a little bit taller, notice I'm just dragging it down. You can see "Order Summary" aligns to the bottom of this cell, but if I was to use my alignment tools, notice here, currently I have "Bottom Align" selected, but I could do "Middle Align," that's going to move it up, or I can align it to the top. Similarly, if this column was a little bit wider, I could align it to the left, as it currently is, I can align it to the middle, or I can align it to the right. So, if I wanted this dead in the center, I would align it to the center horizontally and also vertically. So, don't forget about your alignment tools. I just want it aligned to the left and to the bottom. Let's double-click to put that back how it was, because what I actually want is to align this across all of my data.

So, you might think that what you can do here is select all of these cells and then just click the center alignment, but that's not going to work. It's only going to align that text in the cell that it's in. Now, what we can do is we can effectively merge all of these cells together to make them one cell and then align the text to the center. Now, notice that in the Alignment group, we have a "Merge & Center" button, and I will say that this is a little bit controversial because it can throw up some problems, but let me just show you what it does. If I click "Merge & Center," you can see it makes all of those cells, it merges them together to make one cell, and it moves the text to the middle, which is pretty much what I want.

Now, the reason why people don't like this so much is that if you have merged cells in your spreadsheet, it makes it a lot more difficult to make selections, and it can sometimes throw your formulas off. If I now want to select column D, and I click and start to drag down, you can see that when it gets to that merged cell, it expands out. So, when I carry on dragging down, I'm not just highlighting column D, I'm highlighting everything. So, it makes selections a little bit more difficult. So, let me show you an alternative method where you don't have those problems. I'm going to Ctrl+Z to put everything back to how it was, because instead of doing it that way using "Merge & Center," if we click on the little diagonal arrow in the corner, it's going to open up that "Format Cells" dialogue box, but it's going to take us to the Alignment tab. What we could do instead is where we have "Text alignment horizontal," we could choose "Center Across Selection." Click on OK, it's going to give the same effect, but it means that if I just want to select column D, I can click and drag down, and we don't get the same issue that we get with "Merge & Center." So, in general, I always advise people to "Center Across Selection" instead.

So, now that we have that, I can select all of this. Maybe I want to make this bold, and I'm going to change the background color to, let's make that a blue color, and change the font to white. We can also do things like increase the font size. So, again, in the Font group, if we click the drop-down just here, we can make the font a lot bigger, or we can make it smaller. And if you want to just increase in increments, we have an "Increase Font Size" and a "Decrease Font Size" just here. So, if I click this a couple of times, it's going to make that heading a bit bigger.

Now, I can see here that during all of that formatting process, column B is now very wide. So, I'm going to double-click on the column boundary just to resize that. Now, what else can we do here? Well, maybe I want to put borders around my table. So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to select all of my data, and we're going to use a keyboard shortcut. We're going to press Ctrl+A, which means "Select All." So, when we're clicked within a table of data, when we press Ctrl+A, it will select everything. If I was clicked in a random cell over here and I press Ctrl+A, it's going to select the entire worksheet. So, just be aware of that difference.

Now, when it comes to borders, you'll find your border options again in the Font group. It's this little drop-down just here, and you can see that we have lots of different borders that we can apply. So, maybe I just want to apply borders to the bottom of the cell, the top, the left, the right, I could apply "All Borders," so on and so forth. Now, in general, when I'm applying borders, I like to go into "More Borders" at the bottom to pull up the "Format Cells" dialogue box, and I like to set my options from here. So, maybe I want a thin dark purple border around all of my cells. What I could do here is I could select my line styles, I'm going to go for this one, I can select the color of the lines, I'm going to go for this purple color, and then I can choose very specifically where I want those borders to appear in the cell.

Now, notice we have some presets just above to make this a bit quicker. So, I basically want to border around everything, so I want an "Outline" and I also want an "Inside" line as well. Now, notice with these, you can click on them to remove them, and you can click to put them back again. So, if I wanted borders just running down the columns and not across the rows, I could remove this middle one and just have it like that. So, you can really get very granular about how your borders look in this borders area. Let's click on OK, and you can see what that does.

And in general, people tend to use borders if they have their grid lines turned off. If we go up to the View tab, notice here in the Show group, we have "Gridlines" selected. So, that means we can see all of these cells in the background. Now, a lot of people, once they've finished their spreadsheet, will deselect grid lines to give it a cleaner look. But if we have borders applied, it still allows that data to kind of stand out and not just blend into the background. So, I'll leave that up to you to decide if you want to do that.

So, pretty much all of the options that you have when it comes to formatting cells, rows, and columns, you're going to find in the Font group and in the Alignment group. Remember, when you press Ctrl+1, it pulls up that "Format Cells" dialogue box. Remember, this is where we were when we were applying number formatting, but we also have an Alignment tab, a Font tab, a Border tab, and a Fill tab in here. So, pretty much a lot of the things that you can do working with these icons in the Font group, you can do in the "Format Cells" dialogue box as well, but you do have more advanced options in here. Also, for example, with this Fill section, we could choose to fill the background with some fill effects. This is where we could fill the background of the cell with a gradient. We could choose what colors we want to use, so on and so forth. If we want it vertical, diagonal up, horizontal, we can click on OK and OK again, and you can see that it's just applied that to the one cell because that's all I had selected. Ctrl+Z to undo.

And the final option to point out here is the "Wrap Text" option. What this will do is it will wrap extra long pieces of text around in the cell. So, maybe I have over here, let's just widen this out a little bit, I'm going to type in a reasonably long sentence: "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." Now, this sentence, even though it's running across the columns, it is just contained in cell J5. But because it's longer than the column width, it's running over into other columns. Now, what I could do here is double-click to make that column as wide as what I have in it. But sometimes you might want to have the column width set to this, and you just want the text to wrap around. So, that is where we can use the "Wrap Text" option in the Alignment group. If I click on "Wrap Text," it's going to do exactly that. It's going to wrap the text around to fit the width of the cell. So, just be that in mind as well. I'm going to Ctrl+Z just to undo all of that.

So, those are some of the options you have when it comes to formatting cells, rows, and columns.

In the previous lesson, I showed you some tips and tricks for applying manual formatting to your spreadsheets to make them more readable and engaging. And in this lesson, I just want to show you a quick trick for applying AutoFormat. And what AutoFormat is, is basically automatic formats. So, it takes all of the heavy lifting out of applying formatting manually. We can select a little template from the available gallery, and it will apply all of the formatting in one go. And this is a little option that used to be really popular quite a few years ago in Excel, and then it kind of disappeared from the ribbon. The good news is it is still there, but we need to add it to the Quick Access Toolbar because we can't find it on any of these ribbons.

So, let's start out by doing that. Now, remember with this Quick Access Toolbar, if we click the little drop-down just here, we can go to "More Commands," and that's going to jump us across to our Excel Options and straight to the Quick Access Toolbar section. Now, I'm going to select "All Commands" from the drop-down, and let's scroll through and find "AutoFormat." As I said, these are in order, so it does make it a little bit easier to find. But then there is the button that we're looking for. So, I'm going to select it and I'm going to add it to my Quick Access Toolbar. You can see there it is at the bottom. Let's click on OK.

So, now when I'm clicked in my data set, if I click this "AutoFormat" button, it's going to pull up a gallery of different formats that we can apply to our data set. And if we scroll through, you can see that we have quite a few different ones in here. So, it really depends how you want your formatting to look. Now, if we scroll up to the top, I think I'm going to go for, let's go for this one just here, "Classic 3." Once you've selected a template to apply, we have an "Options" button in the bottom left-hand corner. So, if we click this, we can effectively choose which formats we want to apply to our data set. We don't necessarily have to apply everything. Now, by default, everything is selected, so it's going to apply the number formatting, the borders, the font, the patterns, the alignment, the width, so on and so forth.

Now, I don't want this formatting to change the width of my columns, so I'm going to deselect "Width and Height." And it might be that I don't necessarily want to apply the number formatting contained within the template either. So, go through and specify what you want to apply, deselect what you don't want to apply, click on OK, and check out what we have. It applies that formatting, and you can see here it's applied formatting to the header row, we have a background fill on all of the cells, it's changed the font color, we have an outside border. So, that is a lot quicker than going in and doing all of that hard work manually.

And if you decide that you don't like this, you can click on the "AutoFormat" button again and maybe choose something else. So, I'm going to go for "Classic 2." Let's select "Options" again. I don't want it to apply width and height or number. Let's click on OK, and I get some different formatting, and I think that looks really nice. And of course, you could use this as a base, and you can go in, you can apply manual formatting as well. So, maybe I want to make these headers a bit bigger, I want to make them bold, maybe I want to align them to the left, or even to the center, so on and so forth. So, you can tweak these AutoFormat templates once you've applied them. But I think you'll agree, AutoFormat is a really handy little button to have on your toolbar so you can just quickly format your data sets.

In this lesson, we're going to take a look at how we can use the Find and Replace utility in Excel to find cells that have specific formatting applied and replace it with other formatting. And again, this is a really useful time-saving hack if you've got a lot of data and you just want to replace the formatting on the worksheet or even in the entire workbook.

Now, the Find and Replace utility can be used for many things, not just replacing formatting. We can also replace values and text and many other things. But in this context, we're going to take a look at it specifically for replacing formatting.

Now, you're going to find the Find and Replace utility on the Home ribbon in the Editing group. Notice we have a "Find & Select" option, and when we click here, we get a drop-down where we can find "Find & Replace." Now, personally, this is one of those utilities that I prefer to use the keyboard shortcut to access. I just find it a lot quicker. So, if you want to quickly jump into Find, you can press Ctrl+F. That's going to bring up Find and Replace, but notice that this has two tabs: Find and then Replace. So, if you want to go directly to the Replace tab, what you can do is press the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+H. Basically, brings up the same dialogue box, but you get taken to the tab that you need.

Now, when you first open up Replace, it's going to look like this. Now, this is fine if you just wanted to replace some text. So, maybe I wanted to replace the word "Shipped" with "Sent." I could do that from here. I could say "Replace All," and you can see what that's done in the data set. Wherever it finds the word "Shipped," it's now replaced it with "Sent." That is a very basic text-based replace. But what if we want to replace the formatting? So, maybe where we have "Pending" highlighted in gray, maybe I want that to be a completely different color. Well, this is where we need to open up the options.

Now, when we open up "Options," we get exactly that, more options that we can set as our criteria. Now

The first thing I'm going to do here is I'm just going to remove the text from "Find what" and "Replace with" because we don't want to find that criteria again. This time, we want to find the formatting. So, notice next to "Find what," all the way over on the right-hand side, we have a "Format" button just here. And if we click the drop-down, we can choose "Format" or choose "Format from cell." So, if you have a cell in the spreadsheet that contains exactly then you could use this second option.

So, let's go for "Choose format from cell." Notice that that box disappears and our cursor changes to a little eyedropper. Now, I'm looking for everything that has a gray background. So, I'm going to select any of these cells. So, let's go for this one just here. Notice that the preview updates with what we're looking for.

And then we can choose what we want to replace it with. So, if I click the "Format" drop-down again, this time I'm going to go into "Format." So, this is going to open up another dialogue box and it's going to jump me to the "Fill" tab. So, maybe instead of having a gray background fill, I want a light green background fill. I could even add in more options. So, if I go to "Font," maybe I want it to be in light green but also have bold font. Let's see what that looks like.

I'm going to click on "OK." I can now see what I'm finding and what I'm replacing it with. And then I can set the scope. So, if I just want to find and replace on this worksheet that I'm currently on, I could choose "Sheet." But if I wanted to replace the gray background fill across the entire workbook, I could choose "Workbook" from this drop-down. Now, we're going to keep as "On Sheet." We also get to choose if we want to search by row or by column. Now, I have my formatting running across rows, so I'm fine with it searching across the rows. The last option here, it's also going to look in cells that contain formulas.

So, I'm going to click the "Replace All" button and check out what happens. It's made 20 replacements. Now, notice something a little bit curious. If we click on "OK" and close this down, you can see that it's worked for some of the cells in the row, but not for all of them. And that's because for these two sales, "Price per unit" and "Total," we have different formatting applied. We have currency formatting. And because I chose to find just formatting that had a gray background fill, it hasn't found these because we have different formatting applied.

So, how could I get around this? Well, if we go to Ctrl H again, if I was to then say "Find what," choose "Format from cell," and select one of these cells, and replace it with green. Let's do "Replace All." Check it out. Let's click on "Close." And you can see that it's now found those. So, you do have to be a little bit careful when using the "Choose from cells" option.

Now, if you do have a data set that has lots of different formats applied to different columns, then sometimes it's worth removing the formatting, doing your find and replace, and then reapplying the formatting. For example, with these two columns just here, I might decide to select them and let's just give them "General" formatting so we don't have any specific number formatting applied.

So, now if we do Ctrl H, we can say "Find what." So, let's go "Choose format from cell." I'm going to choose this blue one just here, and we're going to replace it with, let's go for a purple background fill, and let's also make that bold as well. And click on "OK." So, now when we do "Replace All," it's made 35 replacements. And you can see that we have exactly what we're looking for. So, because we changed that formatting just to "General," the find and replace has now worked. And we can then just go back in, Ctrl Shift Down Arrow, and apply whatever formatting we want. So, sometimes that is a quicker method. Remove the formatting first of all so it's all fairly standard, then find and replace the background fill color, and then reapply the formatting. I'll leave that up to you to have a little play around with, but that's how you can utilize the find and replace utility to replace formatting in your data sets.

In previous lessons in this section, we've started to take a look at how we can quickly apply formatting to data to make it more interesting and more readable. And in this lesson, I just want to show you a really quick trick when it comes to copying and applying formatting across different data sets. Now, if you take a look at the spreadsheet here, you can see that we have a table on the left that has some formatting applied. The heading row has some formatting. We've got some gray shading for all of the orders that have a status of "Pending." And also notice in the "Total," we have some currency formatting applied.

Now, it might be that I want to take this formatting and apply it to a different data set. So, all I've done here is I've copied the data set. That's the data set you can see on the right-hand side, but it doesn't have any of the formatting. Now, I could go through, I could use AutoFormat, I could then go in and manually apply some of these other formats, but that's going to take a really long time. So, let me show you a quicker way of doing this using a utility in Excel called Format Painter.

Now, you're going to find the Format Painter icon on the Home ribbon in the Clipboard group. It's this little paintbrush icon just here. And when we hover over, we have quite a bit of information about the Format Painter. It says, "Like the look of a particular selection? You can apply that look to other content in the document." To get started, select the content with the formatting you like, click Format Painter, and select something else to automatically apply the formatting.

So, let's deal with that first of all. Maybe I want to copy this formatting that we have in the header row across to the header row in the other data set. So, what I could do here is click in cell B5. Let's use our keyboard shortcut, Ctrl Shift Right Arrow, to make our selection. And then I'm going to click the Format Painter icon. Let's click it now. Notice what immediately happens. We now get the marching ants around our selection. And when I move my cursor onto the spreadsheet, check it out, it's changed to a little paintbrush icon. So, what we can do now is simply select the area where we want to apply the same formatting. So, I'm going to select all of this row up here. And when I let go, it applies that formatting and the Format Painter deactivates. How simple was that? And you can use this method for any formatting that you want to copy.

Now, one thing to note here, once I've copied this formatting across, the Format Painter deactivated. So, let's take a look at that again. I'm going to select this row that has the gray shading. I'm going to click on Format Painter and I'm going to select this row in the table to copy the formatting across. So, let's select this row. But this time, I'm going to double-click on the Format Painter. So, now when I go down to the next pending order, I can copy that formatting across. But notice the cursor is still showing that my paintbrush or my Format Painter is activated. So, I can carry on painting. I can go to the next one, select it, and then finally go to the last one and select that as well. So, I stay in Format Painter mode.

Now, when you've finished and you want to deactivate and just go back to your regular cursor, you can either click on the Format Painter icon again or simply press the Escape key on your keyboard.

Now, one final thing to note here, it will copy across all of the formatting from the selected cells. So, notice that because in the table on the left, I have currency format applied to the totals, it's also copied across the currency formatting just here. And you'll find that if you just want to copy across the currency formatting, if we select these cells just here, click on the Format Painter once, and copy that across to "Total," that's going to allow us to copy that formatting across. And also notice that because we've copied that entire column of formatting, I now have that bottom border, but it's applied to just column O. So, once again, if I want to take that entire border, I could select everything just here, click on Format Painter, and paint that across to apply that formatting. So, you can carry on using your Format Painter until your heart's content. I'm just going to do the "Price per unit" as well. And now we should find that everything in the table on the right looks exactly the same as the table on the left. So, utilizing Format Painter is a lot quicker when you have a lot of formatting to copy across.

In the last lesson, we saw how we can quickly copy formatting from one data set to another using Format Painter. And in this lesson, I just basically want to show you the reverse of that and how you can clear formatting once it's been applied. And this is a particularly useful thing to know because a lot of the time, you'll receive data sets from maybe other people, or maybe you've downloaded a data set from an external system. And often, that data will come across with formatting that you don't necessarily want. So, you need to know the techniques when it comes to clearing formatting from data.

Now, once again, we're starting with our two data sets. Now, I've made a bit of a change to table number two. You can see I've added a column that just houses a web address in there. Now, the reason why I've done that is because we do have numerous different options when it comes to clearing formatting. So, we're going to say that we want to clear all of the formatting that we've applied to this table on the right-hand side.

Now, when it comes to clearing formatting, you're going to find all of your options on the Home tab in the Editing group, where we have this little eraser icon just here. If we click the drop-down, you can see that we have a few different options. So, let's go through each one so that you understand the difference.

Now, when it comes to clearing, we must first make a selection. So, let's say that I want to clear the formatting from this heading row just here. I'm going to select the area. I'm going to click the drop-down next to "Clear." And let's see what happens if we choose "Clear All." That is pretty much going to do what it says on the tin. It is going to clear everything from that cell, not just the formatting. So, it's going to remove any text or numbers that you have in those cells, as well as the formatting. If you just want to completely get rid of everything, then that is a perfectly good option to use. But I'm going to undo because that's not exactly what I want.

Let's take a look at the second option, "Clear Formats." Now, if we click on this, that is more like what I was looking for. I want it to retain the text that's in the cell, I just want it to remove any additional formatting. So, it's removed that purple background fill and it's also removed the borders. Let's undo to put it back and take a look at the third option.

Now, the third option we have is "Clear Contents." And if we take a look at the screen tip here, it says, "Clear only the contents in the selected cells. The formatting and comments are not cleared." So, this is kind of the opposite of "Clear Formats." If we click on "Clear Contents," it's going to clear the text or the numbers out of the cells, but it's going to leave the formatting there. And sometimes that can be really helpful if you just want to switch out the text you have in some cells but retain that background formatting.

Now, let's click it one more time. Notice we also have "Clear Comments and Notes." Now, this is currently grayed out for me because I don't have any comments or notes in my worksheet. Now, we are going to get onto that subject a bit later on in the course, so we'll take a look and revisit this option then. The final option we have in this menu is "Clear Hyperlinks." So, this is going to clear any hyperlinks from the selected cells.

Now, notice here that I have some hyperlinks in column Q. And hyperlinks, it's not a subject that we've covered, but you've probably seen these before. If you type any kind of website address into a cell, it's automatically going to turn it into a clickable hyperlink. So, if I was to click it, it's going to jump me across to the Simon Says It website. Now, it might be that you want to keep the web address in here, but you want to remove the actual clickable hyperlinks. That is what this option is for. So, I'm going to click in the first cell. Let's do Ctrl Shift Down Arrow to select everything. And then when we go to "Clear," notice that "Remove Hyperlinks" is now active as well. So, we can clear the hyperlinks or we can remove them.

Now, if I clear hyperlinks, it looks like it's done nothing. But now when I hover my mouse over any of these hyperlinks, my cursor doesn't change to a little clickable hand icon because these are no longer hyperlinks. I can't click on them to jump to the website, but the actual text is still there. Let's Ctrl Z to come out of here and put those hyperlinks back. You'll see now when I hover over, I get that little clickable hand icon.

Now, the other option that we have, Ctrl Shift Down Arrow to make our selection, is "Remove Hyperlinks" altogether. So, if we remove the hyperlinks, it's actually going to remove that underline. So, now they're basically just regular text in a cell. They're not linked to anything else. So, that is the difference between those two options.

Now, I don't actually want this website column in my table. So, I'm going to select the entire column. I'm going to go to "Clear" and "Clear All" simply to get rid of it. Now, I don't actually want this second table. So, I'm going to select the entire table, Ctrl A. I'm going to go up to "Clear" and I'm going to say "Clear All." And you can see that that is a nice quick way just to get rid of everything. So, those are the options that you have when it comes to clearing cells.

It's time now to do Exercise Six. And in this exercise, exercise, we're going to practice some of the skills that we've learned in this section of the course. So, the first thing I'd like you to do is open the exercise file, exercise 6.xlsx. And then I would like you to simply format the table so that it matches the screenshot below. And you can see here, we've got some borders, we've got some background fills. I've changed the font of the heading row. And you can see on the right-hand side the exact font I've used, not only for the heading row but also for the text and the numbers within the table. And don't forget to apply formatting where necessary. Also, note that we don't have any grid lines showing in the background. And then once you've done that, I'd like you to find and replace the gray fill color in the "Total" column with a different color of your choice. So, a few things to do there. If you'd like to see my answer, then please keep watching.

So, the first thing I asked you to do in this exercise was simply to format this data set, you can see here, the same as the screenshot. So, I'm going to start with the heading row. Let's select this, Ctrl Shift Right Arrow. And I'm going to change the font to "Dosis Extra Bold." And we're just going to type that in. There we go. Now, we need to apply the background fill color and change the font color. Now, I could do this manually by selecting from the dropdowns, or alternatively, I could use my Format Painter. So, I'm going to select cell I5. Let's click on the Format Painter. And we're going to drag that across this heading row to apply that formatting. That's a nice quick way.

The next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to change the table font. So, let's do Ctrl Shift Right Arrow and then Down Arrow to select everything. And we're simply going to change the font to "Georgia" and hit Enter. The next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to sort out the formatting of the dates and also the amounts. So, let's select the date column. Go up to our number formatting. And I'm going to change this to "Short Date." And then in the amount column, we're going to give that a dollar sign. And I think I had two decimal places in the screenshot.

Final couple of things to do here. I'm going to select the amount column, Ctrl Shift Down Arrow. And we're just going to apply a light gray background fill. And then the final thing to do is simply apply borders around the outside. So, let's do Ctrl A to select everything. I'm going to go up to my borders and we're going to say "All Borders." And then the very final thing is simply to remove the grid lines. So, let's jump up to the View tab and deselect "Gridlines." And there we go. That table is now formatted the same as the table in the screenshot.

The final part of this exercise was to practice using find and replace to find cells with a specific background fill and replace them with something else. So, I asked you to replace this gray background fill with a background fill of your choice. So, I'm going to select this column, Ctrl Shift Down Arrow. And then I'm going to press Ctrl H to jump directly to Replace. Now, in the "Find what" area, we're going to go straight into "Format." And I'm going to choose the "Format from cell." So, I'm going to choose this cell just here. And then we're going to replace it with, let's go to "Format" this time. And I want to make sure that I still have that Georgia font. So, let's make sure that we still have Georgia selected. And let's choose a different background fill. I'm going to go for something fairly light. Let's just go for this light pink. Click on "OK." And we can do "Replace All." OK. And close. And there we go. We've replaced that background fill color. That's all I need you to do. I hope you got on okay with that. And I will see you in the next section.

In this section of the course, we're going to explore the wonderful world of Excel tables because if you've never come across Excel tables before, then you're going to find them extremely useful when it comes to analyzing data. Now, in this lesson, we're going to really get an understanding of what exactly an Excel table is and why they're so useful. So, we're going to start here on this basic tables worksheet. And if you notice at the top here, I have a very simple data set. I just have some fruits listed and I have the total sale, that say the total revenue for January, February, March, so effectively the first quarter. Now, this data isn't in any kind of Excel table.

Now, you might be a little bit confused by that. And I think a lot of the confusion lies in the fact that Excel, by its nature, kind of has a table looking format. We have a grid structure which could be mistaken for a table. But it's worth noting that there is a big difference between simply entering data into cells and actually formatting your data as an Excel table. Now, this table of data at the top here is not formatted as a table, whereas the one underneath, which pretty much looks exactly the same, is formatted as a table. So, how can we tell the difference between these two?

Well, this table up here, I've basically just typed in some text and some numbers into cells, and then I've manually formatted them. So, I've literally selected each row and I've changed the formatting, the background fill manually, just to make it a little bit easier to read. Whereas with this table underneath, this is formatted as an Excel table. If I click inside the data set, notice that we get a "Table Design" contextual ribbon at the top here. And if I click on it, it opens up all of the options that I have when it comes to formatting and organizing my table. If I scroll back up and click inside this first data set, you can see that the "Table Design" ribbon disappears, which means that this data is not in a table.

Now, in the next lesson, I'm going to show you how to create a table, and we're going to take a look at some of the various different ways that you can use a table. But I just want to illustrate what the difference is here. Now, most of the time when you're working in Excel and you have a data set, that data set doesn't remain static. And what I mean by that is usually we're always adding additional rows onto the bottom of our tables. For example, this data set could grow. Maybe I want to add a different fruit onto the bottom here. So, let's say "Strawberry." Let's say the sales for January were, let's go for 500. For February, we'll say 400. And for March, we'll say 300. So, I've managed to add that data onto the bottom, no problem.

But if I had a chart attached to this data, the data wouldn't automatically update. So, let me show you what I mean. I'm going to insert a quick chart. So, let's go to the "Insert" tab. And I'm going to insert a 2D column chart. So, this is pretty much the same as the chart that we have below. Now, currently, it's showing everything that I have in the table. If I was to add another row on the bottom here, so let's go for "Kiwi," and we'll say 400, 250, and let's go for 100. Notice that my chart doesn't update. You can see that "Kiwi" hasn't been added. You can see that "Kiwi" hasn't been automatically added to the chart. And when I click on the chart, you can see exactly the data that the chart is using. It's not including the "Kiwi" row. Now, we could fix this. We could go in and we could drag this little blue handle down, which will then include it in the chart. You can see the chart immediately updates to include "Kiwi." But if you're doing this all the time, you don't want to have to keep going in and dragging this little handle down. It's also really easy to forget to do that.

So, let's take a look how a table behaves differently. If we scroll down, as I mentioned, this little data set is in a table, and I've already added in my chart. So, let's do the same thing. Let's add another item on the end. We're going to go for "Strawberry" and press Tab. As soon as I press Tab, the chart starts to update. I can then add in my values. Let's go for 500, 400, and 300. And everything automatically updates. And that is because tables have an auto-expand capability. So, if your data is in a table, as soon as you add more data onto the bottom, it's going to automatically expand to accommodate that new data. Which means that if you have things like pivot tables or charts hanging off of this data, using this data, they're going to automatically update. So, it really is a great time-saving hack.

Let's take a look at one more example. I'm going to go across to the "Employees" worksheet. And here we have a data set that is a little bit larger. We have employee IDs, employee names, we have the department that they're in, their job title, their salary, and their job rating out of five. Now, I've already put this data into a table. We can tell that because we have a "Table Design" ribbon. And another thing that happens when we turn a data set into a table is that we automatically get these filter dropdowns at the top of each column. So, if I wanted to just see all of the information for a specific department, I could go in, I could deselect everything apart from the department that I'm looking for, click on "OK," and it's going to filter the data. Now, I'm not going to do that right now because we don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves. But just remember that when you create a table, you get these useful filter dropdowns.

Now, the chart that you can see on the right-hand side, you can see that this is showing the average salary broken down by department. Now, this is actually a pivot chart. I've created a pivot table just below of the data above. Now, we haven't discussed pivot tables at all so far. But just really to illustrate the point that this also works if you've created a pivot table. If I were to add another employee onto the bottom here, not only is my pivot table down here going to update, my chart is also going to update. And that is because this data set is in a table. So, I'm going to add on to the bottom here. Let's go for the next member of staff. This person is going to be, let's go for Carly Watson. She's going to work in sales. So, keep your eye on the sales column in the chart. She is a sales associate. And let's make her salary quite a bit larger than everything else. We're going to go for 100,000. I'm going to give this person a job rating of five.

Now, you might be looking at this chart thinking, well, that hasn't actually updated. It looks exactly the same. Now, that is because when we're dealing with a pivot table, and as I said, we have a pivot table that is feeding off of this table data, in order to get a pivot table to update, we need to right-click and refresh it. So, as soon as I do that, it pulls those new totals through. And check out the sales column in the table. Now, it's a lot bigger. Remember, these are just average sales by department. Now, none of this would be possible if our data wasn't in a table. So, the important thing to take away from this lesson is always put your data into a table. It's going to make your life so much easier when it comes to updating that table and keeping all of your charts updated and refreshed with the latest information.

So, now we've learned what an Excel table is and we've seen some of the benefits of putting our data into an Excel table. It's time to go through exactly how you put your data into a table and we'll also go through some tips and tricks when working with Excel tables. So, you can see in the spreadsheet just here, we have some employee data. And this currently is an unformatted data set. And maybe we want to perform some kind of analysis on this data. And as I mentioned in the last lesson, I would always highly recommend that you put any data set that you want to analyze into an Excel table first.

Now, when it comes to actually formatting this data as a table, we have two different methods that we can use. If we click our mouse anywhere within this data, go up to the Home tab, notice in the Styles group, we have a "Format as Table" drop-down. So, when we click this, it's going to open up a big gallery with all different kinds of table styles that we can apply. And by selecting one of these, it will do two things: it will convert our data into an Excel table, but it will also apply some formatting.

Now, the different color schemes that you see in here, these are very much based on the theme that you have in use within Excel. So, let's just take a look at that for one moment. If we go up to the Page Layout tab, notice we have a "Themes" group just here. And when we click the "Themes" drop-down, you're going to be able to see the theme that you have in use. Now, for most people, the default theme is just going to be this "Office" theme just here. And it is worth noting that this Office theme has changed in the last couple of months. Microsoft released an update for Microsoft 365 users, so we now have a different set of theme colors as a default. And if we go to the Home tab and just click, let's click the "Fill Color" drop-down, you can see that these are the new theme colors. It's also worth noting that with this new Office theme, we get a new font as well. So, instead of the default being Calibri, the default is now Aptos, and that is exactly what I have in use in this spreadsheet. So, the point I'm trying to make here is, if you don't like the colors that you see when you click the "Format as Table" drop-down, maybe you want to use something else, you can simply change those by changing the theme that you're using. So, you could choose one of these other themes. Let's go for, let's go for "Facet" for example. And now when I go to the Home tab and click "Format as Table," I get a different set of theme colors. So, just be aware of that. I'm going to switch mine back to the default Office colors.

So, when we click on "Format as Table," I can choose one of these. Let's go for this green one just here, "Dark Green Table Style Medium 4." Now, as soon as I click this, Excel is going to do its best to work out where my data is. And if you're clicked inside your data set, it should select everything around the outside. Now, I need to confirm that this is correct. So, it says, "Where is the data for your table?" and then it's giving me a cell range. And I can see the marching ants around the outside. So, this is correct. It's also worth noting that you must have "My table has headers" selected if your table does in fact have a header row. So, let's click on "OK."

And my data is now in a table. How do I know? Well, check out my ribbons. I now have a "Table Design" ribbon. And on this "Table Design" ribbon, we can do many different things. I could change my table style from here. So, if I decide I don't like this green, I could go in and maybe choose something else. So, let's go for this blue. Notice we have some "Table Style Options." And some of these little checkboxes are already selected. Notice here, "Filter button" is selected because when you put your data into a table, it's automatically going to add these little filters to the top of each column. And these are really, really useful. For example, if I just wanted to see in this table only the people who work in, let's say, HR, I can use this filter to select HR, click on "OK," and it's going to filter my list. Notice as soon as I do that, I get this little filter icon. If I want to clear the filter, I can choose "Clear Filter from Department" to put everything back. So, those filter drop-downs are really useful. But if you don't want to have them on your table, you can simply deselect the "Filter button" from "Table Style Options." I quite like them there, so I'm going to keep this selected.

Notice also we have "Header Row" selected. If I deselect this, it's going to remove that header row from my data set. Another cool feature of tables is that we can add a "Total Row." So, if I click "Total Row," notice what happens to my data set. I get a new row added to the bottom, and it's giving me the total of all of the job ratings. Now, in this instance, that doesn't particularly make much sense. I'm not really going to want to add up the job ratings. But I might want to add up all of the salaries, just to get an idea as to how much we're paying in total for everyone's salaries. If I click in the "Total Row," notice we get a little drop-down just here. If I click it, I can choose to sum all of those salaries. We have other options in here as well. Maybe I want to find out what the average salary is, I could do that also. And I don't have to have anything in this job rating column, I can simply choose "None." So, that total row can be really nice and is a quick way of performing calculations on table data.

Now, in this case, I don't want a total row, so let's just deselect that from "Table Style Options." Also, notice that with this particular table style that we've applied, we have alternating row colors. And this is what we refer to as banded rows. Now, banded rows in general improve the readability of your data. It's easier for people to read across lines. But again, if you don't like the way that this looks, you can simply deselect "Banded Rows" in "Table Style Options," and it will remove those bands. You could instead have "Banded Columns." We have a little option for that, and it's going to give us alternating column colors. We can apply formatting to the last column of data, it's going to make the last column bold, or we can apply formatting to the first column of data. So, that is what all of these little "Table Style Options" do.

Now, the "External Table Data" ribbon, this is where we can do things like export our table data to SharePoint lists. Now, that's outside the scope of this particular course, but just be aware that that button is there. Also, notice we have a "Refresh" button just here. So, this enables us to quickly pull through any updates to this table. In the "Tools" group, this is where we have things like "Summarize with Pivot Table." So, if I wanted to create a pivot table based off of this data, I can do that from here. I can "Remove Duplicates" or I can "Convert to Range." So, this is really interesting and a question that I get all the time. Sometimes people will put their data into a table and then they'll say to me, Deb, how do I take it out of the table? I don't want it to be in a table anymore. Well, this is this button just here. So, let's click it. It's going to say, "Do you want to convert the table to a normal range?" I'm going to say yes. And that effectively takes it out of the table. Notice that when I'm clicked in this data, I no longer have that "Table Design" ribbon. Now, whilst it does remove the table, it will keep the formatting. If you wanted to remove all of this formatting, you could select everything, Ctrl A, go to that "Clear Formatting" button that we've seen previously, and click on "Clear Formats." And we're basically back to where we started.

Now, this is a really good opportunity to show you the second method when it comes to creating a table. Because instead of using Home and "Format as Table," we can simply use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl T. Again, it's going to give us that same little "Create Table" pop-up. I'm going to say yes, my table has headers, and I'm going to click on "OK." Now, the table style that you get when you use the keyboard shortcut is basically the default table style. So, for me, that is this blue color just here, once again. Now, we have the "Table Design" ribbon back. We could go in and we can change that to something else if we want to.

So, now we have our data in a table again. I'm just going to apply some formatting to the salary column. And this is another little tip when you're working with table data. It makes it a lot easier for you to select your columns and your rows. For example, if I want to format everything in this salary column, instead of selecting all of the cells, I can simply hover my mouse over that table header. And notice I get that little black downward pointing arrow. Click once, it's going to select everything in that table column. I can now go to Home and I can apply whatever formatting I like. So, I'm going to apply a "Counting" number formatting. And I'm going to take the decimal places down to zero.

The final thing to point out here, and another thing that I would advise you to do, is to give your table a meaningful name. If you take a look on the "Table Design" ribbon in the first group here, the "Properties" group, notice that my table is currently called "Table2." And this is just Excel's generic default name. So, if I was to create another table, it would be called "Table3." The next table would be called "Table4." Now, whilst you can leave them with those generic names, it makes each table really hard to identify later on. If I was to come back to this spreadsheet in six months' time and I want to work with a specific table, if it's just called "Table2" or "Table3," I'm not really going to know what table that refers to. So, I would always recommend giving your table a more meaningful name. So, I'm going to click in my data. I'm going to go up to "Table Name." And I'm going to call this "Employee_Data." Now, it's worth noting with these table names, you can't have any spaces. If you have two words, so I have two words, "Employee Data," so I've separated them with an underscore. I could also just have them like that, all as one word. I'm going to keep the underscore in. Hit Enter. And your table is now named.

So, those are two methods for putting your data into a table and some of the options that you have on that "Table Design" ribbon.

In the previous couple of lessons in this section, we've seen how to turn our data into a table and we've also discussed some of the benefits of doing this. So, now in this lesson, it's time to see how putting our data into a table affects our formulas. Because this is something that does tend to throw beginners off. Now, currently, we're looking at the employee data. This is the same data that we used in the previous lesson, but I have made a little change here. I've actually taken this data out of the table. And we saw how to do that in the last lesson. So, we still have these blue banded rows, that's absolutely fine. But what I want to do now is I want to perform some calculations on this data.

Now, notice in column I, I have three separate things that I want to find out from this data. And the first one is that I want to know what the sum of all salaries is. So, I want to find out the total. Now, of course, I could put this into a table and turn on "Total Row" and select "Sum." That is one way that you could do this. But if you just want to perform a calculation over in cell J3, we could type in equals sum, press the Tab key, and we could simply select all of these salaries. So, I'm going to select the cell range F4 to F23. Let's close the bracket, hit Enter, and I get my total. And we can very simply check that total is correct by highlighting the salary range again. And if you take a look down in the status bar at the bottom, all the way over on the right-hand side, we have our sum total, which is matching what we have in the cell. So, that is the sum of salaries.

Now, when we double-click on this cell to take a look at that formula, we are using cell references in this formula, F4 to F23. And so far in this course, that is pretty standard. That's what we've been using for all of our formulas. Let's take a look at the next one, "Average Job Rating." So, this time we're going to type in equals, we're going to start to type average, Tab key to select it. And we want to find the average job rating. So, for this one, I'm just going to select the job rating column. You can click and drag, or click in the first cell, Ctrl Shift Down Arrow to make your selection. Once again, if you take a look at that formula, we're using cell references, G4 to G23. Close the bracket, hit Enter, and we get an average job rating of 3.4. The final thing here is to simply do a count of employees. Now, I want to count on one of the text columns, so I need to make sure that I use "COUNTA." Remember, "COUNT" will only count numerical values. "COUNTA" allows us to actually count the employees. So, we're going to use cell references again, C4 to C23. Close the bracket, hit Enter, and it's telling me that I have 20 employees in this list.

So, that was all fairly straightforward, pretty much stuff that we've covered before. But the thing to note here is the point that we're using cell references in all of these calculations. Let's put our data into a table and check out how these formulas change as soon as we do that. So, I'm going to escape out of here. I'm going to delete out all of the calculations we've done so far. And we're going to put our data back into a table. So, I'm clicked inside it. Let's press Ctrl T, keyboard shortcut. Yes, my table has headers. Let's click on "OK." And my data is now back in a table. The first thing I'm going to do is name my table. So, let's go up to the "Table Design" ribbon, all the way across to the "Properties" group. And where we have "Table3," I'm going to call this "Employee_Data" again. Let's hit Enter.

So, now that my data is in a table, let's try and perform these same calculations in column J. So, I want to work out the sum of salaries. So, we're going to start off the same. Equals sum, press the Tab key. And I want to sum the salary column. Now, once your data is in a table, remember you can simply hover your mouse over that salary column until you get that black downward pointing arrow. Click once, and it's going to select that whole column. But take a look, this looks very different to when we were using cell references. The formula now says "Employee_Data" then we have a square bracket, "Salary," closing square bracket. So, what exactly does that mean? Well, these are what we call table references. And you'll see them when you're trying to perform calculations on table data. Instead of using the cell references, it uses the table name and the column heading in the formula. So, you can see there, it's saying, "Okay, you want me to sum the salary column in the Employee_Data table." That is exactly correct. I just need to close my bracket, hit Enter, and I get exactly the same result. Once again, we can check it by highlighting all of the data and glancing down to the status bar.

Let's do it again. So, equals average. This time I want to find the average job rating. I'm going to select the entire column. We get the table name, "Employee_Data," followed by that column. Let's close the bracket, hit Enter, and we get the same result. Now, it's also worth noting that you could type in equals sum, and you could simply start to type in the table name. So, if I start to type in "Employee_Data," it comes up in IntelliSense underneath. I can press the Tab key, and then I simply need to open a square bracket, and it's going to list all of the columns in that table. And I can simply go in and select. Now, I actually don't want to do a sum here, do I? I want to do a COUNTA. So, let's do that again. Going to go for "Employee_Data," open the square bracket, and I want to do a count of the employees. So, I'm going to count the employee name. Let's press Tab to select it. Close the square bracket, close the round bracket, hit Enter, and we get our results.

So, this is really the point I wanted to illustrate in this lesson. Don't be thrown off by the fact that when your data is in a table and you're putting together a formula, you're going to see table references as opposed to cell references. And table references are actually pretty good. If you send this spreadsheet to somebody else, it's a lot easier for people to understand what your formula is doing because we have meaningful labels in there. We can see that we're doing a sum of the "Employee_Data" table, the "Salary" column. Sometimes when you just have cell references, it's not quite so obvious. So, that's how table references work in formulas as opposed to cell references.

It's time now to do Exercise Seven. And in this exercise, we're going to practice some of the

Skills that we've learned in this section of the course. So the first thing I'd like you to do is open the exercise file, exercise 7.exclSX. And I'd like you to format the data as an Excel table and name that table "Invoices". I'd like you to choose a table style, and I don't mind which table style you do choose. And make sure that you turn off banded rows. I'd also like you to make sure that you have filters turned on. And I'd like you to add a total row. And then finally, I'd like you to calculate the average invoice amount using table references in the formula. So a few different things to do there. If you'd like to see my answer, then please keep watching.

So the first thing I asked you to do here was to convert this data into a table. So we're going to click somewhere within the data and press Ctrl+T. Yes, my table has headers. Let's click on OK. And we're going to name this table "Invoices". So let's make sure we're on the Table Design ribbon. Let's go over to the Properties group, which is the first group on the ribbon, and we simply going to type in "Invoices" and press Enter.

Now I then asked you to change the table style, and I didn't mind which table style you used. So I'm going to go for this green table style. I asked you to remove banded rows. So in our Table Style Options, let's deselect banded rows to turn those off. I wanted you to make sure that we had filters turned on, which we do. And I asked you to add a total row. So we want to make sure we have a tick in this box just there.

And then the final thing is we need to perform a calculation in cell I5. We need to work out what is the average invoice amount, and I asked you to include table references in the formula. So what we're going to do here is we're going to type in equals average. And we're simply going to go over to the Amount column, hover our mouse just above until we get that black downward-pointing arrow and click to select that column. And notice that we now have table references in the formula. We have the table name "Invoices" followed by the column name. Let's close the bracket, hit Enter, and we can see that that is the average invoice amount. Now I'm going to apply some formatting. Let's change that to dollar, and that looks a lot better. I hope you've gotten okay with that. I will see you in the next section.

In this lesson, we're going to take a look at some of the options that we have when it comes to working with rows and columns in a spreadsheet. And we're going to start out with this reasonably large data set. If I click somewhere in my data set and press Ctrl+Down Arrow, it's going to jump me all the way down to the last row of data. And you can see that we have just over 51,000 rows in this data set, so a fairly sizable amount of data. Ctrl+Up Arrow to jump to the top. And if we press Ctrl+Right Arrow, it's going to jump us to the last column. So we have quite a few columns of data as well.

Now the first thing that you'll notice about this data is that it's not laid out in the best format. You can see that some columns are too narrow and some are a little bit too wide. If we scroll across and take a look at the Quantity column, this is taking up far too much room, more than it needs to. Whereas some of these columns at the beginning of the data set are showing these hash symbols. They're not actually wide enough to display the data in the column.

Now we've seen this little trick previously, and that is the autofit columns trick. What we can do here is select all of our data. And one way that I like to do this if I have a particularly large data set is to click this little area in between column A and Row 1. If we click this, this will select not only all of the data but all of the columns as well. And that is really important. If I was just to simply click in the data and press Ctrl+A, it's not going to actually select those column headings. So I'm going to click in this square just here. And then we can double-click on any of these column boundaries. You can see I'm hovering my mouse between column G and H and double-click to widen out all of those columns. So effectively, what we've done here is we've autofit the width.

Now I'm going to press Ctrl+Z just to undo that and put it back to how it was. Because the other method we can use is to go to the Home ribbon and then underneath Format, we have this just here, Autofit Column Width. That's going to do exactly the same thing. So you have the two options just there.

Now it's worth noting that this applies to rows as well. So all of my rows are fairly standard. These are the default row height. But if you have a data set where maybe you have rows which look something like this and you want to autofit them, you could follow a similar process. So we can click in this area in the corner. You can go to the Home tab, go to Format, and you also have an Autofit Row Height in here. Click it and it's going to put those back. Let's do Ctrl+Z one more time because we can also double-click. So the double-click trick works for rows as well. So all I would need to do is hover my mouse over any of these row boundaries, mine in between two and three, double-click and it's going to resize or autofit those row heights as well. So some really useful tricks there to quickly format your data set and put it into a more readable format.

Now some other things that you might want to do when you're working with columns and rows is you might want to insert additional columns or additional rows. And you might want to insert those somewhere within the current data set. So maybe I want to have a new blank column in between columns F and G. So what I can do here is select column G, simply by clicking in the header area. And you can press the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+Plus. Now for some of you, that might be Ctrl+Plus on your keyboard. For me, it's Ctrl+Shift+Plus. And that's going to insert a brand new blank row. And if you want to insert more, you can simply carry on pressing it. So Ctrl+Shift+Plus, Plus, Plus, Plus, it's going to insert more columns. If I want to insert, let's say, another three, I could select three blank columns, press Ctrl+Shift+Plus, and it's going to insert three more blank columns.

Now if you want to do the reverse of that again, you can use a keyboard shortcut. For me, that is Ctrl+Minus. And you can see as I press Ctrl+Minus, it's deleting out those blank rows. I can also delete multiple by selecting them, both Ctrl+Minus, and they're gone. It's worth noting for all of these little tricks, you do also have a more manual way of doing this. You could select column G, right-click to pull up the contextual menu, and you could choose Delete from here. That is also going to delete the column. We can also delete columns by going to the Home tab, going to the Cells group, and under the Delete drop-down, we can choose to Delete Sheet Columns. Click this and that's also going to get rid of it. So a few different methods there for inserting and deleting columns.

But what about rows? Well, happily, this works in exactly the same way. I can select a row, for example, row four. Ctrl+Shift+Plus or Ctrl+Plus, depending on your keyboard, and that's going to add in more rows. Again, we can select multiple like this, Ctrl+Shift+Plus, and it's going to insert five more rows. The same thing applies. Ctrl+Minus is going to delete them. Ctrl+Minus again to get rid of them. And of course, underneath that Delete menu, you have a Delete Sheet Rows option as well.

Now what about moving and copying rows in worksheets? Well, there is a little trick to this. So once again, I'm going to select the Customer ID column. And you can't simply pick up this column and drag and drop it because it will try to replace the data wherever you drop it. So if you want to move this column, you need to make sure that you hover your mouse over this green border until you see that crosshair, hold down Shift, and then drag it. Notice as I drag, it's showing me where it's going to get dropped by that green line. So I want to drop it just in here, and that is going to move it.

If I want to copy the column, so maybe I want another copy of the Customer ID column, I would do exactly the same thing, but instead of holding down Shift as I drag, I need to hold down Control. So I'm going to make sure that I have that crosshair, hold down Control, drag, and I'm going to drop it just here, and you can see that that has now made an exact copy of that column. Now I don't want that, so I'm going to select this column, I'm going to right-click, and I'm going to choose Delete. So very easy to move or copy columns. And the exact same process applies to moving rows of data as well.

Now sometimes, particularly when you're working with very large data sets, you can see that this data set stretches all the way across. So I have to use my horizontal scroll bar in order to see all of the data. You might decide that you want to hide some of the columns that you don't necessarily need. That's going to allow you to see just the columns that are important to you on the same page without having to scroll. So let's say that I'm not particularly interested in any of these columns. I can select them and instead of deleting them, which will actually remove them from the data set, I can simply choose to temporarily hide them from view. So if I right-click, notice I have a Hide option in here. It's also worth noting that you have this same Hide option on the Home ribbon in the Format group. We have Hide & Unhide, and we can choose to Hide Columns. That's going to collapse those up. You can see we've got this green line which shows there are hidden columns. And notice that now my data set starts at column F. So that's a good indication that there are some columns that have been hidden underneath there. And I can go through and just do the same for any data that I'm not interested in. So maybe I'm not interested in any of this. I can right-click and I can choose Hide. So now I have only the data that is of interest to me all on the same page, and I don't have to use my horizontal scroll bar to see everything. So this can sometimes be a really useful little trick.

Now if you have hidden columns in your data set and you want to bring those back, what you have to do here is you have to make sure that you highlight the column before and after where we have the hidden columns, right-click and choose Unhide. And that's going to bring those back again. And if you want to unhide all columns, you could select everything, right-click and go to Unhide, and it's going to bring everything back again. And exactly the same works for rows. If I were to select some rows in my data set, right-click and choose Hide, it's going to hide them. And notice now that the row numbers are no longer consecutive. We jump from three to 11, showing that there are hidden rows in this data set. And once again, you can either select the rows either side of the hidden ones, or you can select the entire data set, right-click, choose Unhide, and that's going to bring those back again. So those are some tips and tricks when it comes to working with your rows and columns in a large data set.

In this lesson, we're going to take a look at how we can utilize alignment tools to line up and change the alignment of text and numbers in our worksheet. So once again, we're working with this very large data set. If you recall, this is the data set that has roughly 51,000 rows. Now I have made some changes to this data set. I've hidden a few of the columns. You can see that we've got quite a few columns hidden just here, so that we can see these columns that have values in a little bit better.

Now when it comes to alignment, we're mainly talking about two different things, and that is the position of the text or the numbers within the cell. And if you take a look at the Home ribbon, you can see that we have a whole group of tools in this Alignment group. So if we work our way through these, you can see that the ones in this top row are Top Align, Middle Align, and Bottom Align. So this is dealing with how the text is aligned vertically in the cell.

Now this is illustrated a little bit better if I make this first row a little bit taller. So I'm going to drag Row 1 down a little bit, and that is going to show you that everything in this first row is aligned to the bottom of the cell. And we can in fact confirm that if we select the row and take a look at our alignment tools, you can see that Bottom Alignment is highlighted in gray, meaning that that is the one in use. But what I could do is I could choose to align these to the middle, that will move them up, or I could align them to the top of the cell. And I'm going to put mine in the middle.

The alignment tools that we have underneath deal with the horizontal alignment. So we can choose to have them left aligned, aligned to the middle, or aligned to the right. So currently, all of my text is aligned to the left. And it is worth noting that by default, when you enter text into a cell, it is aligned to the left of the cell. But I could choose to align these to the middle, or I could align them to the right-hand side of the cell. So again, this is very much personal preference.

Now aside from those basic vertical and horizontal alignment tools, we have some other cool things that we can do in this Alignment group. So if you check out this little button just here, this is related to the orientation of the text or values that are in the selected cells. So from here, we can rotate our text diagonally or vertically. And as it says in the screen tip, this is a great way to label narrow columns. So what we could do here is we could click the drop-down, and you can see that we can change the angle of our labels. So I have the heading row selected. I could choose to angle those headings counterclockwise, and you can see exactly what that does. Now I'm going to widen out this row so that those all sit neatly. So this is sometimes a way to make your columns a little bit narrower because these are on a diagonal. We could then double-click to autofit the width of these columns, and they take up a lot less space. We have other options underneath here as well. We can angle them clockwise, or we can do vertical text, that doesn't look so great and it's quite hard to read. We can rotate the text up, you might want to use that at some points, or we can rotate the text down. So this is entirely up to you as to how you want to use this. And if you want to put it back, you just need to deselect the one that you originally selected.

Another thing you have in this little group here are indents. So you can choose to decrease the indent or increase the indent. So if I was to increase the indent, can you see it kind of tabs the headers across the cell? So if you need to have that indented effect, you could use these indentation tools.

Now another thing that we have in here is the Wrap Text option. So we looked at this briefly in another lesson. This allows us to wrap extra long text into multiple lines. So you can see all of it. For example, let's take this column just here, column P. Let's imagine that this column is a lot narrower than it currently is. You can see that some of these product names are kind of being hidden because there isn't enough space in this column to accommodate the width of the text. Now we could, of course, drag the column out to give it more space. But if we want to have a much narrower column but still want to be able to see all of the text, we can simply select the column and click on Wrap Text. And you can see exactly what that does. It wraps the text around. So it breaks the line at the end and wraps it onto another line. So this is fine. Just remember that this can give you inconsistent row heights because if we take a look at what we have in row two, that all fits nicely on one line. Whereas what we have in row three, it needs to wrap around. So this row needs to be a little bit taller.

The option underneath Wrap Text is Merge & Center. And we have a whole video dedicated to this because there are a couple of things that you need to be aware of when you're using Merge & Center. The final thing to point out when it comes to alignment is if you notice in the corner of the Alignment group, we have this diagonal arrow. As we've already seen, this opens up more settings for this particular group of tools. So it's going to jump us across to the Alignment tab. And once again, we have some text alignment options in here, but we have a few more. So when it comes to horizontal alignment, we've got Left, Center, Right, we have Fill, we have Justify, Center Across Selection, so on and so forth. So a few more options in there. We also have the same for our vertical alignment. We have Top, Center, Bottom, Justify, and Distributed. In the Text control group, again, we have Wrap Text, that's the same as clicking the button that we have on the ribbon. We also have something called Shrink to Fit. So let me show you what that does. Again, we're going to use column P. Let's make this quite a bit narrower. If I was to select this column and go back into my alignment tools and choose Shrink to Fit, check out what happens to the text in these cells when we click on OK. You can see what it does. It actually shrinks the font size so that each item fits in the cell and you don't have to change that column width. Now I don't particularly like this option because again, it gives you very inconsistent font sizes. But just remember that that option is there. There might be a time when you need to use it. We can also do things like change the text direction in here. So the default is left to right. You could choose to have this right to left. And then finally, over on the side here, this is where you can change your orientation. So again, if we were dealing with the headings in this document, let's select the top row, go back into our alignment options, I could choose to rotate these headings 45 degrees, click on OK, and it's going to give us the same effect as choosing Angle Counterclockwise from this drop-down. So remember, a lot of the things that you see in these additional options areas are repeats of what we already have in the ribbon. But in some instances, you will have more options in here as well.

Now I'm going to take this back to a 0-degree rotation and click on OK. And I'm also going to remove Shrink to Fit and click on OK again. Now the final thing to point out here is, as we've mentioned previously, the default is for text to be aligned to the left-hand side of the cell, and for numbers or values to be aligned to the right. And you can see evidence of this in columns Q to U. These cells contain text and values. We have text in the header, which is aligned to the left, and we have values in the column, and those are aligned to the right. And how these numbers are aligned against each other are very much controlled by the number formatting that you have in play. So I have Accounting formatting selected for these cells, and that means that all of my numbers are going to line up at the decimal place. It also means that the currency symbol is going to be pushed all the way over to the left-hand side of the cell, keeping it out of the way of the actual number. And this formatting, this accounting format, has been specifically created for accountants who have to read down long lists of numbers. Remember, the other type of formatting that we have is Currency, and you'll find that with Currency format, you have the dollar symbol pushed right up against the number. And in a lot of cases, the decimal places won't necessarily always line up. So again, remember with numbers, the type of formatting that you have applied to them can also affect their alignment. But aside from all of that, that is pretty much all there is to aligning text and values within cells in your worksheet.

In this lesson, we're going to discuss merging cells. And merging cells is quite a controversial topic in Excel. So I'm going to show you how to merge cells, I'm going to show you some of the issues that this can cause, and then we're going to take a look at a better way of doing it. So let's start out by talking about exactly what we're doing when we merge cells. Now you can see that I have a data set just here. This is just a selection of the columns from the data set that we were using previously. And you'll notice here that in cell A3, we have "Sales 2011", and then we have some records that relate to 2011 sales. We then have "Sales 2012" and the same thing, "Sales 2013", and then "Sales 2014". So these are going to act like headers just to break up the data and make it really obvious which sales pertain to which years.

Now we could leave these little labels where it says "Sales 2011", for example, in the cell that they're currently contained in. So this is in cell A3 currently. However, this would look a lot better if it was kind of centered across our data, so somewhere in the middle here. Now when you type something into a cell, it is contained entirely within that cell. So if you're thinking that you can maybe select all of these cells and then in the Alignment group click on Center, it's only going to center that text within the cell that it's contained in. It's not going to center it across the selection. So a way that people generally tend to get around this and get the effect that they want is to use the Merge & Center option. Because what Merge & Center will do is it will merge together all of the selected cells and effectively make them one cell. So you can then use your horizontal alignment tool to center the text into the middle of this big merged cell. So if we go to the Home tab, in the Alignment group, we have a Merge & Center option just here. Now it's worth noting that if we click the drop-down, we have a few other options in here, but the one that we want is Merge & Center.

Now as soon as I do that, check out what happens. The individual cells now all become one cell, and this cell is effectively A3. And because we chose to merge and center, it centered that text in the middle of the merged cell. So what we could then do is maybe change the background color of this to, let's go for a light purple, and that kind of gives the effect that I was looking for. I could then do this for the rest of these headings. Now, of course, once you've done it once, you can use the Format Painter to copy that formatting. So I'm going to click in cell A3, let's double-click on the Format Painter, let's paint that across just here, and we're going to do the same for this one. And then if we scroll down, we're going to do the same for this one as well. And Escape to deactivate the Format Painter. So that is the exact effect that I was looking for, and we've achieved it very simply using Merge & Center.

However, there is a caveat to using this method. When you do use Merge & Center, it then becomes a lot more difficult to make cell selections, and it can sometimes cause problems with any formulas that you have. So let me show you what I mean. If I now decide that I want to go in and I want to select all of the values in the Quantity column, check out what happens. If I click in cell F2 and start to drag down to make my selection, it won't just let me select the Quantity column because we have that merged cell in there. Effectively, one cell, it expands to the width of that and then it kind of uses that width the entire way down. Even if I was to use a keyboard shortcut, Ctrl+Shift+Down Arrow, you can see it only goes to there, and I would need to do it again and again, and it just doesn't work well with this merged cell sitting in there. So making selections then becomes a problem.

Now we can get around this and achieve the same effect, but using a method that still allows us to make selections and ensures that our formulas will still work correctly. So let's undo and try this again. So we're back where we started. And what we're going to do is we're going to select this row of cells. But instead of going to Merge & Center, we're going to open up our Alignment settings. We're going to go to Horizontal Alignment, and if we click the drop-down, we have an option in here called Center Across Selection. So if we click on this and choose OK, it's going to do something very similar. The cell looks like it's one cell, and it centers that text in the middle. So I can then go in and I can apply my background fill color, and I get exactly the same effect. The difference here is that it hasn't actually merged the cells. It just looks like it has. Notice that I can still click in cell A3, and it is just cell A3. I can click in cell B3, C3, D3, E3, so on and so forth. So these are all still individual cells. They haven't been merged into one big cell called A3. And what that means is that if I want to go in and select the Quantity column, I can still do that because we still have our individual cells there. So this method gives us the same nice effect, but it causes us far less problems.

Now I have seen some people, particularly when this topic is discussed on LinkedIn, say that there are certain scenarios where merging and centering is better than centering across selection. And you may well come across those in your working life. But in terms of the look and feel, and also the usability, my recommendation is to go with Center Across Selection whenever you can. So now we can simply double-click the Format Painter and copy this formatting across to the other rows.

And just to finish off this lesson, when we were looking at Merge & Center, if you click the drop-down, notice that we have other options in here as well. So if you are going to use this method, you don't necessarily have to merge and center the text. You could just choose to Merge Across. So this will merge all of the selected cells together, but it's not going to center the text. The text will stay on the left-hand side where it was originally. We can choose to just Merge Cells. So that's just going to merge the cells together. It's not going to do anything with the text. And then we have an Unmerge Cells option, which will basically allow us to come out of that merge mode and split the big merged cell into separate cells again. So just be aware that you do have other options in there aside from Merge & Center. Have a little play around with those, have a little practice, and I will see you in the next lesson.

I've mentioned Excel themes sporadically throughout this course so far. So in this lesson, it's time to delve into themes because themes control the look and feel of our spreadsheets. And how our spreadsheets look is a really important aspect of Excel when it comes to designing spreadsheets, particularly if we're going to send them to other people. We want to make sure that our data is consistent, that it's readable, and it's easy to interpret. And some themes and some color schemes are definitely easier on the eye than others. So it's important to make sure that you're picking a color scheme, fonts, and styles that are going to assist the viewer and not distract and make things more difficult.

Now the first thing to talk about when it comes to themes is if we go up to the Page Layout ribbon, in this first group here, Themes, this is where you're going to find all of your settings. Now what you'll notice is that when you click the Themes drop-down, you can see your themes gallery. And that themes gallery will be divided into two distinct sections. We have Custom Themes at the top, and then we have Office Themes. Now in this custom area, this is where you're going to find any custom themes that you design yourself, because yes, as you might have guessed, you can create your own themes in Excel. Now if you're wondering why on earth would you want to create your own theme, well, sometimes companies or organizations require you to use the same colors that match your company's branded colors. For example, maybe your company has a yellow, green, and blue logo, and they like you to use those colors when you're working in your Excel spreadsheet. So you can build your own custom theme and specify which colors you want to use. Now we will get on to that a little bit later, but for the time being, let's just take a look at some of the initial office themes. So we have a selection just here, and if we scroll down, we have a lot more. So there are quite a few different themes to choose from.

Now a theme generally contains three different elements: colors, fonts, and effects. So when you select a theme, it's going to have its own color palette, its own fonts that it uses, and its own effects. Now the default theme in use when you just open up Excel is going to be the Office theme. Now, as I mentioned, Microsoft have recently changed the way that this Office theme works. We have a different color palette and we have different fonts. So depending on if you've downloaded the latest update for Microsoft 365, your color palette for this Office theme might be different to mine. You might be still using the old one. It's not a problem. Just be aware that that is why there might be a difference between what you're seeing on my screen and what you have on yours. So I have the Office theme applied, but I could also choose the older Office theme. So this might be the one that you're seeing as your default. We have other themes just here. So you can see as I hover over these, we get a live preview, and it's changing the colors in use in the spreadsheet. So you could choose any one of these color schemes. So let's go for Wisp and see what that looks like.

And if you want to see the actual color palette in use, you can go to the Home ribbon, and if you click on the Fill Background icon, you can see here are the theme colors. Now if I go back to Page Layout, notice that we also have a Colors drop-down just here. So by default, when you select a theme, you're going to get its default palette of colors, like we just saw. But if you decide that you don't like those colors, you could just change the colors in use in the theme. So essentially, we'd still be using the Wisp theme, we'd just be using a different color palette. So maybe I want to go for, let's go for this Red Orange color palette just here. So when you select a theme and change the color palette, it's not going to change any of the fonts or any of the effects, but it will change the colors in use. The same thing here, we could go in and we could change the font. So if I decide that I don't like this font, I could change it to something like Arial. The same thing would apply to the fonts and effects. If you don't like the fonts that are standard as part of the theme that you've selected, you can click the drop-down, go in, and change the font to something else. And the effects, if you're wondering, just relate to things like the type of shadow or the type of border you have when you start adding in things like shapes into your spreadsheets.

Now another really important thing to understand when it comes to themes is that there is a big difference between using theme colors and using standard colors in your worksheet. Let me show you what I mean by that. If we go to the Home tab and let's select this heading row up here, I'm going to go to the Fill Background color and instead of picking a color from my theme colors palette, I'm going to choose a standard color down here. So let's go for this navy color, like that. Now if you choose a color from the standard palette and then you go back and try and change your theme. So if I try and change it back to this Office theme, notice that all of the colors in this spreadsheet change depending on which theme I'm currently hovering over. But that heading row doesn't change color. It's always dark blue. So when you choose a standard color, that won't update according to the theme that you've chosen. As soon as you put this back to using a theme color. So let's select it again and let's choose one of these theme colors. Let's go for this dark red, because this is now a theme color. When I go back and hover over my different themes, you can see that that heading row is now updating. Okay, so just be aware of that big difference between using standard colors and theme colors.

Now I mentioned towards the beginning of this lesson that you can create your own themes in Excel. So what I could do here is maybe I want to have these the same color as my branding. So I'm going to go to More Colors, and I can either choose something from here, or if I have a specific hex code for the color that I want to use, I can type it into here. You'll find that if you do work at an organization that uses branding pretty heavily, your marketing team are going to have a list of all of the colors that are used in the logo and templates and things like that, and they'll also have the hex code values. So you can ask them for those values, copy them in, and you're going to get the exact same color as your logo, for example. Now I'm just going to choose a random color from the palette here. Let's go for a dark green. Let's click on OK. And let's change this yellow. And I'm just going to select all of these. Let's change this to, let's go to More Colors again, and we're going to do, let's do a light green. Click on OK. So I've made a couple of changes there. Maybe I want to save this as a theme so I can quickly switch to it. Other this is going to jump you to Page Layout. And right at the bottom, change this folder. Don't navigate to another folder that you have on your PC, because we want to save into this document themes folder. So I'm going to call this, I'm just going to call this my initials and theme, and click on Save. So once you save a theme, when we go back to the Themes drop-down, you're going to see that theme underneath Custom. So I'm just going to undo and take this all the way back to how it was originally. And now if I wanted to apply my theme, I could simply go to Themes, I could choose DA theme, and that is applied.

And the final point worth noting here is that themes will come into play in every aspect of Excel. So if I was to insert a little chart, the colors in use in the chart are going to be based on the theme that you have in use. If I was to insert anything like a shape into the spreadsheet, the default colors are going to be taken from that default color palette. So themes are a really important thing to get your head around. Make sure you're using one that suits the spreadsheet that you're trying to construct.

It's time now to do Exercise 8. And in this exercise, we're going to practice some of the skills that we've learned in this section of the course. So I'd like you to start out by opening up the exercise file, exercise 8.xlsx. Now I'd like you to insert two rows anywhere in the data set and add the following two records. Once you've done that, I'd like you to apply number formatting to the Sales column, and I'd like you to use the format that lines up the decimal places. I'd then like you to apply bold formatting and add a background fill to the heading row. I'd then like you to center the title in row three across all columns, and finally, apply bold and italic formatting to that heading row. If you'd like to see my answer, then please keep watching.

So the first thing I asked you to do here was to insert two blank rows and complete the information for Hawaii and Idaho. Now if we take a look at our data, let's go to the State column. I can see that these are organized into alphabetical order. So if I scroll down, Hawaii and Idaho are going to go in here. So with row 15 selected, I'm just going to press Ctrl+Shift+Plus twice to add two blank rows. I'm then simply going to copy the information from the screenshot into the table.

The next thing I asked you to do was to apply number formatting to column E, and I asked you to apply the number formatting that lines up the decimal places. And hopefully, you have remembered that that is Accounting format. So let's add that, and I'm going to keep this with two decimal places.

Next, we need to apply bold formatting and a background fill to the heading row. So Ctrl+Shift+Right Arrow, let's make those headings bold, and let's give it a background fill. So I'm just going to go with this light blue color.

I then asked you to center this title in row three across all of the columns. Now, if you recall, we discussed the difference between the Merge & Center option and Center Across Selection. And Center Across Selection is by far the safer one, as it means you're still able to make selections and complete formulas. So let's press Ctrl+1 to open up Format Cells. We're going to jump into Alignment, and in the Horizontal drop-down, we're going to choose Center Across Selection. Let's click on OK, and you can see that that's centered in the middle.

And the final thing I asked you to do here was simply apply bold and italic formatting to that header.

A huge congratulations everybody for making it all the way to the end of this course on Excel 365 for beginners. I really hope you've enjoyed running through this course as much as I've enjoyed hosting it for you. And I think you'll agree that we've covered so much in this course. And if you were unsure of Excel when you started this journey, hopefully now you feel that you have at least a little bit of confidence when working in Excel.

Now, there's not too much else for me to say other than thank you so much for choosing us. But let's just briefly do a quick rundown and recap of everything that we've learned in this course. So we started out in Section One with the course introduction, where we learned what Excel 365 is, and I showed you how you can access the online portal. We then jumped into Excel, and the real hard work started. I showed you how to launch the application, and we did a run-through of the interface, contextual menus, and ribbons. And I also showed you some useful things like common keyboard shortcuts and how you can customize your Quick Access Toolbar.

In Section Three, we started to take a look at the actual Excel spreadsheet. We saw how we can create spreadsheets based off of templates, and all of the different ways that we can work with worksheets. We explored how to save workbooks to OneDrive and the benefits of doing that. And we started to take a look at how we enter basic things into cells, such as text, numbers, and dates. I also showed you how you can utilize custom lists to make data entry a lot quicker.

Section Four is where we took our first look at Excel formulas. We discussed some basic rules surrounding formulas, and then we saw a demonstration of the big six essential formulas in Excel. We took a look at absolute versus relative referencing and discussed why that is so important. And then we saw a couple of useful utilities that really quicken the process of entering in formulas, such as AutoSum and AutoFill.

In Section Five, we talked about named ranges. I showed you how you can create named ranges, why they're useful, and how you can use them to make formulas more readable.

In Section Six, we moved on to formatting, a fundamental skill in Excel. I showed you how to apply different number formats, and how you can jazz up your spreadsheet by formatting cells, rows, and columns. We looked at Find & Replace and how to quickly copy formatting using Format Painter.

In Section Seven, we started to explore the wonderful world of Excel Tables. I explained to you what an Excel table is and why it's so useful. I showed you how to create a table and how you can use table references in formulas.

In Section Eight, we did some more work on formatting. I showed you how you can do things like align text and numbers in cells, how we can merge cells, and also how we can quickly apply themes and styles. I think you'll agree there was quite a lot that we've covered in there.

On behalf of myself and the rest of the team, it has been an absolute pleasure hosting this course for you, and we hope to see you again somewhere down the line. But for now, my name is Deb. See you next time.

If you want to start creating stunning PowerPoint presentations whilst learning the very latest tools and techniques in PowerPoint, then this course is for you. Hi everyone, my name is Deborah Ashby, and I'm a Microsoft MVP and course instructor, and I'm going to be your host for this course. I've been working with PowerPoint for over 25 years, and it's gone through so many changes over that time. We've gone from a fairly standard presentation application to a fully featured, rich tool for designing modern slides. And over the balance of this course, we're going to run through some of the best features that PowerPoint 365 has to offer.

Now, this course is designed for PowerPoint 365 users, so it's best suited for people who have a Microsoft 365 account and are using the 365 version of PowerPoint. I will say that if you are using one of these standalone versions, such as PowerPoint 2021 or 2019, then the majority of this course is still going to be relevant to you. There'll just be a couple of features that are specific to 365 that might not work for you.

Now, this course covers everything you're going to need to know to get started with PowerPoint 365. We're starting from a base of very little knowledge in PowerPoint as an application. So if you're brand new to using PowerPoint, then this course is going to be great for you. But even if you're coming from another version, what you'll normally find is that even if you know some of the initial lessons, there's always going to be things that you pick up, whether it's a quick.

keyboard shortcut to make yourself more efficient, or a utility that you weren't aware of. So I highly recommend that you do work through this course from the beginning, but it is designed that you can dip in and dip out of lessons as and when you need. Now, this course is divided up into eight topic-based sections. This gives you a really logical format from which to work through the content, and each section contains a number of video-led demonstrations. The videos are usually roughly 10 minutes or under. We might find a couple in there which are slightly over that, but everything is nice and bite-sized so that you can do a lesson whenever you have a few free moments. And you also have access to downloadable course and exercise files. So each lesson has two course files: a start and a finish file. So you can open up the start file and work through the content with me, and I've provided the finish file to make it easier for you to dive around into different sections if required. And at the end of each section, you will find an exercise with some instructions so that you can practice the skills that you've learned. So without further ado, let's get going.

Before we dive into the content and start building an awesome presentation, I thought I'd start out by making sure that you're completely clear on the difference between PowerPoint 365 online and PowerPoint desktop, because in my experience, this causes quite a bit of confusion, particularly for people with new Microsoft subscriptions. Now, historically, the way that Microsoft have delivered applications is in a standalone form. For example, you might be familiar with the terms PowerPoint 2016, PowerPoint 2019, PowerPoint 2021. Those are what we call standalone versions. But then, in recent years and mainly to assist sharing and collaboration, Microsoft introduced PowerPoint 365, and this is part of the overall Microsoft 365 office suite. So instead of purchasing PowerPoint 2016, for example, and downloading it directly to your PC, we now pay for a subscription to Microsoft 365, and that's a small monthly charge to essentially rent the software from Microsoft. Now, what is the advantage of using PowerPoint 365? Well, it means that we always have access to the latest features and updates, because as soon as something new is added to PowerPoint, it gets pushed out to all Microsoft 365 subscribers. So if you're using a standalone version, you don't get those latest updates. In order to get the latest version of PowerPoint, you would need to purchase and buy the next version up. So that is the main reason why it's beneficial to use PowerPoint 365. The other thing that you get with PowerPoint 365, which you don't get with the standalone versions, is access to an online portal. So currently on the screen, I'm in the desktop version of PowerPoint, and if you've used PowerPoint before, this should look fairly familiar. We have all of our ribbons and all of our commands, and we're ready to start building our presentation. But in addition to this, we also have access to a handy online portal, and this is what the portal looks like. Now, to get this portal, you simply need to go to www.office.com. You can see that up there in the URL bar, and sign in using your Microsoft 365 credentials. So that's going to be your email address and your password that you used when you set up or subscribed to Microsoft 365. That will take you into this main hub page. And if we click the app launcher in the top corner, this is where we can access all of our applications, and you can see we have access to PowerPoint online in here. So this is the online version of PowerPoint. Now, why is it beneficial having access to this portal? Well, it means that you can edit and work on your presentations when you're on the go. So maybe you start a document in the office in the desktop app, but then when you're on the train on the way home, you need to go in and make a change. No problem. As long as you have an internet connection, you can simply go to this browser and you can open up any of your files from here. And the good news is that any changes you make synchronize and upload to the cloud so that when you go back into the office the next day and reopen this file in the desktop version, the changes that you made on the train are going to be there. Now, this all relies on you having your files saved into OneDrive, and we're going to talk more about that when we go through the section on saving. Now, if I click on Home, notice over on the right-hand side we have this install button just here. So when you create your Microsoft 365 account and you go into this portal, if you want the desktop version of the 365 applications, you can simply install them from here. And the desktop application is the full version of PowerPoint that you see just here. So that is the difference between PowerPoint online and PowerPoint desktop. Make sure you have that straight in your mind because it's going to be really important and beneficial for you to know. So with all that said, let's dive into the content for the next section.

You'll want to download the course exercise files. Click the link below in the video description to get these. You can also scroll through the details to find timestamps for each section in this course. If you're enjoying this training, please leave us a comment.

It's time now to do exercise one. And in this exercise, there isn't really anything too much for you to work through, but we just want to set ourselves up for success to do the other exercises in this course. So the first thing I'd like you to do is just to ensure that you have downloaded and saved the course and exercise files. Make sure that you've stored them somewhere safe so that you can access them easily. Next, I'd like you to ensure that you understand the difference between PowerPoint online and PowerPoint desktop. And remember, you can always go back and review the lessons in this section if you need to catch up on anything. The next thing I'd like you to do is just simply to practice logging in and out of the online portal with your Microsoft 365 credentials. Now, if you do this every day anyway, then you can skip over this step, but if this is all new to you, you want to make sure that you can access that online portal. And then finally, I'd like to review the Cool Beans Coffee Company presentation that you'll find in the exercise files folder. This is the presentation that we're going to be building throughout the balance of all of these exercises, so it's good to be able to see the end product before we get going. As I said, there isn't a particular answer to this exercise, so let's move into the next section.

Before we dive straight into creating our first presentation, I thought it'd be good to take a moment just to run through some of the golden rules when it comes to good presentation design. Because I think there is very much a tendency to get a little bit excited at the beginning and dive into a blank presentation, start adding text, graphics, animation, all of that fun stuff, without really thinking too much about the overall design of our slides. And there are some really important rules and best practices that you should adhere to to ensure that you're creating a presentation that is interesting, engaging, and accessible. So let's take a look at these rules now.

It's really important that before you even begin to build your presentation, that you think about what the goal is. So what are you aiming for with this presentation? Who's it going to be presented to? What's the environment it's going to be presented in? What key questions does this presentation need to answer? And if you're presenting to key stakeholders and shareholders, they're going to be most interested in what the problem is and what the solution is. So it's really important that you identify any pain points and problems near the beginning of the presentation. And then as you go through, you can show them what the solution is. Don't make them wait all the way to the end before you get to this bit. And make sure that any solutions that you present are presented clearly and backed up with things like stats. And when you are adding things like charts into your PowerPoint presentations, make sure they're clear and make sure they're easy to read. Even if you're building a presentation that's a bit more fun, maybe it's not for business, maybe it's to do with the ultra challenge that you're running or an after-school club. This is also going to affect how we build our presentation because the audience is different. So think ahead of time about what the goal of the presentation is, and that will help you think about how you can design your slides and which visuals would be best to present.

Now, carrying on from that point, number two: know your audience. The way that we design presentations for a business audience will be very different to the way that we design presentations for an after-school club, for example. So very quickly, we need to ascertain who's going to be watching the presentation, what's most important to them, and what the environment is. And the environment is also very important. For example, if you're presenting in a very large auditorium, you need to make sure that you're designing your slides so that even the person sitting in the very back row feels engaged, feels included, and can see everything on the screen. So this would relate to things like font size, the colors you're using, the contrast, the images. And that might not necessarily be as important if you're just presenting in a very small meeting room. So again, you need to think about this before you even start your presentation.

Rule number three: create an outline first. Now, if you're not sure what I mean by an outline, it's basically a plan of how your slides are going to look. Now, you could do this just on a piece of paper. You can draw some square boxes and kind of sketch out what you want to go on each slide, what types of images you want on each. Or alternatively, you could do a mockup in PowerPoint like I have just here. And the main advantage of creating an outline is that it makes you more efficient because you already have an idea as to what's going on each slide before you start to build them. And it can also give you a really good overview of the flow of your presentation and where you need to make changes. So in general, the way that I do my outlines is I basically just write out all of my slides and sections. So you can see I've got an introduction section just here, and then all the slides that are going to go in there. And that really just helps me visualize what graphics I need and how I'm going to build this presentation.

Which leads me on to rule number four: decide on visuals. A picture says a thousand words, and in general, the human brain can remember images over lots of text. So I'm a big fan of including lots of imagery and visualizations in my presentation. And there are so many cool websites you can go to now. You can download lots of really interesting graphics, photos, videos for absolutely free. And I'm going to talk to you more about that in the next lesson when we talk about free resources. But again, there's lots of different types of visualization you can add into presentations. We can add pictures, photos, charts, graphics, infographics. We have an icon library in PowerPoint. We can add video. And you also need to start thinking about your theme colors. What is going to be your color palette for this presentation? We should always have three or four colors that we use consistently throughout. If we start adding in more than that, then the presentation just starts to look untidy and not join together. Font style is also very important. Again, stick to a few fonts and, in general, try and stick to the same font family. So think about your slides, think about the information that's going on them, and what visualization you might want to use to represent that information. Now, you can see here an example of an infographic, and infographics are so popular these days. And that is because infographics generally tend to tell a story, and people love storytelling and imagery over walls of text. And you'll find lots of infographic templates within PowerPoint, and again, I'm going to show you those later on. And you can see in this slide a really good example of how adding an infographic like this to demonstrate different steps in a process is a lot more interesting for our audience to look at than simply a list of bullet points. So really think about those visuals.

That leads me on to Golden Rule Number Five: text, less is more. I'm sure we've all sat through presentations where we're staring at slide after slide of boring text, and a lot of speakers make the mistake of simply reading out the text that they have on the slide, so they're effectively making themselves redundant. Now, lots of text is just going to send your audience to sleep. So I always like to employ the rule of five, five, five: no more than five words per line, five lines per slide, and five text-heavy slides in a row. The idea of slides is that we just have very simple, basic, key talking points, and then it's our job as the speaker to elaborate on those points. We don't need to put everything that we want to say actually on the slide.

Rule number six: use readable fonts. Now, this should be fairly self-explanatory, but over my years working with PowerPoint, I've seen all kinds of weird and wonderful things. Now, in general, it's good to stick to no more than two or three fonts in your presentation. Any more than that and things can start to look a little bit messy and not very joined together. And what I tend to do is that I will use fonts that all fall within the same font family. For example, you can see here we have the Lato family of fonts, and we have different style fonts within that family. So by choosing a font family, you're ensuring that all of the fonts, whilst they are different and give a different look and feel, they all work really nicely together. And then we have the opposite problem where some people are a little bit scared to use different fonts in their presentation, and what you end up with if you're just using the same font on every single slide is kind of a flat, boring presentation. So don't be scared to combine different fonts, just be mindful of the fonts that you're combining, and generally stick to two or three.

Golden rule number seven: be mindful of color in your presentation. You can see here an example of some really bad color usage. Now, I'm not saying that you're ever going to turn the background of your slide neon green, but I have seen things like this before, particularly neon text on white backgrounds. Now, not only is this going to give your audience a headache, it's really difficult for people with accessibility issues to read. So stay away from anything that has poor contrast. Instead, think about using high-contrast colors. So you can see here in all of these examples, we either have a light background with dark text or a dark background with lighter text. So it doesn't mean that you just have to stick to black and white in your presentations; you can use color, just be mindful of the colors that you're using.

Golden rule number eight: design for widescreen. You'll see when we open up PowerPoint there is an option to design slides for widescreen, and I would always recommend that you choose that option because they're going to fit and look nice for anybody using a widescreen, which is most people these days. But they're also going to look fine for people using a smaller resolution screen. So if in doubt, design for widescreen.

Golden rule number nine: be consistent with style. For example, if you have an image in your presentation like you can see here, we've got this image of a peacock feather. Try and tie the other elements of your presentation to the colors within that image. This is a great way of almost creating your own theme. Now, you can see here underneath that image I've picked out three colors from this image using the eyedropper tool in PowerPoint, and again, this is an amazing tool that allows us to pick specific colors from images, and we can then use those elsewhere in our presentation. So what we end up with is a really nice, quick way of ensuring that the colors that we're using across the slides all tie together.

When it comes to animation, less is more. I've seen some really crazy presentations over the years, you know the kind where text is flying in from all different angles, we have different types of animation applied to each point, and it just generally looks a little bit chaotic and a complete mess. So animation is fine to use, just be mindful of the type of animation you're using, keep it subtle, and always ask yourself the question: is this adding to the presentation or is it distracting? So in general, for bullet points, I tend to use things like this slide in or maybe even a fade in. These are nice subtle effects that make your presentation feel more dynamic, but they're not over-the-top crazy and distracting.

Rule number 11: consider templates. If in doubt, you can use one of PowerPoint's inbuilt templates to get you started. It's a little bit intimidating sometimes just loading up a blank presentation and starting to build something from scratch, so if you're not sure, you can choose a template. Again, I'm going to show you how these work and how you can use them, and all of the templates within PowerPoint are completely customizable. So if you don't like the color or the images, you can easily switch those out, but you have the bare bones of your presentation already sketched out and you haven't had to do it.

Golden Rule Number 12: I've already briefly mentioned this – don't just read from the slide. You should just have some basic bullet points on the slide. You're the one who's there to actually present and elaborate on those points.

And the final rule: end with action points. So once your presentation is over, don't just simply end it and leave the room. You want to leave your audience with some action points. For example, maybe you want them to review this presentation, maybe you want them to practice the skills they've learned, maybe you're going to say to them, "Now that you've learned these skills, I want you to go away and create your presentation and email it to me." So you might want to leave them with a little task. You could even add something like a QR code so they can jump to specific websites or your social media handles at the bottom, and the action point might be to follow you on those social media platforms. So leave your audience with something, don't just end the presentation. So those are some of my golden rules when it comes to good presentation design. Follow those rules, and you are well on the way to designing something engaging, interesting, and completely awesome.

In this lesson, we're going to set ourselves up for success by running through some of the free resources that we have access to that can really take our PowerPoint presentations to the next level. And when I say resources, I'm talking about free resources – free images that we can use, free videos, free icon sets, and so much more. So I'm going to show you a few of my favorite things that I use every time I'm putting together a PowerPoint presentation, and maybe you'll want to use them too.

Now, the first website that I always head to if I'm looking for an image or a video is pexels.com. Pexels has a really nice, simple interface. You can see here we have a big old search in the middle, and we can choose to search for photos or for videos. So if I was looking for some photos of mountains, I can simply type in the keyword, press Enter, it's going to go away and check out these pictures. They're such high quality and completely free to use for everybody. Now, do be a little bit careful in here because mixed in with all of these free ones – the majority are free – we do have some that need to be paid for. So if I scroll down, you can see here these are sponsored photos – so these are ones that need to be paid for. You do get a discount with this code, but don't accidentally click on one of these because you will be asked to pay for it. Everything else is free. So all you need to do is find the image that you want to download, for example this one, and click on the download button in the bottom. That's going to download to the downloads folder on your PC or wherever you have downloads set to save to, and then you can simply pick it up from there and use it in your PowerPoint presentation. And of course, we're going to be taking a look at how to insert images and format them a bit later on in this course. But that is how simple it is to download photographs from Pexels. And it works exactly the same if you'd like to download a video – we would simply choose Video, and then we can search for – let's do mountains again – and we're going to get access to a bunch of really high-quality, short looping videos that we can use for free in our presentations. So Pexels is the first website I always go to.

Along similar lines, if I can't find exactly what I'm looking for on Pexels, the next place I go to is unsplash.com. And this is another very similar website. It's a site that contains lots of royalty-free photos and videos that you are free to use in your PowerPoint presentations. And it works pretty much in the same way. We have a search bar just here. Let's type in "mountains" to keep things consistent, press Enter, and we're going to get a whole bunch of images. Some of these will be the same as what you find on Pexels, but there are different images in here as well. So two really great free resources for royalty-free images and video.

Another website that I find myself going to all the time is The Noun Project. And The Noun Project is where you can find icons. Now, you will see when we get into PowerPoint, PowerPoint does have its own icon library, but the icons are very limited. You don't have huge amounts of icons to choose from, and if you're looking for something very specific, you might need to look further afield. And The Noun Project is a great website for this. We have a very simple search bar again. All we need to do is type in what we're looking for. Let's say I'm looking for an icon of an apple. I can hit Enter, it's going to go away and search, and it's going to return all of these icons of apples. So if I decide that I want to choose this one, I can click on it, and then I get the option to download as an SVG or a PNG. And if you take a look at the bottom here, we can actually make customization. So if I wanted this to be a green apple, I can change it to green. I can change the background color if I wanted to. I've got mine set to transparent, and then I can choose if I want to download the SVG version or the PNG. Now, notice just above it says "royalty-free license", so this particular icon that I've selected I can download for free and use no problem. You will find that some of the icons on The Noun Project you need to have a subscription, and if you did want to subscribe to The Noun Project, last time I checked it was about $40 a year. So if you find yourself using a lot of icons in presentations, it's probably worth it. But it is worth knowing that there are plenty of free icons available on here. And of course, we're going to be looking at icons a lot more later on in this course.

Now, a website that I found myself going to more and more often recently is this one just here: coolors.co. Now, what coolors.co allows you to do is basically create color palettes. So if you're somebody who's not particularly good with color and knowing which colors go together, coolors.co makes it really, really simple. For example, if I go to Tools and go to Explore Palettes, this allows me to see all of these different palettes, and each palette has a bunch of colors that really work well together. So if I'm a bit unsure as to the colors I want to use but I want to make sure that my colors work well, this is a great website for this. And you'll notice as we hover over each color, you can see the hexadecimal code for that color. So this makes it really easy just to simply copy these and paste them into PowerPoint. And we are going to use colors from these palettes in our PowerPoint presentation. So I'll show you the full process of how you copy these and where you paste them in PowerPoint a bit later on. But this is a great website for sorting out your color palettes.

And then the final website that I go to often is Pinterest. Now, you might be thinking to yourself, "Why on Earth would you go to Pinterest for a PowerPoint presentation?" Well, simply put, people have so many good ideas and they post them on Pinterest. So you can see I've just put in the search bar "modern PowerPoint design", and it's pulled back all of these different presentations. So if I'm lacking a little bit of inspiration, I like to take a look at these, and it sort of gives me an idea as to what people are doing out there in the modern slide design world, and I can try to replicate this – obviously make it different to this author – but it just gives me some inspiration and ideas about slide layout. So I definitely recommend having a little browse through different PowerPoint presentations that you can find on Pinterest. So those are some of my favorite websites when it comes to free resources. Check them out, bookmark them, because we're going to be using these throughout the balance of this course.

It's time now to do exercise 2. And in this exercise, we're just going to review some of the principles that we've learned in this section of the course. So the first thing that I'd like you to do is ensure that you understand the rules of good presentation design. I'd then like you to review any older presentations that you have, and really just look at them and think about how you could change them to improve their readability and accessibility. Now, of course, this is optional; you don't have to do this. You might not even have any older presentations to review, but if you do, just start to think about how you could improve them based on what you've learned in this section. And then finally, I'd just like you to start getting those ideas flowing when it comes to good presentation design. So I'd like you to browse on Pinterest and look at examples of good presentations. That's it for this exercise. There isn't any particular answer to this; it's just some things for you to review. So let's move on to the next section.

If you want to get up and running with a presentation super quickly, PowerPoint comes with hundreds of built-in themes and templates. Now, you might be thinking to yourself, "Well, what is the difference between a theme and a template?" So let's explore that first of all.

Now, I've opened up PowerPoint. This is a new blank presentation that you can see on the screen. If I go to the File tab just here, this is going to take me into the backstage area. Now, I'm going to close down my blank presentation, go back up to File, and we're going to go down to New. Now, what you'll see at the top here are some of the presentations – the templates that I've used recently. The first one is always going to be Blank Presentation because that is one of the most common; most people in general start from a blank presentation. But you don't have to. If we scroll down, notice that we have two tabs just here: Office and Custom. And this is our templates and themes area. Now, templates and themes are different. Themes control the look and feel of your documents – the colors, the fonts, the effects that are in use – whereas a template is basically an outline for a full presentation. A template comes with placeholders, text, images, and you simply jump in there and customize it. So let's take a look at themes first of all.

Now, I'm clicked on Office. This is showing me all of the Office themes and templates. And just for the record, the Custom area is for any templates that you create and save. Again, we will be looking at that a bit later on. Now, notice underneath the search bar where we have suggested searches, one of them is Themes. Now, if you can't see Themes down there for any reason, you can simply type "themes" into the search bar above. But if we click on Themes, this is going to show us all of the different themes that we could apply to our presentation, and you can see we have lots and lots of them in here. Now, some of these themes have different variations. For example, if we click on this "Ion Boardroom" theme, it's going to open up and you can see that we have different color variations. So if I don't like purple, I could choose green, this orange color, or blue. So I quite like this green. I'm going to choose it and click on Create, and you can see exactly what that does. It applies the theme to the first slide in my presentation, and I've got my placeholders just here. That's what these dotted boxes are – they're placeholders for text. So I can add in my text. I can then go up to the Home tab, and in the Slides group, I can see all of the different layouts that are going to apply depending on the type of slide that I choose to insert. But just be aware that this little drop-down contains different layouts. So that is a theme; it's just the look and feel. It doesn't contain any text or any images.

Let's go back to File and New, and this time we're going to take a look at a template. Now, if I scroll down, I can see that I've got some templates I can choose here. But if I know specifically what I'm looking for, I could type it up here into the search bar and search for it instead. For example, maybe I'm looking to create a presentation that's going to be a sales pitch. I can type that in, press Enter or hit the magnifying glass to start searching, and you can see it's going to return all of the presentations that match those keywords. So let's say that I'm going to choose this one here with these nice plants on it. If I click to open this up, it's going to show me a little bit of information about this template. I can simply click on Create, and it's going to load that presentation. And can you see the difference? This time we get a whole bunch of slides that already contain placeholder text and images. And this is called placeholder text because we can switch out any of these images and obviously change the text, change the colors that are in use to truly make it suit what our presentation is all about. But templates give us an amazing jumping-off point. They definitely do a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to slide design.

One advantage of having a Microsoft 365 subscription is that you get access to PowerPoint's QuickStarter outline tool. And this tool can create an outline for you very quickly, and you can choose the theme that you want to apply. Now, you're going to find this little tool by clicking on File, we're going to go back down to New, and scroll down to where we have our templates. Now, Quick Starter is the first template that you can see here. It says underneath "Start an outline." So if we click on this, it's going to open up this little window where it says "Search here to get started." So we can type the name of the topic of our presentation. So maybe I'm creating a presentation about the solar system, or maybe I'm creating a sales pitch or a marketing strategy, or maybe this is a presentation for an after-school club, so maybe I want to create a presentation related to softball. Whatever it is, we can simply type a keyword in here. Notice below we have four small topics that we can choose from simply by clicking on them. Now, just for quickness sake, I'm going to use one of these topics. Let's just say that I want to create a presentation all about Paris. So I'm going to click on Paris, and you can see it asks me to select my starter slides. So it's given me the bare bones of an outline: things that I might want to include in my presentation, such as the etymology, the history, the geography, the administration, what the economy is like, things like that. So these are going to be really useful if I'm doing a presentation on Paris and I need to show these key points. Now, of course, you can deselect any ones that you don't want. So maybe I'm going to deselect International Relations, let's deselect Infrastructure and Administration. Let's click on Next at the bottom, and I can then go in and choose a theme for my presentation. So if we scroll down, I'm going to choose this one – this is quite Parisian – let's select it and click on Create. So it's going to go away and it's going to build that presentation for me based on the outline that I've selected and also the theme. And if we scroll through, you can see exactly what that looks like. It's basically created a slide for each of those different topics. Now, if you take a look at the first two slides here where we have the slide number next to them, you can see here 1, 2, 3, 4. Notice that for the first two, it has a strike-through, and that's because these slides aren't technically part of the presentation. The first slide is really informational and it's kind of showing us how to get started with this particular template. And you'll notice at the bottom we have a whole bunch of notes about this template. Below the second slide is also showing me other topics related to Paris. So you can see here France, United States, Germany – it's given me other countries. And you'll notice on the right-hand side it's given me a little hint as to how I can add to this presentation. So it says "Use Smart Lookup to learn more. Highlight one of the related topics, right-click on the topic, and choose Smart Lookup." So if I select France from this list and do exactly as it says – let's right-click – now notice we don't have Smart Lookup in this list, and that's because this has obviously changed since this template was created. It's actually this option just here, "Search France" – that's basically the same as doing a Smart Lookup. And what will happen is on the right-hand side it's going to go away, it's going to troll the web for information about France. So if I want to add some more facts in, this gives me all of the details about that particular topic at a glance, which is going to help me build out more slides in my presentation. We can click Close to close down this little pane. So this can be quite useful, but if you don't want these slides, you can simply select both of them. And if you need to select multiple slides, you just need to hold down Shift to select that second one, and then we can press Delete to get rid of those slides. And now we just have our presentation. Notice that we have a combination of included text but also we have placeholders in here. So wherever you see these little dotted boxes, these are what we refer to as placeholders, and it's telling me that a subtitle needs to go in here. If I go to the second slide, this is the contents – this is going to list out all of the contents of my slide. Then I have a page for each, and I can start adding whatever content I need to add. So QuickStarter outline slides are another really great way just to get up and running really quick.

One of the biggest differences between PowerPoint 365 and previous standalone versions like 2016, 2019, 2021 is how we save. In those previous versions, we'd save a file to a folder, and in order to save our changes, we'd have to keep remembering to press Ctrl+S or go to File > Save. Now, PowerPoint 365 works slightly differently because when we save, we save up into the cloud. When you have a Microsoft 365 account, you also have access to OneDrive cloud storage. And I highly recommend that you get into the habit of saving all of your files into the cloud. It offers a number of different advantages, one of them being that your changes are automatically saved. Now, notice that I have a blank PowerPoint presentation open just here, and when you open a brand new blank presentation, it's just going to have the temporary title of "Presentation 1", "Presentation 2", "Presentation 3" – you can see up in the left-hand corner mine is called "Presentation 2". So I need to save this before I start working on it, and I'm going to save mine into the cloud, into OneDrive. Now, in order to do this, you need to have OneDrive synchronized with your PC. That is outside the scope of this course, but once you do, you're going to be able to see all of your OneDrive folders in File Explorer, which makes saving really easy. So if we go to File > Save As, notice in the Save As area over here I have two different OneDrives. So this OneDrive down here is my personal OneDrive that's attached to a personal email address, and this one just here is my business OneDrive – OneDrive for Business – attached to my business email address. So you might have one in here, you might have two, you might even have three. Now, if you don't see your OneDrive storage set up underneath here, you can simply click on "Add a place" at the bottom. You can choose what you want to set up, for example OneDrive for Business. You're going to need to enter in your Microsoft 365 email address and password, and once you've done that, you'll be able to see it listed as mine are here. Alternatively, if you click on "Browse" at the bottom, it's going to open up File Explorer, and if you have OneDrive synchronized to your PC, you'll be able to see your OneDrive storage in here. Now, let's just cancel out of here because I have mine sitting here. So I'm going to save into my business OneDrive. I'm going to save it into the Documents folder. Now, I'm going to create a new folder and I'm going to call this "Course Files" and click on OK. So now I can simply select this folder and I'm going to name my presentation. So I'm just going to call this "My Initials First Presentation". Notice the file extension .pptx – this is the default standard PowerPoint presentation. We can then simply click on Save, and that file is now saved up into the cloud. So not only can I access it, open it, and work on this presentation while I'm at my desk, if I'm on the train for example, I can simply fire up a browser, log into my Microsoft account, and my file will be there, so I can work on it any time, anywhere.

Now, as soon as I saved this presentation up into the cloud, something happened here. If you take a look at this little bar underneath, this is what we call the Quick Access Toolbar. Notice we now have this AutoSave toggle toggled on. Before we saved this into the cloud, this was actually toggled off. So this is now going to save every single change I make, and I don't have to worry about PowerPoint crashing or my PC crashing and losing any of my work. It also means that as I'm working through this presentation making changes – so maybe I add a title in here – I don't have to keep remembering to press Control+S to save or go File > Save. So everything is nice and automated; all changes I make are now saving back to the cloud.

Let's jump across to the online portal so you can see what I mean. So let's pretend the scenario is: I finished working on this presentation at my desk, I close PowerPoint for the day, and now I'm on the train home on my tablet device and I want to work on this presentation. All I need to do is fire up a browser, go to office.com or microsoft.com, sign in to my Microsoft 365 account, and now I'm in my portal. So if I'm on the train on my tablet device, I simply need to log in, and then if I scroll down, I should find that the presentation that I was editing in the office is at the top of the list. There it is: "DA First Presentation". So I can simply click on it; it's going to open it in PowerPoint Online, which is a slimmed-down version of the full desktop application, and I can carry on editing this. I have everything I need within this online version of PowerPoint. And this works in exactly the same way: every change I make is automatically being saved back to the cloud. And if you take a look in the title bar up here, you can see a little cloud icon with a tick, and it's telling me that I saved just now. And notice, if we jump back to the desktop version of PowerPoint, the changes that I made – that subheading I added when I was working with it in the online portal – have now automatically updated in this copy. So saving to the cloud provides you with a really seamless way to work, and it's less likely that you're going to lose any of your changes. And you don't have to think about saving your file.

It's time now to do exercise 3. And in this exercise, we're going to practice some of the skills that we've learned in this section of the course. So the first thing I'd like you to do is fire up PowerPoint, and I'd like you to use the QuickStarter template and create an outline. And I'd like you to search for "The History of Coffee", and I want you to include all suggested slides in the presentation. I'd like you to then apply the Headline theme, and use Designer to customize the look and feel of the slides. Finally, I'd like you to save the presentation to the cloud, and you can choose a folder of your choice. If you'd like to see my answer, then please keep watching.

So the first thing I asked you to do here was to create a presentation based on the QuickStarter outline. So I'm going to go up to File, we're going to go to New, and if we scroll down to our Office templates, notice that the first template we have in here is Quick Starter. This is going to open up a little box so we can search for different topics. And I asked you to search for "The History of Coffee". Let's click on Search. I'm going to choose this one just here. So let's click on "History of Coffee". And I told you to include all of the suggested slides, so we're going to keep everything here ticked. Let's click on Next, and now we can pick a theme for our slides. And the one I asked you to pick was this one just here: the Headline theme. Let's click it and click on Create. So this is going to put together a presentation based on those parameters, and you can see here we get two slides at the beginning which just go through how outliner slides work, and then we have our presentation.

I then asked you to use Designer to restyle these slides. So if we click on the title slide just here, and then click on the Designer button to pop it open, you can see we get some different templates we can use, and these will be related to the topic that we've selected. So I'm going to choose this slide here for my title slide – look how nice that looks. If we go to the next slide, again, Designer is going to generate some ideas for us, and we can choose something that we think matches. So if I look at some of these, let's go for this one just here. And this is pretty much all I need. You were just to run through selecting different slide layouts. Now, of course, we don't have any text on here as yet. You could change that by adding some content. You could even use something like Copilot, if you have access to it, to generate the content for you. But this is basically it.

what I was looking for, the final thing I asked you to do was to save the file to the cloud. So for this, we just need to go to File and Save As, and I told you to select a cloud location of your choice. So I'm going to browse to a cloud location. I'm going to name my file History of Coffee, and I'm going to save it as a pptx and click on Save. That's all I need you to do. I hope you've gotten okay with that, and I will see you in the next section.

If you're new to PowerPoint or Microsoft applications in general, it's important to understand the interface and exactly what you're looking at because this is going to help you be able to find commands that you need to use quicker. Now, I've still got the presentation that we were working on in the last lesson loaded up on the screen, and this gives us a good opportunity to go through some of the elements of the interface. So, starting in the top left hand corner, this is where you're going to see your file name, and we can also see the status, whether it's saved, whether it's saving, or whether it's waiting to upload. Now, if we click this area, this is where we can come if we want to rename this file. So this is a really nice quick way of renaming: simply click the current title and change it from here. You can even change the location that you're saving into.

Now, if we move across this title bar, right in the middle here we have a big old search bar. And if I'm clicked somewhere down in my presentation and I want to quickly jump up to that search bar, there is a keyboard shortcut of Alt+Q. You can see my cursor is now up in that search area, and what I can do here is I can search for different things. So maybe I want to insert a shape; I can type in shapes, and notice underneath actions is basically showing me that shapes command, and if I hover my mouse over it, there is my shapes gallery, and I can simply select a shape. So this is particularly useful if you're finding the ribbons pretty overwhelming and you're not able to quickly find commands. Notice in here we also have the option to find in slide. So this will help us if we have the word shapes that we're looking for, or we can view different types of media related to shapes. So this search bar is great for finding tools; that's the main reason I use it.

Now, underneath there we have our ribbons and our tabs. So these labels are called tabs, and the actual commands underneath these are called ribbons, and ribbons are just these horizontal menus. Each ribbon contains different commands, and those commands are divided down into logical groups. So we have a slides group just here, and on this we have all of our commands related to slides. We have a font group, we have a paragraph group, a drawing group, editing, so on and so forth. And on the Home ribbon in general, you'll find the tools, the commands that you use most frequently. But if we go to the Insert ribbon, this is where you would come if you wanted to insert something into your PowerPoint presentation. That might be a shape, it might be an icon, it might be a picture, a table, a screenshot; there's a whole manner of different things that we can add to our slides.

Now, I won't go through each of these tabs; I'll leave you to explore, but everything is organized very logically. Now, one thing to note is that you might find that you don't have this Developer ribbon that you can see on mine just here. Now, that's not a problem; most people haven't activated the Developer ribbon, and I will show you a bit later on how you can show the Developer ribbon if you need it. This in general is where we find things like macros and VBA, so not everybody needs to use this.

Now, one final thing to notice here is that notice that in the PowerPoint presentation, if I click on this first heading, this first heading is basically contained within a text box, and text boxes hold information. Now, PowerPoint sees text boxes as just shapes, a rectangle shape in this instance. So if you take a look up at our ribbons, can you see that I now have what we call a contextual ribbon called Shape Format? And this contains all of the commands that I might need to format and manage this shape. If I click away and just click on the black slide, notice that Shape Format ribbon disappears because it's a contextual ribbon; it means it only appears when I actually need it, when I'm clicked on a shape. And you'll see these contextual menus pop up from time to time depending on what you're doing in the slide.

What you'll also find in the corner of some of these groups are these little diagonal arrows, and if we click on any one of these, it's basically going to open up more options. So you can see, when I clicked this arrow in the Shape Styles group, it opens up the Format Shape pane on the right hand side, which gives me lots of additional options when it comes to formatting this shape. Now, these little diagonal menus won't always open up in a pane; if we go back to Home and do the same for the Font group this time, we get a dialogue box, but again it still contains just additional features related to this group.

Now, underneath our ribbons, this is where we have the Quick Access Toolbar, and we briefly touched on this when we were taking a look at AutoSave in the last lesson. Now, currently my Quick Access Toolbar doesn't contain a great deal; we have AutoSave, we have Undo, we have Save which is basically automatic, and then we have Redo. So this will repeat the last command. Now, notice there it says Repeat Ruler, and that reminds me of another important point: I would recommend that you add rulers to your presentation. Now, notice I don't have any rulers so far, but if we go up to the View tab and put a check in Ruler, I now get horizontal and vertical rulers. These are particularly important when you're dealing with alignment in a slide, so I recommend that you turn those on.

Now, this tiny little toolbar underneath is an area that we can customize, and we can add any command from any ribbon to this Quick Access Toolbar. So this serves as a quick way of accessing commands that we use frequently, so we don't have to hunt through each and every ribbon. And I'm going to show you how to customize that a bit later on.

Now, the main part of the interface is made up of this split screen. So on the left hand side, where you can see Slide 1, this is like our slide organizer area. As we create new slides, we're going to see them listed out here; it's somewhere we can come to select different slides to load into the main pane, and we can also do things like move our slides around, add sections, duplicate and copy slides. And whatever slide we're clicked on in this organizer is going to show in the main window. And then right at the bottom, we have the status bar.

Now, the status bar serves two purposes: it allows us to display useful information about what's happening currently in our slide deck, and on the other side, this is where we can switch views, the way that we're looking at our presentation. Now, notice on the left it says Slide 1 of, so this is displaying useful information about how many slides I have in my presentation. It's telling me no spelling errors were found, it's telling me that I'm using English United States, and my accessibility so far is good, which would make sense because we barely have anything in our presentation. Now, we can customize this status bar by right clicking, and we can choose the information we're interested in showing. And then on the right hand side, we have different ways to view our presentation. So the default is Normal view, you can see that highlighted in gray, but I could choose to switch to Slide Sorter view, which isn't particularly useful when we only have one slide. We are going to come back to these later on. We have Reading View, and then finally we have Slide Show view. Now, you will find yourself jumping in and out of Slide Show view because this is the view that's going to show you what the presentation is going to look like when you're presenting it to an audience. If you want to come out of here, you can simply press the Escape key, and I'm going to switch back to Normal view.

Now, we have some other buttons in the top right hand corner, for example Record, Present in Teams, Comments, and Share. And of course, we're going to get to all of these a bit later on in the course.

The final thing to mention is that when you click on the File tab, this takes you to what we refer to as the backstage area, and we've already been in and out of here a fair bit so far. This is where you're going to find some of the more admin related tools. So this is where we come to create new documents, to open documents, to save, print, export, close – all of that kind of stuff. You'll also find all of your options in here as well, right at the bottom. And this is a huge area that contains all of your individual settings for your copy of PowerPoint, and of course you can customize this to suit your needs. But in general, most of the default options work best.

So that's a quick guided tour of the PowerPoint interface for anybody who wasn't familiar. Let's move on to the next lesson.

In the last lesson, I mentioned the Quick Access Toolbar. This is an area that we can customize and add commands from any ribbon; we can even add commands that are not on any ribbon because there are many commands that still exist in PowerPoint but aren't necessarily assigned to a ribbon. So in this lesson, I'm just going to walk you through the process of customizing this, because it's a really great efficiency tip so that you don't have to hunt through the ribbons looking for what you need.

Now, there are a few different ways that you can customize this little toolbar. If you know the command that you want to add to it and you can see it on the ribbon – for example, maybe I'm always adding in shapes on the Insert ribbon – I can simply right click on the command, and notice the first option is Add to Quick Access Toolbar. So as soon as I do that, I can now see it here. So if I want to add a shape, I can click the drop down and choose my shape. So I can basically do that for anything: I can right click on Text Box and add to Quick Access Toolbar, I can right click on Icons and add to Quick Access Toolbar. So if I can see it, I can right click.

The second way that we can add commands to our Quick Access Toolbar is to click this little drop down at the end that says Customize. Now, what you'll see above this line are 15 or so commands that Microsoft have deemed most useful, so you can quickly toggle these on and add them to your Quick Access Toolbar. Now, you'll notice the ones with ticks next to them, those are the ones that are currently already on there, but I could add any of these others. For example, I could add Quick Print, I could go back in and I can add New. So nice and simple.

Now, if I want to add anything else, maybe a command that I can't see on any of the ribbons, this is when I would need to click the drop down and go to More Commands. Now, this is going to jump me to my PowerPoint Options. We briefly came into here in the last lesson, and it's jumped me straight to the Quick Access Toolbar section. Now, what you'll see here is, on the right hand side, this is showing what I currently have on my Quick Access Toolbar, and then on the left hand side, this is showing me a list of commands based on the category I've selected above. So currently I have Popular Commands selected, but what I could do is click the drop down and I could choose a specific tab; it's going to show me everything on the File tab, or I could go to All Commands, which is going to show me a huge long list of every single command in PowerPoint. And fortunately, these are ordered alphabetically, which makes it a little bit easier to find what we're looking for. So if I scroll down, maybe I decide that I want to add this command just here, Add Section; I can select it and then click on the Add button in the middle to move that across to my Quick Access Toolbar. Similarly, if I decide that I don't want a command on there – for example, maybe I want to get rid of Quick Print – I can select it and click on Remove. I can also reorder my Quick Access Toolbar commands by using these up and down arrows. So maybe I want to move Redo next to Undo. Let's select Redo and click on Up. Maybe I want to move Add Section up to here as well. Maybe I want to move Shapes down to here. So I can rearrange and get this to look exactly as I want it to look.

Another thing that I can do to add a little bit of structure to this Quick Access Toolbar is add in separators. So if I scroll all the way up to the top, notice we have Separator just here. Now, you're going to find Separator at the top of any category that you select. So if I select Popular Commands, right at the top we have Separator. So I can add as many separators as I like. So let's add in a couple. So I'm going to add one, two, and then I can move these into position. So maybe I want one separator just here, and then I'm going to have the other separator just here, and I think I'm going to move New File up to this section. So now I've kind of organized my commands into groups of similar type. Once I'm happy with how everything looks, I can click on OK, and I can see those changes applied. So now, if you look at my Quick Access Toolbar, can you see those very faint lines separating the group? It just makes it a bit more organized and a bit more structured. And if I want to remove any of these commands, I can do it directly from here by right clicking on the command and choosing Remove from Quick Access Toolbar.

The final thing you need to know about this toolbar is that we can change its location. So my preference is to have this toolbar showing underneath the ribbons, but some people prefer to have this showing above the ribbons, up in the top corner. So if we click the drop down, notice we have a Show Above Ribbon option, and that's going to move it up here in this title bar area. Now, if I have mine up here, I tend to forget it's there, so I always like to show it below the ribbon. You can even turn it off entirely. So if you don't like it, you don't use it, you can hide the Quick Access Toolbar. If you want to get it back, you need to go all the way over to this little drop down arrow at the end of the ribbons and choose Show Quick Access Toolbar, and that's going to bring it back.

So at this stage of the course, I wouldn't expect you to start adding things to your Quick Access Toolbar because you don't know what's going to be most useful to you yet. But as we go through, if we do click on commands that you think you're going to use all the time, it's definitely worth adding them in as you go.

One of the biggest time savers when you're working in PowerPoint and any Microsoft application, for that matter, are keyboard shortcuts. Keyboard shortcuts allow us to keep our fingers on the keyboard as opposed to constantly reaching for the mouse to execute commands, and a lot of people love their keyboard shortcuts. Now, there are hundreds and hundreds of keyboard shortcuts in PowerPoint, and there is absolutely no way that you're going to memorize all of them. So most people generally have 10 to 15 that they know off the top of their head, and they use those all the time. You might even be familiar with some keyboard shortcuts if you've used other Microsoft applications, and the good news is that they are pretty consistent across applications. For example, if you know what the keyboard shortcut is for Cut, Copy, and Paste in Excel, you'll find it's exactly the same in PowerPoint. If I was to select this title text just here and go to the Home tab, in the Clipboard group this is where we have our Cut, Copy, and Paste options. And if I hover over the pair of scissors for Cut, you can see the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+X. If I hover over Copy, you can see the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+C. So these are exactly the same in every single application. Now, of course there are some differences because PowerPoint has different commands to other applications as you start working with your slides.

Now, I'm not going to go through all of the shortcuts, but I am going to show you some useful tips and tricks for finding out what shortcuts you have access to and where you can access them. Now, as we just saw, if we hover our mouse over some of these commands on the ribbon, you're going to see the keyboard shortcut in brackets in the ScreenTip – that's what we call these little popup boxes of information, they're called ScreenTips. So if I wanted to insert a new slide, I could simply press Ctrl+M, and it's going to give me a brand new slide. Again, you can see the placeholders that we have here: one for the title and one for the content of the slide. Now, you don't see the keyboard shortcut in the ScreenTip for a lot of these commands on the ribbons, but what you can do is if you press Alt on your keyboard, notice what happens to all of our ribbons; they now get numbers and letters assigned, so we can navigate entirely using our keyboard. So if I wanted to insert another new slide, I'd need to go to the Home tab by pressing H. Notice under the New Slide command we have I, so let's press that, and then I can use my up and down arrows to select the slide that I want. So I'm going to select Blank, hit Enter, and I've now added a new slide without touching my mouse at all. So this Alt key reveals KeyTips, and we can use them to access commands and ribbons directly from our keyboard. Now, we can press Escape to come out of there.

Another way that we can find out a big long list of all of the keyboard shortcuts available in PowerPoint is to jump into the Help files. Now, if you have a Help menu up here like I do, you can click on Help. Alternatively, if you press F1, it's going to open up Help in a pane on the right hand side. So at the top here, I could type in "PowerPoint keyboard shortcuts" and hit Enter, and when we hit Enter, that's exactly what we're going to get underneath. So it says, "Here's a list of common shortcuts in PowerPoint." So we can see: to create a new slide, Ctrl+M; to save the file, Ctrl+S; undo, Ctrl+Z; so on and so forth. So these are the most common that you can see here, and then we have other categories that we can choose for other keyboard shortcuts. So don't forget about those Help files.

And the final – and may I say very modern – way of finding out more information about keyboard shortcuts is to utilize Copilot for Bing. Now, currently Microsoft Copilot isn't available within the applications to anyone other than very large organizations; we're talking organizations of more than 300 people with 300 licenses. That version of Copilot is available when you open up PowerPoint, and it's really contextual to whatever it is that you're doing, and it's an awesome tool if your organization has it. Now, for most of us – myself included, because I don't work at an organization – I don't have access to the in-application version of Copilot, but we do have access to Copilot for Bing. So when I open up Copilot for Bing, it's going to open up in a pane on the right hand side, and if you've ever used something like ChatGPT, this works in a very similar way. We simply give it a prompt, and then it spits out an answer. "Please show me a list of keyboard shortcuts in PowerPoint." Let's send that through and see what it comes up with. And here we go; you can see it's giving me Ctrl+N, Ctrl+M, Ctrl+T, so on and so forth. Now, I'm not sure how many it's going to give me here – whether it's going to give me all of them or just a selection of the most popular – but this is a really nice quick way of finding out what those shortcuts are. And then, of course, with Copilot I'm just going to click on Stop Responding here. Underneath, we can just do Copy, and then we could paste that into a Word document, print it out, and have it next to us. So don't forget about that option as well.

So that's how you can find keyboard shortcuts when you're working in PowerPoint and some additional resources that you have access to.

It's time now to do Exercise 4. And in this exercise, we're going to practice some of the skills that we've learned in this section of the course. So the first thing I'd like you to do is just open up PowerPoint, and I'd like you to be able to identify where the following interface elements are located: the status bar, the ribbons, the backstage area, and the Quick Access Toolbar. I'd then like you to add three commands of your choice to the Quick Access Toolbar. And if you'd prefer the Quick Access Toolbar to be above the ribbon, I'd like you to change the position. That's all I need you to do. If you'd like to see my answer, then please keep watching.

So the first thing I asked you to do here was to be able to identify where specific elements are on the PowerPoint interface. Now, the first thing I asked you to identify is where the status bar is located. It's this small bar that runs across the bottom, and what we have on here are different pieces of useful information. Remember, you can customize what you see in this status bar by right clicking your mouse and selecting what you want to see. The status bar also houses a quick way to get to our notes, and a quick way to switch between different views, and zoom in and out of our presentation. The next element I asked you to identify were the ribbons. Now, this is a fairly easy one: our ribbons are right at the top here where we have these tabs: Home, Insert, Draw, Design, and the ribbons are what contain all of our commands and command groups. Next, I asked you to identify the backstage area. Now, the backstage area is what we find underneath the File menu. So File essentially isn't a ribbon; it's what we call backstage, and this is where you're going to find more of the admin tasks. So it's where we come to create new documents, open documents, save, print, export – things like that. So just be aware that that is what this area is called. And then finally, I asked you to identify the Quick Access Toolbar, and that is this little toolbar that you can see just here, underneath the ribbons.

Now, this leads us on quite nicely to the second part of the exercise, which is to add three commands of our choice onto the Quick Access Toolbar. And remember, there are a few different methods that you can use. When you find a command on a ribbon that you want to add, you can simply right click on that command and choose Add to Quick Access Toolbar. If you can't see the command you need to add on any of the ribbons, you can click the drop down just here, go to More Commands, and it's going to jump you across to your PowerPoint Options. And from here, we can choose commands from one of these menus. So if I go to All Commands, that's going to show every command that's available in PowerPoint, and then I can select whatever it is that I want to add. Let's say 3D Rotation; click on the Add button to add that across. So I can carry on doing that, click on OK, and I've completely customized my Quick Access Toolbar.

And the final thing I asked you to do in this exercise – and this was only if you want to do it – you can change the position of the Quick Access Toolbar. So maybe instead of having it located underneath the ribbons, you want to show it above the ribbons instead. So to do that, again we click this little drop down arrow and we have a Show Above Ribbon option. That's all I need you to do. I hope you've gotten okay with that, and I will see you in the next section.

Every time you create a new blank presentation in PowerPoint, it comes with a set of inbuilt preset placeholder slides, and we refer to these placeholder slides as slide layouts. Now, the default when you create a new presentation is this slide here: you're going to see one slide in your PowerPoint presentation, and this in general will be a title slide. You can see here I have some placeholders on this slide, which makes it really easy for me to add in text; I can simply click to add the title and then click to add a subtitle. Now, if we go up to the Home ribbon and click the New Slide dropdown, there are the nine different slide layouts that I could select. So if I wanted to insert a new slide, maybe to add some content, I can choose one of these slide layouts. So I'm going to add this slide just here, a two content slide; it's going to create a new slide for me with different placeholders. So again, this just makes it really simple for me to add text and content quickly. So I can click up here in the title area and I can add the title for this slide. If I want to add content in the two placeholders below, I can simply click in these placeholders and start to type in my content. Now, notice also in the middle here we have all of these different icons. So this really accounts for the different types of content that I could enter into this placeholder. So I don't necessarily just have to add bulleted text; I could add any of these pieces of content. Maybe I want to add a stock image into this placeholder, or upload my own image, or maybe an icon or a table. So there are different types of content that we can easily add into these placeholders.

Now, in this particular lesson, we're just going to start with a bulleted list. So I'm going to add in a Marketing Project Update. And of course, if I want to move across to the other placeholder, I simply need to click to add my text, and then when I click away, I can see exactly how my slide is going to look. And remember, at any point if you want to see what your presentation is going to look like to your audience, you can simply go down to your status bar and choose the Slide Show icon just here, or alternatively you can go up to the Slide Show ribbon and choose From Current Slide if you just want to view this slide. So this is what it's going to look like to my audience. Escape to come out.

Now, let's click back on Slide 1. Now, currently I don't have any information in these placeholders, so let's add a title for our presentation. Now, what about if I have a slide layout selected and I decide that I want to change it? And as a side note, if you ever want to know what slide layout is in use for any particular slide in your presentation, make sure you have the slide selected in the organizer on the left, go to the Home tab, and click the Layout dropdown. Whichever slide layout you can see highlighted in gray – and you can see for me that is the Title Slide – that's the one that's currently applied. So if I want to change the layout here, I can simply select another layout from this selection of nine. So maybe instead of Title and Subtitle, I just want to display the title on this first slide; all I need to do is choose the Title Only layout, and you can see that it changes that slide title. Now, notice as I've done that, I've got this little Designer pane open up on the right hand side, and this is part of PowerPoint's AI tools. Now, we're not going to use this at the moment, but we are going to come back to this a bit later on. So I'm simply going to click the cross to close that pane down for the time being.

The important takeaway here is how you can add new slides with different layouts and how you can change current slides by switching the layout. Always remember that if you need to add just a blank slide that doesn't contain any placeholders, just click the New Slide dropdown and click on Blank. Now, notice here it's inserted the blank in between these two slides, so you have to be quite careful where you're clicked when you add a new slide because I was clicked on Slide 1 when I inserted the new slide; it's going to insert it directly after. So if I didn't want that there, I'm just going to delete it out. I would need to make sure I have Slide 2 selected, then when I insert a blank, it's going to put it at the end.

The slides pane that you see on the left hand side here is a great place to come to organize your slides. As you build up your presentation, you're going to get more and more slide thumbnails showing in here, and we need to know how to manage those because we're probably going to want to add new slides, remove new slides, duplicate slides, and even rearrange slides. And we can do all of that from within this slide organizer area.

Now, in the last lesson we saw how to add a new slide: we click the New Slide dropdown and then we can choose a slide layout, and I mentioned that where you're currently clicked in this organizer makes a real difference when it comes to where you're inserting your slides. So remember that as we go forward.

Now, if we want to remove a slide, this is as simple as you might think it is. We can simply select the slide – so I'm going to select this blank slide – and we can just press the Delete key on our keyboard. That's going to get rid of it.

Now, what about if I want to duplicate or copy a slide? So let's say that I want to make a copy of Slide number 2. And we would make a copy of a slide to make ourselves more efficient. Sometimes, if you already have a slide that has the layout and maybe the imagery that you want to use throughout the presentation, it's easier to simply duplicate the slide than go back in, create a new slide, and add the content. So it's very simple to duplicate a slide, and there are a couple of different methods you can use. Now, you can copy and paste slides. So if I select Slide 2, I can press Ctrl+C, which is the keyboard shortcut to copy. I can click underneath and then press Ctrl+V to paste that slide, and essentially I have a copy of Slide 2. I'm going to delete that out because the quicker way, and the method that I use more often, is to simply duplicate the slide. This time we only need one keyboard shortcut as opposed to two, and the keyboard shortcut to duplicate is Ctrl+D, and we're going to get an exact duplicate of that slide. I could duplicate multiple slides so I need to select both slides; I'm going to hold down Shift to select Slide 1, and then if I press Ctrl+D, I'm going to get a copy of both of those slides.

Now, let's say that on this slide here, Slide number 3, I currently have the Title Only layout applied to Slide 3. Now, what if I'm editing this slide and I move this placeholder? So maybe I think I want this in the middle somewhere down here. Now, I can do that; we can move placeholders around, that's not a problem. But what if we make a whole bunch of changes and then we decide, "Actually, you know what? I want to reset this back to its original layout." Well, fortunately we have a button that's going to allow us to do this. So if you've made loads of changes to the slides and you just want to reset to the default layout, which is Title Only in this case, if we go to the Home tab, the Slides group, we have a Reset button, and you can see it says, "Reset the position, size, and formatting of the slide placeholders to their default settings." So when I click on Reset, it's going to move that placeholder back to where it should be for a Title Slide layout. So just remember that button because it can be quite useful if you find yourself needing to backtrack and reset.

Now, the final thing I'm going to talk to you about in this particular lesson is rearranging slides. Because quite often, we will start adding slides into our presentation, and we'll decide that they maybe need to go in a completely different order. Well, this is really simple; we can do this via drag and drop in this Slides pane. So maybe I just decide that I want these two Marketing Strategy slides together; I can simply click on Slide 3 and I can drag it upwards, and notice a space is made, and I can let go of my mouse. I could do the same here; I could drag Slide 3 underneath Slide 4. I can drag multiple; I just need to select them. So let's select the first slide, hold down Shift, select the second, and then I can drag both and drop them where I need them to be.

Now, it's worth noting that many of the options that I've shown you just here are also available on the ribbons and in the right click menu. If I right click on any slide, you can see some of the commands that we've used in this lesson, for example Duplicate Slide. So if you can't remember that the keyboard shortcut is Ctrl+D, you have the option in the right click menu. We have Delete Slide in here as well. And we can even change the layout from here if we want to. Also, on the ribbon, on the Home ribbon specifically, in the Clipboard group, this is where we have our Cut, Copy, and Paste options, and of course we have our New Slide drop down.

So far in this course, we've seen how to create a basic presentation and apply slide layouts. So now it's time to liven up our presentations a little bit and start adding color and images. So I've gone in and I've created a brand new presentation for Hummingbird Designs. Slide number 1 is just using a Title Slide layout, and then I have two blank slides after it. Now, we haven't added any kind of theme to our presentation as yet, which is why it looks kind of boring and we just have a plain white background. If we go to the Design tab and click the drop down just here, you can see different slide designs that we could apply to this presentation. Now, whilst some of these are really nice, maybe we want something completely different. For example, maybe I just want a gradient background in very specific branded colors. So if we click away, instead of choosing a theme, we can go over to the Customize group and we have a Format Background button, and this is going to open up a pane on the right hand side and allow us to really customize exactly what our background looks like. And if we do this, it means that we can change the design slightly for every single slide. So if you want slides that are different colors, then you can format the background and do that.

Now, I want to apply this background to all three of my slides in this presentation. So I'm going to hold down Shift, and that's going to select all three. So any changes I make over here are going to apply to all of my slides. Now, in this Fill group, we can choose to fill the background with a solid fill, so that's just simply one flat color. If we click the little color drop down, it opens up a palette that's made up of our theme colors, and this is the default Office theme that's in use when you create a new PowerPoint presentation. We can choose one of the standard colors, or we can go to More Colors if we want something else. So let's start out simply by applying one of these theme colors. I'm going to go for this light purple, and you can see that that applies to all of the slides. Also notice we have a Transparency slider just here, so if I want to make this more transparent, I can drag this slider up, and I'm getting a lighter pink, and it goes all the way through to white. And if you forget to select all of your slides when you're formatting the background, and you just apply the formatting to the first slide, for example, we also have an Apply to All button at the bottom, which is going to copy that formatting down.

Now, notice that we can also fill the background with a gradient fill. So if I select this option, it opens up more customizations below. So we have some preset gradients; this is really just changing the way that the gradient looks. We can choose a gradient type – so these are all slightly different. If you click on Radial, you can see it kind of changes the way that that gradient looks. I'm going to leave mine on Linear. We can choose the direction – so which direction do we want this gradient to flow in? Now, I want mine from the bottom up. We can choose the angle if we want to, and then we can specify what colors we want to use in our gradient. And notice here we have what we call gradient stops. And if we move these around, you can see it changes the intensity and the position of these gradient colors. And we can modify the color of each one of these gradient stops. We could even drag gradient stops off of this toolbar if we have too many. So maybe just want two; I could drag this one off and I could drag this one off, and now I just have two gradient stops that I can adjust. If I want to add another one, I can click on the Add Gradient Stop, and that's going to add it in the middle. So I'm going to have three colors in my gradient, and I'm going to position them like that.

Now, in order to get a really nice looking gradient, I'm going to go back to that website that I showed you at the beginning of the course, coolors.com, search for color palettes that work well together. So I'm going to go to Tools and we're going to explore palettes. Now, if I scroll through some of these palettes, I'm going to choose something to use in my presentation, and I think I'm going to go for – let's go for this one just here. Now, notice as we hover our mouse over each of the colors, it shows us the hexadecimal value. So if I want to use this red in my gradient, I can simply click to select the hexadecimal value, jump back to PowerPoint, and maybe I want this gradient stop to be in that red color. So I need to select it, click on Color, and go to More Colors, and this is where I can paste in the hexadecimal value: Ctrl+V, click on OK, and it's going to add that red in. Let's grab this color just here, the greeny color, let's click, and this time I'm going to add that to the middle gradient stop. So let's select it, click the drop down, More Colors, and then we can simply Ctrl+V to paste in that hex code, click on OK. Let's do the final one. I'm going to go back to my palette, and this time we're going to use this cream color. Click to copy, back to PowerPoint, select the final gradient stop, More Colors, and Ctrl+V to paste in the hex code. So now you can see what that looks like. And we can adjust these: so if we want more red, we can bring that up; if we maybe want more of the green, we can bring that down. And we can also click on these specific gradient stops and change the transparency. So maybe that red's a bit too intense; I can make it a little bit more transparent. So a really nice way of adding a consistent color theme into your presentations. And remember, Apply to All will apply this to all of your slides if you forgot to select all of them before you started formatting.

Now, the final option I'm going to show you here is how to use a picture as a background. So let's go back to the Home tab, and I'm just going to insert a new blank slide. We still have the Format Background pane open, but this time we're going to say Picture or Texture Fill. Now, it will always fill it initially with the first texture that it finds in the list, and for me that is this one just here. We have a list of textures that we can apply from this little drop down. I generally don't tend to use these because I find them a bit busy and also a little bit old school looking. But what I want to do is I want to insert a picture. So what we can do is go to Picture Source and click on Insert. I'm going to insert an image from a file, and I'm just going to go to my Downloads folder and insert an image that I've got saved off from my PC. And all of these images you see here are from that website that I showed you, pexels.com. Let's click on Insert, and there we go; we now have an image as a background. Now, you might be thinking to yourself, "Well, that's fine, but if I put some text on top of this, it's going to be a bit hard to read." So in the next lesson, I'm going to show you a little technique that I like to use whenever I'm using a reasonably busy image in the background so that the text can still be seen. So if you're ready, let's jump across there now.

We finished out the previous lesson by adding an image as our slide background, and I mentioned that if you have an image in the background of your slide and you want to add text over the top, sometimes it can be really hard to read the text depending on the image that you're using. For example, with this slide here, Slide number 4, we have this image in the background. Now, currently this is a Blank layout slide, so I'm going to change the layout. Let's go to Layout, and I'm going to say that I want a title on this slide, so let's choose Title Only. And now I get my placeholder. If I add a title in here – so let's say this one is called Meet the Team – and maybe I decide I want to move this down, that's really, really hard to read. Even if I make this title bigger – so I'm going to go to the Home tab, the Font group, and I'm just going to increase this font size to make this a lot bigger than it currently is – it's slightly better, but it's still kind of obscured. The M is in the black part of the background, and it just doesn't look particularly good or professional. So how can we get around this? Well, let's delete out that title for one second, and I'm just going to reapply the Blank layout.

Now, what we could do here is add what I like to call a transparent overlay, and this involves simply adding a shape over the top and changing the fill color. Now, if you're thinking to yourself, "Well, if we add a shape over the top of an image, we're not going to be able to see the image," but remember, we can adjust the transparency. So what I'm going to do first of all is let's zoom out a little bit. In the bottom right hand corner, notice we have this little Zoom slider, so I can drag this down to zoom out of this slide so I can see it a little bit better. Now, what we're going to do is we're going to jump up to the Insert tab, and we're going to insert a shape.

Now, we haven't spoken about shapes yet in this course. We have quite a few lessons on shapes a bit later on, but this will give you a little sneak preview. If you want to insert a shape into your presentation, you just need to jump across to the illustrations group and click the lower half of the shapes button to expose the shapes gallery. And we have all of our shapes that we can use in here, divided down into different categories.

Now, I want to use a rectangle, so let's go down to the rectangle section and select this one. Now, as soon as you select a shape, your cursor is going to change to a crosshair. Can you see that? I'm hovering over a light part of the image, and this just means we're now in draw mode, and we can draw our shape. So I'm going to draw a shape that is exactly the same size as my slide. So I'm going to start in the top left-hand corner and let's click and let's drag it all the way out and let go.

Now, by default, the shape is going to be filled with the default color from the theme that I'm using in PowerPoint. Now, if we go to the Design tab and click the drop-down just here, the default for all new presentations is the standard Office theme, and this comes with its own theme colors. So that is what I'm seeing just here. Also, note that when you add a shape, by default, it will insert with a shape outline. There's a very thin dark blue outline around the outside of that shape.

Now, I'm going to change that. Notice that when we're clicked on a shape, we get access to a contextual ribbon at the top called Shape Format. And we spoke about contextual ribbons right at the beginning of this course. They only appear when they're needed. So because I'm clicked on a shape, I can now see that Shape Format ribbon. Now, in here, I can control the shape outline. So let's click the drop-down and I want to say "No Outline" just to remove that.

Now I have my shape covering my image, but what I can do is I can change the transparency to show some of that image coming through. So to do this, we need to right-click on the shape and go down to the Format Shape menu option. This is going to open up a pane on the right-hand side, and we can choose how we want to fill this shape. Now, it might be that I want to use the same gradient fill that I used before, or it might be that I just want a solid fill. So let's use a solid fill in this example. I'm going to click the drop-down and I'm going to choose my color. Now, I want to have white text on top of this background, so I'm going to go for a reasonably dark color. Let's go for something that's almost black. I'm going to go for this one just here, and then underneath, I can adjust the transparency. So can you see as soon as I start moving that slider around, more of the image pokes through? So this is a really nice way of being able to use an image and having that effect in the background, but still being able to see any text that you put on top. So you can take this down to almost dark if you want, and just having it peeking through a little bit. So I'm going to take mine down to 133%, and now I'm going to go back to Home and I'm going to change the layout. Let's say Title Only.

Now I want my title text to be white. So I'm going to click on the outside of this text box that this title placeholder is in, go to the Home tab, and I'm just going to change the font to white. And now I can add my title. And once again, I can increase the font size to make that a little bit bigger and easier to see. And I can move this around if I want to. So maybe I want to place it in the slide so that it looks something like that. So using a shape and adjusting that transparency is a really nice way of creating modern slides that allow you to use nice images in the background but don't distract away from the information on the slide.

AI has definitely been the buzzword of 2023. It feels like everybody is talking about AI and how we can use it to help us out when we're working with applications like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. But did you know that PowerPoint has contained AI for a number of years? I'm guessing that you probably didn't. A lot of the things that we take for granted in PowerPoint are actually using AI, and I'm going to show you one of those features now because this can be a really nice way of quickly applying a really cool-looking slide design to a presentation.

Now, you can see here that we are working on a presentation called "Hummingbird Designs." Now, if I go to the Home tab, notice all the way over at the end here, we have Designer, and it says, "Open the Designer pane for instant slide makeovers." Now, we did see this pop up automatically when we were working on slides in previous lessons, and you will see this pop up from time to time to help you out when it comes to slide design. But if you want to open it at any time, you can simply by clicking on Designer.

Now, notice it said "Generating design ideas." Now, what's currently happening here is that PowerPoint, the AI element, is looking at the context of my presentation. So it's reading the words on the slide, and it's found the word "hummingbird." So look what it's presented to me: a bunch of slide ideas related to hummingbird. And you'll find this no matter what you have on your slide. The AI is going to go to work and produce a bunch of potential slide designs that you could use based on the wording and the topic of your presentation. So it is pretty cool. And check out some of these. I really like them. If we scroll down, we can see all of these different slide designs that it's generated. Right at the bottom, we could even see more if we wanted to. But if we want to apply any of these, we can simply select. So I really like this top one. Let's select it, and it's going to apply it.

If I go to the second slide, you can see it's not generating any ideas, and that is because this is just a blank slide. We don't have anything on the slide, so it doesn't know what I want to produce. And you will find that it doesn't work with all slides. It depends if you have text on the slide or not. And if you want to go in and switch this to something else, you can simply open up the Designer again and choose another design from this little pane. So just be aware of this little Designer tool because you will see this pop up from time to time, and we're going to see it pop up as we start to add more elements into our presentation.

So far in this course, we've discussed that when we add a new slide, it comes with default placeholders and a slide layout. Now, occasionally, there will be things that you want to add to every single slide. For example, maybe you want to add your company logo into the bottom corner. And if you have that company logo saved off as a JPG or a PNG file, it is a little bit of a pain to have to go into each and every slide, go up to Insert, and insert the picture from your device. What would be much better is that every time we insert a new slide, the logo is automatically applied to the bottom. Similarly, if I decide that I want a different font for all of my slides other than the one that's currently in this template, which is Aptos Display, it is a bit of a pain to have to go into every single slide, selecting the text, and changing the font again. It would be much better to change it once, and then every time we add a new slide, we get that new font.

Now, we can do this using the Slide Master. And in my experience, when working with PowerPoint and teaching people how to use PowerPoint, this seems to be something which people struggle with a little bit. It's actually pretty logical, so let's work our way through it so you understand exactly how it works. Now, the Slide Master is basically similar to a master template. Any changes we make to the Slide Master will appear on every single slide, but there is a bit of a caveat to that, in that we can automatically apply to different slide layouts.

Let's first bring up the Slide Master. Now, to find the Slide Master, you need to go to the View tab, and in the Master Views group, this is where you'll find your Slide Master. Now, if we take a look at our Slide Master, I think this is where people then tend to get pretty confused because what are all of these different slides in our slide organizer? Well, the one at the top here, this is what we call the master slide. It's like the root slide for everything else. So any changes that we make to this root slide are going to show on every single slide that we add. Now, underneath this root slide, we then have all of the different slide layouts that we could possibly create. For example, this is the title slide, this is a title and content slide, we have down here our blank slide. So all you're seeing underneath the root are all of the different slide layouts. And the way that this works is that if I want to have certain things applied to certain slide layouts, I would just change the relevant slide layout in here. So, for example, if I wanted my company logo on every single slide in the presentation and when I create new slides, I would add it to this top root one just here. If I only wanted my company logo every time I create a title slide, I would add it to the master title slide just here. So that's the difference between these.

Another thing to note is that when you select one of these slides in the organizer, can you see here it says "Title Slide Layout used by slides one"? So it tells you how many slides you have this specific layout applied to in your current presentation, and that can be pretty useful sometimes.

Now, let's say that I want to change the font across my entire presentation. For this, I'm going to go up to the master title slide to do it because I want it on every slide. And all I would need to do here is select the title style placeholder, go to the Home tab, and then I can change the font. So instead of Aptos, maybe I want, let's just go for something like Arial. I could even make this bold if I wanted to. And I'm going to click on the placeholder underneath and I'm going to make that Arial as well, but for this one, I'm not going to make it bold. Now, notice that if you take a look at these other layouts, now that change has been made to every single master slide. So it doesn't matter which layout we apply to our presentation, that title placeholder is always going to be in bold, and the overall text is going to be Arial.

So now let's say that we want to add our company logo, but we only want to add the company logo when we choose a blank slide layout. So instead of modifying the root master slide up here, I'm going to scroll down to find that blank layout. And you can see here it's saying that it's used by slides two to three. So I'm going to select this blank master. I could simply insert the image of my logo, or I could insert a placeholder, and you can see we have lots of different types of content placeholders. Now, I'm just going to insert the image. I have my logo saved off to my PC, and you'll find this logo in the course files folder if you'd like to follow along. So let's go to the Pictures drop-down. I'm going to choose "This Device." There is my company logo. Let's select it and click on Insert.

Now, this logo actually does have "Hummingbird Designs," but it's in white because I've got a dark slide layout, and this will show up once we close the Slide Master. Now, once you have your image in here, I can resize this. So I want to make this quite a bit smaller and then position it where I want it to appear. So I want to have my logo in the bottom left-hand corner. Now, remember, we've only applied this to the blank layout template. So when we close the master view, what we should find is that where we have a blank layout in use, which is slides two and three, we can see the company logo in the bottom right-hand corner. It's also worth noting that for every slide in our presentation, the text has been changed to Arial because we modified that root slide. If I click in the text, you can see Arial just here. And what we should find is that if we were to add a new slide and we were to use the blank template, it's going to add the new slide with the logo on the bottom.

Now, notice it hasn't added the gradient fill background, and that's because I didn't apply this gradient fill to the Slide Master. If I wanted every slide that I create to have this same colored background, I would need to format the background in the Slide Master. But that's the concept of how Slide Masters work. There are many other things we can add into Slide Masters. For example, we can add in things like headers and footers. You can see we have footer placeholders. But the general rule here is that if you want to make changes to multiple slides and you want those changes to apply going forward, change the Slide Master instead of trying to manually change every single slide.

So far in this course, we've mainly been dealing with slide layouts that contain preset placeholders, and we've simply been adding in text to those placeholders. But you can also define your own placeholders, essentially by adding in text boxes. And text boxes allow us to place text anywhere on the slide. We're not just limited to wherever the placeholder is of the layout that we've selected.

Now, notice here that I've added another slide to this presentation, slide number four. And if we check out the layout that I applied, it's just a simple two-content layout. Now, if we click on this first placeholder, this is essentially just a text box, and text boxes can be changed and modified to suit our own needs. So you can see here that this text box is currently pretty large. I have a lot of white space at the bottom. So what we can simply do here is resize that text box and make it more economical. So notice at the bottom, we have these little circles. These are little handles that we can click on and drag upwards to reduce the amount of space. And I can do the same with the text box on the right-hand side. I can click and I can drag this up.

Now, the reason why we might want to do that is because if I was to add maybe an image or an icon or something else onto this slide, if I have a text box that's this big and I want to put an image underneath here, it then makes it quite difficult for me to select the image because this text box is effectively over the top. So I always like to reduce the size of the text box so that it exactly fits the text contained within.

Now, there's so many other things that you can do with text boxes, but those are quite hard to demonstrate when we have a slide with a white background. So let's switch to the slide before the "Meet the Team" slide, where we have this darker background. And I'm going to duplicate this slide. Let's Control+D to duplicate it, and I'm going to delete out the placeholder here so that we're just left with this background image.

Now, if you want to insert a text box onto any slide, you can simply jump up to the Insert ribbon, and then over in the Text group, we have a Text Box option just here. So let's select it, and then what happens is when we click, and I'm just going to click down here, we get our cursor surrounded by a small box, and we can simply start typing. So I'm going to type in "We're ready to talk to you." Now, when we select the text box, notice that we have a Shape Format ribbon at the top here, because effectively, a text box is considered to be a shape. I can move the text box around, and if I go to the Home tab, I can change any of these font properties to customize the way this text looks. So maybe I want to make this bigger. Let's make it 44 points. In fact, I think that's a bit too big. Let's go for 32. I could change the font color, so I'm going to make the font white. And what I could do to really make this stand out from the background because it's kind of blending in a little bit is go to the Shape Format ribbon and I could change the shape fill of that text box. So maybe I want to make this a darker color, or maybe a blue, or something like that.

Now, another really, really cool little utility that we have in here is the eyedropper tool. Notice down here we have Eyedropper. If I click this, my cursor changes to this little pipette, and what it allows me to do is hover over any part of the image in the background and pick up the color in use. So this is a great little tool if you're kind of trying to tie colors together within your slide. So if I hover over her top, this is kind of this dark green color, and click, it's going to apply that to the background of the text box. And then I can move this up to the top. I could make it wider if I wanted to, or I can make it narrower. I can use my alignment tool. So if I go to Home, maybe I want this aligned to the middle, like that. Now, I actually like this on one line. So let's change that. And I can even add an outline around the outside of this text box. So once again, I'm going to go to Outline, I'm going to choose a white outline, and I could change the weight of the outline as well. So currently, we have quite a thin line, but I could make this quite a bit thicker if I wanted to. So let's take this up to three points. So very quickly there, we've been able to add a text box, add our text, we've used the eyedropper utility to fill in the background color, and we've seen how we can add a border around the outside.

Sections are a great way of adding a bit of structure and organization to our presentations. They're also really useful if we want to create custom slideshows, and we're going to talk a lot more about custom slideshows a bit later on in the course. For the time being, let's just focus on adding sections into a PowerPoint presentation.

Now, in this example, I've simply loaded up a template, and this is a template that you can find under File and New. Now, the reason why I've used a template is because this contains lots and lots of different slides. And without sections in our presentation, as slides just run one after the other. So we have slide one, slide two, slide three, slide four, so on and so forth. These aren't grouped or categorized or sectioned off in any way at all. So let's go in and let's add some sections to give it a little bit of structure.

Now, the first thing I'm going to do here is, when we have slide one, I want to add a section called "Introduction," and maybe that's including slide one and slide two because these are the introduction slides. It's my title slide, and then I'm just talking a little bit about the company. Now, there are a few different ways that we can add sections into presentations. We can go up to the Home tab, and we have a Section tool just here, and we can choose Add Section. Alternatively, we can right-click on the slide, and we also have Add Section in that right-click menu. So if I click on Add Section, it's going to give me this little pop-up box, and I can give my section a name. So I'm going to call this "Introduction." Let's click on Rename, and you can see it's added it at the top. Now, I want to include both slide one and slide two in this section.

So my next section is going to start from slide three, and maybe slide three and slide four are related to issues. So I want another section in here called "Issues." So I'm going to click on the first slide in the section. Let's right-click, Add Section, and we're going to call this "Issues." Rename. I'm going to go down to the next section. So I want this to start just here, and this is related to the products. So again, we're going to go to Add Section. This one is called "Products," and Rename. And I would carry on going through this presentation adding in sections. So let's just add one more. We're going to name this "Company," so on and so forth. Pretty straightforward.

So now that we have these sections, what can we do with them? Well, notice that each section has a little collapsible and expandable arrow next to it. So if I just want to work on the two slides under the Issues section, I could collapse up the other sections around it, which is going to allow me just to focus in on these two slides. Now, if I want to quickly expand everything out again, I don't have to go in and do it all individually. I can go to the section drop-down, and notice we have Collapse All and Expand All buttons. So if I click on Expand All, it's going to expand all of those out again. Notice also under this drop-down, we can Remove a Section or we can Remove All Sections.

Another thing we can do is we can use these sections to reorganize our slides. So maybe I decide that both of these slides in the Issues section need to be underneath Products. So what I can do here is grab where it says "Issues" and drag it underneath. And how much easier is that? Because it collapses up all of the slides, and I can see this a lot better to drag and drop. So it makes moving things around a lot easier as well. And also, remember that if we right-click on any of these section headings, we then have options in the right-click menu as well. So again, we can rename from here, we can remove sections, or we can reorder by moving sections up or down.

Now, I always really like to make sure that my PowerPoint presentation is in sections because this feeds through to lots of other things in PowerPoint. For example, if we go to the Insert tab, we can insert something called a Section Zoom. Now, I'm not going to go into this at this stage of the course because it's a bit more advanced than we're currently at. But in order to use this, we need to have our presentation split up into sections. Also, if we want to create a custom slideshow, it helps to have a presentation in sections, and I'm going to show you why this is so useful when we get to those relevant topics. But for the time being, that is how you can very easily add sections into your presentation to give it some structure.

Another really useful tip to know when you're working in a PowerPoint presentation is how to quickly find and replace fonts. So we're sticking with this presentation that I created based off of the template. And if we take a look at this presentation, you can see that we have different fonts in use here. So currently, all of the titles on each of these slides are using this font just here, Poster Headings. And if I take a look at the body font in use, it's using Avenir Next LT Pro Light. Now, maybe my manager comes to me and says, "You know what? I don't like these fonts. Can you change the font to something else across all of the slides?" Now, if your first thought is to go into each slide, select the text box, and then go up here and manually change it, that is going to take you an age to do, particularly if you have a lot of slides included in your presentation. There is a much better way to do this, and that is using the Find and Replace utility.

So if we go up to the Home tab, all the way over in the Editing group, we have a Replace option. Now, if we click the drop-down, we have a very specific option in here to Replace Fonts in the Presentation. So if we choose Replace Fonts, we can then go in, choose what we want to replace, and what we want to replace it with. Now, the heading fonts that I want to change are using Poster font style, so we're going to select that. And then we can choose what we want to replace it with. And this time, we get our full list of fonts. So I'm going to scroll down to, let's go for F Sans Black, and click on Replace. And you can see that's exactly what it's done. If we close out of here and click in that title area and take a look at the font in use, it says F Sans Black, and it's applied that to every single placeholder that contains that font style.

Now, if we go to the About Us page, where we have these little text boxes, these are using Avenir Next LT Pro. So we can pretty much use the same process to replace these fonts as well. So I'm going to go back to the Replace Fonts dialog box. This time, we want to select Avenir Next LT Pro, and then we can choose what we want to replace it with. So let's just go for Bow, click on Replace, and that font has changed. And if I check up on the Home ribbon, you can see now in the Font group, it says Bow. So Replace Fonts is a really amazing efficiency tool that's really going to quicken up the process of switching out fonts for other fonts in your presentation.

When it comes to copying slides from one PowerPoint presentation to another, we have a couple of different methods that we can use. We can simply cut or copy and paste, or we can import slides from one presentation to another. So let's take a look at both methods.

So I have open on the screen here two presentations, and you can see that I've displayed them side by side. Now, maybe I want to copy slides from the presentation on the right across to the presentation on the left. Now, as I mentioned, the first method we can use is cut or copy and paste, and we can use this method to copy across one or multiple slides. Now, the cut, copy, and paste method requires you to have both presentations open. So let's drag out so we can see our thumbnails a little bit better, and I'm going to do the same in the other presentation. Because now what we can do is, let's say I want to grab this agenda slide. All I need to do is select it. I can press Control+C to copy it, and then I just need to go to the point in the other presentation where I want to paste it. So let's say I want to paste it underneath slide two. If I click under slide two, I get this red line, and then I can simply do a Control+V, which is going to do the default paste.

Now, the default paste in this particular instance is to use the destination formatting. So notice here that as I've pasted this slide in, the formatting has changed very slightly from the original version. It looks like the font has changed, the alignment has changed, and also the colors in use. Now, that's happened because I just did a Control+V. It's doing the default paste. And if you notice underneath, we have this little tag with this drop-down, and this shows us our paste options. Now, the one that's highlighted in gray, "Use Destination Theme," and that's the one that gets used when you just do Control+V. So basically, the slide has updated to match the settings and the theme in the new presentation. But we do have a couple of other options. The second one is to "Keep Source Formatting." So check out what happens if I now choose this. You can see now it looks exactly the same as the original because I've pasted it and kept the original formatting. The final option we have in here is to "Paste as a Picture." Now, in this case, I don't want to do that, but just be aware of the difference between these two options: "Use Destination Theme" and "Keep Source Formatting."

Now, we can use cut, copy, and paste to do exactly the same for multiple slides, and the process doesn't change. So all we would need to do is select multiple slides from our presentation, and then we can use the same method of copy and paste. Now, I'm going to delete out that slide that we just copied in, because what we're going to do this time is we're going to close down the presentation on the right.

Now, if I'm working in this presentation here, and I don't have the other file open, I might choose to use a different method if I want to import some slides. And this method means that I don't have to go in, find the file, and reopen it in order to copy them across. What we can do is we can jump up to the Home tab, go to the Slides group, and click on Reuse Slides. This is going to open a pane on the right-hand side, and underneath, you're going to see any presentations that you've opened and worked on recently. Alternatively, you can browse for the file that contains the slides that you want to import. Now, we used this presentation recently, so it's sitting there underneath. Now, notice it says "Choose content" or "Open in PowerPoint." So I can simply open this presentation in PowerPoint from here, or if I want to insert specific slides into the pitch deck presentation that I have in the main window, I can say "Choose content."

Now, what this is going to do is it's going to show me all of the slides contained within that presentation, and I can then go through and select which ones I want to insert. Now, notice by default, we have "Use Source Formatting" selected. So if I want these slides to stay looking exactly as they are in the original, I would keep this box checked. If I wanted these slides to take on the formatting of the presentation that I'm pasting them into, I would deselect this box. Now, I'm going to leave this unchecked because any slides I import, I want them to take on the look and feel of the current presentation. So let's just go through and let's insert a few slides. I'm going to say Insert Slide on Agenda, let's insert Introduction, and also Results from Last Year. So you can see how simple that is. Once you're done, you can close this pane down, and then we can go in, and we might find that we need to do a little bit of rearranging because we're not using the source formatting, we've updated it with this presentation's formatting and colors. But that's how simple it is. Two different methods to copy slides from one PowerPoint presentation to another.

It's time now to do Exercise Five, and in this exercise, we're going to practice some of the skills that we've learned in this section of the course, and this is really where the hard work starts. So the first thing I need you to do here is I want you to create a new presentation, and I'd like you to build out a title slide. So we're going to do this from a blank presentation, and I'd like you to apply the title slide layout. I'd like you to add the title text "Cool Beans Coffee Company" and add the subtitle text "Ethically Sourced, Always Delicious." Then I'd like you to use Designer to apply a theme to the presentation. And you're going to see in a moment on the next slide the theme that I used. Now, you could choose another theme, but if you want to follow along accurately with me, ensure that you pick the same theme.

Now, note there is an optional exercise in here. So if you want to practice modifying the Slide Master, download the "coolbeans_logo.jpg" from the exercise files folder and add it to the master. But it is worth noting that if you've applied a theme to your presentation using Designer, the logo is going to be hidden on all slides. So I've added that in there in case you just want to practice adding things to the master slides. You can do that, just be aware that because we've used Designer to add our theme, we can't see any graphics we add to the master. And this is effectively what I'd like your slide to end up looking like. So we have our title, our subtitle, and we have our theme applied using Designer. See how you get on with that. If you'd like to see my answer, then please keep watching.

So the first thing I asked you to do here was to create a new blank presentation, which we've done just here, and I wanted you to make sure that the first slide is a title slide. Now, I think this is, let's go to Layout and just check. Yes, we have a Title Slide layout applied. I then asked you to add some title text, "Cool Beans Coffee Company," and then some subtitle text, "Ethically Sourced, Always Delicious." Next, I asked you to use Designer to apply a theme to this presentation. So on the Home ribbon, we're going to click on Designer. And what you might find in here is that you don't actually get the suggestion for the one that I've used in the example. Now, there's not a great deal that we can do about that because these are obviously AI generated, so they're going to be different every time you go into here. So what I would say to you is, if you can't see the one that I use, then just pick something else that you think is pretty cool. So, for example, I'm just going to go for this one just here.

Now, if you do want to follow along exactly with me, what I would suggest you do is open up the "Cool Beans Coffee Company Completed" presentation in the exercise files folder, grab the first slide, and just copy and paste it into the new presentation, and make sure that you keep the source formatting when you do this. That will effectively bring across the template, and then when you're working, you're working exactly along with me. So either of those options is fine. You don't have to necessarily follow exactly the themes and styles that I'm using.

Now, I gave you an optional exercise of modifying the master and adding a logo. Now, because we've used Designer, the logo won't actually show. But if you did want to practice that step, let me just run through with you how you would do that. So the logo for Cool Beans Coffee Company is located in the exercise files folder. So we're going to go to the View tab, we're going to go to Slide Master. And if I want to add the logo onto every slide, I need to make sure I'm clicked on the root slide, the top slide up here, and then I can insert the graphic. So let's go to Insert Pictures, This Device. There is the logo. Let's click to select and click on Insert. So now we can simply resize this and we can place it wherever we want. So I'm going to put mine all the way over here. And notice that that is now on every single slide. Let's close the Master View. As I said, we can't see the logo because we're using Designer, but that is how you would modify the Slide Master. That is all I need you to do in this exercise. I will see you in the next section.

It's time now to shift our focus and really start to jazz up our presentation by adding some visual elements, and we're going to start in this first lesson by adding pictures to our slides. Now, just to get you up to speed, I've created a brand new presentation, and we're going to be using this presentation throughout the balance of this course. And currently, in this presentation, I have two slides, and I've built these slides using techniques that we've already seen demonstrated in previous lessons. So, just a quick recap on this first slide here, this is a combination of a gradient-filled background, some text boxes, and I've just inserted my company logo and some shapes. Now, we haven't spoken much about shapes, but everything else we've already seen demonstrated, and I've added this background and the logo into the Slide Master so that whenever I create a new slide, it's created with the correct background, with the logo, and with the correct fonts.

Now, what we want to do on slide two is we want to have a really nice "Meet the Team" slide. And maybe I want to introduce the three managers or the three heads of department to my audience. Now, if you want to insert images into your presentation, you need to go to the Insert tab, and then we have an Images group here where we can insert pictures. And notice that we can choose the source of our pictures. So if we click on Online Pictures, this is going to open up a window that's going to allow us to add a keyword into this search field at the top, and then it's going to go away and search the internet for everything that matches. So if I was to type in, let's just go for "beach" and hit Enter, these are all the images it's found online of beaches that have a Creative Commons only license. Now, even when an image does have a Creative Commons only license, if you want to use that image in your presentation, and the presentation is going to be used for commercial purposes, you still need to check the copyright on the individual image, even if it comes up as Creative Commons only. So just bear that in mind. In general, when I want to use images in a PowerPoint presentation, I tend to stay away from online pictures and instead make sure I've already downloaded pictures from a royalty-free image source such as Pexels or Unsplash. But just be aware that this option is there. You can insert pictures from online.

We can also search the stock image library. So this is PowerPoint's in-built gallery of stock images. We can do exactly the same thing up here. Let's be consistent and just type in "beach," and again, it's going to return a bunch of stock images for use.

Now, the third method we can use as our source is our mobile device. So most of us are used to taking pictures on our phones these days, so we now have a way that we can very quickly import photos from our phone into PowerPoint. Now, this is a fairly recent addition to PowerPoint 365, and currently, if we click this, you'll see that it's only available for Android users only. So if you have an iOS device like I do, then unfortunately you are out of luck. But if you do have an Android device, you can scan the QR code to get started.

Now, the final option we have in here is to upload photos from this device. So that means pictures that you have stored on your PC. And this is what we're going to do to finish off this lesson. I've downloaded three photographs of people from pexels.com, and we're just going to upload those into our PowerPoint presentation, and this will set us up nicely for the next few lessons. So let's click on "This Device." I want to add this picture, this one, and this one. Let's insert them in.

Now, notice what happens as soon as those pictures are added to the slide. Did you see the Designer automatically popped open on the right-hand side? So it's recognized that I've added content to this slide, and now it's giving me a choice of really nice designs that I might possibly want to use. And you can see some of these actually look really, really great. So this really helps you organize your imagery and your text into nice layouts. This one's pretty cool down here. You simply need to click on it to insert it, and it takes a lot of the hard work out of designing your own slides. Now, I don't want to use this. I'm going to Undo to go back to how we were, and I'm simply going to close down the Designer.

Because now that we have our images in here, I want to resize them. Now, we can do that by dragging the handles in to make them a little bit smaller. Now, notice as I'm dragging the handles, I don't know if you can see, every now and again, we get these red dashed lines pop up on the screen, and these are alignment guides. You can see here, if I drag that up or down a little bit, you can see we get that red dashed line, and these are called Smart Guides, and they're there to help us with alignment. Now, I'm going to be talking a lot more about these when we get onto the relevant lesson about alignment, but if you're wondering what they are, that is what they do. So I'm going to roughly resize these, and I'm just going to move them next to each other. So if I drag that in, you can see as I'm doing this, those guides are really helping me, so I know that those are exactly the same height.

When you have images in your presentation, notice that when you're clicked on any of the images, we get a Picture Format ribbon at the top. This is one of those contextual menus that disappears when we're not clicked on it and reappears when we are. And on the Picture Format ribbon, this is where we have all of our tools for customizing our pictures. For example, if I wanted to add a border around the outside of this picture, I could go up to Picture Border, I can choose the color of my border, let's make it a light gray, and I can also choose the weight. So maybe I want to make it pretty thick, just to add that border. We have Picture Effects, such as Shadow, Reflection, Glow around the outside. So I could put a nice green glow. Let's make it a bit bigger so you can see it. In fact, let's do a blue glow like that. I can change the Picture Layout if I wanted to, or I could add a Picture Style, and you can see what each of these look like in the live preview when I hover over them. So lots of different options when it comes to formatting your actual pictures.

Also, in the Adjust group, notice we have some correction utilities. So if we need to make the image sharper or softer, or if we need to change the brightness or the contrast, we have all of those in here. We can change the color. So these can sometimes give a really nice effect as well. We have Artistic Effects. I can't say I've ever used these in my PowerPoint presentation, but just know that they're there if you want to use them. And of course, we can change the transparency of our image as well. So lots of different ways that we can customize the look and feel of our images once we have them in the slide.

Now, I want to remove all of these effects. So I'm going to click on the picture. Let's go back to Picture Format, and in the Adjust group, we have a Reset Picture option. So Reset will basically discard all of the formatting changes you've made to a picture. So if I click this, it's going to put it back to how it was when I imported it. So now we have our images in the document. We're going to move this on in the next lesson, so I'm going to head over there now. I hope you'll join me.

Shapes play a really important role when you're putting together a PowerPoint presentation. We can use shapes for so many different things. We can create individual shapes, or we can combine shapes together to make an entirely new shape. So in this lesson, we're going to run through some of the things that you can do with shapes, and that will continue throughout the next few lessons. Now, if you want to insert a shape into your PowerPoint slide, if you jump up to the Insert tab, notice in the Illustrations group, we

Have a shapes menu just here. In this Gallery, you're going to find all of your shapes divided down into different categories. You're always going to have your most recently used shapes at the top of this list so that they're easy to access.

But just take a moment to look through the different shapes that you can add. Not only do we have things like triangles, circles, rectangles, we have lines, we have arrows, we have things like equation shapes, flowchart shapes, stars and banners, and even callouts towards the bottom.

Now, we're going to start out by just adding a very basic shape. I'm going to choose this rectangle just here. When I click on it, notice that my cursor changes to a small crosshair. And now I can click on my slide and drag and draw my shape.

Now, notice that the aspect ratio of this shape isn't locked, meaning that I can drag it out, I can drag it down to create different shapes. Now, if I wanted to create an exact square, you'll notice if we go back to the shapes gallery, we don't actually have a square anywhere in here. And that is because to draw a square, we would simply use the rectangle shape, but when we drag, we hold down Shift, and that's going to lock the aspect ratio and give us an exact square.

The same thing applies to circles. So if we go back to shapes, notice that we don't actually have a perfect circle in here. We have this oval tool instead. So if I click on this and just drag it, I could make an oval or I could try and make a circle if I wanted to. But all we need to do if we want a perfect circle is choose the oval and then hold down Shift again. So let's do that. Let's choose the oval. If I hold down Shift and drag, I get a perfect circle. So just be aware of that.

Now, notice with all of these shapes as I've drawn them on the slide, they've all been filled with the same formatting: this blue color with a dark blue border. Now, this is the default style for all of my shapes, and this will very much depend on the theme that you have selected in PowerPoint. So if I go to Design, the actual theme that I'm using in this presentation is this one just here, which is the standard default Office theme, and the first color in that palette is basically what these shapes are being filled with.

Now, if I don't like this, maybe I want my default color to be something else. I can simply click on the rectangle. I'm going to go to Shape Format and I'm going to fill it with an entirely different color. So let's go for an orange, and I'm going to remove the outline border as well. So maybe this is the formatting that I want to see when I add any new shape. All we would need to do to make that happen is right-click and choose "Set as Default Shape" at the bottom.

So now, every time we go in and draw a shape, let's just grab the rounded rectangle this time, it's going to have that formatting as opposed to the blue.

Now, some other things that you can do with these shapes. You can obviously resize them by dragging these handles in and out. You can rotate them by just moving this rotation handle around. And also, notice that with some shapes, particularly those that have rounded corners, you're going to get this additional yellow handle as well. And this lets you basically adjust the roundness of those corners. So if I want it really round, I can do that. If I want it less rounded, I can do that.

And if I have multiple shapes on the slide, I can select them all and apply formatting all in one go. Now, when it comes to selecting multiple objects, we've already seen that we can click on one and then hold down the Shift key and click on the others. But there is another way that you can make multiple selections, and that is simply by clicking your mouse and kind of dragging a big rectangle over everything that will select all of the objects contained inside.

So now I have them all selected. I can go to the Shape Format ribbon and I can change the shape fill to something else, and it's going to change all of those. If I want to get rid of the outline because we do have an outline on some of these shapes, I can choose "No Outline." Also, notice in here we have some shape styles that we can apply. So we can hover our mouse over these and see what they're going to look like.

And if at any point I click on a shape and I think to myself, you know what, I actually want to change this for a different shape again, we can go to the Shape Format ribbon and in the Insert Shapes box at the side here, we can say "Edit Shape," "Change Shape," and then we can change it to something completely different.

Now, I'm going to delete some of these shapes that we've added so that we've just got these three left just here, because what we can also do is merge shapes together. So maybe I want to create a shape that kind of looks like an upside-down L, like that. Now, currently, these are still two shapes. But what I could do is put them next to each other, hold down Shift, and select both of them. And then on the Shape Format ribbon, I can go to "Merge Shapes." And if I choose "Union," it's basically going to combine those two shapes into one object, and I can now move this around, I can rotate it, and I've effectively created a brand new object.

We can do other things here. So if I put the circle sort of like that over this shape, and then select the other shape as well, and go to "Merge Shapes," we have different effects. So we can "Combine," we can "Fragment," we can "Intersect," or we can "Subtract." So these tools here basically allow us to create different shapes. So I've chosen "Fragment," and what it does, it basically breaks this shape up where it overlaps with the other shape. So now if I click this, I've got one part just here, and we've got another part just here, and we can do different things and create different shapes by doing this.

So if you're thinking that shapes are simply squares, rectangles, triangles, I hope you can see here that there's so much more that you can do with them.

Now, we're going to set ourselves up for the next lesson, and we're going to draw three circles on our slide. So let's go to Insert, let's go to Shapes, and I'm going to choose the oval tool. I'm going to hold down Shift so I get a perfect circle, and I'm going to make this about that big. Now, I'm going to duplicate this twice because I want three of them. So Ctrl+D, Ctrl+D, and I'm just going to drag these somewhere on the page, it doesn't really matter. And we're going to be utilizing these circles in the next lesson. And that's exactly where I'm going to head now. So I hope to see you over there.

We finished up the last lesson by drawing three circles on our slide. I'm just going to zoom out so we can see those a little bit clearer. Now, in this lesson, we're going to turn our attention to talking about aligning and grouping objects on our slide, because having objects on a slide that aren't quite lined up can really destroy the professionalism of your presentation. So it's good to know all of the tools you have at your disposal to get everything nicely lined up and looking really good.

Now, currently, I have these three circles on the slide, and I want to line these up perfectly so that they're not only in line with each other and have equal distance in between each, but also so that they're in the middle of the slide. Now, to do this, we need to use alignment tools, and we also need to do some grouping. But before we get on to doing that, I want to speak to you a little bit more about Smart Guides.

Now, I mentioned Smart Guides in a previous lesson. These are the little guidelines that come up when we move objects around on the slide. Notice as I move this middle circle around, can you see that red dashed line? That's telling me that I'm exactly in the center of this slide. If I was to move this object down a bit, at a certain point, I'm going to get another dotted line running across the middle. There it is. So I can now see that that circle is dead in the center of the slide because it's lined up both horizontally and vertically. But also, notice I have another line running above the circle telling me that I'm lined up exactly with the circle next to it. And you'll see these appear as you move objects around on your slide.

Now, these Smart Guides are controlled by the right-click menu. So if we right-click, notice we have a little option here called "Grids and Guidelines." And when we hover our mouse over that little arrow, notice we have "Smart Guides" toggled on. We have a tick next to it. Now, if you don't have a tick in this box when you start to move your objects around, you're not going to get those red guidelines. So just be aware of that.

Also, notice we can add guides, which will put the sort of permanent guides running down the center vertically and horizontally. And if we take a look at some of the others that we have, we can turn off these guides, or we could simply just add a vertical guide or just add a horizontal guide. We also have grid lines that we can place on our page, and these are these small squares. We get kind of a grid formation here, and these are actually pretty good when it comes to lining up objects as well. So I can place that one there, I can say that I want exactly one square in between, and I can sort of try and line my objects up this way. And these grid lines are pretty good, particularly when you're lining up objects that are a lot smaller than the ones we have on the page right now. So those are some of the options that you have in that right-click menu.

Now, I'm going to turn off grid lines, but I am going to leave Smart Guides on. Now, as I said, I want to line these three circles up so that they're exactly lined up with each other and also the slide. We kind of have to position the first object and the last object so that they are the distance that we want away from the edge of the slide. So I kind of want this one just here, and I want this one to be kind of the same, just here.

So now we need to select all three objects. I'm holding down Shift as I make my selection. And you'll find your alignment options on the Home ribbon under the Arrange dropdown, or alternatively on the Shape Format ribbon, we also have an Align dropdown just here with the same options. So now I can choose if I want to align to the left, the center, the right, the top, the middle, or the bottom.

Now, if I choose "Align Top," all of my shapes are basically going to be aligned to the top of the first shape that I selected. So if I click "Align Top," it's going to move the second and the third shape up so they're in line with the top of the first shape. And the other thing I always like to do is make sure that they are also distributed evenly, so we have an even gap in between each shape. So I'm going to choose "Distribute Horizontally," and it looks like they pretty much had equal distance in between them. And if I decide to make any changes, so maybe I think, actually, these need to be a bit closer together, I can move them in a little bit, and then I can run through the same process. I'm going to hold down Shift, I'm going to say "Align to Top," and I want to "Distribute Horizontally."

So now these shapes are lined up with each other, but they're not lined up to the middle of the slide. Now, when we're lining up multiple shapes to the middle of the slide, we basically want to make them one object, and we align that one object. And to do that, we're going to use grouping. So we're going to group all of these shapes together. So they're no longer individual shapes, they're going to become one object.

Now, there is a quick shortcut to be able to do this. Ctrl+G will group them together. Notice on the Shape Format ribbon, you also have a "Group" option just here. So now these work as one object, and I can move them around as a group. So what I can now do is, with the group selected, I can go back to "Align" and I could say "Align to Middle," and that's going to put them dead in the center of the slide. Of course, you have to remember that if you want to now make changes, maybe change the formatting of these individual shapes, you'll need to ungroup them again. And you can do that using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+G, or alternatively from the Group menu, you have an "Ungroup" option. And now they're individual objects again. I can go in and maybe change the shape fill for some of these. Let's just go through and add a quick shape fill and make them all look different. But that is how you can align, group, and ungroup objects in your slide.

Something that's really important to understand when you're working in PowerPoint is the Z-order. Now, the Z-order basically refers to layers that exist in PowerPoint. So let me show you a quick example. So working on slide number three where we added our shapes, if these shapes were layered on top of each other, so I'm just going to move these like that, they're effectively on three different layers. So the green circle is the top layer, it's the one that's at the front. Then we have the blue circle on a layer in between, and the purple circle is on the layer at the back. And this kind of stacking is what we refer to as the Z-order.

And we have tools that allow us to rearrange this Z-order and bring objects that are at the back to the front and vice versa. For example, if I want to move this purple object to the front, I can go to the Shape Format ribbon and then notice in the Arrange group, we have "Bring Forward" and "Send Backward." And if we click the dropdown next to "Bring Forward," we can "Bring Forward" or "Bring to Front." So this again really relates to that Z-order. If I bring the purple object forward, it's just going to bring it forward one layer. If I bring it to the front, it's going to jump it all the way to the top layer. The same thing with backwards. So now that this one is at the front, I can choose to "Send Backward," which will send it backwards one layer, or I could choose to "Send it Directly to Back." So we're rearranging the Z-order of objects on our slide.

Now, another way that you can do this is by opening up the Selection Pane. And the Selection Pane is something that I use all the time because I find it so useful, because there is so much that you can do in this Selection Pane. Now, notice right at the bottom here in the Arrange group, we have the "Selection Pane" option. If we click it, it's going to open up a pane on the right-hand side. Now, what the Selection Pane does is it basically shows us all of the objects in our slide, everything we have sitting on our slide. So it's not going to show things like anything that you've added to the master, so it's not going to show the logo or the fact that we've formatted the background, but it will show any objects. So currently, it's just showing me those three circles that I added.

Now, take a look, they're named "Oval" because we use the oval tool to draw circles. And these currently have very generic names: Oval 14, Oval 15, and Oval 16. But if you notice, if I click on Oval 16, it selects it in the slide. Click on 15, it selects it. Click on 14, it selects it. Now, we only have three objects on our slide, but a lot of the time, you'll have a slide that contains many, many different objects. You might have quite a few different shapes, you might have pictures, you might have tables, things like that. And if you have a lot of objects that are fairly similar, like I do here, I've got three circles, identifying which one you want to select is pretty hard using the Selection Pane. So what I always recommend you do is that you open up the Selection Pane and you name all of your objects.

So instead of just Oval 14, I want to make it a bit more meaningful. So if I click in here, I'm going to rename this "Purple Circle." If I click on 15, let's rename this one "Blue Circle," and double-click on the final one, and we're going to name this "Green Circle." So now it's a lot easier for me to identify which one I'm clicking on. So we can make selections in here. For example, if I select "Green Circle," or maybe I want to change the fill color of this green circle. So now I've got it selected, I can simply go to my Shape Styles and I can add a new shape style.

Now, what else can we do with this Selection Pane? Well, we can use it to change the Z-order. We saw how we can do it previously by using those "Bring Forward" and "Send Backward" buttons, but we can also rearrange things in this Selection Pane. So if I wanted the purple circle to be at the top, I can simply click on it and drag it all the way up and place it on top of everything else. I can drag the green circle down, and that's now at the back. And remember, we changed the color of that green circle, so I'm probably going to want to rename this to "Orange Circle." So we can adjust the Z-order by utilizing drag and drop in the Selection Pane.

Also, notice in this same area, we have this little eyeball icon next to each of the circles in the Selection Pane. So if I choose the orange circle and click on the eyeball, notice that it hides the circle from view. Click it again, and it brings it back. You might be thinking to yourself, well, why on earth would I want to do that? Well, sometimes in a slide, you'll have things stacked on top of each other like this, and if I now decide that I want to maybe apply some formatting or add some text to this purple circle, because it's covered up by other things, it's quite hard for me to select and work on because these are in the way. Now, the only way for me to get to this would be to move these other objects out of the way. But a lot of the time, you don't want to start rearranging things on your slide if you have them in the correct positions. So that is where this little eyeball is useful, because what we can do is we can hide the orange circle, hide the blue circle, and then we can work on this circle just here. So maybe I want to add some text in the middle here. I'm just going to say "Hello." Let's select the text, let's format it and make it a little bit bigger. And once I'm happy with what I've done, I can unhide the other circles, and they're back where they should be.

So understanding the Z-order and how objects are layered on top of each other is really important, and also knowing how to organize them and make changes to layered objects in the Selection Pane is also a really excellent tip to know.

In the preceding few lessons, we've spoken about how to add shapes to our slides, how we can align those objects on the slide, and how we can rearrange the Z-order. So now it's time to take a look at how we can fill shapes, and we can fill our shapes with many different things. We can just simply fill them with a solid color, like you can see on the slide here. We could fill them with a nice gradient, or alternatively, we could fill them with a texture or an image.

Now, we're going to focus on filling with images in this lesson, because I've seen many weird and wonderful ways to try and do this over the years. So since the last lesson, I've made a couple of changes to this slide. So I've made sure all of my circles are aligned, they've got a consistent fill color, and I've just added the title "Meet the Team" and also some text boxes with the names of the heads of department underneath. And what we want to do is we want to fill those people's pictures in these circles. So let me show you a couple of different techniques that you can use.

Now, to do this, I'm using images that I've downloaded off of Pexels.com, and you'll find the images that I'm using in the course files folder if you'd like to follow along. So the first one that we're going to fill here is the image of Christina. So let's click on the first shape. We need to right-click and go into "Format Shape." Now, we want to make sure we clicked on the bucket icon just here for "Fill & Line," and then we can expand the "Fill" section. So this is where we can determine what type of fill we want for our shape. So we can have "No Fill," we can have a "Solid Fill," which is what we have now, we could have a "Gradient Fill," a "Picture or Texture Fill," a "Pattern Fill," or a "Slide Background Fill." And these are all pretty straightforward, they work as you would expect them to work. But we're going to go for a "Picture Fill."

Now, notice as soon as I select that, it's going to fill it with the first texture that it finds in the list. So don't get thrown off by that. All we need to do is select our picture source underneath. So I'm going to click on "Insert," and I have my images saved off to a file. So let's click on "From a file," and here are my images. So there is Christina. Let's select her and click on "Insert." And you can see it's inserted her into the shape. But notice what's happened here, she looks a little bit squashed. And you will find this, that the aspect ratio is kind of off with the pictures when you fill shapes with them. So we need to do a little trick called "Crop and Fill."

So with the image still selected, we want to go up to the "Picture Format" ribbon, and then in the "Size" group, we have a "Crop" button. Now, what we want to do is we want to "Fill" the shape. So we're going to click on "Fill," and you can see immediately it fixes that problem. We can then move her around to position her correctly. We could even drag the fill handles if we want her to be a bit bigger or a bit smaller in that circle. So I'm going to kind of do it like that. Let's move her down very slightly, but I think that's just about perfect. So now that we have it in the correct position, we can click the top half of the crop button, and we have a perfectly cropped image.

Let's do that one more time. We're going to click on the next circle. We're going to go to "Picture or Texture Fill." Notice now it's going to fill the shape with the last image that I used. Again, don't worry too much about that. We're going to click on "Insert from a file," and this time we're going to choose Carrie. Let's click on "Insert." And I need to do my "Crop and Fill" trick again. So let's go to "Picture Format," "Crop," "Fill." And then I can move around. I'm going to make her a little bit bigger because I want them all to be kind of a similar size. We don't want some people really far away and really small, and some people very large. You want to keep them fairly consistent. So I'm happy with that. Let's click on "Crop." So we have our second perfectly cropped image.

Now, for the third one, I want to show you a slightly different technique, because if you already have the image on a slide that you want to fill the shape with, you can copy it to the clipboard and fill with whatever you have on the clipboard. So for Matthew, let's go back to slide two. Now, this is the image of Matthew that I want to use. So it already exists on the slide. I'm going to press Ctrl+C to copy that image to the clipboard. Now I can go back to slide three, click on the shape, and when I go to "Picture or Texture Fill," notice next to "Picture Source," we have a "Clipboard" option. So let's click on "Clipboard." It's going to paste him in. I still want to do my "Crop and Fill" trick. So let's go for that. I'm going to move him down a bit, and he's a bit further away, so we need to make him a little bit larger so he kind of matches the other two. You want to keep them fairly consistent. So I think he could probably go a bit larger than that as well. Let's move him into position. I think that's good. Let's click on "Crop."

And now we have our three perfectly cropped images. So now that I have this slide, I don't really need slide number two. Let's delete that out, and we have a very, very nice looking "Meet the Team" slide, and it's just taken us a few minutes to create.

So now that we have some nicely cropped images inside shapes on our slide, it's time to take a look at some of the formatting options that we have when it comes to shapes and pictures, because there are so many of them. And your formatting options are located in a couple of different places. So if we click on the first image here of Christina, notice what happens to our ribbons. Not only do we get a "Shape Format" ribbon, we also get a "Picture Format" ribbon. And that is because we essentially have a picture inside a shape, so we get both ribbons. So if I wanted to apply some formatting to the actual shape, this is the ribbon I would go to. Whereas if I want to apply the formatting to the picture, I would go to the "Picture Format" ribbon.

So maybe I want to make some changes to the color. We would jump over to the "Adjust" group, and we have lots of different options in here. For example, if we click the "Color" dropdown, this is where we can sort of change the overall look and feel of our image. And these can be quite nice. If I select turquoise just here, you can see that that gives quite a nice effect. We could combine it with a nice white border. And for this, we would go to the "Shape Format" ribbon, because we want to add a border to the shape. So if we go to "Shape Outline" and select white, and then I could even make that border a little bit thicker. So we go down to "Weight," and then we could choose something that's a little bit thicker. And this gives quite a nice effect.

Let's click on the second image, and we're going to go back to the "Picture Format" ribbon. We have some "Corrections" options in here. So we can sharpen or soften any of our images, and we can change the brightness and the contrast as well. And don't forget, we also have a "Transparency" dropdown just here. So if we want to make this image more transparent, we can, or we can bring it all the way back to complete opacity.

Now, what else can we do with these images? Well, let's click on Christina again. Let's go back to "Shape Format," because what we can do is add some "Shape Effects." For example, we could add a nice little drop shadow effect. We could add a reflection. If I choose this one, you can see what that looks like. This can look really effective on some images. Now, I don't particularly like that. Let's go back. We can add some "Glows." So let's go for a nice glow. Let's put that around the outside. And I'm actually going to get rid of that reflection. So now we have this nice glow effect. It's quite subtle, but it makes that image stand out.

Now, some of the other things that we have on "Shape Format," we have some "Shape Styles." So you would use these if you wanted a solid fill inside your shape. We can also add text to our shapes, which I'm going to show you in a moment. And we have very similar options on the "Picture Format" ribbon.

Now, aside from these two ribbons, if we right-click, we also have a "Format Picture" pane. And you can see we have so many different options in here. So if you really want to make some granular adjustments to the formatting of your shape or your picture, you can come in here, and you're probably going to find what you need. Now, a lot of these are repeats of what we have on the ribbon, for example, things like shadows, but you'll normally find that we have a few additional options, a few additional things that we can change to get it exactly as we want it to look. But don't forget about that right-click menu that contains more options.

Now, the final thing I want to show you in this lesson, and I'm just going to insert a new blank slide, is how you can crop a picture to a shape. So we've seen previously how to fill a shape with a picture, but what if you want to actually crop the picture to a very specific shape? Well, let's insert an image. So I'm just going to insert a picture of Christina again in this example. There she is. Let's make her a little bit smaller. And maybe I want to crop her to, let's say, a triangle shape.

Well, if we go up to the "Picture Format" tab, in the "Crop" dropdown, we can choose "Crop to Shape." Now, this differs from crop, because if we just select "Crop," we get these little fill handles, and we can basically just crop out any blank space and click the top half of the crop button to apply it. But when we "Crop to Shape," we can actually choose a shape that we want to crop to. So actually, let's do, let's do a hexagon. I'm going to click on this, and it's going to do exactly that. It's going to crop that image to a hexagon shape. So this can sometimes give a really nice effect as well. So don't forget about that when it comes to your pictures. We can, of course, then go in and we can apply a picture border if we wanted to, to make this look a little bit nicer. We could apply some picture effects, so maybe we want a glow around this one as well. And you can really go to town on how you format that image. So those are some of the options that you have when it comes to formatting your shapes.

If we've applied formatting to any object in a PowerPoint slide, we can copy that formatting using a couple of different methods. And one of those is that we can use the Format Painter. If we go to the title slide where I have "Quantum Mesh Technologies," you can see that for "Quantum Mesh," I've used this really nice kind of teal green color. Now, maybe I decide that I want the entire title to be this color. What I could do is simply select the text that contains the color, and then go up to the Home tab and click on the Format Painter icon.

Now, if I click on the Format Painter icon once, it's going to allow me to use my paintbrush once. Notice that my cursor has changed to a paintbrush, and I can now simply drag it over what I want to change, let go, and it's going to copy that formatting. Now, I don't want to actually apply that, so let's undo to put it back again.

Now, if I wanted to do lots of painting, so maybe I wanted to paint other things on this slide that green color. One thing to note is that when you click on the Format Painter icon once, it's only going to allow you to use it once. If you have to do lots of painting, then you need to double-click on that icon. So let's do it again. Let's highlight this, but this time I'm going to double-click on the Format Painter. So now I can select "Technologies," and my Format Painter is still activated. I could then select "The Future is Today," and it's going to apply that formatting. In order to come out of Format Painter mode, I would need to click on the icon again, or I can press the Escape key on my keyboard. So just be aware of that difference. Click once, you can use it once. Click twice, and you can use it over and over again.

Now, I'm going to undo because I want this to be exactly as it was originally. Let's take a look at how this works when we have images. So if you recall, we applied some formatting to the image of Christina, and I want to copy this formatting across to the other two pictures. So let's try and use our Format Painter to do this. So if I click on Christina, go to the Home tab, and click on Format Painter, if I then click on the image of Carrie, check out what it does. It does copy the formatting, but it also copies the image of Christina across. And that is because, in this particular scenario, this is considered to be formatting. We've formatted the shape to include a picture. So PowerPoint thinks this is formatting, hence why it copies it across. So it's not quite as easy to use the Format Painter in this particular scenario.

So what would we do if we wanted to apply this same formatting? Well, I would copy the formatting to the shapes first before I filled them with the images. So let's take a look at how that would work. So I've taken these shapes back to how they were originally. So what I would do here is I would select Christina, I would double-click on the Format Painter because I need to paint twice. I would click on Carrie, I would click on Matthew. That's going to copy the formatting across, but I'm still going to have this image of Christina. Let's press Escape. I would then need to go in and simply replace the picture. So if we go to the "Picture Format" tab, we can go to "Change Picture," "This Device." I can then pick up Carrie, insert her, and then I would do my crop and fill. So let's go to "Fill," let's drag her down. We're basically repeating the process that we did previously, and then click on "Crop."

So once we've filled the shapes with our pictures, we then just need to go in and go to the "Picture Format" tab and apply our color. So it is a little bit more manual than I would really like it to be. It would be great if there was a much easier way to simply copy from one shape to another, but it's because the images are considered to be formatting. So the rule here, just to recap, is to draw the shapes first, apply the effects, then insert the image, and then apply any picture formats over the top.

Now, the final thing that you can use when it comes to copying formatting is the Eyedropper utility. And we did look at this a little bit at the beginning of the session, but you might have forgotten about it by now. So let's say on this slide that I want to apply a border to this image, but I want the border to be the exact same yellow as the yellow that we have in the Quantum Tech logo in the bottom left-hand corner. Now, I'm going to make this border a bit thicker so we can really see what we're doing. So let's go to "Picture Format," "Picture Border," I'm going to go to "Weight," and let's make this pretty thick, like that.

So if I want to change this border color, what I can do is I can go to "Picture Border," and notice that we have an "Eyedropper" utility. Now, if I click this, my cursor is going to change to a little pipette, and notice as I drag my cursor over the image, I'm getting a little preview of what the color is wherever my cursor is located. So this means we can basically pick up a color from anything that we have on our slide. So I'm going to go down to this yellow, click, and check it out, it's now applied that exact same color to the border of this image. So this is a really great utility for getting a consistent color scheme within your slides based on existing items within your slide. So don't forget about those two options, you've got your Format Painter and you have your Eyedropper utility.

In this lesson, I'm going to show you how you can remove the background from an image. And I'll say this right up front, PowerPoint is definitely not Photoshop. So if you're looking for something as accurate and as detailed as Photoshop when it comes to cutting images out of their background, then PowerPoint is probably not going to be the right application for you. However, PowerPoint does do a pretty decent job, particularly if the image isn't all that complex. So let's take a look at the options that we have when it comes to removing the background.

Now, we're going to start out with an image. So let's jump up to the Insert tab, we're going to go to "Pictures," and "This Device." Now, I'm just going to use this photo of Carrie. So let's select her and insert her into the slide. Now, notice that this image does have a background, but it is fairly plain, so we should be able to get a pretty decent result using the background remover tool. Now, I'm just going to make Carrie slightly smaller so we can see all of her. Let's go up to the "Picture Format" tab, and the first group here, we have this "Remove Background" button.

Now, if we click on "Remove Background," PowerPoint is going to do its best to determine which bits of this image need to be removed. And a lot of the time, it won't get it completely accurate. You can see everything that currently shows in purple is what's going to be removed. When we click the "Keep Changes" button on the background removal ribbon, notice that we do have a brand new ribbon up here with some options to help us refine our selection.

Now, I can see here that I want to keep some parts of this image. For example, the laptop that she's holding is currently showing in purple. If I was to click "Keep Changes," that's going to be removed. So what we can do here is jump up to the background removal ribbon and we can choose to "Mark Areas to Keep" and "Mark Areas to Remove." So I'm going to click "Mark Areas to Keep." Notice that my cursor changes to a small pencil, and all we need to do is kind of draw a line over the parts of the image that we want to keep. So I'm going to draw this line over all of these purple bits, and also at the bottom here for the bottom of her jacket. And you'll notice sometimes that when you make adjustments, you have to go in and redo other adjustments. So there we go, it's got it pretty much exactly as I want it.

Now, notice here, little parts of her hair are not included in this selection. When it comes to things like hair and sort of wispy strands flying out everywhere, those are going to be really hard to cut out of this image individually. So I'm pretty happy with the outline of the hair up here. So I'm just going to say "Keep Changes." And there we go, we've cut her out of the background, and it actually looks pretty good.

Now, once we've done this, we could leave it like this, it looks pretty good in its own right, or we could add another image in the background and create a composite image. So let me just show you what that looks like. If we go up to the Insert tab, I'm going to insert another picture, again from "This Device," and let's just do a cityscape background. I'm going to click on "Insert."

Now, notice when I've inserted this image, it doesn't take up the entirety of the slide. So this is again where we can use our "Crop and Fill" trick. So if we go to "Picture Format," go into "Crop," and "Fill," we can then drag these handles out like so. Go back to "Crop," and say "Fill." This will fill the entire slide with the image, but it won't distort the image at all. We can then click the top half of the crop button. And we need to send this image to the back so that we can see Carrie behind. So again, on the "Picture Format" ribbon, I'm going to go to the "Send Backward" dropdown and choose "Send to Back."

So now you can see that we've created a completely different looking slide simply by cutting Carrie out of her original background and placing her on a new background. And in mind, be you want to click on this background image, go to "Picture Format," and apply some different effects. So maybe you want to change the color, maybe make it a dark teal, or maybe a nice orange color, or maybe you want to change the transparency. It's entirely up to you how you style this, but that's how you can use PowerPoint's background remover tool to cut an image out and place it on top of another image.

In the final lesson of this section, we're going to take a look at some of the other types of graphics that we can insert into our PowerPoint presentations, and we're also going to see how we can customize them as well. Now, take a look at the presentation. You'll see that it's changed quite a bit since the last lesson. If we go back to slide number three, we finished up the last lesson simply by cutting out this image of Carrie Hudson and placing her on the background of a cityscape to create a new composite image. Well, since then, I've kind of changed this to show you the potential and how slides can look in more of a business context. So we've got our cutout image, I've added a shape in the background, and simply some text boxes in here. And I've done exactly the same for each of the other heads of team. So you can see we now have a slide for Christina Lopez, and we also have a slide for Matthew Lucas. So hopefully you can see here how we can start to bring elements together in PowerPoint and start to create some really nice looking slides just using some very basic techniques.

So now that we have those, I've also inserted a new blank slide at the end, because we're going to take a look at some of the other types of graphics that we can insert. So if we go up to the Insert ribbon and go to the Illustration group, let's click on Icons first of all. Now, we did touch on these earlier on in the course. I told you that we had an icon gallery built into PowerPoint with a selection of icons that we can use in our presentations. And you can see here, we clicked on the Icons tab, and we have all of these different icons. Now, these are divided down into categories. So if you can't see what you're looking for just here, maybe click on a different category like "Occupations" and have a little scroll through, or alternatively, you can click at the top here and you can type in what you're looking for. So let's type in "brain." You can see those are all the icons related to that.

Now, let's insert one of these. I'm just going to select this icon just here and click on "Insert." Now, you'll see that by default, it just inserts it with this black fill color, and we can resize this to make it bigger or smaller. Now, when we insert these images, these are in fact considered to be graphics in PowerPoint, hence why we have the Graphics Format ribbon. So up here, we can do things like change the color of the icon, but notice that it changes the color of the entire thing. Now, what about if I wanted to have different parts of this image different colors? Well, we can do that. We simply need to ungroup the image and convert it to a picture.

Now, I'm not going to use this icon. Let's use something that's a little bit better. Let's go back to Insert and Icons, and let's use this image of an acorn. I'm going to...

going to select this and insert it, and let's make it quite a bit bigger. Now, maybe I want just the top half of the acorn to be a different color to the bottom half. What we can do is we can ungroup this icon. Now, to ungroup, we can simply right-click, go down to group, and choose ungroup, or alternatively we can press Ctrl Shift G on our keyboard. Now, we're basically getting a message asking us if we want to convert this object to a Microsoft Office drawing object. Now, if you do want to change the color of different parts of an image, then you are going to need to convert it. So let's click on yes, and you can see now I have two different parts. It's like I have two different images. I could even grab this one and move it around completely somewhere else. Now, in this instance, I just want to change the color. So I'm going to select the top half of the acorn, go to shape format, and into shape fill, and I could choose – let's go for this sort of dark orange color, and I could change the bottom half to something completely different. So let's go for a green color. Now, I'm not saying that that looks wonderful, but hopefully you get the idea that icons in PowerPoint are customizable. Now, we don't want this image of an acorn, so I'm going to draw a big square over both to select them and press the delete key to get rid of them.

Now, we can do something similar with other graphics that we can insert. For example, if we go to illustrations, this is where we get a whole big gallery of these really nice little illustrations that we can add into our PowerPoint presentations, but notice that they're all currently in yellow. They have this yellow accent. Now, if that doesn't match the theme that you're using in your PowerPoint presentation, again, you can customize these. So if I was to choose this graphic just here and insert it into the slide, notice that instead of yellow, it's showing as blue, and that's because it's taking on the coloring of the theme that's in use in my PowerPoint presentation. But again, if I wanted to change this accent color, I would just need to go to graphics fill and I could change it to something else. I could even get it to match my current presentation by choosing one of these recent colors. So I could go for this teal, or I could go for yellow. Let's go for teal, and you can see what that looks like. We have ourselves a really nice looking graphic, and if you want to resize this, you can drag it down.

Let's go back to insert and back into icons, because we have cutout people in here as well. Now, with these cutout people, there isn't a great deal that you can do to change the way that they look, but if we insert this one, for example – this is very similar to cutting out an image and removing the background – but these ones are already done for you, and we have these different characters. And you'll find that in this PowerPoint gallery, you have the same character just in different poses, so you could use the same character throughout your PowerPoint presentation to give it a consistent look and feel. Now, we do have a picture format ribbon here, so we can do things like add picture effects, maybe add a reflection, or maybe a shadow. We can't actually change any of the coloring on these cutout images though.

If we go back to insert, back into icons again, one of the newer ones that we have in here is cartoon people. Now, if we select this, we can choose to basically create our own character. We have a category for faces, we have a category for heads, we have a category for upper bodies, so on and so forth, so you can kind of build your own character. If you would rather just select a whole character, we can click on characters just here and choose one from the gallery. So if I choose this guy just here and insert him in, I can move him, I can resize him, and I can also change the fill color as well. So if I go to the graphics format ribbon, I can change this to yellow and change the way that he looks. Again, if I want to change different parts of this image, I can ungroup by using the Control Shift G keyboard shortcut, saying yes to convert to an object, and now you can see that I can select different parts of this image. So maybe I want to color his trousers in a completely different color, so let's go to shape fill. I'm going to go – let's go for some jeans here. I can select the rest of him. Maybe I want to change that shape fill to – let's go for a black. I can select his beard and maybe make that like a gingery color, so on and so forth. So you can see the customization options here are pretty much endless.

And let's go back to the insert ribbon one last time and take a look at the final few options. So we also have stickers and videos. Now, if we go to stickers, we have these little cute little stickers that you could add into your presentation if you wanted to. I can't say I've ever really used these, but just be aware that the gallery is there. And we also have a videos library in here. This is stock video footage that's free to use within any of your PowerPoint presentations. So those are some of the other graphics that you can insert into PowerPoint to really jazz up your presentations.

It's time now to do exercise six. And in this exercise, we have quite a lot to do, so we're going to get to practice a lot of skills in this exercise. So sticking with the coffee beans company presentation that we started building in the last lesson, I'd like you to add a second slide, and I'd like you to call it "About the Company." So for this, we're going to use a blank slide layout, and I'd like you to turn on vertical guidelines. This is going to be really helpful to you when it comes to the next step, because I'd like you to draw a rectangle shape that fills half of the slide, and use that vertical guideline so you know that that rectangle is exactly covering half of the slide. I'd then like you to download the image labeled "about us.jpg" from the exercise files folder, and I'd like you to fill the rectangle with the image. And it's very important to ensure that the image is not distorted, so think about the technique that we used in order to safeguard against that.

Once we have the image inside the shape, I'd like you to add a title on the right side of the slide that says "About Our Company," and then underneath that title, I'd like to draw three circles. And I'd like you to ensure the circles have no fill and a thin white outline border. Make sure that those circles are aligned with each other and also distributed horizontally so that we have equal gap in between each. And then from the icon library in PowerPoint, I'd like you to search for "mountain" and add an icon to the presentation. I'd like you to resize the icon and position it inside the first circle.

Now, I'd like you to repeat this process. So again, from the icon library in PowerPoint, this time I'd like you to search for "time" and add the egg timer icon to the presentation. I'd like you to resize and position the icon inside the circle. And then for the third circle, this time I'd like to download the image "values.png" from the exercise files folder. I'd like you to resize and position the icon inside the final circle.

So once you have those icons inside those circles, I'd then like you to change the color of the icons to Green Accent 6 Lighter 40%, or you can use the hexadecimal value that I have listed just there. I'd finally like you to add text boxes to the slide and recreate the layout shown in the screenshot below. So this screenshot is what we're aiming for. Use this as your guide. We have our image in half of the screen, we have our text boxes, and then we have those three circles with no fill, just a white outline border, with those icons that we've grabbed from various different locations inside. So that is what I need you to do. If you'd like to see my answer, then please keep watching.

So the first thing we're going to do here is we're going to add a new slide, and I asked you to add a blank slide. Next, I wanted you to turn on your vertical grid lines, so we're going to right-click and we're going to go to grids and guidelines, and we're going to say add vertical guide. That's going to give us that line down the middle. Next, I asked you to insert a rectangle shape. So let's grab the rectangle tool that covers half of this slide, and I'm going to use my vertical guideline to help me do this. So we're just going to drag that all the way over. Now, one thing I'm going to do is make sure that we have no outline around the outside of that shape. Next, I asked you to fill this shape with an image that we can find in the course files folder. Now, there are a couple of different ways you can do this. I'm going to right-click on the shape and we're going to go down into format shape, and we're going to expand fill and say that we want to fill with a picture, and we're going to insert our picture from our picture source. Now, our picture source is going to be from a file because we have it saved off to our hard drive, and this is the picture we want to use: "about us.jpg". Let's click on insert. Notice that this is slightly distorted. It's a little bit too thin, so we need to use our crop and fill trick to restore the aspect ratio of this image. So on the picture format tab, we're going to go to crop, we're going to go down to fill. You can see that looks so much better. We can choose to move this around a little bit if we need to reposition. I'm pretty happy with that; that's looking nice. So I'm just going to click on the crop button to crop that perfectly. Now that I've done that, I can actually turn off my vertical guide like so.

The next thing I asked you to do was to add a title on the right-hand side that says "About Our Company". So we're going to insert a text box. Let's go to insert, we're going to go for text box, let's just draw it just here: "About Our Company", and let's make this a little bit bigger. So I'm going to take that up to let's say about there, and again if your fonts look different to mine, that is not a problem; we're just really practicing adding elements to our slide. Next, I asked you to add three circles underneath. So let's go back to insert shapes. I'm going to grab the circle tool, and remember if we want a circle, we need to hold down shift as we drag. So let's just add one like that. And what I want to do is format this. So I don't want a fill, but I do want a shape outline, and let's change the weight to – let's go for one and a half points. Now I'm going to duplicate this twice: Ctrl D, Ctrl D. And then I'm going to drag these into position. Now notice the guidelines that are coming up. That looks about right. I think this one might need to go out a little bit more. But remember, when you're doing this, you can hold down shift and select all of your shapes, and then you can use your align tool. So I want to make sure these are aligned to the top, and I also want to make sure they're distributed horizontally.

Now that I have my shapes, I need to add my icons inside. Now we're going to go to the insert ribbon, and we want to insert some icons. So let's click icons, and the first thing I asked you to search for was "mountain". And I'm going to use this one just here. Let's insert it, and we're going to change the color of these too. I think I asked you to do Accent 6 Lighter 40%, which is this one just here. So then we can drag this into position and resize as necessary. Now I'm going to insert the second icon in exactly the same way. So join me back here once I've done that. And then the final icon, we actually have saved off to the exercise files folder. So this time, we're going to go to insert, we're going to go to pictures, this device, and there is the icon "value use.png". Let's click on insert. Again, we're going to need to resize this. We're going to get it roughly the same size, and then we can drag it into position.

I then just simply asked you to add some text boxes and recreate the slide in the screenshot. So this is very simple. Again, we're just going to add a text box. We'll just do the first one just here, and we had "Our Mission". Now you can format these however you like. I'm going to make mine just a little bit bigger and I'm going to change the font color to match that green like so. And there we go – that's what it looks like after we've added our text boxes. I hope you got on okay with that. I will see you in the next section.

In this section of the course, we're just going to take a look at some really cool things that we can do with text to liven up your presentations. And we're going to start out by creating a transparent text effect where we can see the background peeking through. Now, I've just added a blank slide to my presentation, and what I'm going to do is I'm going to insert a text box. So let's draw a text box, and I want this lettering to be quite large. Now I'm going to type in "Locations", and I want to change the font style. I'm going to use F Sans Black, which matches the other headings in my presentation. I'm then going to take this font size all the way up. So let's go to 96, and I think I want it even a bit bigger than this. So I'm going to use my increase font size button, and I think we'll take it down to about there. Now I'm going to position this in the middle; notice that I'm using my smart guides in order to do this. Now that looks pretty nice, but maybe I want this to have a completely different effect, and I want it filled with an image. Now, if you're thinking that we can just simply right-click, go to format shape, and choose picture or texture fill, you would be wrong, because check out what happens if we do it that way – it's going to fill the actual text box as opposed to just the text. So we need to go about this in a slightly different way.

Now, the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to insert the image that I want to fill this lettering with. So let's go to pictures and this device, and we're just going to use this cityscape background. So let's click on insert. Now, the important thing here is that the image covers all of the text underneath. Now I'm going to send this image back so that we can see that text. Now all we need to do is select the image and then hold down shift and select the text box, and then from the shape format ribbon we can go to merge shapes. And then these different options that you can see in this drop-down list are going to give us all different kinds of cool effects. So if I go to union, doesn't really do anything. Combine – that's going to allow me to have the image in the background, but it's going to show the background of the slide within the text. So if we just linger on this one for a moment, that one looks pretty nice. If I wanted to have that image in the background and just the cutout text on top, we have fragment – doesn't really do too much. But the one that we want is intersect, because check out what happens as soon as we do that – the image is now inside those letters. And I can use shift and I can make this a little bit bigger if I need it to be. And once I have it in this state, I might decide that I want to maybe add an outline to make it stand out a bit more. So let's go up to picture format and picture border, and I can choose an outline color. Maybe I want a black, maybe I want something that kind of matches the color scheme of my presentation. So let's go for this teal color, and I'm actually going to make that border a little bit thicker. So let's go for two and a half points. I could even go in and add a picture effect, so maybe I want a little glow as well. I'm going to go to more glow options and choose the same blue color, and check out what we have – we've created something that looks really effective and stands out from the background. And I think you'll agree that gives a really nice effect.

In this lesson, we're going to take a look at how we can create a really cool-looking slide using layers. And we've already briefly touched on layers when we were talking about the selection pane and the Z-order of objects on our slide, and this is going to come into play in this lesson. Now, since the last lesson, I've added another blank slide and I've put it at slide number two, and what I wanted to say on this slide is basically "About Us". So the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to insert a text box. Let's draw one and type out "About Us". Now, once again, I'm going to select the text box and we're going to change the font to F Sands Black, and I'm going to make it pretty large. So let's take it up to 72. I think we can go a bit bigger than that. I think that's pretty good. Let's drag it out so it's all on one line like so, and I'm going to place that just about there. Now, what I effectively want to do with this text is I want to add some images and I want it to look like this text is kind of flowing through those images. Now I understand that's a bit hard to visualize at the moment, but bear with me – trust the process – we'll get there in the end. This does look really cool now.

Now, what I'm going to do here is I'm going to duplicate this text box: Ctrl D. That's going to give me another exact copy. Now, with the copy that I've just made, I'm going to change this so that we don't have any fill color – we just have an outline. So if we go up to shape format, we can go to text fill – I'm going to say no fill. Looks like it's disappeared. And we're going to say that we want a black outline. That's all I want to do here. Now, I think I'm going to make the outline a little bit bigger as well, not too much, but we'll put it up to let's say one and a half points. And then what I'm going to do is I'm going to move this back over the top of the original text. Now, what we essentially have here are two different layers. If we open up the selection pane, notice we have text box one and text box two, and it is quite difficult at this stage to tell which is which. So if I choose text box one, let me just check what that is. So text box two is the outline. So I'm actually going to rename this to say "Text Outline", and this one we'll say is "Text Fill" to make that more obvious. And then we can move this one back over this one. So we have our two layers together.

Now, what I'm going to do is I'm going to go to slides four, five, and six. I'm just going to copy the image of the employee from each of these slides. Now, if you're doing multiple copies, it's always a good idea to have the clipboard open. Notice on the Home tab, in the first group we have clipboard. Click the diagonal arrow and it's going to open up this little clipboard just here. And this clipboard basically allows us to gather different items and then paste them when we're ready to. So if I go to slide four, I can select Carrie. I can say Ctrl C – it says preview not available because it's an image, but that is basically the image of Carrie that we've copied. Let's go to slide five, select Christina, Ctrl C – you can see that's been added to the clipboard. And then finally we have Matthew – we select him, Ctrl C. So now I can go back to the "About Us" slide and I can paste all of these by clicking paste all. And you can see there they are. Let's close down the clipboard.

Now I'm going to move these people into position. So I'm going to have Matthew about there, let's have Christina just there, and then I'm going to have Carrie just about there. And again, notice in the selection pane we now have those images added. So I would highly recommend that you label these as well. So this is the picture of Carrie, picture four is Christina, and picture five is Matthew. So then it's a lot easier to see what we're working with. And of course, you could change the order of these – if you wanted Christina to be in front of Matthew, you could move her up like so. Now you might be thinking, why on Earth are we doing all of this? Because we now can't see the "About Us" title in the background. But what we could do here is we could grab the layer that contains the text outline and we can pull that up to the top to bring it in front of the image. So now Christina, Matthew, and Carrie are kind of in the layers sandwich between the text outline and the text fill. So we get this kind of cool transparency effect. Now, of course, if you don't like this, you can then move these around. So maybe I decide that I want these to be a bit further down so they're not obscuring quite as much, but we still have that really cool kind of transparent modern effect. And of course, if you don't like the fill color, you can change the text fill layer. So let's go to shape format – I could say that I want that to be white, for example. Maybe I decide that the text outline is a bit too thick. I can go back to that layer, I can modify the weight – maybe take that down so it's a bit thinner. And I could also change the text outline color to something like that. So you can really fiddle around with this, but hopefully this kind of gives you an idea as to the cool types of text effect that you can create simply by splitting the layers up and positioning images within those middle layers. So you can fiddle around with the positioning of these items and get the slide to look exactly as you want it to look. But I think this looks really cool, particularly if we run the slideshow. I'm just going to click the slideshow button in the status bar on the right – you can see how that's going to look to an audience, and this just gives a really cool modern-looking effect. And your boss is definitely going to be wondering how on Earth you did this.

In the final lesson of this section, I just want to very quickly show you how you can fill text with a gradient fill. So we've seen a couple of other techniques in this section: we've seen how to fill text with an image, we've seen how to separate out the layers to give us a really nice text effect. But what if we just simply want to fill this piece of text with a gradient fill? Well, it is pretty straightforward. I've already added a text box to the slide with "Locations" in the middle here. So what I can do is go up to shape format, and in the text fill drop-down, this is where I can choose the gradient option. Now, I can select different variations of gradient in here, and you can see the live preview update behind as I hover my mouse over each of these. But if you want to be a bit more specific about the colors that you're using in your gradient, you simply need to click on more gradients. That's going to open up the format shape pane on the right-hand side, and this is where we can go in and choose gradient fill. And then underneath, we can choose the colors that we want to use in our gradient. And you can see here, because I was playing around with this previously, I have the actual branded colors already in here. But remember, with these gradient stops, we can select them and choose what color we want to use. So maybe if I select the yellow one, I can go to color and then I can choose a completely different color. So let's go for a light gray. I could choose this teal-colored one, and I could go for a dark gray almost black. And then I can adjust these depending on how much of each color I want to show through. Remember, you can also adjust the directions – so which direction do you want that gradient running through? Now, in this case, I do want these to be branded colors, so I'm going to click on the gray one, let's change that back to teal. Click on the almost black one, and change that back to this yellow color. And of course, at this point, I could then scroll down and I could add a text outline if I wanted to stand out from the background a little bit more. So if I choose solid line, I can then choose the color of my line. So maybe I want this to be a gray color. I can change the width just by taking that up or taking that down. And then I could even go in and add some text effects if I wanted to. So again, we have things like reflection – I could add this to give us an entirely different effect. So gradient fills can look really effective when applied to text. Combine them with text effects, and soon enough you're going to be creating some really awesome-looking slides.

It's time now to do exercise seven. And in this exercise, we're going to practice some of the skills that we've learned in this section of the course. So continuing on with our presentation, I'd like you to add a new blank slide and simply recreate the screenshot on the right. So I'd like you to download the file "girl drinking coffee.jpg" from the exercise files folder, and I'd like you to use the selection pane to assist with building this slide. Notice that behind the picture of the girl we actually have two rectangle shapes to give this nice effect. Now, in order to be able to work with the shapes and change the color, it's going to be useful to use the selection pane so you can make selections a little bit easier. So just bear that in mind. The final thing I'd like you to do is just add a text box "Meet Our Leadership Team" and use a gradient fill on the text using colors that already exist on the slide. So think about what tool you can use to pick up specific colors from this image of the girl to fill our gradient text. That's all I need you to do. If you'd like to see my answer, then please keep watching.

So the first thing I asked you to do here was simply to insert a new blank slide. Now, we know how to do that: we can go up to new slide and just select a blank. Next, I asked you to download the image of this girl drinking coffee and add it to the presentation. So you'll find this image in the course files folder. I simply went up to insert pictures, this device, and grabbed this image just here. Now, the image that you see here is a little bit thinner than the one that you'll find in the course files folder, so I don't mind if you use the crop utility to make this a little bit skinnier, shall we say, by clicking on the picture, going to picture format, and just cropping the outsides. Alternatively, you could have just drawn a rectangle and filled the rectangle with the image. Now, I asked you to use the selection pane to help you out with this, because underneath here we actually have two more rectangles, which I created just by using the draw tool underneath shape. Now, if we go to shape format and open up the selection pane, you can see there are my different rectangles. And this is why it's important to name your items in the selection pane. So you can see here, rectangle 18 is actually the girl drinking coffee, so I'm going to name this "Girl". Rectangle 19 is the orange rectangle, so I'm going to say "Orange". And rectangle 20 is the beige one, so I'm going to name this "Beige", just to make these a little bit easier to identify. So when I was changing the color of these shapes, I was using the selection pane to make sure that I've selected them correctly, and then just simply going up to shape format and changing the shape fill color – nice and simple to do.

The final thing to do here was just add a text box. Again, we just do that from insert and text box. Add the title "Meet Our Leadership Team", and then I asked you to fill this with a gradient fill color based on colors that we have in the current image. Now, the way that I did this was to right-click on the text box and go to format shape, and then we're going to go to text options, and we can choose our text fill. So I chose gradient fill from here, and then down here is where we have add gradient colors. I'm using two gradient colors; if you used more, that's absolutely fine. Now, the way that I selected these colors was to use the eyedropper utility to pick colors from this image. So to do that, simply click the color drop-down, we go to eyedropper – the cursor changes to a little pipette – and then we can go in and we can choose the colors that we want to use. So I picked a couple of colors out of this image for each of these gradient stops, and that is what gave me a nice subtle gradient fill. That's all I need you to do in this exercise. I will see you in the next section.

One of the biggest advantages to working with applications in Microsoft 365 is their cross-compatibility with other Microsoft 365 applications – for example, PowerPoint and Excel. Now, we can insert charts into our PowerPoint slides. These charts might be charts that are native to PowerPoint, as in we build them in PowerPoint and insert them into a slide, or we can create a chart in an application like Excel, which has a lot of charting options, and we can link to the data from our PowerPoint slides. So let's take a look at both options.

Now, you can see here I've added a blank slide onto the bottom, slide number seven, and I've just given it a title of "Sales 2019 to 2023". Now, maybe I want to display a nice-looking line chart that shows the progression of sales over a period of time. So what I can do is jump up to the insert ribbon, and in the illustrations group we have a chart option. So I can click on chart, and if you are used to using an application like Excel, this is going to look really familiar because we have the same charting options in here. Now, there are so many different types of chart that you can use in PowerPoint, and you can see they are all divided down into different categories. Now, I will say that when you're thinking about inserting a chart, not all charts are suitable for the data that you want to display. But a general rule of thumb that I apply is: column charts and bar charts are suitable for most types of data. If you want to insert a line chart, this works best with data that changes over time – for example, showing sales figures from one year to another. Pie charts work best for smaller data sets where you're just doing a direct comparison with maybe two or three items. And then we have some very specific chart types – for example, a map chart, stock charts, tree map charts, things like that. Now, we're definitely not going to have time to go through all of these – I would encourage you to have a little play around with these and explore. We're going to insert a line chart, and we're going to choose a line chart with markers. Notice just above we have all different styles of line chart that we can choose from. So this is the one that I want – it's just going to have those markers on the data points. Let's click on okay, and what that will do is it will insert the chart into the slide and it's going to open up this mini Excel spreadsheet just above. Now, in this mini Excel spreadsheet, you can see that we have some sample data, and PowerPoint kind of needs this to be able to plot the chart. But of course, we can go in and we can modify this to suit our needs. So where we have Series 1, Series 2, and Series 3, you can see that these are what are going to appear in the legend at the bottom. So maybe I'm displaying sales data for three different categories: Hardware, Software, and Accessories. I could jump into here and I could change Series 1 to Hardware, Series 2 to Software, and Series 3 to Accessories. I can then change the categories to the years. So let's say 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023. Now, notice because I've added in more years than the original selection – you can see where we have these color borders: the purple, the blue, and the red. This is telling me which data is currently being included in the chart, and this is kind of preset to five rows and four columns. So if I want to include 2023 data, I can simply grab the bottom of this and drag it down. Now we can update our data. So I'm just going to put some dummy figures in here, and you can see as I'm adding it in, the chart is updating like so. Now, once you have all of your data in here, you can close down this Excel spreadsheet, and then you can go in and start applying some formatting to your chart. For example, I might want to make this a bit smaller so it fits on the slide a little bit nicer. Now, currently this doesn't really stand out from the background of the chart, so I'm going to click on the border of this chart and notice that we now have a chart design ribbon and a format ribbon. Now, if we go to chart design, we have some preset chart styles that allow us to quickly apply formatting to our charts. So I could choose one of these if I want to be a bit more granular and detailed. I could go to the format tab and I can choose shape fill and choose my background fill color from here. Now, I'm going to keep with the style of my branding and I'm going to give this a dark blue background. Now that I've done that, the text doesn't really stand out. Now, when you click in this chart, you'll see that a lot of these items are in fact just text boxes. So if I click on chart title, I can go to home and I can just change the font color to white. I can make it bold, I can even make it bigger if I want to. I can click on the vertical axes and make these white. I can click on the horizontal axes and make those white. And even click on the legend and change that font color as well. So immediately this looks a lot easier to read.

A couple of other things I might want to do: maybe I want to change the color of these lines. And remember, unless you specify, these are going to use your Office theme colors. Now, if we click on the blue line and go to format, I can choose to format this with something completely different. And notice I'm using the shape outline tool to format these lines. So I could go for yellow just here. I'm going to click on the green line, let's go to shape outline, and I'm going to choose that bright blue. And then for the third one, I'm going to go to shape outline and let's just do a bright green. I can also change the color of the markers. So notice these tiny little markers – if we click on them to select them all, we can do the same thing: we can change the shape fill from here. But if we wanted to maybe modify the size of these markers or even the style – whether they're round or square or triangles – we would need to right-click and go into format data series. And then from here, we can click on the fill bucket, and we have a marker section. So when we expand marker options, I could choose built-in, and then I can choose the style of marker I want to use. So I'm going to choose a diamond, but I'm going to make that diamond a little bit bigger, and you can see that reflecting in the chart. I'm going to say I want a solid fill color because I want these markers to be – let's make them red so that they really stand out, and I don't want a border. Click away, and you can see what that looks like. And we can go in and we can do exactly the same for the other two lines like so. Now, I'm not saying that that looks the greatest, but hopefully you get the idea as to the types of things that you can change on these charts. I could even modify these grid lines in the background. Now, with some of these chart elements, when you're selecting them, they are a little bit difficult to actually select – such as the grid lines just here. Now, if you're finding making selections a problem in your chart, if you go up to the format tab, in the first group where it says current selection, this is where we can click the drop-down and we can actually choose which element we want to format. So I want to format the grid lines – you can see here "Vertical Axis Major Gridlines" – let's select it, and you can see that those are now selected in the chart. I can go up and I can change the color of these to something that blends in more with the background – for example, this dark teal color just here. Also notice when it comes to chart formatting, if you click on the chart, we have these three buttons pop out to the side. So if we click on the plus, this is where we can go in and quickly add in different chart elements. For example, if I wanted to add data labels, that's going to show me the actual labels on the chart. You can see that there are a darker color, so I'd probably want to go in and change the font color to white so that those stand out. If we do select those, we can add in axes titles. So again, over here I get this little text box. I'm going to change it to white so it's easy to see, and I could add in a title for my axes – "Sales Totals" for example. And then underneath we have another one – I'm going to change this text box to white font, and this one we want "Years". And of course, we want to make sure that we give our chart a meaningful title like so. So that is one way that you can insert a chart into a PowerPoint slide – you can create it from scratch.

Now, another way that you could do this is to simply copy and paste the data directly from an Excel spreadsheet that you already have created. So let's go in and let's add another new blank slide at the bottom. And I have this same sales data, but I've got it saved off into an Excel spreadsheet. So here is that same data in an Excel spreadsheet. So if it already exists, what you can do is simply copy it by selecting Ctrl C, going back to PowerPoint, going to insert chart, you can select your chart type – let's do a line chart again with markers – and then this time you can just simply Ctrl V to paste that data in, and notice that the chart will automatically update. You can then go in and apply your formatting. Now, another interesting thing: if we just close this down and delete that out, maybe we have a slightly different scenario. Maybe we already have the chart and the data in an Excel spreadsheet, and we want to link to this chart from PowerPoint. Once again, we can select the chart, Ctrl C to copy it, go back to PowerPoint, and Ctrl V to paste it in. Now, notice what's happened here – designer has popped open with lots of different suggestions for me, so I could choose one of these if I wanted to. Let's go for that – why not? So you can see what that looks like now. It's brought across this chart. If I was to go to the chart design tab and choose Edit Data, it's going to open up that Excel spreadsheet, and look at what it tells us at the top: "This data is linked to an Excel spreadsheet. Changes made here will save to that spreadsheet." So it means that if you copy and paste this in and you start making changes to it here, it's also going to update in the spreadsheet and vice versa. If you make changes to the data in the Excel spreadsheet, it will update in the PowerPoint slide because it's all linked through. So those are a couple of different methods for creating charts when you're working in PowerPoint.

In the previous lesson, I showed you how you can very quickly create a chart and add it to a slide in PowerPoint. And you can see since the last lesson, I've jazzed this up a little bit by choosing one of the designs suggested to me by designer. And really, I just wanted to show this because they really do format these slides really nicely, so I've applied that to slide number seven. And in this lesson, we're going to move on to talking about another type of diagram or chart that we can insert into our slides using something called SmartArt. Now, if you've never used SmartArt before, you'll find it on the insert ribbon in the illustrations group. We have a SmartArt button just here. And SmartArt basically allows us to insert diagrams into our presentation. And you can see here that we have all of the different types of diagram divided down into different categories. So what you choose from here is really going to depend on the type of diagram that you want to create. You can see we have diagrams related to lists – they will list out information in a more interesting way. We have process diagrams – so if you're trying to illustrate some kind of process flow, maybe the process of logging a help desk call, you could illustrate that using a SmartArt diagram. We have cycle charts in here. We have hierarchy charts, which are great for quickly creating organizational diagrams. We have lots of different types of charts that we can utilize. Now, some of these charts not only allow us to add text into diagrams, but also pictures. And notice we have a picture group here, which shows us all of the different SmartArt diagrams across the different categories that allow or account for pictures. So just be aware of that as well. Now, you can insert a SmartArt diagram from here and then add your information, but I'd like to show you a slightly different way which I think is pretty cool. So let's cancel out of here.

Now, notice in slide eight, I've written out the process for our company sales pipeline, and I've just written this out as a series of bullet points. So it goes through from identifying and targeting potential leads all the way through to closing the deal and ensuring customer satisfaction – post-sale concerns are addressed. Now, this is fine written out as a bulleted list, but it's not particularly interesting. We could very easily quickly convert this to a SmartArt diagram. So what we can do here is we can select the text box that contains the bullet points, and then on the home ribbon, in the paragraph group, we have this little icon just here: "Convert to SmartArt graphic". Now, if I click the drop-down, I get a few choices from up here, and you can see as I hover over exactly what that's going to...

Look like now. If I want to be very specific about what I'm choosing, I can go to more Smart Art graphics. And because this is a process, I'm going to choose the process category. And now I have access to all of these different diagrams. So maybe I want to use this one just here, the continuous block process. Click on OK, and you can see exactly what that does. Instead of those bullet points, it's now converted them to a much easier to read diagram. And every element of this Smart Art diagram can be modified. Notice we now have a Smart Art Design and a Format ribbon at the top. So if we go to Smart Art Design, we can change the Smart Art style in use. Some of these are quite nice. Again, I suggest you have your mouse over them to see the different effects. I'm going to choose white outline. We can change the colors. So again, these will very much be based on the theme that you have in use in PowerPoint. If you want to change each one of these boxes individually, then you simply need to select the shape, go to Format, and then you can fill it with whatever color you like. Now, just for quickness sake, I'm just going to change it to one of these colors. So let's just go for this one. Keep it in the blue range. I might want to change the background fill of the arrow. So I can select that, go to Format, Shape Fill, and then I can choose the color of the arrow. So maybe we want a nice yellow arrow in the background. But check out how quick that was to liven up what was a very dull bulleted list.

Let's take a look at another way that we can utilize Smart Art Graphics. If I go to slide nine, notice that I have an organizational chart just written out in bullet points. So at the top here, we have the CEO, Oliver. And then we have Christina, Lopez, Matthew, Lucas, and Carrie Hudson, who all work for Oliver. And you can see that I've constructed this hierarchy by simply using bullet points. And wherever an employee works for somebody else, I've tabbed them in a level. So we can see that Joseph and Lucy, they work for Christina. Neil, Caroline, and Brie work for Matthew. And Alex and Hannah work for Carrie. Now, it is worth noting that you don't necessarily have to start with all of the names written out. You can simply insert a blank organizational chart. For example, if we go to the Insert tab and click on Smart Art, if I just wanted a blank one, I could go to Hierarchy, select the one that I want, click on OK, and it's going to insert that into the slide. And I can then go in and start manually editing it and adding in the different names. But you can also write the names out first of all, select them, and create the organizational chart from there. So if we select all of the names, right-click, we have Convert to Smart Art. And from here, I'm going to choose this one, the organizational chart. Let's click and check it out. It automatically builds that hierarchy for us. So we can see Oliver at the top, then we have Christina, Matthew, and Carrie, and then all of the people underneath that work for them. And of course, when we click on the Smart Art object, we can then do things like change the color. Alternatively, as I mentioned before, you don't necessarily have to use one of your theme colors. You can go in and change the color of individual items. So if I click on Oliver at the top here and go to Format, I can simply change the Shape Fill. So maybe I want to keep this within the colors that I'm using in this presentation. So let's go for a dark indigo. Maybe I want the next three. Hold down Shift to select them. Shape Fill, let's go for yellow just there. And then maybe I want everybody else. So I'm just going to go through and select all of those. I'm just holding down Shift as I do this. And I can go to Shape Fill and change those to what I need them to be. So very quickly there, we've created a branded organization chart. If I want to add more people, so maybe we have another head of team that we need underneath Oliver, I could select Oliver at the top here, go to Smart Art Design, and notice in the first group here, we can Add a Shape. Now, this person is going to be underneath Oliver, so we're going to say Add Shape Below. And you can see it adds another branch over here. Now, it doesn't carry across the formatting, so you will need to go in and change that to the formatting that you want. But then you can simply right-click, choose Edit Text, and add in the new name, like so. And I could carry on going, building out my organization chart. Also, note that if you want to change the colors of the actual lines within the organization chart, you can do that as well. But there are quite a lot of them. If we go to Format, Shape Outline, maybe I want these to be white. And you can see it just changes that little section just there. So I need to go in and change each section. So this can be a little bit tedious if you want to change the colors, but you can definitely do it for the lines as well. So that's how we can use Smart Art to display our information in a more visual way by creating graphics and charts.

Two other things that we can insert into our slides are screenshots and clippings. And if you've ever inserted a screenshot before, you'll know that historically we've always been able to press the Print Screen button on our keyboard to take a screenshot of whatever we have in front of us. These days, we can do exactly the same thing without leaving PowerPoint. But we have two different options. We can take a screenshot or we can take a screen clipping. Now, you're going to find all of these tools on the Insert tab in the Images group. Notice we have Screenshot, and it says as we hover over, "Quickly add a snapshot of any window that's open on your desktop to your document." And this is actually a really important thing to note. Whatever you want to take a screenshot of needs to be opened directly behind PowerPoint. And you'll see why in a moment. So let's click the dropdown. Notice that we have Available Windows and also Screen Clipping. Now, Available Windows is basically showing me anything that I have open behind PowerPoint. And currently, I have two different web pages open. So these are available for me to take a quick Print Screen or screenshot of. So if I click on the first one here, which is just the Simon Says IT website, I can click it, and it's going to directly insert that screenshot into my presentation. Notice because it's an image that I've inserted, Designer is popping open on the right-hand side and giving me some suggestions. So I could choose to use any of these if I wanted to. Now, I'm not going to in this case. I'm just going to close down that pane. Because once we have our screenshot in the slide, notice we have the Picture Format ribbon. So we can treat it like any other picture. I can resize it, I can move it around, I can add a picture border, or maybe even some picture effects. So taking a screenshot is really simple.

Now, what about a slightly different scenario? Maybe instead of taking a screenshot of the entire window, I simply want to grab the logo, Simon Says IT, at the top here. Well, for this, we would use Screen Clipping. So let's delete out our screenshot, go back to Insert, and into Screenshot, and at the bottom, we have Screen Clipping. Now, this is where it's really important to have exactly what you want to take a clipping of directly behind your PowerPoint window. Now, if I click on Screen Clipping, it just minimizes PowerPoint and reveals what is behind. And notice we kind of have this faded out opacity over the top, and our cursor has changed to a crosshair. So this means we can now go in and select a region specifically from this page that we want to clip. So maybe I want to clip the logo. I can simply drag over that, let go, and it's going to insert it into the presentation. I could go back and take another clipping. So let's go to Screenshot, let's go back to Screen Clipping, and maybe this time I want this section just here. I can just select it, let go, and it's going to allow me to paste it in. And once again, we get the Picture Format ribbon because these are effectively pictures that we can format. So that's the difference between those two utilities. I'm going to delete out this because it doesn't really make too much sense in the context of our presentation. Maybe this time I want to take a screen clipping of an image from Pexels. So instead of downloading it, I could simply clip it. So I've opened up Pexels behind PowerPoint. Let's go to Insert, Screenshot, Screen Clipping. It's going to minimize down, and then I can go in and I can take my screenshot. So let's grab this. Let's insert it. There is the image. You can see the Designer has popped open on the right-hand side, and I could choose any of these templates if I want to. So maybe if I go for this one, you can see what that looks like. And once again, this is simply just a picture. We've got the Picture Format ribbon, and we can go in and we can make any changes that we want to make to style up this image. So don't forget about those two utilities. Super useful if you just want to quickly grab something and insert it into your presentation.

It's time now to do Exercise Eight. And in this exercise, we're going to practice some of the skills that we've learned in this section of the course. So the first thing I'd like you to do is download the file coffee_sales.xlsx from the exercise files folder. This is an Excel spreadsheet. I'd like to use the data in the spreadsheet to create a bar chart in PowerPoint to show Q1 sales only. I'd like you to apply the Style 12 chart style. Next, I'd like you to move the legend to the right of the chart. That is it. That is all I need you to do. If you'd like to see my answer, then please keep watching.

Now, for this exercise, I'm going to insert a Title and Content slide. Now, if you didn't insert one of these, that's fine. If you just did a blank, not a problem. But this just makes it super easy to add things like charts. Now, I'm just going to give this a title. I'm going to call this "Our Sales." And I'm going to click on the Insert Chart icon. Now, I asked you to insert a bar chart. So bar charts are basically very similar to column charts. They just run horizontally across the page as opposed to vertically. So let's click on OK. Now, what this is going to do is it's going to insert the bar chart, and it's going to open up a mini PowerPoint window with some sample data. Now, obviously, this isn't the data that we want to use. We want to use data from our coffee sales spreadsheet. So let's open that up from the exercise files folder. So here is our spreadsheet, and you can see here it lists out the months of the year, January to December, and the most popular coffees: cappuccino, espresso, and latte. Now, I asked you to only include the sales for Q1 in the chart. So we're not going to select everything just here. We're going to select just the first three months for Q1. Ctrl+C to copy. Let's jump back to PowerPoint. Now, what we're going to do is we're going to click in our little mini spreadsheet and Ctrl+V to paste that in. Now, notice here we have Category 4. We don't need that. We can right-click and delete. So we just have our data set, and you can see what that looks like below. Now, I asked you to change this to chart Style 12. So from the dropdown just here, there is chart Style 12. Let's click. Now, if you change the colors, that's absolutely fine. In fact, I'm going to change mine to this nice colorful palette four. And then I can just do some tidying up. So we can add in things like a chart title. And what I'm also going to do is I'm just going to move and reposition some of these items so that we don't have things crashing into each other. The next thing I asked you to do was to display the legend on the right-hand side. So let's click on the chart, let's click the plus, and where we have Legend, we can simply say Right. And that's going to move that up. And that is pretty much all I need you to do. I hope you've gotten okay with that. I will see you in the next lesson.

A huge congratulations, everybody, for making it all the way to the end of this PowerPoint 365 training course. I hope you've enjoyed running through the lessons and the exercises as much as I've enjoyed hosting this course for you. And we've come so far since the beginning of this course, and we've ended up creating a really nice-looking presentation, not only during the lessons but also during the exercises as well. And my hope for you is that you take the skills that you've learned in this course and start applying them to your daily work because that is where the real learning comes in. Using PowerPoint every day is fundamental to becoming an expert in PowerPoint. But hopefully, this course has given you enough information to not only get you excited about creating slides but also the skills that you need in order to do that. So I'd just like to leave you with a few of my favorite free resources. So when it comes to inserting images and video into slides, I generally tend to go to these three websites: Pexels, Unsplash, and Cover. You'll find free, royalty-free images and video on these websites, and we've used a couple of them in the course so far. If you're looking for more icons, so maybe you're finding the inbuilt icon library in PowerPoint a little bit limited, you have a choice of thousands on sites like The Noun Project and Icon Icons. If you're looking for inspiration, well, I generally tend to go to Pinterest or Envato Elements, where you can find lots of examples of great presentation design. And finally, fonts are so important when it comes to your PowerPoint slide decks. And if there are particular fonts that you'd like to use or special fonts for particular presentations, you can really expand PowerPoint's inbuilt font gallery by downloading and installing fonts from Font Squirrel, Google Fonts, or Font Joy. So with all that said, it is time for me to say my goodbyes. Thank you so much for joining us on this journey. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Once again, my name is Deb. I'll see you next time.

Hey there, future Word 365 whizzes! Welcome to our Microsoft Word 365 training course, where we'll take you on a journey from document novice to document virtuoso. Whether you're a student gearing up for those term papers or a professional wanting to level up your document game, you're in the right place. My name is Deborah Ashby. I'm a Microsoft MVP and course instructor, and I've been using Word since the mid-90s. And over the course of the last 25, 30 years, I've seen Word go through many iterations, from a very basic word processing package to the fully developed, feature-rich application that we see today. Word is definitely one of my favorite applications, and I am so excited to be your host for this course. So, what's the deal with Word 365, you might ask? Well, it's not just your run-of-the-mill word processor. It's the same as your trusty old Word, but with rocket boosters strapped on. Microsoft Word 365 is part of the Microsoft 365 suite, and it brings you all of the classic Word features and so much more. Think of it as a digital Swiss Army knife for crafting, editing, and sharing documents, essays, reports, or whatever textual wonders you need to create. Now, some of you might be wondering about Microsoft 365. And whilst it feels like just a random string of numbers, it's a whole ecosystem. Microsoft 365 is like the command center for all of your Microsoft applications, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and more. And it's your golden ticket to cloud collaboration and seamless productivity. So say goodbye to the days of files trapped on a single computer. With Microsoft 365, your work travels with you to the cloud, accessible from anywhere. And in this course, we're going to break down the nitty-gritty of Word 365, exploring its powerful features, handy tools, and hidden gems that are going to make your life so much easier. So grab your digital notepads and get ready to dive into the world of Microsoft Word 365. Let's get started on your journey to Word wizardry.

One of the most important concepts that you need to understand when you start working in Word 365 is the difference between Word Desktop and Word Online. And these might not be terms that you're familiar with if you've been using older versions of Word. So let me explain in a bit more detail. Now, currently open on the screen, I have Word Desktop, and I've just got a document open that's related to my resume. Now, when working in Word Desktop, I would simply fire up Word from the Start menu just here, or alternatively, you might have it pinned to the taskbar like I do just here. Now, when we start Word in this way, we're opening up the desktop version. And the desktop version is the full version of Word. Now, historically, this has meant that we're very much tied to our PC in order to work on documents. Prior to things like cloud storage and online applications, we would buy one license for Word, we'd install it onto our PC, and we could only access files that were on our hard drive. Now, of course, times have changed and moved on greatly since then, and we now have things like cloud storage where we can share and access files from anywhere. And that's where Word Online comes in. Because if you have a Microsoft 365 subscription, not only does that give you access to download the desktop versions of all of your applications, not just Word, it also gives you access to a handy online portal where you can access online versions of all of the applications. So if you open up a browser and you go to www.office.com, that's going to take you to the Microsoft 365 portal. If you've already logged in previously, it should take you straight in as it has done with me. If you haven't logged in previously, then you'll be required to enter in your email address and your password. And that's the email address that you used when you signed up for a Microsoft 365 subscription. Now, once you've logged in, you're going to get to the Microsoft 365 portal, and this really is your online hub. If we click the app launcher in the top left-hand corner, this gives us access to the online versions of all of our applications. For example, if we fire up Word, it's going to open in a brand new browser tab, and I am now effectively working in Word Online. Now, I'm just going to open this business proposal document. And interestingly, this is a document that I created in the office using Word Desktop. Notice how I can still access it through the portal. So let's click to open up that document. It's going to open in Word Online, and I can now start working on this document. Now, the eagle-eyed amongst you might notice that Word Online looks slightly different to Word Desktop. In fact, let's do a side-by-side comparison so you can see here that with Word Online, we have less ribbons. And whilst it's not immediately obvious at first glance, we do have less access to some of the more advanced features. For example, in the desktop version, if I go to the Mailings tab, this is where we can do things like mail merge. Now, notice in the online version, we don't actually have a Mailings tab. So that is the first thing to recognize. Word Online does not have as many features as the desktop version. However, you can do most things that you're going to want to do from Word Online, and that's really why it's been designed. It's so we can access and work on documents on the go. So it doesn't matter if I'm in the office, or if I'm in a library, or maybe on a train or at a station, as long as I've got access to Wi-Fi and an internet browser, I can carry on working on my documents. And if you're saving your documents into Microsoft OneDrive, it opens up so many more collaboration features, and we're going to get into some of those throughout the balance of this course. But that's the difference between Word Desktop and Word Online. Just to note, we are going to be working predominantly in the desktop version of Word, as that is the version that has the most features. But occasionally, we will dip in and out of the online version as and when required. So with all that said, it's time to do our first exercise and then jump into the first section.

For the next section, you'll want to download the course exercise files. Click the link below in the video description to get these. You can also scroll through the details to find timestamps for each section in this course. If you're enjoying this training, please leave us a comment.

It's time now to do Exercise One. And in this exercise, we're going to practice some of the skills that we've learned in this section of the course. Now, this is simply the introduction section, so we don't have a great deal to practice. But I would just like you to check a few things. So I'd like you to make sure that you have a working copy of Word 365 so that you can follow through this course fully with me. I'd then like you to make sure that you have the course and exercise files downloaded and saved off to your PC. And finally, I'd like you to be able to explain the difference between Word Desktop and Word Online, including how to access the online portal. So imagine you're in an elevator with your manager, and he asks you to explain the difference, what would you say? Make sure you have that clear in your mind. And I will see you in the first lesson.

Before we start working in Word, we need to first launch Word. And if you've signed up for a Microsoft 365 subscription and you have access to the portal, you can see that I'm logged into my portal just here. If you want to install the desktop versions of all of your applications, if you haven't already, notice that on this first page, you have an Install Apps button. If you click on Microsoft 365 Apps, that's going to install the desktop versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and all of the applications that come with your subscription to Microsoft 365. Once you have those desktop applications installed, it's a simple case of searching for them in Start. So let's go down to the Start menu. Now, again, I'm using Windows 11. If you've got a different operating system, maybe you're using Windows 10, or maybe even an earlier version, Windows 8 or 8.1, the way that you search for applications might be slightly different to me. But if you are using Windows 11, you can simply come up to the top here and you can search for the application that you're looking for. For me, that is Word. Now, at this stage, I would probably pin this application down to the taskbar. You don't want to have to keep coming into the Start menu and searching for it. So if you don't already have it pinned, right-click on the application and choose Pin to taskbar. Now, mine says Unpin from taskbar because I already have mine pinned. As soon as you pin it, you're going to be able to see it down here in the taskbar area, which makes it really convenient just to quickly start up. And when you click on it to open or launch Word, this is the screen that you're going to be taken to, and this is referred to as the Word Start screen. Now, it's worth noting that you only see this version of the start screen when you first open Word. If you have a file open and then close it down, it doesn't take you back to this screen. You only see this when you first launch Word. And on this start screen, we have numerous different things. We're currently clicked on Home, which gives us this area where we can do various different things. So more than likely, when you start Word, you either want to open an existing document or you want to create a new one. So that's exactly what we have just here. We can create a new document, so we have Blank document just there, or we can choose one of the templates, and we're going to talk more about templates a bit later on. And then at the bottom here, in this section, this is where we can see any documents that we've accessed recently. So if this is a brand new copy of Word for you, you're probably not going to have anything in this list. But as you open and create documents, they're going to go into this recent list, and you can simply open them by double-clicking. We can also do things like pin documents. So if I'm always opening Business Proposal, I can click on the little drawing pin icon just here, and that's going to pin that document to the top of this list. So it means it's never going to move, no matter how many documents I open. I can then also find it underneath the Pinned section. You can see there it is, Business Proposal. So I recommend pinning any documents that you need to access frequently. We also have a Shared with me area. So if anybody shares a document with you, and again, we don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves, but we will discuss sharing later on. If somebody shares a document with you, you're going to see it in here. So this is a nice quick way of accessing those documents.

Now, aside from the Home screen, we have a dedicated New page. So again, this is where you can come to create a new blank document or search for a specific template that you might want to use. And then we have Open underneath, which will allow you to open existing documents from cloud storage, SharePoint sites, or even your local PC. Now, a note about this: when you sign up for a Microsoft 365 subscription, you also get access to OneDrive cloud storage, and you will find that that is automatically set up for you just here. So you can see that I have access to my OneDrive storage, and I've also set up my own SharePoint site. Now, if for some reason you can't see your storage area just here, you can click on Add a Place, and you can go through the process of adding in your OneDrive account. If you click on OneDrive, it's going to ask you to enter in your email address and your password, and then it will add it to this section just here. Final couple of things that we have on this start screen, we have access to our Account. So this is where we're going to find all of our account settings. It's also where we can go to check for any updates. And that is one of the biggest advantages of working in Microsoft 365. Any new updates to Word that Microsoft releases, they will be automatically downloaded to your PC. So essentially, Microsoft 365 is versionless because you're always working in the most up-to-date version. We can also do things in here like change our photo if we want to. We can change the Office background, which is just that little pattern in the blue bar running across the top. I could change that to clouds if I wanted to. And I can also change my Office theme. So if I don't like colorful, I can go for dark gray. Sometimes that's a bit easier on people's eyes. We could go for black, we could have white, or we can go for colorful. Entirely up to you. And then finally, at the bottom, we have access to our Word Options. And this is where we go to effectively personalize our copy of Word. And we have so many different options in here. We're going to be dipping in and out of this section throughout this course. So just be aware that that's where it lives.

So now we've launched Word and we've seen that start screen. It's time to start doing some work. So now we've launched Word Desktop, it's time to create a blank document and just get ourselves familiar with what we're looking at on the Word interface. Now, when it comes to creating a new blank document, there are a couple of different methods that you can use. We can click on the File tab at the top, and we can choose Blank document. From the Home tab, we can go to the New page and choose Blank document. Or alternatively, if you like your keyboard shortcuts, and I'm just going to click the back arrow to go back, we can press Ctrl+N, and that will also create us a new blank document. So let's explore exactly what we're looking at. Running across the top, this is what we call our Title Bar, and that's this area that you can see in blue. Now, the Title Bar area will always show certain pieces of information that can be really useful. For example, on the left-hand side, this is where you're going to see the name of your document. Now, we haven't saved this document yet. We've just created it, so it's just going to be given the default name of Document 1, Document 2, Document 3. As soon as we save this document, we'll see the title reflected. And the cool thing about Word 365 is that we no longer have to go to File and Save As. We can simply click this area up here, and it will pop up the Save As window. Now, we're not going to do that at this stage. We're going to do that a bit later on. So let's just click on Cancel for the time being. Moving across to the middle of this Title Bar, we have a search bar just here. Notice as I hover my mouse over, we're getting what we call a screen tip pop up. And you'll see these screen tips appear when you hover over different elements in Word. And these are helpful little popup pieces of information. Most of the time, they'll tell you the name of the command, they'll show you the shortcut key for that command in brackets, and they'll also give you a bit of a description as to what this command or part of the screen does. So you can see here it says, "Just start typing here to bring features to your fingertips and get help." Now, this search area is great if you're looking for specific commands or utilities. We can also access help from here by clicking on the "Tell me more" link. And then moving across to the right-hand side, this is where we have access to our profile information. So you can see my name and my little profile picture. If I click on this, I can jump into my account and I can adjust my personal information. We also have a Sign Out link. And what you'll also see below is if you have any other accounts with Microsoft. So you can see I have a few here. I've blurred them out just to protect my privacy, but I have three other accounts. So I can simply select the account I want to switch to and start working in that account. And then we also have in this top right-hand corner the Minimize button, the Arrange button, and this is pretty cool, and we'll get on to that a bit later on in the course. And then we have the Close button up here as well. Now, it's worth bearing in mind that if you click this Close button, it's going to close down all of Word, not just the document that you have open.

Underneath the Title Bar, this is where we have our Ribbons. And the Ribbons are these horizontal menus that contain all of our commands. And if we take a look at the Home ribbon, for example, you can see that our commands are all divided down into different logical groups. For example, we have a Font group just here, and within the Font group, we have all of the different commands related to formatting and customizing font. Same with Paragraphs, same with Styles, so on and so forth. So the Ribbons are where we can find all of our commands. Now, below the Ribbons, we have this little toolbar just here, the one that says AutoSave. And then we have a few icons: Undo, Redo, and Save. Now, this area is called the Quick Access Toolbar. And in here, we can add commands that we use frequently to this toolbar to make them easier to access. It just means we don't have to go hunting through the different Ribbons each time we want to execute a command. So this area is entirely customizable, and we have a lesson on this a bit later on in this section. Now, the main part of the screen is taken up with the document. And you can see I have my cursor flashing in the document, ready to start typing. And you'll notice that with Word documents, the cursor doesn't go all the way to the edge of the page. We'll always have a margin in there, so we have a little bit of space. Now, of course, you can adjust your margins if this is a bit too wide for you or a bit too narrow, you can definitely do that. Again, it's something we'll cover later in this course. Now, one thing that I would recommend that you turn on, which we don't have turned on at the moment, are Rulers. Rulers can be so helpful, particularly if you're doing things like working with tabs and indents. So the first thing I'm going to do here is jump up to the View ribbon. And in the Show group, notice we have a Ruler option. And if I hover over, I get the screen tip that says, "Show rulers next to your document, you can see and set tab stops, move table borders, and line up objects in the document. Also, you can measure stuff." So rulers are really important, but by default, they aren't turned on. So let's click in this checkbox, and you can see now I have my horizontal and vertical rulers. And then the final part of the interface is the Status Bar that we can see running across the bottom. And this Status Bar contains useful information. Now, this Status Bar can be customized. So you can specify exactly what information you want to see down here, simply by right-clicking. And we can turn off or turn on things that we're interested in. For example, you can see that currently I have Page Number ticked in the Customize Status Bar menu. And if you cast your eyes all the way down to the left-hand corner of the document, you can see it says Page 1 of 1. Now, that is useful information, particularly if this is a long document. But if I deselect Page Number, you can see that that disappears. Select it again, and it comes back. So we have all of these different items that we can add to this Status Bar, and I recommend you go through each and review and set up your copy of Word so that you can see the information that's most useful to you. And then all the way over on the right-hand side in this Status Bar area, this is where we can do things like switch between different views. So the default view in Word is Print Layout view. That's the view that I'm currently in. But we could switch to Read Mode, we could switch to Web Layout. And also, notice that we have a Zoom slider just here as well. So I can use this to zoom into the document or zoom all the way out. The final point to mention here is, aside from the Ribbons, we also have what we call the Backstage area. And you can access this by clicking on File. So File isn't technically a Ribbon. It takes us into the administration tools for our document. So this is where we come if we want to create a new document or open an existing document. We can Save, Save As, and Print from here. We can Share our file and Export it. So all of those types of admin tools you're going to find underneath File, or as we refer to it in the Word world, Backstage view. So that's a quick rundown of the Word interface. Hopefully, you feel a bit more comfortable with it now. Let's move on to the next lesson, where the hard work really starts.

In the previous lesson, where we were exploring the Word interface, we briefly mentioned the Ribbons, and I showed you that on each of the Ribbons, we have different groups, and within these groups, we have related commands. Now, in this lesson, I just want to delve a bit deeper into this. Because aside from what you can actually see on the Ribbon, we have access to more options. For example, if we go to the Home tab, let's focus on this Font group. So I'm going to type a line of text into this document. I'm just going to click when my cursor is flashing, and I can simply start typing. Now, the font in use here is going to be the default font for your copy of Word. And if you're using Microsoft 365, then you will probably be aware that Microsoft has just changed the default font from Calibri to Aptos, and you can see Aptos is listed here in the font dropdown. Also, note that we have a default font size of 12, and both of these can be adjusted. We can change our font from here, and we can also change the size of the font as well. So if I select my text, and I do that by simply clicking and I can just drag and swipe across it, I could choose to make this bold by clicking on the B. I could change the font color, so let's just make this red. I could increase the font size by clicking on the increase font size button. And notice that with each of these, we have keyboard shortcuts. I can click it once, click it twice, click it a third time to increase that font size, and the same in reverse. So lots of things we can do with font in this group. However, also notice that we have a little diagonal arrow just here. Again, keyboard shortcut Ctrl+D. If we click on this, it's going to bring up our Advanced Font formatting options. So in here, we're going to find repeats of some of the commands in the Font group on the Ribbon, but we can get a little bit more detailed about exactly what we're changing, and we can change things all in one go. So if I wanted to change this piece of font to something completely different, so let's go for Agency FB. I'm going to say I want it to be bold italic, and let's make it bigger. Let's go for font size 16. I can change the font color from here, so let's make it purple. I could give it an underline style if I wanted to, and I could even change the underline color. I could give it a strikethrough, a double strikethrough, I can make it superscript or subscript, and I can make it small caps or all caps. So lots of additional things that we can do in here that we can't do on the Ribbon. We also have an Advanced tab just here, where we can do things like specify how much space we want in between each character. For example, currently I have my spacing set to normal, but I could choose to have it as expanded. Click on OK, and we now have more of a gap in between each of those characters. If we highlight again and go back into our Advanced formatting options, I could make that spacing even more obvious by changing the number of points. So if we take it up to 1.8, for example, and click on OK, you can see we now get more space in between. So don't forget that when you're working with these different groups of commands, if you see this little diagonal arrow in the corner of a group, it's going to give you access to more advanced functions related to that group. Now, the majority of the time, this is going to open up a dialogue box. That's what we call these little windows just here. However, sometimes when you click on the arrow, it's going to open up a task pane instead. For example, the first group on the Home ribbon, this is where we have our cut, copy, and paste options. Now, we have a little diagonal arrow just here, but instead of opening up a dialogue box, it's actually going to open up what we call the Clipboard. And again, we're going to talk more about the Clipboard later on, but just recognize that this opens up what we refer to as a task pane as opposed to a dialogue box. And task panes in general are docked to either the left or the right of the screen, but we can pick these up and drag and drop them wherever we want. If we want to redock them, we can simply drag across and let go.

Now, another thing to recognize is that we have contextual menus and contextual ribbons. So what do we mean by that? Well, if I select this line of text, notice what pops up just above. We have a mini toolbar, and everything we see on here is related to text. So this little floating mini toolbar is just there as a quick way so that we don't have to keep reaching our mouse up to the Ribbons. It's going to show us everything that we might want to do with this text, for example, change the font. I could change it back to Aptos. I could remove bold, italic, and underline, so on and so forth. And also, with this text highlighted, if we right-click our mouse, this gives us access to a contextual menu. Now, it's called a contextual menu because everything that you see in here is related to whatever it is that we've right-clicked on. So we have options that are available for text. If I had a shape in here, and I'm quickly going to add one, if I was to right-click on this shape, I get a different menu. The options that I see in here are now related to shapes. So I can do things like add text to the shape, I can save it as a picture, I can insert a caption, so on and so forth. So just be aware that whenever you right-click, the menu you see is very much dependent on what you've right-clicked on. And the other thing to note here is that if I keep this shape selected, look at my Ribbons. I now have a ribbon called Shape Format. If I click away from that shape, that ribbon disappears. And this is what we call contextual ribbons, meaning that they only appear when they're needed. So this really stops our Word Ribbons from getting too cluttered. We don't have everything we need displayed at the top. Things will appear and disappear as and when they're needed. And on this Shape Format ribbon, I have all of the options that I'm going to need in order to format this shape. For example, I could change the fill color of this shape. So the main point of this lesson is to really understand these little diagonal arrows in the corner of each group, the difference between dialogue boxes and task panes, and also the concept of contextual menus and contextual ribbons.

When we were exploring the Word interface, we briefly touched on the Quick Access Toolbar. And if you recall, it's this little toolbar just here, and I mentioned that we were going to come back to this in a later lesson, and that time is now. Now, the Quick Access Toolbar, by default, will contain four different commands: AutoSave, Undo, Redo, and Save. So these are commands that you will need to access frequently. For example, when we save this document, AutoSave will automatically toggle itself on. And the advantage of this is that Word will save any changes that we're making to the document automatically. We don't have to remember to manually save. The Undo button allows us to undo our last action, again, a lifesaver when you're working in documents. And we have the opposite of that just here, the Redo button. It will repeat the last action. And then, of course, we have the Save button just here. Now, this Quick Access Toolbar is really there to make it easy for you to access commands that you use frequently. It just means that you can save a bit of time, as you don't have to hunt through the Ribbons looking for the command that you need. Now, notice on the end of the

The quick access toolbar: we have a little drop-down arrow that says "Customize Quick Access Toolbar". If we click on this, it's going to open up the Quick Access Toolbar menu. Now notice that some of these items have ticks next to them, and those are the ones that are currently on the Quick Access Toolbar. You can see there we have Redo, Undo, Save, and Automatically Save. But we do have some other ones listed out here that don't have ticks next to them, and these are commands that Microsoft has deemed you might need to access frequently. For example, New Document. Let's select it. You can see that it adds that icon to the toolbar. If we click it, it's going to create a brand new document. So very simple to go through and add any of these commands.

Now obviously, the ones that you can see listed in here, those are not all of the commands available in Word. We can see just how many commands we have when we take a look at our ribbons. So if you have a command on a specific ribbon that you want to add to the Quick Access Toolbar, for example if we go across to the Insert ribbon, maybe I'm always inserting lots of shapes. I can right-click on the command, and the first option in the contextual menu is "Add to Quick Access Toolbar". So when I click on this, I now have that added, and it makes it really simple for me to access my Shapes gallery. So I can go through right-clicking and adding whatever commands I want from whatever ribbon. If you want to delete commands from the Quick Access Toolbar, again it's a simple case of right-clicking and removing from the Quick Access Toolbar.

Now there is another way that you can customize this toolbar, because not every command that's available in Word is on one of these ribbons. So if you want to see just a big list of absolutely everything that's available, we can click the drop-down and right at the bottom we have "More Commands". Now this is effectively going to jump us into our Word Options and directly to the Quick Access Toolbar section. On the right-hand side, we can see the commands that we currently have on our Quick Access Toolbar, and then on the left-hand side, this is where we can choose a specific group and see all of the commands available. So currently I'm just showing Popular Commands in the list below, but if I wanted to see all commands available in Word, I have an "All Commands" option just here. And this sometimes takes a couple of seconds to refresh, because there are a lot of commands, but now we have them all listed out here in alphabetical order, so it makes it slightly easier to find them. So I can scroll through here and I can add any of these commands to the Quick Access Toolbar. For example, let's go for "AutoFit Columns". I just need to select it and click on the Add button in the middle, and it's going to add that in. So I'm going to add just a few commands into here like so.

Once we have them added onto the Quick Access Toolbar, we can rearrange them by using Move Up and Move Down. So if I wanted to move this button up, I can do that. If I want to move this one down, I can do that as well. So rearrange these however you like. Another thing that can help with organization and structure with your Quick Access Toolbar is to add in separators. And you'll find that it doesn't matter which one of these groups you've selected, at the top of every list you're going to have a separator option. So I can click on Add, and I'm going to add a couple of these, and then I can move these into position to visually group together commands of similar type. Now I'm going to move the Save command up so it's next to AutoSave. We've then got Undo and Redo – those two kind of go together. And then we have a whole bunch of commands related to Auto formatting. So I'm going to grab the first separator, I'm going to move it up to separate the Save functions from Undo and Redo. I'm then going to grab this separator and I'm going to move that up to group all of the Auto Format commands together. Once I'm happy with how this looks, I can click on OK, and those changes will be updated in the Quick Access Toolbar. Notice here we now have these grouped together, and you can see a very faint line where we have our separators. So this is just good to give your toolbar a bit of structure.

Final couple of points to mention. Let's click the drop-down again. Right at the bottom here, we can choose to change the position of our Quick Access Toolbar. So if you don't like it underneath the ribbons, you can put it above the ribbons. So let's say "Show Above", and you can see it's now up here in the title bar. Some people like this because it kind of keeps it out of the way. I definitely prefer to show it below the ribbon. And some people don't like to see this toolbar at all; some people don't use it. If you're one of those people, you can also choose to hide the Quick Access Toolbar, and that's going to get rid of it. Now if you want to bring the Quick Access Toolbar back again once you've hidden it, if you go all the way over to the right-hand side, notice we have a little drop-down arrow just here. When we hover over it, it says "Ribbon Display Options". If we click this, we have a "Show Quick Access Toolbar" option, and it's now back. Final thing in here is we can also show command labels. So if you struggle to identify these commands just based on their icon, you can choose to add the labels as well to make it a little bit more obvious. I'm going to hide the command labels. So customize this Quick Access Toolbar as you like. I'm going to remove some of these because I don't actually want to have these on there, so we're just going to right-click, and I'm just going to leave the defaults. That's it for this lesson. I will see you in the next one.

In this lesson, we're going to discuss keyboard shortcuts. I'm going to show you how you can access your keyboard shortcuts and also demonstrate some of my favorites. Now, in order to demonstrate these properly, we're going to need some text in our document. So this is really the first shortcut that I can show you. If you want to get some sample text into a document so that you can practice, you can simply type into the document "=Rand()", which stands for random. Open a bracket, and then you can specify how many lines and how many paragraphs of random text you want to generate. So let's say that I want 10 paragraphs of five lines each. Close the bracket, hit Enter, and that's exactly what I'm going to get. So that's a really nice quick way to get some sample text into a document that you can work with.

Now, keyboard shortcuts are a way of working really efficiently with your documents. A lot of people find keyboard shortcuts a lot quicker and easier when executing commands and carrying out tasks. For example, if I decided that I wanted to make all of this text bold, I could simply press Ctrl+A – keyboard shortcut – which will select everything. Ctrl+B is the keyboard shortcut for Bold. If I wanted to make this italic, Ctrl+I. Underline, Ctrl+U. And if you want to back out of these, you can simply press them again. So Ctrl+U will remove the underline, Ctrl+I will remove italics, and Ctrl+B will remove bold. I can then just click away to deselect everything. Now remember, with a lot of the commands, if you hover your mouse over them – for example, Bold on the Home ribbon – you can see the keyboard shortcut in brackets. Now this isn't the case for absolutely everything. For example, if I hover over Bullets, it's not showing me a keyboard shortcut. So just be aware that that's not particularly consistent throughout the application.

Now there are hundreds of keyboard shortcuts available in Word, and I will say that you'll probably only use about 15 to 20 of them when you're doing your daily work. So we saw right at the beginning of this course, we can press Ctrl+N. That's the keyboard shortcut for creating a new document. If I want to close this document down, Ctrl+W will do that. If I want to save, Ctrl+S, and that's going to pop up the Save As dialogue box because we haven't yet saved this document, and we're not going to at this stage, so let's just close it down. If I want to print this document, Ctrl+P is going to jump me into my print area. And if I want to find out a full list of keyboard shortcuts available in Word, I can access those through the help files. Now I'm going to search for them. Remember we have a search bar at the top, and a quick way to jump our cursor up to that search bar is to use the keyboard shortcut Alt+Q. You can see that it's now grabbed focus in that search area. So if I type in "keyboard shortcuts" up here, you can see we have a section here called "Get Help" and a link to "Keyboard shortcuts in Word". So if we click on this, it's going to jump us into the help files, and this is where we're going to find information about keyboard shortcuts, as well as a big long list. Now fortunately, the keyboard shortcuts have been divided down into different groups. So if you want to find out what the most popular ones are, or the frequently used shortcuts, you have a little link just here. If we click this link, it's going to show us the most commonly used or frequently used keyboard shortcuts. So you can print out these or make a note of the ones that are going to be useful to you. If you're specifically interested in keyboard shortcuts for navigating, we could click on "Navigate the document". That's going to jump us down to the relevant section, and then we have all of our keyboard shortcuts in there. And navigation is one of the main reasons why I use keyboard shortcuts. For example, I'm clicked at the top of the document. If I press Ctrl+Down Arrow, it's going to jump me to the next paragraph. Ctrl+Down Arrow again to jump to the next paragraph. Ctrl+Up Arrow to go back. If I want to jump to the end of the document, Ctrl+End is going to jump me down there. Ctrl+Home will take me to the top. Now what about if I just wanted to make the first paragraph bold? Well, we can select the first paragraph only by pressing Ctrl+Shift+Down Arrow. I can then do Ctrl+B to apply that bold formatting. If I was clicked at the end of the paragraph, I could do Ctrl+Shift+Up Arrow and then press Ctrl+B again to remove that bold formatting. If I'm clicked at the start of a sentence and I want to highlight the whole sentence, Shift+Down Arrow will do that. I can press Shift+Down Arrow again and I can highlight each sentence individually. Ctrl+Right Arrow will move me by word through the document. And it's also worth noting that a lot of these selections that we're making, we can also do by double-clicking in the margin. For example, if I just want to select the first sentence, I can hover my mouse in the margin next to the sentence, click once, and it's going to make that selection. Alternatively, if I want to select the entire paragraph, I can double-click in the margin, and it's going to do that as well. So lots of different ways that we can work more efficiently with keyboard shortcuts.

The final thing to mention here are Alt key tips. If you press the Alt key on your keyboard, check out what happens to our ribbons. We now have a number or a letter assigned to every single ribbon. So if I wanted to insert a shape, for example, I know that's on the Insert ribbon, so I need to press N. I can then go to Shapes by pressing SH, and then I can use my arrow keys to select the shape that I want to insert. So let's go for a rectangle, hit Enter, and there we go – I have my shape. So effectively, the keyboard shortcut to do that would be Alt+N, SH. So these little Alt key tips are really useful. So those are some of my favorite keyboard shortcuts and how you can access the full list. You'll soon find as you start working more in Word, keyboard shortcuts that you use most often, and before long they'll become second nature.

One thing we never want to do when creating Word documents is send out a document that contains spelling mistakes. Now there's lots of different tools available in Microsoft Word to help us spell-check our documents, but in this lesson I just want to focus on "Check spelling as you type" because this is such a useful feature. Because if you're checking your spelling as you go, it leaves less of a job to do at the end. Now you should find that "Check spelling as you type" is a setting that's turned on by default. How do we know if it's working? Well, let's type something into our document, and let's spell a word wrong. So I'm going to type "welcome" with two E's. Now as soon as I press the space bar, you can see that that word gets this red squiggly underline. So that's telling me that I've made a spelling error. So as soon as I type that word and press space, I'm going to see that I need to make a correction. And the quickest way to do this is to simply hover your mouse over the word, right-click, and you should find underneath the spelling pop-out menu a list of alternatives. So I can see here this is what I meant to say: "welcome". We can select from the list, and it will automatically correct it. So "Check spelling as you type" is extremely useful. It will also check grammar as you type as well. So let's type in another sentence that doesn't really make sense. So "Welcome to an Microsoft Word course" – that's not a particularly well-constructed sentence. And you can see that underneath the word "an" I have a blue double underline. So this is indicating that I have a grammatical error. Once again, I can right-click. It's going to tell me that this is related to grammar, and then it's going to give me some suggestions. So I could maybe choose "use a" instead. It's still not the greatest sentence in the world – "Welcome to a Microsoft Word course" – but it sounds a lot better than having "an" in there. So you can check both spelling and grammar as you type.

Now if you're noticing that this isn't happening when you're typing and words are misspelled, then you'll want to check the setting and make sure that you have the box selected so that it will check your spelling as you go. So let's jump up to File, let's go down into our Word Options, and need to go to the Proofing page. This is where we're going to find everything related to spell check. Now we have a lot of different options in here, but the ones that we're interested in are underneath this heading "When correcting spelling and grammar in Word". Notice that I have "Check spelling as you type" selected, and also "Mark grammar errors as you type" as well. So if it's not working for you, you'll probably find that one or both of these boxes are unchecked. So just make sure you select them and click on OK. That's all there is to "Check spelling as you type" – a really helpful little feature.

It's time now to do Exercise 2. And in this exercise, we're going to practice some of the skills that we've learned in this section of the course. So the first thing that I'd like you to do is to just create a new blank Word document. I'd then like you to use that little random text generation trick that I showed you – to generate 20 paragraphs of six lines each of junk text in the document. Once you have your junk text, I'd like you to just practice moving around the document using different keyboard shortcuts. So jump to the end, jump to the beginning, jump to the end of a paragraph, select an entire paragraph – things like that. And then I'd like you to select the first paragraph using keyboard shortcuts. I'd then like you to use Alt keys to center-align that first paragraph. Once you've done that, I'd like you to practice customizing the Quick Access Toolbar by adding three commands of your choice. And then finally, I'd just like you to ensure that "Check spelling as you type" is turned on. That's all I need you to do. If you'd like to see my answer, then please keep watching.

So the first thing I asked you to do here was simply to create a new blank Word document. You could have gone up to File and selected New Document, or alternatively you could press the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+N. I then asked you to add some junk text to this document using that little random text trick that I showed you, and we want 20 paragraphs of six lines each. So let's type in "=Rand(20,6)", close the bracket, hit Enter, and there we have it. I then asked you to practice just moving around the document using keyboard shortcuts. So that might involve Ctrl+Home to jump to the top, Ctrl+End to jump to the bottom, Ctrl+Up Arrow to go by paragraph, Ctrl+Right Arrow to go by word, so on and so forth. Ctrl+Home to go to the top. I then asked you to use keyboard shortcuts to select the entire first paragraph. So for this, we simply just need to press Ctrl+Shift+Down Arrow to make that selection. And then I asked you to use Alt key shortcuts to center-align this paragraph. So we're going to press the Alt key. Our paragraph options are on the Home ribbon, so let's press H. And now I can see that center line – I need to press A, C, and there we go. The next part of the exercise was to simply add three commands to the Quick Access Toolbar. So you could have done this in numerous ways. The easiest way by far is simply to find the command on the toolbar. So let's go to Insert, right-click on it, and click "Add to Quick Access Toolbar". Alternatively, you could have clicked the drop-down and chosen one of these from here, so let's add Email. Or you could have gone into More Commands and added an option from here. So let's go for Bullets, let's click on Add, and click on OK. And then the final thing I asked you to do was simply to check that you have "Check spelling as you type" turned on in Options. So let's go to File and down to Options. We need to go to the Proofing page, scroll down to the bottom, and we want to make sure we have a tick just here. That's all I needed you to do. I hope you got on okay with that, and I'll see you in the next section.

Word templates are like blueprints for your documents. Think of them as pre-designed layouts that you can use as a starting point for all sorts of stuff – from a fancy resume to a cool party invite. Now why are templates so useful? Well, imagine you need to create a resume for a job application. Now we could start that document from scratch, but that's a lot of work. Whereas if we use a template – they swoop in like superheroes to save the day. They give us a head start. All we need to do is pick a resume template, and like magic we already have a cool-looking format with sections to add our information. So templates overall are fantastic time-savers. They help us create professional-looking documents without having to be a design guru. Plus they're not just for resumes; you can find templates for newsletters, brochures, reports, and so much more. It's like having a creative assistant at your fingertips.

Now to access templates, we simply need to go up to the File menu and go to the New section. And at the bottom here you'll see we have two headings: we have "Office" and we have "Personal". Now underneath the Office tab, this is where you're going to find a selection of all of Microsoft's Office templates, and all of the templates you can see in here are divided down into categories to make them easier to find. And notice underneath the search bar just here where we have suggested searches, we can see some of those categories. For example, if we were looking for a resume template, we could click on "Resumes and Cover Letters", and this is going to give us access to that library. Now let's click on Back just to go back for one second, because if we know a template that we're specifically looking for, this is where we could use the search bar. So if I need to create an invoice, I can type in "invoice", press Enter, and it's going to return all of the results that match that keyword. So really nice and simple.

Now if you're wondering what the difference is between the Office tab and the Personal tab just here, this is related to saving templates. So we're going to talk about that in a moment. Let's first load up a template and make some changes to it. Now we're going to go down to "Resumes and Cover Letters". Let's scroll down and choose this one just here. Click once – it's going to open up a little window which will provide a bit more information about this template. We can see that this template is provided by the Microsoft Corporation, and then we have a description. We also get a larger preview, so we can really determine if this is exactly what we want. Once we're happy, we can click on the Create button to open that template in Word, and we are ready to start making changes.

Now notice here in the title, it's just loaded this up as "Document 8". And this is one thing you need to understand about templates: they are designed to be reused. So every time I want to create a resume, whether it's for me or for somebody else, I could load up this template and make the changes. And we save templates in a slightly different way to saving Word documents, and we haven't spoken about saving too much as yet, so this is going to give you a nice little bit of insight. Now before we save this, let's just make some changes. Now currently, this template has an overall kind of purple theme. And if I wanted to change all of the colors in this particular template, I could do that simply by changing the theme. Again, this isn't something we've explored in too much detail as yet, so this will provide a nice introduction. If we go up to the Design tab, notice we have a Themes group just here. And if I were to change the theme – so let's go for the Office theme – you can see that that is going to change the colors. I could also change any individual element by simply selecting it, going to the Home tab, and I could change the font color to something completely different if I want to. Also notice that in templates, a lot of the time you'll have these square brackets, and this denotes that this is an area to be customized. So I could type in "Dear", and maybe this is going to Microsoft. I can make that change. I'm also probably going to want to switch out the picture just here and replace it with my own image. We can definitely do that, but again we haven't got on to pictures just yet, so let's just leave it as the default.

The main thing I want to show you here is how to save a template. As I mentioned, this works slightly differently. So if we go up to File and into Save As, I'm going to click on Browse to jump me to File Explorer. Now notice that by default, it's going to jump to my Documents folder in OneDrive. Now I could save my template into here, however we don't want to save it as a .docx file. We want to save this as a template instead. So we need to click the Save as type dropdown and choose "Word Template" from the menu. Now notice what happens to my folder location as soon as I make this selection. Can you see it jumps across to the "Custom Office Templates" folder? Now I always recommend that you save into this default folder. So let's give this a file name. I already have a file called "Deb resume" in there, let's call this "Deb CV" and click on Save. Now if we close this file down, let's say we now want to use that template to create a resume. We can go to File, we can go to New, and now when we click on the Personal tab, we should see our template in there. Now that's because we saved this template into that Custom Templates folder. If I just saved it into my OneDrive Documents folder, we wouldn't be able to access it through here. So now that it's underneath Personal, I can simply click on it again, and notice it opens as "Document 9". So any changes I make here are not going to overwrite the template. This is going to be a brand new document. So effectively, I can reuse that template over and over again. So templates are an amazing way to get a head start when it comes to document creation. Have a little play around with them, and I'll see you in the next lesson.

In the last lesson, we saw how we can save templates so that they can be reused again, and we did that by changing the file extension, which in turn changes the folder that we're saving into. But what about if we just simply want to save a regular Word document? Well, let's create one – Ctrl+N – and let's get some random text in here. So once again we're going to type in "=Rand(", I'm going to open a bracket, let's do 20 paragraphs of three lines this time. Ctrl+Home to jump to the top. Now currently, this document is not saved. You can see in the title bar it just says "Document 10". And if you take a look at my Quick Access Toolbar, notice that the AutoSave option is turned off. Now the reason why this is turned off is because we haven't saved this into a folder as yet. As soon as we save it, this will automatically toggle on, which means that as we make changes to this document, it's going to automatically save back to the file. So no more having to keep remembering to press Ctrl+S or clicking on the Save button to save our changes. Now when it comes to saving files for the first time, we just need to go up to the File tab and we need to select Save As. And you have a few different options when it comes to saving. So you can see at the top here I have access to OneDrive and also SharePoint. Now yours might look a little bit different depending on if you've set up OneDrive and SharePoint. And if you haven't, you can simply click on "Add a Place" just here, and then you can walk through the process of adding in your file storage system. So I could choose to save into OneDrive. I can see my folder structure just here. If I double-click on "Course Files", that's going to open that folder, and then I can type in my file name and click on Save. Alternatively, if I click on Browse, that's going to open up File Explorer, and some people are a lot more comfortable just working with File Explorer because that's what they're used to. So if that's you, that's absolutely fine. You can navigate to the folder that you want to use and save it that way.

Now I'm going to click on Cancel because I do want to save it into OneDrive, and I want to save it into the Course Files folder. So at the top here, we're going to give our file a name. I'm going to call this "My first document". Notice underneath the default file extension is .docx, and a new feature in Word 365 is the ability to kind of define what type of document this is. So if it's a personal document, if it's public, if it's general for all employees, so on and so forth. Now I'm going to leave mine on the default, which is "General for all employees". Let's click on the Save button. So now that we've saved this, notice what's happened to the AutoSave toggle. You can see this is now toggled on. So as we go through and start to make changes to our document, for example if I delete something, notice the Save button now has a green arrow on it showing that it's refreshing and it's updating. We can also see the word "Saving" in the title bar up here. So everything we do is automatically saved back to the file. Notice now it says "Saving" in the title bar, so I know I'm not going to lose any of those changes. And if I wanted to very quickly rename this document, I don't have to go back into File and Save As. I can simply click in the title just here where it says "My first document" and I can change this to something else. So maybe "My second document". Now we're not creating a copy here; we're simply renaming this one like so. Let's close down this document – File and Close – and if we want to reopen it, we can go to File, Open, and then we should be able to see it in our recent list underneath Documents. So at the top here I've got anything that I've pinned, but this is the section for documents that I've saved today, and there you can see "My second document". And we simply need to click to reopen. So that's how simple it is to save a document.

In the previous lesson, we saw how to save a Word document. And in this lesson, I'd like to carry on with the subject of saving, but this time we're going to talk more specifically about saving documents into OneDrive and how that all interacts. Now this document just here called "My second document" – I saved this into a folder in OneDrive. If I click on the title bar up here, you can see exactly where that's saved. So it's saved into the Course Files folder in OneDrive. Now because I've saved my document into OneDrive, it means that I can access this through the Microsoft 365 online portal wherever I have an internet connection. So I could be traveling home on the train, or maybe I'm on my iPad at home in the evening, or maybe I'm in a library. As long as I have a Wi-Fi connection, I can simply fire up a browser and I can carry on working on this document. So let's close this down – File and Close – and let's jump across to Microsoft 365. So once again, I've just gone to office.com and I've logged in using my email address and password. And what you'll notice immediately is that on this homepage in the Recommended area, it's going to show me the last thing that I saved, and I can see that there is my document – "My second document". If I scroll further down the page, I can see all of my recently saved documents, and the top one again is "My second document". So if I've been working on this document in the office and I've closed it down and I've closed down my PC and gone home for the day, if my boss messages me and needs me to update something in this document, I can simply fire up a web browser, sign in, click on this document from Microsoft 365, and it's going to open it up in Word Online. And I can go in and I can make my changes. So let's just change this paragraph to red. Once again, this will automatically save any changes that I make. And when I close this down and go back to the office the next day, I can fire up Word, go to File, there's the document at the top of the recent list, and I should find that when I open this up, I can see those changes. So when you save your Word documents into OneDrive, everything synchronizes, and you can then access them through a browser.

In previous lessons, we've spoken about the AutoSave toggle just here, and what we know about AutoSave is that as soon as we create a document and save it to a folder, this AutoSave will automatically toggle itself on. So if we make any changes to this document, it automatically saves those changes back to the file. We don't need to remember to press Ctrl+S to save as we go along. But remember, AutoSave doesn't toggle on until you save your document to a folder. So if we close this file down and let's just create a new blank file, notice that currently AutoSave is toggled off because I haven't yet saved it to a folder. Now sometimes you might just quickly create a blank file and start typing away, thinking "I'll save it in a moment". So let's get some text in here. Again, I'm just going to use my little Rand trick. Let's jump to the top – Ctrl+Home. Now currently, any changes that I'm making to this document are not saving. And just to make this super obvious, I'm going to add a title to the top here: "Microsoft Word explained". Let's just make that bold so it stands out. So maybe I'm working away in this document and Word suddenly crashes – it does happen, we've all been there – or maybe I've accidentally clicked the cross in the top corner, which will close the application, and I've selected "Don't Save". And then as soon as I've done that, I think to myself, actually you know what, I really did need that document. Well, the good news is that we can recover unsaved documents in Word 365. So let me show you how.

We're going to relaunch Word. Now we need to get into the Info section. Now in order to do that, we actually need to create or have a document open. So let's just open a blank one. Then we can go to File, down to Info, and right at the bottom here we have a big old "Manage Document" button. If we click the drop-down, it's going to allow us to recover any unsaved documents. So let's click this. It's going to jump us across to File Explorer and into a very specific folder – it says "Roaming\Microsoft\Word" – and these are all of my unsaved documents. Now to find the one I need to recover, I'm probably going to want to reorder these by Date Modified. So let's click this so we have the latest one at the top. That's today's date, this is the time, and there it is. So I can see the title "Microsoft Word explained". That is the document I want to recover. So select it, click on Open, and like magic, we have our document back. Notice that I get a little message just above: "Recovered unsaved file. This is a recovered file that is temporarily stored on your computer." And also notice in the blue bar at the top, it's currently read-only. So if we want to carry on working in this document, we need to click on Save As and then choose a folder to save it into. So I'm just going to call this "Recovered file", click on Save, and as soon as I do that, I can now carry on working in my document, and AutoSave has been toggled on. So don't forget about that little option, as it can be a lifesaver.

In previous lessons, I've shown you how you can navigate around a document using keyboard shortcuts. But we also have other navigation options. Now notice here on the screen, this is the document that we recovered in the last lesson, and what I've done here is I've just made a few changes to it. The first thing I've done is I've renamed the file "Word explained", and I did that simply by clicking on the file name at the top and renaming it up here. What I've also done is added some headings into this document, and I've added these headings using Word Styles. If you look on the Home ribbon, notice we have a Styles group just here with different levels of heading. Now I'm not going to get too much into Styles in this particular lesson; we're definitely going to cover this in more detail later on in the course. What I've basically done here is I've gone through and I've applied Heading 1 and Heading 2 styles to this document. Now applying Styles or using Styles in your document is advantageous for many, many reasons, but one of them is that it really assists us when it comes to navigating around documents. For example, if we go up to the View tab just here, in the Show group we have a "Navigation Pane" option. And if I hover my mouse over this, the screen tip says: "Open the navigation pane. It's like a tour guide for your document. Click a heading, a page, or a search result and it will take you right there." So this is really useful, particularly if you have a very long document. So let's click to show the Navigation Pane. And the first thing you'll notice is that it opens on the left-hand side, and we have three tabs at the top: Headings, Pages, and Results. Now underneath the Headings tab, notice that it's picked up all of the headings within the document, and it's picked those up because I've used Word Styles. Instead of using Styles, if I'd simply typed the word "Introduction" and made it bigger and made it bold and maybe changed the color, it wouldn't be picked up in this pane because it's not officially a heading that uses Word Styles. As I said, we're going to talk more about these later on, but just for the time being, let's see how we can use these to navigate around our document. And it should be reasonably obvious: if I want to jump to the section related to the Review ribbon, I can simply click on the heading in the pane, and it's going to jump me down to that part of the document. Click another heading, it's going to jump me back. And the structure that you see here is again based on the heading levels. So where we have "Microsoft Word explained", I've actually used a Heading 1 style for that, whereas all of these other sub-headings have Heading 2 attached to them. If I added something else that was Heading 3, that would be indented slightly as well. And all of these headings come with collapsible and expandable arrows next to them, so this just allows me to focus on exactly the part of the document that I'm interested in.

Now aside from using the headings to quickly navigate around a document, we can also navigate by page. So if we click on the Pages tab just here, you can see this document has three pages. If I want to jump to the third page, I can simply click on it, and it's going to jump me down there, and your cursor will be placed on the first line of whatever page you've chosen. And then finally, we have a Results tab. Now this is related to the search bar above. So I can type in a search term in here, and it's going to show me all of the pages or the paragraphs where that search term exists. So if I type in let's just type in "home", you can see it's found the Home ribbon. If I type in the word – let's type in the word "video" – you can see we get quite a few hits just here. So it's showing me exactly where it's found all of those hits, and you can also see that the search word is highlighted in the document, and we have quite a few of these throughout this entire document. And if I want to jump to a specific paragraph, I can simply select it from the results list, and it's going to jump me down to that particular area. I can also use my up and down arrows just here to navigate one by one through the search results, so that can be quite useful as well.

And the final thing I'm going to point out at this stage is notice we have a little drop-down arrow at the end of this search bar. And if we select "Go To", this is another way that we can quickly jump to specific things within our document. So if I want to jump to page 3, I can make sure I have Page selected, type in 3, and click on Go To, and it's going to jump me to that page. If I want to go back to page 1, I can type in 1, Go To, and it's going to jump me back up. We can also jump to specific things in here – so specific sections, again we haven't sectioned up our document yet, but we will come back and review this when we do. We can jump to specific lines, bookmarks, comments, footnotes, so on and so forth. Also notice right at the bottom here, we can go to Heading. So we can enter in a heading number. Now my cursor is currently at the top of the document where I have my Heading 1, but if I wanted to jump to the first Heading 2, I can just type in 2, Go To, and you'll see my cursor basically moves to the first Heading 2 in the document, which for us is "Introduction". So we have this little Go To area as well. Don't forget you can access that through the drop-down. An alternative way of accessing Go To is to press Ctrl+G. That will bring up the same window and jump you to the Go To tab. So those are some of the other ways that you can navigate around a Word document.

I just wanted to finish up this section by showing you a quick way that you can find different tools when working in Word 365. So I currently just have a blank document open; you can see it's just called "Document 1". We don't need to save this or anything like that because we're not going to need this file. But let's imagine that we're looking for a specific utility in Word, for example maybe I want to change the theme of this document, and maybe I don't know where the Theme button is, and maybe I don't know where to locate the Theme button. Well, what we can do is we can use the search bar at the top to find tools in Word 365. And if you recall, a quick way of getting our cursor into that search bar is to press Alt+Q. Now notice what happens as soon as our cursor is in that box. We get this menu dropped down, so we have some recently used actions – so these are things that I've done previously – some suggested actions, and then we have some suggested actions. Now it's recognizing that I've got just a blank document here, so it's asking me that I might want to put a table of contents on the first page, I might want to open the Navigation pane, or maybe I want to add a table. We then have a section called "Find in Document", we then have a "Notes" section, and then a "People" section. Now what this basically means is that we can search for all of these things within Word.

Now let's just start out by searching for what I mentioned at the beginning – "themes". What we can do is we can simply type in "themes" at the top here, and it's going to find that command on the ribbons. So you can see at the top here it says "Best action", then we have "Themes". And if I hover my mouse over this, it's going to show me all of the themes, so then I can select a new theme. So I'm going to choose this one just here. Now just as a comparison, the Themes option is actually on the Design tab just here – there it is, the first button. When we click it, we get that same gallery, but it is a lot easier to simply press Alt+Q and then search for what you need. If I want to insert a table and I'm not sure how to do that, I can simply type in "table", and it's going to give me a list of possible actions. Now because I've just typed in "table", it doesn't know if I actually want to insert a table or if I want to do something like insert a table of contents. So if I want to insert a table, I can simply click on this option, and it's going to take me into the Insert Table dialogue box. I can then specify the number of columns and rows, click on OK, and it's going to put that table into my document. Now again, we don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves – we haven't discussed tables or anything like that so far, but hopefully you can see how useful this search bar can be at the top. Now I'm just going to delete this table out, and let's just add in some more random text. Now I'm going to press Alt+Q again to jump back up to that search area.

because this will also allow me to do things like search specific text in the document. So let's use the example of video again. You can see as soon as I type in video, it's giving me some actions. Online videos, we can insert those into our documents. But also underneath the finding document heading, it's B basically doing a search for the word video. So if I click on this, it's going to open up that navigation pane that we looked at in the last lesson, and it's going to show me those search results. So this search bar is so helpful when it comes to finding different tools when you're working in Word 365.

It's time now to do exercise 3, and in this exercise, we're going to practice some of the skills that we've learned in this section of the course. So the first thing I'd like you to do is just simply to create a new Word document based off an invoice template of your choice. I'd like you to save the invoice as a template into the default templates folder, and then I'd like you to make sure that you know where to go to reuse that template. Once you've done that, I'd then like you to create a new blank document and add some text, and of course, you can use a little text trick to do that. Now, without saving the document, I'd like you to close the document down, and then go back in and recover the document. Once you've recovered the document, I'd like you to save it to OneDrive or a folder of your choice as training one.docx.

Once you've done that, I'd like you to open the file, the haunting of Willowbrook Manor.docx, and you'll find that file in the exercise files folder. And I'd just like you to practice navigating around the document using headings and also keywords. So a few different things to do there. If you'd like to see my answer, then please keep watching.

So the first thing I asked you to do in this exercise is to create an invoice based off of a template of your choice. So we're going to go up to File, we're going to go into New, and we're just going to search for invoice templates. Let's hit Enter, and I didn't mind which one of these you chose. So let's go for this one just here, Invoice Document. I'm going to click on Create.

I then asked you to save this invoice as a template into the default templates folder. So let's go up to File, down to Save As, and we're going to browse. Now, the first thing we need to do here is change the file type to Word Template, because that's going to jump us directly to our default templates folder. And I didn't specify if I want to call this file, so you can call it whatever you like. I'll just call it my initials and invoice template. Let's click on Save.

I then asked you to make sure you know where to go in order to reuse this template. So let's close this down, because remember, once we save into that default folder, when we go to New, we can click on the Personal tab just here, and this is where we're going to find our invoice template. When we click on this to open it up, it opens basically as a brand new document, and we can make add changes. So that's all I need you to do just there.

The next thing I asked you to do was simply to create a brand new document, so Ctrl+N, and add some text to it. So once again, we're just going to do our little text trick just here to get some text into that document. And I told you to close this down without saving it. So let's go to File, let's go to Close, and we're going to say Don't Save.

I then asked you to recover this file. So remember, remember, all we need to do to do that is go up to File. We need to make sure we have a document open. So let's just do Blank again, and then we can go into Info, Manage Document, Recover Unsaved Documents. And I have my documents organized by date modified. So this is the file to recover. It's the one I created a couple of minutes ago on today's date. So click on Open. There is our recovered file.

And I then asked you to save this either into a folder of your choice, choice, or into OneDrive if you have access to OneDrive. So let's go to File, let's go to Save As. I'm going to put mine in the Course Files folder, and I asked you to call this file training one.docx. And there we go.

The final thing I asked you to do in this exercise was to open the exercise file, the haunting of Willow Brook Manor. It is Halloween today, so we are going for a bit of a spooky theme. So you're going to have this file downloaded to your PC, so you need to pick it up from whatever folder you've saved it into. There is the file. And then I just asked you to practice navigating around this document using headings and keywords. So if we jump into View, we can pull up the Navigation Pane, and this is where we can see all of our headings. So if I want to jump down to the Halloween Showdown, I can simply click on Chapter 7, and it's going to jump me to that part of the document. Alternatively, I can type a keyword into here. So let's go for haunting. It's going to show me all of those paragraphs where that word exists, and then I can simply jump to the section that I'm interested in. So that is how I solved this exercise. I hope you've gotten okay with that, and I will see you in the next section.

Document views allow us to do exactly what you might imagine. They allow us to view our documents in different ways. So maybe you'd like to see how your document's going to look if you were to upload it to a website and view it as a web page. Maybe you'd like to be able to see somewhere on the screen all of the heading styles that you've applied to your document. Or maybe you'd like to switch into a view where it's easier for you to read and understand the document. Well, fortunately, in Word 365, we have numerous different views that we can choose from, and you'll find all of them on the View ribbon. If you take a look, we have a Views group right at the beginning here, and we have five different views that that we can switch into. It's also worth noting that you can switch between your views in the status bar as well. If you cast your eyes down to the corner on the right hand side, we have these little icons that allow us to toggle or switch between different views.

So let's do a quick run-through of each of the views so you can make an informed decision. Now, notice in the Views group, I have Print Layout currently selected. That's highlighted in gray, and in general, this is the view that you'll work in the majority of the time. It's the view where we edit and make changes to our documents. It allows us to see the layout of our pages very clearly, and we can also see things like where that page breaks, so we can get an idea as to how this is going to look when we print it out. So Print Layout view is the default.

Now, what about Web Layout view? If we hover our mouse over it, the screen tip says, "See how your document would look as a web page." This layout is also great if you have wide tables in your document. So if we switch into Web Layout view, this is basically what this document would look like if I uploaded it to my company intranet or to another internet site. It's a much wider view based off of the size of web pages, and as it mentioned in that screen tip, if you have any elements on your page that are particularly wide, so for example, wide tables, it's going to make it a lot easier for you to see those.

What about Outline view? Well, this allows us to see our document in outline form, where content is shown as bulleted points. This view is useful for creating headings and moving whole paragraphs within the document. So if we switch into Outline view, you can see we get a very different way of looking at this document, and you'll notice that next to some of our headings, we have things like these little plus symbols. Now, in general, I'll utilize this view when I want to do a lot of rearranging in my document. So maybe I want to rearrange the order of some of these paragraphs. This is a good view to do that in. For example, if I click the plus next to Market Analysis, it's basically going to select that entire paragraph, so I could pick it up, I could drag and drop it, and maybe I want to put it underneath Products and Services. I can drop it down there. So it's good for reorganization. It also allows us to do things like change heading levels really easily. So if I click next to Products and Services, you can see that this is a Heading Level Two. What I could do is click the drop-down, I could make it a Level One, or I could make it a Heading Level Three, so on and so forth. So come into Outline view when you need to do a lot of reorganizing.

What about Draft view? Well, when we switch into Draft view, we're just going to see the text in the documents. So if you have any images, like I do in this one, you're not going to see those. It's just going to show you the text. So this view is useful for quick editing because headers and footers and certain objects won't show up, allowing you to focus just just on the text. So if we click on Draft view, you can see that I can see the text, but this big white space here, that's where my image normally lives. So if you just want to focus on the text and you need to do a lot of editing, this is a good view to go into. Also, notice we have a little dotted line indicating where the page ends and the next page begins.

Now, another thing that I really like about this view is the ability to see what heading styles we have applied to each line in a document. Now, this might not mean too much to you at the moment because we haven't really covered styles in any great detail, but this can be super useful if you ever receive a document from somebody else and you need to apply your own company's heading styles. Now, in order to be able to see this information, we need to turn on our little Styles area, and we do this by going up to File, down to Options, and it's under the Advanced page. Now, if we scroll down to the Display area, notice this option just here: Style Area Pane Width in Draft and Outline Views. Now, by default, your Style Area Pane is going to be set to 0 inches, which is why we can't see it. So in general, what I do is I switch it to 2 inches, click on OK, and now check out what we have. We have this little pane running down the left-hand side that shows us the style applied to each line in this document, and once you have this showing, you can resize it so it's a bit smaller, simply by clicking and dragging. So now I can see that I have Title styles applied here, this is a Heading One, this is just normal text, then we have Heading Two, Line Paragraph, where we have our line numbers, so on and so forth. Now, as I said, we are going to be coming back to this later on when we talk a bit more about styles, but just be aware that when you're in Draft view, it's useful to have this Styles pane turned on.

The final view that we have in here is Read Mode, and this is one of the newer views in Word. It's been around for the last few years, but historically we've never had a Read Mode view. But let's click on it and see what we get. Now, with Read Mode, this is basically designed for reading documents. It will clear away anything that could possibly be distracting. So notice that the ribbons have been completely minimized. We don't have anything else showing on the screen aside from this document, and we read this in a similar way to reading a book. We go side to side as opposed to scrolling vertically. Notice we have a little arrow on the right-hand side. If I click this, it's going to go across to the next page, so on and so forth. Now, if you do need to access your ribbons whilst you're in Read Mode, you can still do that simply by clicking them at the top here, and notice that we have some different tools when we're working in this view. So we can do things like Find, we can Search, we can Translate if we need to. If we go to View, we can do things like modify the column width, we could even change the page color. So if if we find it easier on our eyes to have a sepia-toned background, we could definitely do that. Alternatively, we could have white text on a black background. Now, I don't particularly like that. Let's go back to None. We can do things like show where syllables occur. So notice now that we have a little dot wherever there is a syllable. So this can help when it comes to reading, particularly if English isn't your first language. We can adjust things like the text spacing. So I can make this text a lot wider again. That can sometimes be helpful. And we also have a Read Aloud option just here. This is helpful for people with accessibility issues, for example, people who can't see so well can choose to have the text read out aloud, and it will go through and highlight each word as it's reading. And we are going to talk more about this option a bit later on, but just be aware that you have all of that available in Read Mode view. So, so those are the different ways that you can view a document when you're working in Word.

In the previous lesson, we took a brief tour around the five different views that you can work in in Word, but it is worth noting that we do have another group just here called Immersive, which gives us access to two other views. And once again, these are two of the newer views available in Word 365. Now, the first one here is called Focus. If we hover over it, it says, "Eliminates distractions so you can focus on your document." So this is kind of similar to Read Mode, except you'll see that it doesn't have that horizontal sort of book quality to it. It still will allow you to scroll up and down in your document. Now, if we switch into Focus mode, immediately you can see that all distractions are removed. We can just see the document and the rulers. The only other thing we really have on this page are our scroll bars, allowing us to scroll up and down. Remember scrolling in a document, if you have a mouse with a wheel on it, you can also use that to scroll up and down in your document. Also, notice that it's changed the background to black. So again, this really allows us to focus in on our document and kind of just blacks out everything else.

Now, when you are working in this view, notice right at the top in that title bar, there are three dots in the middle. Now, if you click these three dots, it's basically going to pull down the ribbon. The ribbon will show in that black color again, but if we now go back to the Immersive group, we now have a new option available, which is Background. So you're only going to see this little background drop-down when you're actually in Focus mode. So this is going to allow us to change the background color. So if we don't particularly like that black, we could choose a different color from this menu. So maybe I prefer to have a blue background instead, maybe that makes it easier for me to read. You can change it to that. And to come out of this Focus mode, you just need to toggle off Focus. So this button is a toggle button, so we can just click it again, and it's going to take us back to the main body of our document.

The second option we have in this group is Immersive Reader. And again, this has a lot of the properties of that Read Mode view. If we take a look at the screen tip, it says, "Open a focused reading and editing experience. Lets you adjust text size, spacing, and more. You can also listen to your text read aloud." And if you recall, those options were also available in Read Mode. So let's jump into the Immersive Reader. Notice we now have an Immersive Reader contextual tab, and we have different options that we can adjust. So, for example, Column Width. And when we say column width, we're talking about the the width of the text that we can see. So currently, mine's set to narrow. If I change it to moderate, it widens it out. I could go for wide to make it take up that full screen. We can change the page color. So again, we could use any one of these colors depending on which one takes your fancy. So I'm going to go for this light green color. Line Focus allows us to focus on just one line at a time, and we can use our down arrow on our keyboard to go through line by line. And notice that everything else is kind of grayed out, so we can really just focus on each line individually. If that's a little bit too much, then we could go for maybe three lines, so we can just see three lines at a time. This can all help when it comes to reading long documents. Now, I'm going to say None. Text Spacing. Now, notice that that is already toggled on because we toggled it on in the last lesson. Now, when I turn off text spacing, it goes back to what it normally looks like. Click it once more, and it's going to put more space in between the words and also the characters. Again, this can help with the readability of your documents. We can toggle on Syllables, which will put dots in the word wherever we have syllables. And then we have the Read Aloud option. So this is helpful for people who have problems with their eyesight and maybe can't read documents as well. So if we click on Read Aloud, "We are pleased to present this business proposal for the establishment of a new coffee company based in London, specializing in sourcing the fin." It's going to read that document out. Notice we have a little player just here, so we can pause, as I've just done. We can move on to the next paragraph, go back, we can play, and we also have some settings that we can adjust, so things such as voice speed and some other options down here. So this is the Immersive Reader. If you want to come out of here and just go back to Print Layout view, just click on Close Immersive Reader, and it's going to take us back to the original document.

In today's busy workplace, more often than not, we'll have more than one Word document open at one time. So managing how those documents are arranged on the page becomes extremely important. So let's take a look at some of the options that we have when it comes to arranging our documents and also how we can utilize zoom. Now, we're staying on the View, and we're moving across to the Page Movement group just here. Now, notice we have another toggle button which is currently toggled on called Vertical, and what that basically means is that when we either use these scroll bars at the side or the scroll wheel on our mouse, we're going to move vertically through the document, and that is the default behavior when you're working in Word. However, if you would prefer to have this more like a book, you could choose to toggle on some side to side. So now we can read as if we're reading a book, and when we use our scroller, it's basically going to move those pages from side to side by scroll back, scroll forward, scroll back, so on and so forth. So you can choose which one of these views you prefer. My preference is always vertical.

Now, we're going to jump over the Zoom group for the time being. We're going to come back to that at the end of the lesson because I'd like to speak a little bit about arranging documents on the screen. Now, if you have multiple documents open, now I've only got one open at the moment, so let's open something else. I'm going to also open up the haunting of Willowbrook Manor, and I'm going to open up training one. So now I effectively have three Word documents open. And currently, if I want to be able to see all of those documents at the same time, I would have to minimize the document I'm working on to see this one, and then if I want to get the other one back, I'd need to go down to my taskbar and pull it back up that way. But what we could could do here is go to View, and we could choose Arrange All. Now, if we hover over it, it says, "Stack your open windows so you can see all of them at once." So I'm going to click on Arrange All, and you can see what that does. It stacks them one on top of the other. Now, I'm not saying that this is the greatest way to display these documents, but it can be quite useful for comparing two documents together. Now, you'll notice that with these, the majority of the space is being taken up by the ribbon. So this is where we could actually choose to hide the ribbon. Now, to hide the ribbon temporarily, if you cast your eyes over to the right-hand side of the screen and click the little drop-down, we could choose Show Tabs Only, and that's going to collapse up the ribbons so we can see a bit more of the documents. So I could go through and do that on all of these different windows. So let's say Show Tabs Only, and again, I still can't see a great deal. So in general, I wouldn't use this view for any more than two documents.

Now, to come out of this view view, you just need to click on the little square in the top right-hand corner, and that will maximize the page out again. If you want to get your ribbons back, just click on any ribbon to display it, and then click that drop-down again and choose Always Show Ribbon, so you have that Arrange All option. I have to say, I don't really like that option so much. I much prefer View Side by Side. So if we click on this, it's going to ask me if I want to compare these two documents side by side. So let's say OK, and now I can see both of those documents on my screen. And because of the way they're arranged, it's really easy for me to see all the text within the documents. Also, one thing to note about this option is notice that when I scroll in one document, it scrolls at the same time in the other document as well. And this is what we call synchronous scrolling. Now, because we have these squished into each half of the screen, notice that Word automatically collapses up the ribbon. So now, if we want to see some of our options, we need to go back to the Window tab, and notice that we have Synchronous Scrolling toggled on. So if you didn't want these to scroll at the same time, you would just need to deselect this, and now when I scroll, it only scrolls in that document. So just be aware of that.

Now, one really useful way to use synchronous scrolling is sometimes you might have a document, let's say this one just here, which is the synopsis of a book. Maybe I want to to compare changes between two documents. Maybe I've sent this document to somebody else and they've made some changes, and now I want to compare the change document with the original. This is where I find that option particularly useful, because when you view side by side and you have synchronous scrolling turned on, you can literally go line by line through the document, and it's a lot easier to see the new window button is going to allow you to open the same document in a new window. So we effectively have two copies of this particular document. You could then choose to arrange these side by side again. And if you're using Windows 11, we do have a snapping feature that allows us to do this as well. So I could pick up this document, drag it all the way over to the right, let go, and it's going to snap into place. I could then choose the other document to snap into the other half of the screen. Now, the disadvantage of using snapping as opposed to View Side by Side in Word is that you can't specify if you want synchronous scrolling turned on. On snapping is a Windows feature and not a Word feature, but sometimes I find that so much quicker than using View Side by Side. So I'll leave it up to you to decide which method you prefer.

Now, finally, let's talk about zoom. We have a group in the middle here which allows us to zoom in and zoom out of our document. So if I click on Zoom, it's going to pop up a little zoom box, which is going to allow me to specify the percentage of zoom, or I can choose one of these presets. I can zoom into the page width, the text width, the whole page. So if I was to choose page width and click on OK, it's basically going to zoom in until the edges of the pages are all the way to both sides. If I want to get back to 100% zoom, which is the default, I have a 100% button just here. Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+0. Now, currently I'm viewing one page of my document, but I could choose to view multiple pages as well. So I like this view when I'm just trying to get an overall sense of how my document is laid out and what it looks like. If it flows together, it's easier to get a sense of that when you're looking at multiple pages. And of course, if you want to come out of here, you can click on 100% to go back to 100% zoom. And don't forget that in the status bar at the bottom, we also have a zoom slider, which is going to allow us to zoom in or zoom out of our document. And if you have a scroll wheel on your mouse, you can hold down control to zoom out or zoom back back in. So lots of different methods you can use there to arrange and zoom in and out of your documents.

It's time now to do exercise four, and in this exercise, we're going to practice some of the skills that we've learned in this section of the course. So the first thing I'd like you to do is open the file exercise 4, the solar system.docx, from the exercise files folder. I'd like you to switch into Draft View and toggle on the Style Area Width pane. And I'd like you to be able to answer the question, "Which heading level is applied to the heading The Sun?" I'd then like you to view the document in the Immersive Reader. I'd like you to change the page background to purple and also show syllables. So a few different things to do there. If you'd like to see my answer, then please keep watching.

So the first thing I asked you to do was to open the file, the solar system.docx, from the exercise files folder, and then I asked you to switch into Draft View. So we're going to jump up to the View tab, go to the Views group, and we're going to choose Draft. Now, I also asked you to make sure that you have the Style Area Width pane turned on. So we're going to go up to File, down into Options, and we want to jump into the Advanced page. And if we scroll down to the Display section, this is what we're looking for: Style Area Pane Width in Draft and Outline Views. So currently, mine is set to 0 inches. I'm just going to change that to two. Click on OK, and now we have our little Style Area Width pane on the left-hand side, and of course, we can resize this by dragging this in and out. I then asked you to be able to answer the question, "What style is applied to the heading The Sun?" And if we scroll down, here is that heading, and I can see that Heading Two is applied to that heading.

I then asked you to switch into the the Immersive Reader. So once again, on the View ribbon, we're going to click Immersive Reader. And I asked you to change the page color to purple. So there's a few different purples in here. Let's just go for that lighter one. And also turn on Syllables. That is it. I hope you've gotten okay with that, and I will see you in the next lesson.

We are going to start this section of the course by taking a look at entering and formatting text. And this may seem like something that is super basic, but I guarantee there are a few tips and tricks you'll pick up in this lesson. Now, I've just created a new blank document, and if I click my mouse, you can see the cursor is flashing away, flush with the left-hand margin, ready for me to start typing. And one thing you need to remember when you're typing in a document is that the default behavior is for the text to wrap around when we get to the end of a line. For example, I've just typed this line of text in, and I haven't had to to press Enter. When I get to the end of the line, it just automatically wraps round, and that is the default behavior when you're working in a Word document. If you did, however, want to maybe break the line after the word formatting, if you press the Enter key, that's going to do that, and that will be appropriate for you in certain situations. I'm going to backspace to put everything back onto the same line.

Now, we need a bit more text in here. So I'm going to delete out everything we have here. I'm selecting my text and pressing Delete. So I've shown you previously the little Rand trick to get random text into a document, but it's also worth noting that there is another little formula trick you can use to get junk text into a document. So we could use Lorem instead of Rand. We're going to say we want 20 paragraphs of three lines each, close the bracket, hit Enter, and this time we get Lorem Ipsum dummy text.

Now, the font in use by default in your document is is the font that comes with whatever current theme you have applied in Word. So again, if we go up to the Design tab and check out Themes, you can see I'm using the standard Office theme, and the default font that comes with this Office theme is Aptos. Now, if you're looking at this thinking, "Hmm, I thought the default font for documents in Word was Calibri." Well, there has been an update recently, and the default themes colors have been changed, changed, and also the default font in use, and it's now changed to Aptos font. But what you'll notice is that if we hover our mouse over any of these other themes, you can see that the font changes. So we have different font styles for each of these themes. So just be aware of that. It's your theme that controls your default font. And if we go to the Home tab and take a look in the Font group, we can see there it says Aptos Body.

Now, if you want to modify the font, let's say of this first paragraph, I'm going to make my selection first of all, Ctrl+Shift+Down Arrow to select that first paragraph, and then we can go in and make our changes. So if I wanted to change the font, I can click the drop-down, and you can see right at the top, it's showing me my theme fonts. We then have recently used fonts, and then underneath that, we have a big long list of all fonts available in Word. And of course, if you can't see the specific one that you want, you can install that from sites like Font Squirrel or Google Fonts. It's also worth noting that you don't necessarily have to click that drop-down and scroll up and down looking for the font that you want. You can simply click in the box up here, and if you know the name of the font, you can type it in. So if I start to type, "Times New Roman," it's picked it up. I can press Enter, and it's going to apply that font to that first paragraph.

I can change the size by clicking the drop-down just here and selecting from this list. Now, notice these don't go up in even increments. It goes 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, then we jump to 14, 16, 18. So if I wanted to change this paragraph to 13 size font, we don't have it listed there, but again, we can simply type in what we want into this little box. So if I type in 13 and press Enter, it's going to apply that font size. And next to that, we have our Increase Font Size and our Decrease Font Size buttons, and these both come with keyboard shortcuts, and you can see those in the screen tip. So if I wanted to make this font bigger, I can click this button, and it will jump it up incrementally. So if I click it once, it's going to go to 14, click it again, 16, which is effectively the next one in the list. Next one is 18, and I can go back the other way.

The button next to this is related to the case. So we can change this first paragraph to Sentence case, basically what we have already. We can change it to Lowercase, Uppercase, Capitalize Each Word, or we can Toggle Case. So if I needed this to be all in uppercase, I could select that, and it's going to change it. So this button is also really good if you've ever had the issue where you've started typing and you haven't realized that you've got Caps Lock on. You could come to this button just here and change it to Capitalize Each Word, and it's going to change that for you. So a really useful little button.

Now, as we've already seen, we have Bold, Underline, and Italics. So we can click these. They act as a toggle. We can click once to turn on, click again to turn off, and each of these have their own keyboard shortcuts of Ctrl+B, Ctrl+I, and Ctrl+U respectively. Now, notice with Underline, this one comes with a little drop-down because we have a few different choices when it comes to how we're underlining our text. So the default is simply to underline with a solid black line, but if you wanted to double underline, you've got that there, a thicker line, a dash line, a dotted line, so on and so forth. And of course, you can change the underline color. So maybe I want to underline in purple, and maybe I want a double underline instead. So don't forget that you have those options as well.

Now, I'm going to Ctrl+Z just to remove that underline. Next to that, we have the Strikethrough button. So if you want to strike through something, you can do that. Again, this is a toggle. And then we have Subscript and Superscript. So these are used when you need to have very small letters just below or above the line of text. So a good example would be if we had the word H2O for water in a sentence. The two is normally smaller and above the line. So we could select the two, and then we could click Superscript, and it's going to change that. So just be aware of those buttons as well.

Now, if we want to jazz up our paragraph a little bit, we have some Text Effect options just here. Now, I would say that these probably work best for a heading or if you're doing something something like a poster, but don't forget you have these different styles just here that you can choose, and then you can modify each element of whichever style you select. So we could select this one, and then if we didn't particularly like that outline border, we could choose to say No Outline, which is going to remove it, and we just have that kind of gradient fill. So you would effectively select your text effect, and then you can click into these to make any modifications, like removing shadows, reflections, and glows.

Moving along, we have Highlights. So this is quite good if you need to highlight something in a document. So maybe I want to highlight this piece of text just here. I can click the highlighter, or if I don't like the default yellow, I can click the drop-down and choose a different highlight color from the gallery. And of course, we can change our font color. Again, if we click this drop-down, we're going to be able to see our theme color palette, we're going to be able to see standard colors, and then if we want something more specific, we can click on More Colors. We can choose from this little color wheel, or we can go across to Custom, and we can get really granular about the color that we're using. Click on OK to apply that color. And just above, we have a Clear Formatting button. So if I click this, it's basically going to clear all of the formatting and set that font back to how it was originally.

And the final thing to mention here is if we click the diagonal arrow in the bottom corner of the Font group, it's going to open up some more options. Now, on the Font tab, we basically have the same options that we have on the ribbon. We do have another font style in here of Bold Italic, that's just going to apply bold and italic formatting at the same time, but pretty much all of these are available on the ribbons. If we jump across to the Advanced tab, this is where we can do things like change the character spacing. So what I could do here is where it says Spacing Normal, I could go for Expanded, and I could say I want to expand it by 2.4 points. Let's click on OK, and you can see what that does. So I've now applied bold italic formatting, and we now have more space between the characters. So don't forget about that Advanced formatting tab as well. And if it all goes wrong, you've got your trusty Ctrl+Z, which will take you back to how you were previously.

In this lesson, we're going to take a look at how we can use cut, copy, and paste to move text around. And fortunately, if you've used cut, copy, and paste in other Microsoft applications, such as Excel or PowerPoint, then it pretty much works exactly the same way in Word. Now, the first thing to establish is the difference between cutting and copying. When we cut text and paste it somewhere else, we're effectively moving that text to a new location. Whereas when we copy it, we're making a copy, a duplicate of it, and moving the copy to another location. So let's scroll down and let's say that we want to move Chapter 2. So I'm going to select this entire paragraph, and I'm going to do that by clicking in the margin and just dragging down. And with this paragraph selected, I'm going to cut it. Now, when it comes to cutting text from a document, you can use a few different methods. You could right-click your mouse, and in the contextual menu, we have a Cut option. Alternatively, you can jump up to the Home ribbon, and notice in the first group here, Clipboard, we have a pair of scissors that is also cut. And then the third method we can use is the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+X, and that's what I'm going to use just here. So Ctrl+X will cut it out. You can see that it disappears, and then I can scroll to a different location in the document. So let's just go all the way down to the bottom to keep this simple. I'm going to get myself onto a new line, and then I can paste it.

Now, again, there are a few different ways you can paste. You can right-click, and you have paste options here. We have a few different paste options. Now, we're going to talk about paste options in a couple of lessons' time. If you just want to do a plain old paste, you can click the top half of this paste button on the Home ribbon. Notice that this is what we call a double-sided button, so the top half will do a plain paste, whereas the bottom half will allow you to access those paste options again. And the keyboard shortcut for a plain paste is Ctrl+V. So let's do Ctrl+V, and it's going to retain the formatting.

Now, what about if we wanted to copy this instead? Well, again, we can select, and we can right-click and choose Copy. Alternatively, we can go to the Home ribbon, and we have a Copy button just here, or we can use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+C. Now, notice this time it doesn't remove this paragraph from the document because we're doing a copy. I can then do Ctrl+V to paste that in, and I now have Chapter 2 listed twice.

Now, another thing to notice is that when you do cut or copy text and then paste it, you're going to get this little tag pop up on the right-hand side, and you'll see this occasionally when you're working in Word. If we click this, again, this is going to open up some paste options. So if I wanted to change the way that I'm pasting this, and as I said, we are going to talk more about this in a couple of lessons' time, I can simply choose one of the icons just there to paste this text in a slightly different way. That might be pasting it without any of the formatting, or pasting it as a picture, or merging the formatting with the current document. There's lots of different things that we have beneath paste options, but in its simplest form, that is how you cut, copy, and paste text from one part of the document to another.

One thing you need to remember about working with the clipboard is that your PC has two clipboards. It has a Windows clipboard, and it also has an Office clipboard. So what is the difference between these two? Well, when we do a very basic copy and paste, we use the Windows clipboard, and that allows us to copy and paste one piece of content at a time. As soon as you copy a new piece of content, the old piece is deleted. For example, if we take the first paragraph in this document, let's select it. I'm going to press Ctrl+C, and then I'm going to give myself some space just here, and I'm going to press Ctrl+V to make a copy. So I've copied one piece of content from one place to another. But if I was to copy something else, let's say this second paragraph, Ctrl+C, the old paragraph that I copied is now deleted, and the only thing I can paste is the item, or the paragraph in this case, that I've just copied. So the default when you're just doing Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V to copy and paste content is to use the Windows clipboard, which allows you to paste one item at a time.

Now, I'm going to Ctrl+Z just to take this document to how it was previously. Now, the Office clipboard works in a slightly different way because it has what we refer to as slots. The Office clipboard can hold up to 24 pieces of information, with each piece being held in its own separate slot, and then we can choose which pieces of content from Which slot we want to paste, and we can paste those in individually, or we can paste everything that we've copied all at once. So this time, we're going to use the Office clipboard. We're going to jump up to the Home tab, and in this first group that's called Clipboard, if you want to bring up the clipboard, you just need to click the diagonal arrow in the bottom corner. This is going to open up a clipboard pane on the left-hand side, and you can see anything that you currently have stored on your clipboard. Now, we're going to start again. So I'm going to click on Clear All to remove all of those items. Now, what you'll see is that when we start copying things from our document, we store them on

This clipboard, so if I select this first paragraph and do Contrl C, you can see it's grabbed it and placed it on the clipboard. I could grab, let's say, the third paragraph, Contrl C, and place on the clipboard, and I could carry on going, copying whatever I need to the clipboard. So this is really a collection area. Once we've collected our items, we can then choose if we want to paste these individ, or if we want to paste the entire lot together. So if I make some space up here, I could say that maybe I want to paste this paragraph of text where my cursor is currently flashing. I can simply click to insert it into the document. Alternatively, if we press Control Zed instead of clicking, we can click the drop down just here and choose paste from the menu instead. And another thing that we could do is we could paste everything that we have in the clipboard all in one go, and it is worth remembering that but what you copied first is going to be at the bottom just here. So if I just wanted to paste everything that I have in here, I could choose paste all, and it's going to paste everything from that reading pane. So the clipboard serves as a collection area, allowing you to cut or copy what you want and paste it where you want.

Final point to mention here is that we do have some clipboard options right at the bottom. We have a little options button. If we open this up, you can see we have some customizations we can make. Now I have the bottom two select Ed here, so show office clipboard icon on taskbar and also show status near taskbar when copying. So when you have this selected, what's going to happen when you copy text is that you're going to get a little popup in the bottom right hand corner that just shows that you've copied that item to the clipboard. The top three options are really related to how we want to invoke the clipboard. So we could choose to show the office clipboard automatically whenever we open a document. Now for me that is a little bit Overkill, but the option is there. We can show the office clipboard when Contrl C is pressed twice. Sometimes people find that more efficient if they're already working with the keyboard, or we can collect items without showing the office clipboard. So just be aware that you can make some minor customizations. Once you're done with the clipboard, you simply need to click on the cross to close it down.

A really cool time-saving utility when you're working with your word do ments is the format painter, and what the format painter does in its most basic form is it allows us to copy formatting and then paste it somewhere else. And this can be a lifesaver, particularly if you have a long document that contains lots of formatting and you want to copy that formatting to different parts of the document. So let's see how the format painter works. Now I have a document open on the screen. It's just a basic document about using the format painter, and you can see that this document has some numbered list items in it. Now list item number one, notice that this is formatted differently from every other list item in this document. I have some italic formatting applied, and I've also changed the color to this purple color. Now maybe I decide that I really like the way that that looks, and I want to copy that formatting across to all of these other list items in this document. Well, we can do that using the format painter. Now you might be thinking to yourself, well, why would I want to do that? Because it doesn't take me very long to click the italic button and change the font color. That is true, and if you only have maybe one piece of formatting applied to your text that you want to apply to another piece of text, then it might be quicker for you to just simply use the tools in the font group on the home ribbon. However, you will find that there are some pieces of text and even images or shapes that have been heavily formed formatted, and that is where the format painter comes in handy, because you don't have to go in and apply all of the properties individually. So let's select our piece of text. Notice on the home ribbon in the clipboard group we have this little paintbrush icon, and this is the format painter, and in the screen tip it says, "Like the look of a particular section? You can apply that look to other content in the document. To get started, select the content with the formatting that you like," which is what we've actually done, "click format painting and select something else to automatically apply the formatting." It's also worth noting that there is a keyboard shortcut to activate the format painter of Alt Contrl C. Now we're going to click the format painter, and notice that when we do click on it, it kind of toggles on. So this is another little toggle button. I can see that we've got it turned on because it's now highlighted in Gray, and when I hover my mouse over my document, notice how my cursor has changed to that little paintbrush icon. So this means I'm now in format painter mode, and I can simply click and drag over the text where I want to paint that formatting, and there we go, we've copied that formatting across. Now notice, as soon as I use my format painter once, I no longer have the little paintbrush icon on my cursor. Also notice in the clipboard group that format painter is now deactivated. So this is a really important point: if you only click the format painter once, you can only use it once, and then it will automatically deactivate. If I need to do lots of paintings, if I want to go through and do the rest of these list items, I need to double click on the format painter. So this time, let's select our text, and I'm going to double click on the format painter, and then I can paint once, and notice that it doesn't deactivate. I can just carry on going through painting the rest of the text. Now when you want to come out of format painter mode, you simply need to click the format painter toggle in the clipboard group, or you can press the Escape key on your keyboard to deactivate.

Now in this example, we were just copying and pasting format from one piece of text to another, but right at the bottom of this document I have three Circle shapes, and notice that they're all formatted slightly differently. This one is blue with a dark blue border, we then have pink with a slightly thicker light gray border, and then we have a green circle that doesn't have any border. Now maybe I want to make all of these shapes look consistent. Maybe I want them all to look like this first blue one. We can use the format painter to copy formatting from one shape to another as well, so it doesn't just apply to text, and we would do it in exactly the same way. So with this circle selected, I'm going to double click the format painter, and all I need to do is click on the pink circle, click on the green circle, hit Escape to deactivate. So the format painter is super useful. Key takeaway points here: double click if you've got lots of painting to do, and it can be used on many different things, not just text.

I mentioned in a previous lesson that when we're working with cut, copy, and paste, we also have access to paste options, and paste options really just allow us to control how exactly we're pasting our piece of text. So in this lesson, we're going to explore some of them so you understand what each one of them do, because again, this can be a really good timesaver. Now I've created a quick document; again, I've just used junk text for this. And in this document, the first paragraph is formatted slightly different to the rest of it. So you can see here, the first paragraph is in italics and the font is also green. Also notice, if we scroll down the document a little bit further, I actually have a section break just here, and we'll talk more about section breaks later on in the course, but then on the next page after the section break, I have more text, but that text is a different style. So when I say a different style, it's a completely different font. So in the top half just here, we're using Abos font, and then in this section down here, we're using Cambria font. Also notice that this font is in a dark blue color. So we basically have different formatting applied to different parts of this document. Now I'm going to press Control Home to jump back up to the top. Now maybe I want to cut this first paragraph just here, paste it elsewhere in the document, but keep it looking exactly the same. So I want it to still have the italic and the green formatting. Now if we want to do that, we can simply select it. Let's do Control X to cut, and maybe I want to paste it down here. Now if I just press Contrl V, it's going to keep that Source formatting. That is the default that I have set. But notice, whenever you paste anything in, you always get this little tag, this little smart tag pop up, and this is where we can actually define how we want to paste that in. So it's done the default paste, which is to keep the source formatting, but I could choose to paste it without the formatting, effectively keeping the text only, and check out what happens if I were to select that one. It looks like the rest of the document; it doesn't have the formatting. I could also choose to paste this as a picture. Now if I were to select this option, this basically turns this piece of text into a picture, which we can then pick up and move around, and we have access to a picture format ribbon and all of the picture format options. So I could put a border around it, for example. Now I don't think that looks particularly great, so I'm going to undo a few times to put add text back to the top of the document. So when I did just a Contrl V, the default was to keep the source formatting. Now you can change what your default paste is.

Now let's take a look at a slightly different scenario. Let's select this paragraph again. I'm going to Contrl C, and now what about if I scroll down to this section of the document where we have different font applied? What about if I want to paste it into here? Well again, if I do a Contrl V, because my default is to keep the source formatting, it's going to bring that formatting with it. However, if I wanted it to blend in with the style on this page, all I would need to do is click the little drop down just here, and I have two options. I could choose to merge formatting. Now check out what happens there. It's merging the formatting instead, so it's applying the font, the Cambria font, but it's still keeping the italics. If I wanted it to look exactly the same as everything else in this section of the document, I would need to keep text only, and as soon as I do that, it's just going to allow it to match everything that surrounds it. So look out for this little tag when you're pasting in. Also note that on the home ribbon, when you're doing a paste, if you click the lower half of the paste button, that's going to give you those same paste options, and if you want to check what your default paste option is, you can go to set default paste. It's going to jump you across into Word options, and if you scroll down to the cut, copy and paste section, you can see here what your defaults are. So you can see here, pasting within the same document, my default is to keep that Source formatting. If I'm pasting between documents, my default is to merge formatting, so effectively what I paste is going to take on the format of the document I'm pasting it into. Now I could change these if I wanted to. I can simply click the drop down and choose maybe keep text only or merge formatting. That's entirely up to you and a personal preference. So make sure you check those options. But that is basically how paste options work; it's just a quick way of being able to control exactly how your text is pasted into the document.

In this lesson, I'm going to show you how you can use the find and replace tool in Word to quickly find specific things in your document and replace them with other things. And to demonstrate this, what I've actually done is I've actually been on to Chat GPT to generate the text in this document. So I logged on to Chat GPT, and this is the prompt that I gave it: "Explain in detail how the find and replace tool works in Word 365." And then it gave me all of this big explanation. So I simply clicked on the copy button and I copied it into a blank Word document, and that is what you see here, and this is exactly how the formatting and everything came across from Chat GPT. Now I can see immediately in here we have some things that we need to tidy up. You can see that we have a double asterisk at the beginning and end of each of these headings. Now I don't want those in there, so I'm going to want to get rid of them. I can also see that I have a blank line in between each of these different items, and maybe I don't want that blank line in there either. I also have some dashes in here that I don't necessarily want; maybe I want to replace these with actual bullet points in Word to make them look a little bit more consistent. So there's lots of things in here that I don't want, or I want to replace with something else. So we're going to use find and replace to help us do this more efficiently, because scrolling through this document and manually deleting out all of the asterisks is going to take a long time. Now you're going to find your find and replace tool in a couple of different places. You can go to the home ribbon, and all the way over in the editing group, notice we have a find button and a replace button. Now if you just click on find, it's going to open up a pane on the side which allows you to find specific text in your document, and it will allow you to replace it from here as well. Now if we close down this pane and click on replace, this is going to jump us across to the find and replace dialogue. Now I prefer to use this, but it is entirely up to you; you might prefer to use that task pane underneath find. Now this will always hold in it the last find that you did, so I'm going to delete out that little Dash because I was searching for that earlier. Now the first thing we need to do here is to define what we want to find and then what we want to replace it with. So the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to get it to find every occurrence of a double asterisk, and I'm going to say replace it with nothing, because we just want to delete them. So I can type in two asterisks, and then I'm going to say replace with nothing, so I'm going to leave this blank. When we click on replace all, you can see it's made 28 replacements. Click on okay, and if you now look in the document, you can see that all of those have gone. How much quicker is that than doing it manually? What else do I want to replace in here? Well, I mentioned these dashes in here. So let's find every occurrence of a dash, and again I'm going to say replace with nothing. So let's do replace all. Click on okay, and you can see it's removed those dashes as well.

Now something that I find really useful when working with formatting is to turn on the show/hide markers. So on the Home tab in the paragraph group, we have this little paragraph symbol. Now if we click on this, it's basically going to show you underlying formatting. So we can now see these little paragraph markers throughout the document wherever we have the end of a paragraph, wherever we have a blank line, and we can also see that for things like this underneath 0.1, we have some manual spaces in here. So remember, this did come across from Chat GPT, so we've definitely got some formatting issues that we're going to want to sort out. So let's get rid of the these spaces in between using find and replace, and then we'll deal with these little space marks just here. Now another way that you can very quickly pull up the find and replace dialog box is to press Contrl H. Now if you want to find paragraph marks and replace with nothing, for example, what you need to do here is click in the find what box, expand more, and then right at the bottom, this is where you have some additional options. We have a format menu and we have a special menu. So if you wanted to find and replace specific formatting in this document, you would choose the format button, but if you want to look for a special character, in this case a paragraph mark, you can click special and see a whole big list of different special characters. Now effectively what I want to do here is I want to search for double paragraph marks, so wherever we have a sentence ending with a paragraph mark and then another one underneath, I want to replace it with just one paragraph mark. So we're going to say search for paragraph mark, which gives us this little symbol in the find what box, and we're going to add another one so that we're looking for two paragraph markers, and we're going to replace with just one paragraph mark. Let's click on replace all. You can see it's made 11 replacements, and if we take a look at the document, that's pretty much what I wanted it to do. So it's now deleted those blank lines in between each of these different points. So let's go back into Contrl H again. Don't forget that you can search for special characters and replace with other special characters as well.

Now when it comes to dealing with these manual spaces that we have, these little dots in here, we can use find and replace to replace those as well. But this is inconsistent; I don't have four dots at the beginning of every item. Sometimes it's four, sometimes it's five, sometimes it's six, so on and so forth. Now there isn't really too much of a way to get around this, but we can get most of the job done using find and replace. So this time I want to search for four spaces. Now you might think that you type in four dots, but you actually don't. In the find what box, you'll need to do four spaces: 1, 2, 3, 4, and we want to replace with nothing. And when we do replace all, you can see it's made 21 replacements. And if we look at the document, particularly this first line just here, you can see that it's got rid of those dots. I could then go through and maybe do the same to look for two spaces. So let's do that. Let's look for two spaces: 1, 2, and replace with nothing. Let's do replace all. It's made nine replacements. So you can see that using this method is going to be so much quicker than manually doing it yourself. So now that I've done that, I'm going to turn off my paragraph marks so the document looks a bit cleaner, and I might want to go through and apply bold headings to all of these different points to make them stand out. So I've quickly gone through the document and applied this bold formatting. But again, if I wanted to change all of the Bold formatting in this document to a different color, for example, we could use find and replace. So the formatting that we're looking for is basically anything that is Aptos 12 bold. So when we do Contrl H to bring up the replace box, we can expand more. We want to go down to format and into font, because we want to find everything in this document that is bold, and click on okay. Notice now underneath the find what box it's looking for everything with the format font bold. And we want to replace it with, let's click on format again and go to font, and all I want to do here is basically change the color. So let's choose this purple color, bold, click on okay. So now when I click on replace all, you should find that it's made 10 replacements, and now I have all of those headings in that document in a purple font, and we've really tidied up that formatting simply by using the find and replace tool.

Two more recent additions to Word 365 are the dictation and transcription tools, and both of these are so useful and cool when it comes to getting text into documents. Now we're going to look at both of these, and we're going to start out with dictation. Now if we go up to the home ribbon, notice over in the voice group we have a dictate button. Now this is one of those two-way buttons, very similar to our paste button over here. Now with two-way buttons, we can click the top half or we can click the bottom half. Now if I was to click the top half of this button, it's going to go straight into dictation. Now notice the screen tip: it says, "Now use voice typing to author content and voice commanding for a more hands-off experience," and notice the keyboard shortcut of Alt plus apostrophe. Now if we click the lower half of this button, this is where we can determine if we want to dictate or if we want to transcribe. Now what is the difference between these two? Well, dictation is going to allow us to speak, and the words that we say will automatically be added into the Word document. This option is brilliant for anybody who's maybe visually impaired, or maybe somebody who has problems with their wrists making it hard for them to type. It's also good for efficiency. Most of us can speak quicker than we can type, so if you work in an industry which requires a lot of typing, then this can be a really useful option. Now transcribing will basically convert speech to a text transcript. So if you have a recording of, let's say, a meeting or an event, if you have that as an MP4 file or some other kind of audio file, you can upload it into Word, and Word will automatically transcribe and create a document based off of the audio in the audio file. So let's start with dictation. Now I'm going to click the drop down, let's go to dictate, and notice we get this little floating toolbar on the right hand side. Now the first thing I would do, particularly if this is the first time that you're using dictation, is click on the Cog icon to open up your dictation settings, because you want to check a couple of things in here. For example, you want to check that you have the spoken language set correctly. Now obviously, I'm sure you can tell by my accent I am from the UK, so I could change this to English United Kingdom, and then I need to select my microphone. Now you might not be using a microphone like I am here; you might just be using your laptop audio or your PC audio, but just make sure you have that selected from the dropdown just here. So I need to select my microphone, and you can now see as soon as I do that, these bars are going up and down showing that it's recognizing and picking up my voice. We can also say if we want to enable auto punctuation. So yeah, why not? Let's try and get some punctuation in there as I'm speaking, and I'm also going to filter out sensitive phrases. So when I click on Save, if I want to start dictating, I just need to click on the little microphone button just here. So I'm going to click to start the dictation, and you should find that whatever I am speaking is going to start appearing on the page like it is right now, and you can see it should hopefully start to put in some punctuation as well. I can't see any in here as yet; maybe it doesn't think that it requires it. So I can carry on speaking, and it's going to pick up everything that I'm saying, and you can see there it has actually picked up a full stop, which is perfect. Now notice the one thing that it's not going to do is it's not going to separate off paragraphs, things like that. You're going to need to go in and do that manually yourself afterwards. But in terms of actually getting text quickly into a document, this is a brilliant method. When you want to stop dictating, all you need to do is click on the stop dictation button again on the floating toolbar. So let's stop dictating. So I think dictation is pretty cool.

Now I don't actually want this, so let's Contrl A to select everything, and I'm just going to press Delete on my keyboard, because we can now look at the second option that we have, which is transcription. Now I've already prepared an audio recording of me reading out a synopsis for a crime thriller that's been generated by Chat GPT, and I've saved that off in a folder on my PC as an MP4 file. So what I could now do is I could go to dictate, transcribe, and notice in here it's asking me to upload audio or start recording. Now we're going to upload audio in a moment, but what is this start recording button? Well, imagine you're in a lecture, for example, and your teacher is speaking. You could choose start recording, and it's going to transcribe everything that they're saying. Now obviously, this comes with quite a few different caveats. In order for it to pick up what your teacher is saying, you need to be close enough and they need to be speaking loud enough for it to be picked up accurately by whatever device you're using. Another thing worth noting here is that you do need to be careful with this option. For example, if you're in a very sensitive HR meeting, you're probably not going to want to start recording unless you've got prior permission. But if you simply want to record something that's being said and nobody else has a problem, or you want to record a lecture, then you can start recording from directly within Word. Alternatively, if you recorded on another device and you have a file to upload, you can click on upload audio, which is exactly what we're going to do now. Here is my file; it's called Shadows of Dis Seat. As I said, this is a synopsis for a crime thriller from Chat GPT. Now it is an MP4 format. Let's click on open, and you can see it's now uploading it to OneDrive and also transcribing the audio file, and there we go, it's uploaded it and I can now see the transcription below. Now it was just me speaking throughout the entire thing, so you can see here it says Speaker One the entire way through, but this will pick up when voices change so that you can see who spoke or who said which parts. Now with all of these, you do have an opportunity to edit the transcript section. So I would definitely recommend that you have a read through, and I can see here this has actually worked really well, but we can click on edit and then we can change this. So I'm going to say that this was me, so I'm going to type my name, and let's say change all Speaker One because it's always me. Let's click on confirm, and now we have a pretty decent transcript. Above, we can listen to it. So I can click on play: "Shadows of Deceit synopsis in the pulsating Metropolis of New York..." I can rewind, I can fast forward, I can even change the playback speed to make it play back quicker, and I've got a volume button just here. Now once you've checked the transcript in this little task pane, you can add each section on its own by clicking the plus button just here to add the section to the document. If you want to add everything, you can simply click at the bottom "add to document" and then you can choose what you want to add: just the text, with the speakers, with the timestamps, or with everything. So I'm going to say add this with speakers and timestamps; that's going to put it into the document. And check out what we have: we have a link to the file at the top just here because it's been uploaded to OneDrive first, so we can now get to the original MP4. Then we have "Transcript" as the title, and then we can see timestamps and who is actually speaking. Now I'm not sure what you think, but I think dictate and transcribe are two brilliant additions to Word 365. Have a play around with them, and I will see you in the next lesson.

It's time now to do exercise five. And in this exercise, we're going to practice some of the skills that we've learned in this section of the course. So the first thing I'd like you to do is to open the file "Exercise 5 William Shakespeare.docx" from the exercise fast folder. I'd then like you to find all bold headings in the document and replace them with the following properties: font weight bold, font Aptos or Calibri, font size 18 points, font color orange. I'd then like you to copy the formatting that's applied to the first photo of William Shakespeare and apply it to the photo of Macbeth on page three. And then finally, I'd like you to move the paragraphs titled "Histories" and "Poetry" above the paragraph titled "Tragedies." So a few different things to do there. If you'd like to see my answer, then please keep watching.

So the first thing I asked you to do here was to find all of the Bold headings in this document and replace them with different properties. So for this, we're going to use find and replace. So you could either go to the home ribbon and click on the replace button, or alternatively you can press the keyboard shortcut Contrl H. Let's just remove anything that we have in there previously, and what we're looking for here is basically just formatting. We're looking for bold formatting, and we want to replace it with other formatting. So when we're finding and replacing formatting, we need to expand more, and want to make sure we're clicking in the find what box. We're going to go to format and to font, because we're looking for everything that is bold, and just to make sure we get it correct, I'm going to select the font which is Aptos, so that's what we're looking for. Let's click on okay. And we're going to replace it with, again let's make sure we're clicking in the replace with box. We're going to go back to format into font, and we want to replace it with Aptos font. We still want it to be bold, but we want it to be 18 points, and we want the font color to be Orange. Let's click on okay, and let's click on replace all. You can see it's made 15 replacements. We can click on okay and close this window down, and check to make sure that that's applied. I can see that now all of my headings are in that much larger font and they're colored in Orange, so that has worked perfectly.

The next thing I asked you to do was to copy the formatting that's applied to the first picture of William Shakespeare and apply it to the image on page three of Macbeth. Now this has actually been moved down onto page four because we've got this increased size of our headings. So this is the image we want to apply it to. If we scroll up to the top, you will notice that with this image of Shakespeare, we do have a bit of formatting applied. You can see that we have rounded corners, we have a shadow effect in the background, and we also have a reasonably thick orange border around the outside. Now if we want to copy formatting from one picture to another, we can simply use our format painter. That is by far the quickest method. So let's click on the image, go to the home ribbon, and click on the format painter once. I can then scroll down to page four and simply click on this image to apply that exact same formatting.

The final thing I asked you to do was to move the paragraphs "History" and "Poetry," which are right at the bottom, above the paragraph labeled "Tragedies." So there are different ways that you could do this. I'm going to open up the clipboard. I'm going to select my paragraphs, and I'm going to do Contrl X because we're doing a move, not a copy. That's going to collect these items on the clipboard. And then I can scroll up, give myself some room above "Tragedies," and then I can simply click from the clipboard to insert those in. And remember, if they insert in without the formatting, we can click the little tag here and we can choose to merge the format, which is going to bring that formatting across. That is all I need you to do in this particular exercise. I hope you gotten okay with that, and I will see you in the next lesson.

In this section of the course, we're going to start to talk about formatting paragraphs and alignment. And in this first lesson, we're just going to take a look at some of the basic rules when it comes to formatting paragraphs in your document. So I have a document open on the screen; again, we just have some dummy text in here to practice with. Now you can see that I have numerous paragraphs throughout this document, and a paragraph is really just where one chunk of information ends and the next chunk begins. And in general, we create a new paragraph whenever we're sort of switching to a different point. And what you'll notice with Word is that if I was to backspace to make this all one paragraph, when you press the Enter key, it's automatically going to put in a bit of a larger line space to denote that this is a new paragraph. And all of these paragraphs can be formatted as one or independently of one another. For example, if I wanted to apply some formatting just to this first paragraph, I could select it, and of course we know there are numerous different ways for selecting. I'm going to hover my mouse in the margin, click and drag down to select that first paragraph, and then we can apply the format in that we want to use. Now again, remember, when it comes to formatting, you're going to get this little floating toolbar pop up. Now some people really like this, other people find it quite annoying. I am going to show you in a moment how you can turn this off if you don't like it, but I am going to use it in this case. So let's make this first paragraph bold, let's maybe make the text a bit bigger, and let's make it purple. Click away, and we've formatted that first paragraph. I could then go through and do the same to the second paragraph and make this look completely different if I want to. So we can format paragraphs individually. Let's Contrl Zed a couple of times just to undo all of that formatting.

Now another thing we can do, if we select this first paragraph, is we can change the way that this paragraph is aligned in this document. So by default, when you start typing paragraphs in a document, everything's always going to be aligned to the left hand side. So the text is going to start flush with that left hand margin. And if you take a look on the home ribbon in the paragraph group, you can see that left align is selected by default. Now when you have your text aligned to the left, we get what we call a ragged edge on the right hand side. And that means that Word just wraps round whenever it can't fit the next word on a line. So we don't end up with a nice uniform margin on the right hand side; things don't line up exactly with that margin because it really depends on the text contained within the paragraph. So it will be aligned on the left hand side and look nice and neat, but you will get a ragged edge on the right hand side. Now normally that's not a problem; this is standard with most documents that you'll see. Now we can align our paragraphs in different ways. So let's select again, and I could choose to align to the center if I wanted to. Notice there is a keyboard shortcut for this of Contrl E. If I click this, it's going to do exactly what you would expect; it's going to align that first paragraph to the center of the page, so we get a completely different effect just there. And of course we have an align right as well, keyboard shortcut Contrl R, which is going to give us the opposite of a line left. Now we have a nice neat edge on the right hand side and we have a raggedy edge on the left hand side. Now the final option, if we select that paragraph one last time, is justify, keyboard shortcut Contrl J. Now what this will do is it will distribute your text evenly between the margins. So if you want to have a nice neat margin on both sides and not a raggedy edge, this is what justify will do for you. And this is in general, if you ever read a newspaper, newspapers always use justified columns so that everything lines up neatly. Now we have a nice neat end on both the left and the right. So how has it managed to achieve this? Because the text looks exactly the same. Well, what's actually happened here, and on this particular document it is very subtle, is that Word is automatically spread out the words in each line so that they fit exactly to those page margins. Now it isn't particularly obvious just here using this font, but in some fonts that you use, you will see quite an exaggerated space when you use justify, but this is a good option if you want it to look nice and neat on both ends.

Now a couple of other things that we can do with this paragraph: if you notice, when we go up to the paragraph group, we have a shading option just here. So this is going to allow us to change the color behind the selected text, paragraph, or table cell. So if I was to select this, I could change the background color. And I like to use this when I'm putting together reference manual; sometimes there's certain paragraphs that I want to really stand out to the reader. Highlighting the background of a paragraph is a great way to do this. So I'm going to make this green, and then I could choose to maybe make the font bold to really make that stand out. I could even change the font to maybe a dark green so it ties in a little bit nicer with that background color. Another thing I could do is I could apply borders. Notice in the paragraph group, we can wrap borders around the outside of paragraphs. So if I click the drop down just here, I could choose to add a bottom border. You can see what that looks like as I hover over. A top border is going to put a nice line across the top. We could have a left, we could have a right, we could have no border, we could have all borders, outside borders, so on and so forth. So if I wanted to have an outside border, I could choose this option. But what if I want that border to be a little bit thicker? Well, this is where I would go down to borders and shading, and then I can define how thick I want that line. So I'd like a solid line, but I want it to be a bit thicker than half a point. So let's make it one and a half points. And then I can click on the diagram to choose where I want to add it. Now I want to add it around the outside, so I'm going to use these little preset buttons to apply to the top, to the bottom, to the left, and to the right. And we're applying it to the paragraph. Let's click on okay, and now I've got that nice border, and that paragraph really stands out from the rest of the document.

It's important to know the that you have when it comes to line and paragraph spacing when you're working in a Word document. Now I have the document that we used in the last lesson loaded up on the screen, and we're going to start to play around with the line and paragraph spacing. So let's scroll down; let's use this paragraph just here as our example. Now I'm going to highlight this paragraph and go up to the paragraph group, because we have a few different options for line and paragraph spacing. Now the first one is this little icon just here. So it says, "Choose how much space appears between lines of text or between paragraphs. To apply the same spacing to your whole document, use the paragraph spacing options on the Design tab." So that last point there is really important to know, because there is default line and paragraph spacing already applied to your document. If we take a look at this document, for example, as we mentioned, if I was to click just here in front of the word "to" and press Enter, that's basically going to be recognized as a new paragraph, and the amount of space between the previous line and the new paragraph is already defined automatically in Word. And that is controlled underneath the Design tab over in this little group just here where we have paragraph spacing. Now if we click the drop down, you can see that currently I'm using the default style set, and I have different options in here. So if I hover over "No Paragraph Space," you can see what that does. It collapses up all of that line spacing, and you can actually see the properties in the screen tip. So it's saying before the paragraph there's no spacing, after there's no spacing, and we just have a very small line space of one. If I hover over "Compact," we get something slightly different. So this time, before the paragraph there's no spacing, after there's four points, and we have a line spacing of one. So we have all of these different options just here, each giving a slightly different effect. So you can choose any one of these style sets, and it will apply it to the whole document. Now most of the time, leaving it on the default is fine for the majority of people. If you want to customize your default, you can go down to "Custom Paragraph Spacing," and you can get really detailed about exactly how much spacing you want. And you can see here my default paragraph spacing is zero points before, eight points after, line spacing multiple at 1.16. Now if I make any changes here and I want those changes to apply to all new documents that I create in the future, I can simply make my changes and then make sure I select "New documents based on this template" at the bottom; otherwise, any changes I make to this style set are only going to apply to this document. Now I'm not going to make any changes here; let's click cancel and go back to the Home tab.

Now I only want to change my spacing on one particular paragraph. So I can select the paragraph and make line and paragraph spacing changes just for this paragraph, not the entire document. And I have a few different options. If I go up to this little line and paragraph spacing drop down again, I can choose to change the line spacing, and you'll see as I hover over each one of these, it's putting more and more space in between each line in that paragraph. I can choose to add space before or add space after. Or alternatively, I can jump into my line spacing options. Now this is going to open up the paragraph dialogue box and jump us to the Indents and Spacing tab. Now we're going to talk about indents a bit later on; we're focusing on this section down here where it says "Spacing." And what you'll notice is that the default style set that we were looking at previously, there are those same properties: 0 points before, after is eight, line spacing multiple at 1.16. So currently I'm just using the default spacing for this paragraph. But I can go in here and I can make changes, and I always find it really useful just to keep an eye on this little preview below so I can see exactly how my changes are going to affect my paragraph. Now where we have "before" and "after," this relates to the amount of space before the paragraph and after.

the paragraph, so this doesn't control the actual spacing between the lines in the paragraph. So just to make this really obvious, if I change before spacing to 30 points and click on okay, you can see what that's going to do. We now have quite a big space in between the end of the last paragraph and the beginning of this one. So 30 points before the paragraph. Let's select the paragraph again, and this time I'm going to click on the diagonal arrow, which is going to take me directly back into the same dialogue box. Now, I don't want 30 points. I'm going to change that back to zero. Now after, that's going to do a similar thing, except this time it's going to put space in after the paragraph. So again, if I take this up to 30 points and click on okay, you can see what that looks like. So really nice and straightforward. I'm going to take this back to the default of eight. Now line spacing is currently set to multiple. I could have single line spacing. I could change it to 1.5 lines, and you can see how that preview is changing. So we've got a little bit more space, depending on which option we choose. Now if I go for at least, this is where I can use this little at field on the right hand side. So I could say put at least 20 point spacing in between each line in the paragraph, and that's the effect that we're going to get. I'm going to change this back to multiple, and once again, if we do make any changes in here and we want to set those as the default for all new documents, we have a set as default button at the bottom. Let's click on okay. So I'm going to change everything back to the default, click on okay, and that is how you can set your paragraph and line spacing options, by creating your own style set that you can use across different documents, or how you can change them for individual paragraphs only.

It's time now to talk about nonprinting characters. And nonprinting characters in the context of a Word document relate to anything that's actually in your document but we can't see on first glance and won't be printed. And there are many things that are classified as nonprinting characters. For example, if you take a look at the document that we have open on the screen here, can you tell that I have a section break somewhere in this document? I think you'll find, if you scroll through, there's nothing that we can actually see that indicates we have a section break in here. And that's because technically a section break indicator isn't shown unless we choose to show it, and section break indicators also won't be printed if we choose to print this document. So I always advise people, when they're working with the document, applying formatting, rearranging things, that they turn on nonprinting characters, or as they're known in Word, show/hide markers, so that you can see all of those underlying elements. It just makes your life a lot easier. So if we go up to the Home ribbon, in the Paragraph group, notice we have this little paragraph marker icon, and if we hover over, you can see that this is called show/hide. So it says show paragraph marks and other hidden formatting symbols. This is especially useful for advanced layout tasks, and notice that there is also a keyboard shortcut in here of Control plus asterisk. So let's click this, and immediately the section break now becomes obvious. What we can now see is that we have a small dot in between each word that shows us where we have a space; a space is a nonprinting character. And we can also see things like these little paragraph marks to denote the end of a paragraph, and we can see where we have any section breaks or line breaks. Now, by default, this little show/hide tool is turned off, so your document is going to look like that. So you either need to remember to toggle it on, or you can change a setting within options so that this is permanently toggled on. So let's just quickly take a look at where that setting is. We're going to go to File and down to Options, and we want to stay on the General page. Now, whilst we're here, if you recall in a previous lesson where we were looking at formatting, I showed you how to use that little floating mini toolbar that pops up. Now, if you don't like that, this is where you can also come in order to turn that off. So if you don't like that coming up whenever you make a text selection, you can simply deselect this checkbox just here. Now, if we go across to the Display page, this is where we can choose to always show certain formatting marks on the screen. So you can see I have two of these selected already: object anchors and show all formatting marks. So if I wanted to permanently display, let's say, paragraph marks for example, I could choose to select this and click on okay, and it doesn't matter if I have this toggled on or toggled off, I'm always going to see these paragraph marks at the end of the sentence. Now, these paragraph marks might seem, on first glance, fairly inconspicuous. They appear at the end of each paragraph to let us know that we are switching to a new paragraph, but these paragraph marks hold quite a lot of information. They basically hold all of the formatting information for the paragraph that they are attached to. So these are like little containers for instructions. Now, why am I telling you this? Why is this useful? Well, you might have come across a little problem when you're working in your Word documents. For example, if I were to select this paragraph, including the little paragraph marker, and change this to green text, if I only want this paragraph to be in green text and I then press Enter and expect to start typing in black, it continues typing in green. Now, that is because when we formatted the paragraph above, we included this little paragraph marker, and because this paragraph marker holds all of the instructions for the previous paragraph, when we press Enter it's just going to bring those formatting instructions down. So we're going to get a green paragraph of text. Now, let's undo and go back to where we have it as black text. If we were to select the paragraph without that paragraph marker and change it to green, when we then click at the end of the sentence and press Enter, we now carry on typing in black. So just remember that when you select the paragraph markers including the text, it's going to copy those formatting instructions to the next paragraph. And of course, as we've seen, when we turn on show/hide markers, it is super useful to be able to see where you have things like page breaks and section breaks in your document. And we're going to talk more about these a bit later on in the course, but it's good to know at this stage how to toggle and show all of those nonprinting characters and elements within your Word documents.

Bullets and numbered lists allow us to add some structure to our document and make the layout easier to read. And you'll find both bullets and numbered lists on the Home ribbon, in the Paragraph group. And it's these three little icons at the top here. So we have our bullets just here, we have our numbering just here, and then we have our multi-level list just here. So let's explore each of these and see how they differ from one another and which situations you would use each. So currently, I'm working on this document about William Shakespeare, and you can see that I already have some headings in here, but aside from that, it doesn't have a great deal of structure. Now, if I scroll down to where we have plays, you can see here we have the first paragraph, and then it lists out some of his most popular plays in each of these three categories: tragedies, comedies, and histories. Now, currently, these don't really stand out from the rest of the text, so I might want to think about adding bullet points. Now, in general, a bullet point will indent the piece of text that you have selected and add a little symbol at the start. And that symbol might be a solid filled circle, it might be the outline of a circle, it might be a diamond. It can pretty much be whatever you want it to be, because you can also create your own custom bullets. You don't necessarily have to select the inbuilt ones. And if we go up to the little bullets drop down just here, you can see options that we have in the Bullet Library. So the most popular is by far this one just here, the solid filled circle, but we do have some other options: we can add a star, we can have an outline, we can have a little square, a tick, so on and so forth. And if we wanted to, we could define our own new bullet just here. Now, I don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves; we are going to come back to this in a moment. For the time being, let's select the text that we want to apply our bullet points to. So I'm going to select these three lines just here. I'm going to go up to my bullets drop down, and I'm just going to choose the solid filled circle. And you can see exactly what that does: it indents those three lines and places a bullet point in front of them. So very quickly, this has just really added to the readability of this section of the document. If I want to remove bullet points, I can choose to remove it from one or all of these points. So if I just want to remove the bullet point from tragedies at the top here, I can simply click my mouse at the beginning and just click on bullets again, and that's going to remove them. Click again to reapply. I could do the same for everything. So I could select the entire paragraph and remove the bullets to put it back to how it was, or click again to add those bullets back in. And if I want to change these bullets to something else, I can simply make sure I have my lines of text selected, click the drop down, and maybe change them to a star instead. And if I wanted to use a bullet point that was different to one of the ones we have available in this gallery, I can choose to define new bullet. So from here, I could upload my own picture to use, or I could insert a symbol from the symbol gallery. So I'm just going to choose something from here. Let's just go for this star in a circle. Let's click on okay and okay again, and you can see that that's now applied. Now, just for this demonstration, I'm actually just going to switch these back to regular bullets, because if we see at the end of a bulleted line and press Enter, you're always going to get another bullet on the next line. Now, in a lot of cases, if you're writing out a list, then that's exactly what you want, so it's nice and quick; you don't have to keep going in and reapplying those bullets. But sometimes you might just want to write some text underneath without the bullet point being there. So once again, you could simply click to remove the bullet, and then you can start typing your text. But if you want to in line with where tragedies starts, this is where you can use your indent buttons just here. So we can increase the indent. If I click once, it moves it to there. Click again, and now we're directly underneath, and we can start typing. So don't forget that you have those options when it comes to lining up text that you don't necessarily want to be bulleted. Now, I'm going to backspace and just remove what we did there, because another thing you can do when you press Enter is, let's say I wanted to have another bullet but indented even further. What I can do is press the Tab key on my keyboard, and it's going to give me another level of bullet. So maybe I just want to have tragedies as the first bullet, and then I want to have this as the second bullet. So I could select this text, and then I could simply grab it and move it down. And if I wanted to put all of these on separate lines, I could press Enter, and we're going to get the same level of bullet. So let's put all of these on separate lines like so. If you want to promote one of these secondary level bullets back up to a top level bullet, you can do the reverse of Tab. If you press Shift+Tab, that's going to promote it. Tab is going to demote it. And we can carry on pressing Tab to get different levels of bullet, Shift+Tab to go backwards. So that's how you can utilize bullet points to add structure to your documents.

The second thing that we have are numbered lists. So they are sort of similar to bullets, but instead of having a symbol, a circle or a star, we have numbering instead. So the paragraphs that you can see here where we have the title in orange, maybe I want these to say 1, 2, 3, 4. This is where I could come up to numbering and I can choose my style of numbering from the numbering library. So this really relates to how I want this formatted. So I could have 1, 2, 3, or I could have Roman numerals, or I could even have a, b, c. Now, I want to have 1, 2, 3, and I just want to have a dot. I don't want to have this little bracket after it. So let's click like so. And this works in a fairly similar way to bullets. If I was to click at the end and press Enter, it's going to give me a number 2. If I press the Tab key, it's going to indent it to a new level, where we get an A. Press Tab again, and we get a little i. Now, you might be wondering: where do these things come from? How does Word know that when you indent it wants to go to A as opposed to 1.1, for example? Well, this is where multi-level numbering comes in. So let's just backspace out of here, because the next little drop down is our list levels. So you can see here, with the one that I currently have selected, the first level is going to be a number 1. Second level, when we indent, is going to be an A. Third level is going to be a Roman numeral. So if I wanted to have this say 1, 1.1, 1.1.1, so on and so forth, I would need to choose a different multi-level numbering. So this one here fits the bill. And now when I press Enter and Tab, I'm going to get 1.1, 1.1.1, so on and so forth. So just be aware of that when it comes to numbering in your documents. Now, in this case, I don't want to have any other levels, but I do want to apply numbering to the rest of these. So I could do this individually, or I could select them and apply multiple at the same time. And both numbering and multi-level lists are customizable. So I could come into numbering and define a new number format. So this is where I can really choose the number style that I want to use, and I can come in here and I can get really granular about how I want this number formatting to look. I can even choose the font that I want to use for my numbering. And the same applies to multi-level lists: we can define a new multi-level list at the bottom here, and we can go through and we can choose what level we want to modify. So if I want to modify how 3.1.1 looks, I can select the level and then I can come down here and I can choose exactly how I want it aligned, what font I want to use, what number formatting I want. So lots and lots of customization options when it comes to using your bullets, your numbering, and your multi-level lists.

Indents help us define and adjust where our paragraphs are lining up to in our Word documents. And whilst indentation might seem a fairly simple topic, there are definitely some key things you need to know when working with indents in a document. Now, the first thing that you're going to want to make sure that you turn on before you even begin adjusting your indents is the ruler. Now, you can see that I have mine turned on at the top here. If you cannot see this ruler, then simply go to the View ribbon and make sure that in the Show group you have a tick next to ruler. If you don't have a tick in here, your document's going to look like that, with no ruler at the top. And this is so important, because we need to be able to see our ruler when we're working with indents. Now, when it comes to indentation, there are a few very basic things that we can do. Now, when we're working with indents, it's really important to keep your eyes on these three little markers on the ruler. So can you see this just here, right at the start? These are actually three separate little moving parts. So this one at the top controls our first line indent. This one in the middle controls our hanging indent. And the little block at the bottom controls the left indent. So what does this actually mean? Well, if I click my mouse just before the first paragraph and just press the Tab key on my keyboard, check out what happens to those little markers on the ruler. Can you see this one here? Remember, this one represents the first line indent. It has now moved across to where that tab ends. And if you're wondering what controls the distance that one tab will move, that is a setting in Word. The default distance is this distance that you can see here, so it's about half an inch. If I press Backspace, it's going to remove that indent, and notice that little marker moves back to the left margin. Now, aside from pressing Tab, which is only going to indent each line that we clicked in, we can actually use these little markers to define how we want this document to look. So once again, if I click my mouse just in front of the first paragraph, this time I'm going to grab the first line indent and I'm going to drag it along. And you can see as I drag it back and forth, it's changing the indentation of that first line, because this marker is a first line indent. So that's all that's going to move; everything else is going to stay flush with the left hand margin. Now, if I were to grab the hanging indent, which is the one in the middle, this is basically going to do the reverse. So it's going to indent all of the text below that first line. Drag it back to the left. And then finally, if we grab the bottom one here, left indent, and drag, that's going to drag the entire paragraph and indent it to whatever level we specify. But notice, all of these are just controlling that first paragraph. If I just drag this first line indent again, notice that it only applies to the first paragraph. If we look at the second paragraph, that is still flush with the left hand margin. So if you wanted to maybe change the indentation for two paragraphs, you would need to make sure that you select them, and then when you start making modifications to these markers, it's going to affect both of those paragraphs. If you want to apply to the entire document, you can press Ctrl+A to select everything, and then when you drag the first line indent, for example, it's going to do it for all paragraphs. So just be aware of the different selections there and how these little markers on this ruler control your indentation. Now, of course, we can have different indentations for different parts of the same document. So maybe I wanted the first two paragraphs to have a first line indent, but the rest of the document I don't. Well, that is where we have to start sectioning up our document, and we're going to cover that a bit later on. So just put a pin in that thought for the time being. Now, aside from dragging and dropping these little markers around on the ruler, we do have some options on the ribbon for controlling indentation. So if we go to the Home ribbon, in the Paragraph group, you can see we have the decrease indent and increase indent buttons just here. And we used these previously. So if I click this, it's essentially like dragging this left indent across the ruler; it's going to indent the entire paragraph that you have selected or that you're clicked in. And if we decrease the indent, it's going to put that back. If I wanted to do more than one paragraph, I would need to select them, and then I can indent and decrease indent. Now, if we open up our paragraph settings by clicking on this diagonal arrow again, in the Indents and Spacing area, we can adjust our indentation manually. So from here, we've got first line and hanging. So if I wanted to do a first line indent again, I could select that, and check out the preview below. You can see that it's going to do exactly the same as when we drag that first line indent marker across the ruler. Now, I'm going to say none here, and this is where I can choose to define exactly what my indentation on the left and the right should be. So I could say that I want a left indentation of 0.4, and check out what that does in the preview. You can see it's indented that paragraph. But I could also choose to have indentation on the right. So I could take that up to 0.4 as well, and I get the same level of indentation. It's a bit harder to see because we have a raggedy edge applied just here, but if I click on okay, that's exactly what I'm going to get. I could then choose to justify the text so that everything looks nice and neat. And if you take a look at the markers on the ruler, you can see we have our left indent applied, and now we also have a little marker for right indent as well, because that's what we set in these indentation options. Now, I have both of these equal, 0.4 and 0.4. What I could do is I could just say mirror indents if I wanted these to be exactly the same. Mine were already the same, so it's not going to change anything. But if you had different inside and outside and you just wanted them to be equal, you could choose mirror indents and click on okay. So that's how indentation works in Word. As I mentioned, we are going to come back to this when we cover sections a bit later on.

Tabs or tab stops are a great way to define the layout of your document. They allow us to set markers on the ruler, and then when we press the Tab key on our keyboard, our cursor is going to jump directly to the tab stop that we've set. So in this lesson, we're going to take a look at how we can use tabs in a document and why they're so useful. Now, I have a fairly empty document open on the screen, and currently I don't have any tab stops in this document. Now, when you press the Tab key on your keyboard, your cursor is going to move across the ruler, or move across the page, at a set amount of distance. Now, for me, that is about half an inch. If you take a look at my ruler, you can see we're sort of in line with this middle marker just here. And if I carry on pressing Tab, it's going to keep moving my cursor across by half an inch every single time. And if I press Backspace, it's going to take me back the other way. So what this means is that if I was to type—let's just type my name, for example—and press the Tab key, it's going to move me across to the next tab. So maybe I then type my job title, Tab again, and I move across. So tab stops there are some inbuilt ones already in Word. Now, it might be that you want to set up your document so that you customize where your tab stops are, and this is really useful if you have a very specific layout. So I see a lot of people using things like tab stops when they're putting together something like a letter. In general, with a letter, you'll have your name and address on one side, and then in the middle you might have the date, and then all the way over on the right side you might have maybe the recipient's address details. Now, before we get too far into this, a couple of things are worth turning on. Once again, make sure that you do have your ruler displayed. If you don't, jump up to the View tab and make sure you have a tick next to ruler. Another thing that's sometimes worth turning on are show/hide markers, because these are going to show you your little tab stops by way of an arrow every time you press that Tab key. So some people find that quite useful. Now, when it comes to setting tab stops, there are a couple of different ways that you can do this. For example, let's say that when I press the Tab key, instead of tabbing across half an inch, I want to tab across 2 inches. What I could do is hold my cursor over where we have 2 on the ruler, and it's going to put in this little marker just here. And as I hover over that marker, you can see that this is a left tab. So what does that mean? Well, if I press my Tab key, you can see I'm jumping across to 2 inches. And if I type my name, it means it's going to line up with the left, and the text is going to move to the right. Going to Ctrl+Z to undo. Now, aside from this left tab stop, we do have other types of tabs that we can use. And if you cast your eyes all the way over to the left hand side of the screen, can you see we have the same little marker over here at the top of the vertical ruler? And this is currently showing the same; it's a left tab stop. But what I could do is I could click it, and it's going to cycle to a different tab stop. And this time, when I hover my mouse over, you can see that this is a center tab. So now I can click somewhere else on the ruler to apply a center tab. So let's remove our left tab from the ruler. I'm going to click and just drag that off. And now, because I have Center tab selected over on the left hand side, if I was to click on the 2 again, it's going to add a center tab. So what is the difference between the center tab and a left tab? Well, if I tab across, this time when I type my name, it's kind of moving from the center. So you can see that center tab is dead in the center of my text, whereas a left tab would be on the left hand side of the text. So this is great if you're trying to line something up dead in the center of your document. And with all of these tabs, you can simply drag them to move them across. So if I wanted this in the middle, I'm going to place that roughly around there. And now, when I press Enter, every time I tab, it's going to move across to that exact same spot. Now, I'm going to remove that tab again and remove it off of this line, because we do have some other tabs. We have a right tab as well. So I could put this all the way over on the right hand side of my document, and it means that the text is going to line up to the right. So let's just delete this out, because you'll notice that when I press Enter and tab, it's going to jump all the way across to the right hand side, and then it's going to line up with that right hand margin. Let's drag this tab off and take a look at the last couple of tabs. This time, this is a decimal tab. So this is useful if you have a list of numbers, because it's going to line those numbers up based on the decimal point. So let's get rid of this text in here, and let's put a decimal tab at point 2. Now, when I tab across, if I was to type a number that has a decimal point in it, you can see that that is lining up directly with that decimal tab. So it doesn't matter what number I put in; it's always going to keep those decimal points in line. And then, if we click one more time, we then have a bar tab. And this is a little bit different. So let's place the bar tab at point 2. Notice I now get a bar in there, or a line. So this is useful if you just want to have a nice line in between whatever it is that you're typing, and that line will grow as you add more text in. So those are the different kinds of tabs that you can use, and you can place them wherever you want on the ruler in order to help you line up your text. So let's get rid of all of that, because I want to show you the other method that you have when it comes to applying tabs to documents. Now, for this, I'm going to add some text in here. So let's type in "rand's" – do our little Rand trick. Because what we can do is, on the Home tab, in the Paragraph group, if we click this little diagonal arrow, it's going to pop up the Paragraph dialogue box. And right at the bottom, we have a button for tabs. Now, when I open this, this is where you can define your tab stop position, and you can get quite granular with things like leaders and the alignment. So maybe I want to define a tab stop position at, let's say, 1 inch. I can put that in there: tab stop position. And here it's showing me what my default tab stops are, which is basically half an inch. And then I can choose the kind of tab stop that I want. So again, we have left, center, right, decimal, or bar. I can even define if I have a leader. So let's put a left tab stop, and let's give it a dotted leader. Let's click on set. I can then define another tab stop, so let's say 2.5. I'll make this one center with a dotted leader and set. And I could carry on going. I'm going to put another one at 5. We'll say that that is a right tab stop with a dotted line leader, and click on set. So I could set multiple tab stops all in one go using this little dialogue box. Let's click on okay, and as soon as I do that, you'll see those tab stops apply to the ruler. We have our left tab stop, our center tab stop, and then our right tab stop. So then we can utilize these. So if I'm clicked at the start of this paragraph and I press Tab, you can see what that does. It tabs into that first left tab, and because I selected have a dotted leader, it's giving me these dots. Now, I'm not saying in this example this looks particularly great, but this can be useful if you're doing things like maybe creating a table of contents, something like that. So with all that in mind, these could be super useful when you're creating a multitude of different documents. For example, let's press Ctrl+A to select everything, and I'm going to delete out everything we have in here, because maybe I'm creating a letter. So I'm happy to have my name and address flush with the margin; I don't need to add a tab stop for that. But maybe I want to have the date in the middle, and then some other details over on the right hand side. So what I would do here is go all the way over to the left hand side, and I'm going to click and cycle around until I get the center tab stop, and I'm going to place that at point 3. I'm then going to cycle around again until I get the right tab stop, and I'm going to put that at point 6. So now, this makes it really easy for me to create my letter. I can put my details in here. So let's just make up a fake address. And then I want the date in the middle. So I can press Tab, and it's going to jump me directly across to that center point. So then I can put in whatever the date is, and it's dead in the center. If I want to put the recipient address over on the right hand side, I can click up here and press Tab a couple of times, and it's going to jump me across to that right tab. So we'll just say Mr. Smith, and then we can add in his addressing details. So let's say 34 For Oak Court, London. So now, when I hit Enter, I'm back to the left hand margin, and I can start to type my letter like so. So now, when I turn off show/hide markers, you can see that we have a really nice looking, lined up letter simply using tabs. So tabs are definitely a good thing to start exploring if you've never used them before.

It's time now to do Exercise 6. And in this exercise, we're going to practice some of the skills that we've learned in this section of the course. So the first thing I'd like you to do is to open the file "Exercise 6 Employee List.docx" from the exercise files folder. And then using tab stops, I'd like you to recreate the employee table shown below. We've got a few notes here. So for the Employee Name column, this needs to be flush with the left hand margin. The Job Title column uses a left tab at 1.94 inches. The Salary column uses a decimal tab at 4.38 inches. And the Department column uses a right tab at 6.31 inches. Once you've set those tabs and added in the text, I'd then like you to change the line spacing to zero points. Once you've done that, I'd then like you to use custom bullet points to recreate the company structure shown in the screenshot below. Now, a couple of things to notice here. I'm using a diamond symbol as the bullet point, so you're going to need to find that in the Symbols gallery. And the other thing I want you to ensure is that the diamond bullet is applied to both levels. So once you've typed in "Gen Green", for example, and gone on to the next line and pressed Tab, you might find you just have a regular round bullet. I want you to set this up so that when you Tab and you've got your second level bullet, that is also a diamond. So you're going to need to have a little bit of a look in the settings for bullet points in order to be able to do this. That's all I need you to do. If you'd like to see my answer, then please keep watching.

Now, the first thing I asked you to do was to recreate the employee list table shown in the screenshot. Now, to do this, we need to set up some tab stops, and I have a few to set up. So I'm going to click the diagonal arrow to open up the Paragraph dialogue box and go straight into Tabs, because I find this a bit easier when I need to do multiple and be very specific about the tab stop position. Now, the first tab stop we need to set up is a left tab stop. I don't want a leader, but I do want it to apply at 1.94 inches. I'm going to set that one. The next tab I want to set up is a decimal tab. So let's select that again. I don't want a leader, and I want the decimal tab at 4.38 inches. And let's click on set. And the final tab I need to set up is a right tab. Again, no leader, and this time we want this at 6.31 inches. And click on set. So now, when we click on okay, we should find those tab stops have applied to the ruler. And we can now simply go in and add our text. And if you've done everything correctly, it should end up looking something like this. The next thing I asked you to do was to decrease the line spacing in this table to zero points. So I'm going to select everything again, I'm going to open up the Paragraph dialogue box, and then in the Spacing group down here, where we have points after, I'm going to put that down to zero, and click on okay. So you should have ended up with something that looks similar to this. The next thing I asked you to do was to recreate the screenshot that shows the company structure. So I've just typed out all of the names, and now we need to add in our bullet points. So this is what you should have ended up with. So you could have simply just typed out the list of names and then applied the bullets. Now, with these diamond bullets, the way I inserted these was simply to go up to the Paragraph group and then click the drop down just here. Now, because I've recently used mine, you can see them sitting in there. If you couldn't see that bullet point, if you go to Define new bullet point and click on Symbol, this is where you can find that diamond bullet. Once you have that bullet inserted, you can then just press the Tab key to tab across these other two sub items. So you should have finished up with something that looks like this. That's it for this exercise. I will see you in the next lesson.

It's time now to talk about themes in Word, because themes really control the overall look and feel of our documents. So I just wanted to spend this first lesson just running through exactly what themes are, because there are some little things in here that you might not be aware of. Now, I have a document open on the screen here. This is a business proposal for a fictitious coffee company, and you can see here that this has formatting applied. So I have a title at the top, and I have Heading 1s and Heading 2s in my document. You can see these just here. And we also have some shapes at the top here as well, containing the three main points: sustainability, quality, and innovation. Now, everything you see on this page with regards to the design – and by that I mean the way that these titles look, the way that the headings look, and also the color palette that's in use here – these are all determined by the theme I have applied to this document. Now, if you want to check what theme you're currently using, you can jump up to the Design tab, and the first group here is Themes. Now, if we click the drop down, it's going to show us the Themes gallery. Now, you might not have any custom themes at the top; these are ones that I've created for myself. But what you definitely will have is a group here called Office, which contains all of these standard inbuilt themes. And for most people, the default theme is going to be the Office theme. Now, Microsoft has recently changed this; it's updated its default theme, and the one that you see here is an example of the updated theme. I do also have the old theme, which is this one just here. And if I hover over this, you can see the document changes. So I now have different styles and different colors applied, because we have a different font in use in the old theme, and also a different color palette. So as I hover over each of these themes, you can see the live preview as to what the document is going to look like if I were to choose an alternative theme. So you can go through these, and you can choose which one best suits your needs. Now, I'm going to stick with just the standard Office theme for the time being. Now, when you choose a theme, you get access to various different things. For example, there is a color palette that is supplied with each theme, and you can actually see that when you want to do things like change the font color or the background fill color of a shape. For example, if I was to select this piece of text just here, go to the Home tab, and go to change the font color, notice here it says Theme Colors. So these are all of the colors that are installed with the theme that I'm currently using. Now, we don't have to use a theme color; we can choose any of these standard colors down here, or alternatively we can click on More Colors, which opens up these palettes, and we can drag around, move this around, and really get the color that we're looking for. And this is particularly important if you have brand colors that you use quite often. You can grab the hex code from your marketing team, and you can simply paste it down here to get the exact color of maybe your company branding or your logo. So lots of different options, but just be aware that you will have this theme color palette. Now, in a document, I generally tend to stick to the colors contained within my theme, and that is because, in general, these colors work really well together. So we're not going to have sort of crazy reds with crazy neon pinks, things like that. We're pretty safe when we use our theme colors that it's going to look good. Now, if we jump back to the Design tab, notice that over here we have a little Colors drop down. So if maybe we like the fonts in use in this theme, but we don't necessarily like the color palette, we could choose to use one of these other color palettes, or we can even create our own. So I could choose to use maybe this one just here, Red Violet, and what you'll see is that it keeps some part of my theme. So it's keeping things like the font and the actual style; it's just changing the colors in use. So now, if I want to go back and change the color of Executive Summary on the Home tab, you'll notice that my theme color palette has updated to those new colors. So just be aware of that. I'm going to undo to put it back to my original color palette. Let's go back to Design. We can also do something similar with fonts. So again, I have default fonts included with this theme, but I could choose to change to a different font. So maybe Arial, Segoe UI, Calibri Light, Roboto Black. And you can see as I hover over, those changes are being applied. Once again, we can customize our fonts entirely in here and choose our own heading font and also what we want to use for the body. I'm going to talk more about customizing themes a bit later on. Now, another thing you'll get with your themes are all of these different styles. So underneath Document Formatting, you see that we can choose to change the style that we're using. So this really applies to the heading levels in our document. For example, if I was to choose this one, you can see the style gives my document a bit of a different look. And I actually really like this style. If I go back to the Home tab and look in the Styles gallery, you can see that that has also updated with the styles from this particular style set for this theme. So now, when I want to apply a Heading 1, star, it's going to have a line underneath it. Heading 2 is going to look like this. So on and so forth. Now, why is this important? Well, notice that when I go to the Design tab and I hover my mouse over any of these themes, can you see that it automatically updates everything in my document? That's the styles that I'm using, the color palette, the font, everything. Now, if I had chosen to apply, let's say, for these shapes down here – I'm going to go to Shape Format, I'm going to go to Shape Fill, and instead of using one of my theme colors, I'm going to use some of these standard colors down here. So I'm going to change this to Dark Blue, I'm going to change this one to Medium Blue, and let's change this one to a Light Blue. So now, in this document, these three shapes are using non-theme colors. So when I go back to the Design tab, if I want to completely update my theme, notice what happens when I scroll over these different theme options. Whilst the font and the styles are changing to match the theme, the colors of those shapes are not, because these are no longer theme colors. So when

You choose to use things that are outside of your theme, it just means that you can't simply update everything by applying a new theme. So, in general, that's one of the reasons why I find it's better to always use your theme color palette and your theme fonts. So, if I put these back, let's change that one back to purple. Let's change this one to a darker blue, and let's change this one to a green. All of these are theme colors again. Now, when I go back to Design and go to choose another theme, can you see that those update? So, using themes is a really quick way just to update the look and feel of your document. And if you stick within your theme color palette and your theme fonts, it makes it really simple to change the theme to something else if you need to.

In the previous lesson, we started taking a look at themes in Word. I explained to you what they are and how they can be useful. So, in this lesson, we're going to take this a stage further, and I'm going to show you how you can create your own custom theme with your own custom colors. Now, why might you want to do this? Well, imagine you work at a company, or maybe in your spare time, you're the president of the local football club, and everything that you send out to your members or your employees needs to be branded with the company colors. That might be colors that are contained within your company logo.

Now, every color when you're working in Microsoft applications has what we call a hexadecimal code. And you can see in the top right-hand corner, I've just drawn some rectangles in here, and you can see that I've added in the hex value for each of the colors behind. And we're going to say that these are my company's branded colors that we want to use in our theme. So, we can use these hexadecimal values to create a custom theme. Now, if you're not sure what the hexadecimal value is of your company logo colors, then you can get that information from your marketing team. They'll always have some kind of brand document or brand guidelines which contains these values. A lot of the time, I will say that if you are working at an organization that is big on branding and house style, you'll probably be working within company templates which already contain the correct color palette. But there will be occasions where you do need to create your own custom palette or your own custom theme.

So, the first thing we're going to do here is we're going to go up to Design. Now, remember, I currently have the Office default theme applied. Now, you might think that you can just go down here and choose "Save Current Theme" and then customize it. It kind of works the opposite way around. We need to make our changes and then then we can save the theme. So, I'm going to go straight across to Colors, because this is where we can customize the colors in use in our particular theme. And you'll notice at the top, we have a custom group, and this contains custom color palettes that I've set up previously. And then we have a selection of standard Office palettes that we could also use. But we want to create our own custom palette.

Now, another thing to point out here, this is useful information if you are working or thinking about customizing colors. If I select this rounded rectangle just here that contains the word "sustainability," this has a purple background fill at the moment. Now, if I go up to Shape Format and click the Shape Fill dropdown, you can see that the color in use is actually selected in the theme color palette. You can see we have a red border around the outside. It's this one. And when we hover over, we can see the name of that particular theme color. So, in Word, it's called Plum Accent 5. Now, this is important information because Accent 5, if we go back into Custom Colors and go down to Customize Colors, notice what we have in here. So, this helps us determine what color we're actually changing. So, you can see here, Accent 5 is currently showing in purple. That is correct. So, when I click the dropdown, I know that I'm changing that particular item. So, just be aware of that.

So, what we're going to do is we're going to use these colors that we have in the top right-hand corner to create a new custom palette. So, I know that this one is Accent 5. I'm just going to quickly check what these other two are, because this is going to be the most obvious change for you to be able to see. So, if we go to Shape Format, Shape Fill, I can see I'm using this blue that is Accent 4. So, I need to change that one. And if I go to this one, Shape Fill, that is Accent 6. So, we basically have Accent 4, 5, and 6 that we need to change if we want these colors to update.

So, let's go to Design. Let's go to Customize Colors. So, I want to change Accent 4, 5, and 6. So, let's go for 4 first of all. More Colors. And then we can type in the hex code just here. So, D7238A. Click on OK, and you can see that's updated to that pink. We can then go to Accent 5. Let's go to More Colors. And we're going to update this one so that it's that nice green. So, 00B050. And click on OK. Let's do the next one, Accent 6. This is just going to be a black. So, this is 123456. And click on OK. Let's change Accent 3 as well. Let's change that to a gray color. So, that is B2B2B2. And click on OK.

So, now I've effectively customized the color palette in use. I could go a stage further, for example, I could change the text color that's in use. Let's do that. Let's change that to a dark blue, for example. I can now give my new custom theme a name. So, I'm going to call this "Custom Company Colors" and click on Save. And you can see as soon as I save it, those changes update. So, you can now see that these shapes have changed color and they match my company colors. And you can also see that some of this text has also changed to dark blue.

I could go a stage further and I could change the font in use. So, maybe I want to change these to, let's go for this one to make it really stand out, Roboto Slab. Now, I could go into Customize Fonts just here and really get granular. So, Heading Font, I'm going to go for Roboto Slab again. So, let's just type that in so we can find it a bit easier. Let's say Roboto Slab Black. And then I can choose how I want my Body Font. So, let's stick with the Roboto family and we'll just go for this font just here. And I'm going to call this "Custom Company Fonts" and click on Save. So, you can now see that that has also updated.

So, we've created our own custom palette, we've created our own custom fonts. I could go a stage further and also customize the effects, because effects are part of themes as well. Now, in this case, I'm not going to customize the effects, but just be aware that you can also. Something I could do here is I could change the paragraph spacing. I could set that to what I want it to be and include that in my theme. And if I want to use this theme as a default, I have a "Set as Default" button. So, that means that every time I open a new document, it's automatically going to apply this theme.

Now, currently, we haven't saved this theme. We've just saved our color palette and our new fonts. So, now we need to go back to the Themes dropdown and now we can say "Save Current Theme." Now, this is really important because it's going to open up File Explorer and it's going to jump you to the Document Themes folder by default. Now, a lot of people try to go in here and save their theme in one of their own folders. I always recommend that you keep these in the Document Themes folder. So, don't change the default folder. If you start trying to save this somewhere else, it means it's not going to be available in the dropdown for you to select. So, I'm going to call this "Custom Company Theme" and click on Save.

So, now what I should find is when I click the Themes dropdown in the Custom group at the top, there is my new theme, "Custom Company Theme." So, now if you open up a new document and you want to very quickly apply this color palette and these fonts, we can simply just apply the theme. And this theme isn't document-specific. So, it doesn't matter if you close down Word, if you open up a new document, it's always going to be there for you to select and apply.

It's time now to do Exercise 7. And in this exercise, we're going to practice some of the skills that we've learned in this section of the course. So, the first thing I'd like you to do is open the file "Exercise 7 Yoga Your Ticket to Zen.docx" from the exercise files folder. And I'd like you to apply the Ion Boardroom theme. I'd then like you to create your own custom theme and be sure to include the following: custom theme colors and custom theme fonts. And the colors and the fonts that you use are entirely up to you. I'd then like you to make sure you save your theme so that you can access it from the dropdown when you create a new document. That's all I need you to do in this exercise. If you'd like to see my answer, then please keep watching.

So, the first thing I asked you to do was to open the file "Exercise 7 Yoga Your Ticket to Zen.docx" from the exercise files folder, and this is that document just here. So, the first thing we need to do is we just need to change the theme. So, we're going to go to the Design tab. We're going to go to the Themes dropdown, and the theme I asked you to choose was Ion Boardroom. Let's click to select, and you can see immediately how that changes the look and feel of the document. I then asked you to create your own theme with your own custom colors and your own custom fonts. And for this, I didn't really mind what colors you used. So, I'm going to go straight over to the Fonts dropdown. I'm going to go to Customize Fonts and I'm going to change the fonts in use in my theme. So, let's click the dropdown. And for my heading font, let's go for Georgia. Why not? Georgia Pro Black. And then for the body font, I think I'm going to stick with the Georgia family, and I'm just going to go for regular Georgia. And we can see there in the sample what this is going to look like. So, I'm going to change this and name it "Georgia Font Theme" and click on Save. And you can see immediately it applies that to a document.

Now, I asked you to also change the color palette. So, when we click the dropdown, you could have chosen any one of these color palettes in the list, or alternatively, you could create your own color palette using "Customize Colors." So, let's just very quickly do that. And I'm just going to change these accent colors just here. And I'm just going to select from the standard color palette just for quickness. If you had specific colors you wanted to change to, you would go to More Colors, and then you can type in the hex code in here. So, let's just very quickly go through and I'm just going to change these to the standard colors, like so. Then we can name our custom color theme. And you can see that some of those colors have also updated.

So, now we've changed the colors and the fonts, we need to save this as a new theme. So, let's click the Themes dropdown and go to "Save Current Theme." We want to make sure that we're keeping it in the default Document Themes folder. And I'm just going to call this "Yoga Theme" and click on Save. So, now that theme is available in the Themes dropdown. You can see there is to apply to any new document I create. That's all I need you to do in this lesson. I will see you in the next section.

In this lesson, we're going to talk through a really important concept in Word, and that is using Word Styles. Now, we have touched on Word Styles a couple of times throughout the balance of this course, but we haven't really looked at them in depth. So, that's what we're going to do in this lesson. I'm going to explain to you what styles are, why they're useful, and I'm going to show you how quickly you can add them into your document.

Now, on the screen, I have a very plain-looking document, and this is just a document about the solar system. Now, notice in this document, we have a mixture of different things. We have a title in the first line. We have a heading that says "Introduction," and then we have some paragraph text underneath. And this pattern kind of repeats throughout this entire document. We then have another heading and a paragraph of text, another heading, a paragraph of text, and so on. And at some points in this document, we have a heading, for example, "The Inner Planets," and then we almost have a subheading of that heading, and then we have the paragraph of text.

Now, in general, if you do have a document that looks like this, that has a mixture of titles, headings, and paragraph text, you're going to want to give it structure so that these things stand out and the document becomes more readable. If I was just to leave my document like this, it's not particularly obvious what's a heading, what's a title, so it makes it a little bit harder to interpret and read. So, let's start with this first line here. This is the title of the document. Now, if I wanted to make this stand out, you might think that I would go up to the Font group just here and start applying some formatting. For example, I could make this text quite a bit bigger. I could make it bold. I could even change the color if I really wanted that to stand out. And now, effectively, I've given myself a heading.

Now, whilst you could do that and apply manual formatting in that way, that isn't the most efficient way to do this. In order to achieve this look, I've had to do quite a few different clicks. I've had to increase the size, I've had to make it bold, I've had to change the color. And if I had other titles throughout this document and I wanted them to look exactly the same, I'd need to go to those titles, select them, and manually reapply all of the formatting.

Now, this is where Word Styles can help us out. So, let's undo and just put that back to how it was originally. Now, as we already know, every document you create has a theme already assigned to it. And we can see the theme that we're using by going to the Design ribbon. And you can see here, I'm just using the standard Office theme. And this theme will determine things like the colors and the fonts in use in the document. But what it will also give you are styles that match the theme. And if I click the dropdown, it's going to open up a Styles gallery. And these are very much tied to the theme that I have set. Now, if I was to change the theme in this document, let's go to the Design tab and let's just change it to something completely different. Now, when I go to the Home tab, notice that the styles, the look and feel of them, have changed to match the theme that I've selected. Now, I'm going to put mine back to my Office theme.

Now, styles are effectively preset formatting. So, you can see here, I have a Title style, which I could use for any title in this document. I have a Heading 1 style for any top-level headings. I have a Heading 2 style for any subheadings. If I've got things like quotes in my document, I have a Quote style just here. And you might be noticing that as I'm hovering over these, it's changing the paragraph that I'm currently clicked in. And another thing to note is that in this little gallery here, you might not necessarily see all of the styles that are available to you within your theme. What you can do to see them all is click on the diagonal arrow in the bottom corner of the Styles group, and it's going to open up this little floating pane, which, of course, we can pick up and dock on the right-hand side. And this is where we can see all of our styles.

Now, it's pretty hard to tell the difference between these styles when we just have them listed in this pane. So, what I always like to do is click the "Show Preview" checkbox, and then I can kind of see what each style looks like. And now you can see there is the default paragraph font, we have Heading 1s, Heading 2s, Heading 3s, Heading 4s, so on and so forth. So, now we can use these styles in a document. So, if I click just before where we have the title, I can simply click there and I can choose Title style. I can click next to Introduction and I could choose Heading 1. And I could carry on doing that for the rest of the Heading 1s in this document. It is so much easier to use styles than apply manual formatting.

Now, of course, there are other advantages to using styles, which we'll talk about a bit later on. But in terms of just getting formatting applied quickly to your document and giving it some structure, styles are the way to go. Now, remember, if I want to complete the rest of this document, I can select multiple in one go. So, I'm going to hold down Control and just select all of the pieces of text that I want to format as Heading 1s. This one, and this one. And then I can click Heading 1. Let's also go through and apply some Heading 2. So, I can see just here where we have "The Inner Planets," we have a little subheading just here. So, that's going to be a Heading 2. If I scroll down, this is also a Heading 2. Saturn's Rings, that's a Heading 2 as well. And then "A Cosmic Symphony," that's going to be a Heading 3. And I think that's all that we have in the document. So, very quickly there, just using styles, I've managed to style up my document and give it some structure.

And another really good tip is that if you're ever working through a document and adding styles, or maybe you've been sent a document and you have to restyle it, it's always quite useful to be able to see what styles you have applied to which line. And this is where switching into Draft view can really help too. So, if we go to the View tab and click on Draft, can you see it opens this little pane on the left-hand side, and we can see exactly which styles we have applied? So, I can see we have Title style, Heading 1, Heading 1. If I scroll a bit further down, Heading 2 in there. And I've shown you before in a previous lesson how to turn on this little style area pane if you can't see it when you go into Draft view, so we won't go over that again.

Now, if you're looking at this thinking to yourself, "Well, that's great, but I really don't like the way that these styles are formatted. I want my headings to be red or purple or orange and a completely different font." Well, that is completely fine, because you can modify the styles in your document. And this is what we're going to talk about in the next lesson. I'm going to show you how you can quickly update all styles and how you can create your own styles. But that is the basic premise of how you can use Word Styles to give your document structure and quickly apply formatting.

In the previous lesson, we started to take a look at Word Styles, and we added some basic Word Styles into a document about the solar system. So, in this lesson, I'm going to show you how you can modify these styles to suit whatever formatting you want. Because, as we've already established, the formatting that you see for these Word Styles is very much controlled by the theme you have set in Word. Now, I will say that if you are working at an organization, most companies have their own company-branded theme. And what you'll normally find is that when you switch to your company-branded theme, which will probably be set as the default theme when you open up a new document, you're going to see in this dropdown all of your company styles. So, it might be that if you are working in that type of environment, you don't actually need to modify the styles because they're already set up and branded for you. However, if you do want to do this, you definitely can. So, let me show you how simple this is.

Now, when it comes to modifying styles, there are kind of two different paths you can go down. You can modify the style once for use in a document, or you can modify the way a style looks permanently within your theme. So, let's start out with the former first of all. I'm going to show you how to modify a style once. So, let's say that in this particular document only, I want to change the Heading 1 style to a different font and a different font color. Now, what I could do here, instead of going through each one individually, is I could use my Styles Pane. And where we have Heading 1, if I click the dropdown, notice that I have "Select All." Now, what this is going to do is it's going to automatically select all Heading 1s in my document, and it's going to select the Heading 1s only. Notice it hasn't picked up anything that I've marked as a Heading 2 or a Title style. So, now that I have all of these selected, I could go in and I could apply manual formatting if I wanted to. So, I'm going to change the font in use. Let's just go for Cambria, and I'm going to make it red. Now, notice that whilst it has done that, it hasn't changed the actual style. So, if we look at Heading 1 in this Styles pane, it's still showing in that blue colored font. So, I haven't actually modified the style. I've just modified all Heading 1s to a different format in this particular document. And what would happen is if I opened a brand new document, the style is still going to be in this blue font color.

Going forward, but what if I always wanted this particular style in this theme to look like this? Well, this is where we can modify the actual style within the theme. So, let's undo and take that back to how it was previously. Now, this time, I'm going to modify the style. So, let's go to Heading 1 again. Again, I'm going to click the dropdown and I'm going to choose "Modify." And this is going to open up the Modify Style dialogue box. So, we've got the style name at the top, it's called Heading 1. You could even change the name of the styles if you wanted to. I'm not going to do that in this instance. We're just going to leave it as Heading 1. Now, what I'm interested in is this formatting at the bottom. So, what I can do is go to the Formatting dropdown. I'm going to do the same thing. Let's change it to Cambria, and I'm going to change it to that dark red color.

Now, at the bottom here, I have some interesting options. So, notice that "Add to the Styles Gallery" is checked. So, what that means, it's going to add this formatting. I'm going to be able to see this newly formatted style in the Styles Gallery so that I can reuse it. Now, I do want to do that, so let's keep that checked. I can also check the "Automatically Update" button, so that if I was to add in any more Heading 1s, it's going to automatically update with this new styling. So, let's check that as well. And then underneath, we get to choose how we want to apply this. So, do I only want to modify this style for this document, or do I want to modify the style for all new documents based on this template? And if you're thinking to yourself, "Well, I'm not actually using a template, this is a blank document." All blank documents that you create automatically use a template called "Normal.dotm." So, if we were to select this option just here, it means that every time you create a new blank document, your Heading 1 is going to be red and in Cambria font. So, let's do that for the time being. Let's click on OK, and you can see what that does. So, all of my Heading 1s in the document have updated. But if you notice in the Styles pane, it's now showing with that red font.

So, I could carry on going through, modifying each of these styles if I wanted to. So, let's go for a Heading 2 as well. Let's change this to, let's go for something completely different. This is not going to look great, but just to illustrate my point and really make it stand out, let's go for Arial Narrow, why not? And let's change it to a blue color. I'm going to "Automatically Update New Documents Based on This Template" and click on OK. And once again, you can see that's changed in the Styles pane. And if we scroll down, as I said, these fonts don't really go together, but I'm just trying to make it really, really obvious for you.

Now, because we've chosen to use these for every new document that's created, if I was to close this document down and just simply create a new blank document, check out what we have. It's including those modified styles. So, that is the difference between modifying the actual style and just clicking the dropdown, selecting all of the styles, and changing the formatting manually. Now, I will say, if you are going to go in and start modifying styles, what you might find again, if you're an organization that has its own custom styles, you'll probably find that the "Modify" button is grayed out. Because if they allowed everybody to just start modifying the company styles, you'd end up with documents that all look completely different, and most companies want to have a level of consistency when they're sending out their documents. So, don't be surprised if your "Modify" button is grayed out if you're trying to do this at work.

Now, the final point worth noting is that I've just shown you an example of how to change the font and the font color. But it is worth noting that if you go into "Modify," there are so many things that you can change or add into your style. For example, at the bottom here, if we click the little "Format" dropdown, if I wanted to maybe change the indentation of a heading, maybe I want it indented by 1 inch, I could go to Paragraph and I could change the indentation in here. If I wanted my Heading 2s to be bulleted, I could do that from here as well. If we go to Numbering, we can choose to add numbers or bullet points from here. So, there are lots of other things that you can modify to really get your style to look exactly as you want it to look. But for the time being, that is how you can modify styles and use them in your document.

In the previous lesson, I showed you a couple of different methods for modifying styles in your Word document. And one of those methods was to modify the actual style in the Style Pane. And if you recall, when we did this, when we were in the Modify dialogue box, we also chose to use these styles for all new documents based on this template. And I told you that all new documents are based on the Normal.dotm template. Now, that is fine if you do want to use these styles in all new documents going forward. But what if you want to reset these Styles back to the default? Well, that isn't quite as easy as you might think it is. We don't have a little button that just says "Reset to Default." So, I'm going to show you a method that I use.

Now, remember, we've said this so that any new blank documents we create are going to use these Styles. So, in order to set these back to default, you need to open a document that you've created previously that contains those default styles. For example, I've just opened a document that we used in a previous session, and you can see up here, because we didn't modify the styles, we still have those default styles in there. So, what I effectively want to do now, I have this document open, is I want to copy these Styles back to the Normal.dotm template and effectively overwrite all of the customizations that we made.

Now, in order to do this, we need to display the Developer ribbon. Now, if you can't see your Developer ribbon, go to File, down to Options, and then go to the Customize Ribbon page. And on the right-hand side, just here, you can see we've got checks next to all the ribbons we have displayed. Make sure that you have a check next to Developer. As soon as you do, when you click on OK, you should be able to see the Developer ribbon.

Now, we need to get into "Add Document Templates." And if you notice, all the way over on the right-hand side, we have a Document Template button. So, if we click this, it's going to jump us across to Templates and Add-ins, and the Templates tab. Now, we want to go straight down to where we have this button just here, "Organizer," because this is what contains all of our styles. So, on the left-hand side, you can see all of the styles in this specific document. You can see the document name, the document title at the top there. And then on the right-hand side, we have the styles available in the Normal.dotm template. Now, currently, the Heading 1 and Heading 2 styles in the Normal.dotm template are those that are colored in that red font. So, what I effectively want to do is copy Heading 1 and Heading 2, which contains the default styles, across to the Normal.dotm template. So, let's click on Heading 1, click on "Copy." I'm going to say, "Yes, I want to overwrite." Let's click on Heading 2, click on "Copy," and say "Yes" to overwrite.

So, now when we click on Close and close down this document, we should find that when we create any new blank documents, those styles have been reset back to how they were originally. Now, once that will reset the style set back to default for all new documents going forward using the Normal.dotm template, it's not really going to affect anything that you've created previously. So, if I reopen my document, you can still see that those styles are showing in there. So, let's click on Document Template. Notice on the Templates tab, it's showing that the document template is Normal.dotm. But I want it to update the current document styles with that new Normal.dotm template. So, let's click on OK, and you can see that is exactly what it does. So, let's click the dropdown. You can see those styles are back to normal in this document.

So, you kind of have two different methods there. You need to copy the styles so that when you create blank documents going forward, those styles are reset to default. But if you want to change them in existing documents, you simply need to update those styles.

So far in this section, we've seen a couple of different methods we can use to modify styles, and I've shown you how to reset your styles back to the default. So, we're going to finish up this section on styles just talking about how we can create our own new style from scratch. Because the methods that we've seen so far, we've actually modified existing styles. So, it means that any formatting that we apply is effectively overwriting the default style, and we've seen that resetting back to the default is not the easiest thing to do in the world. So, sometimes a much better method to use is to create your own style and have it running alongside the default Word Styles in the document. That means you can easily switch backwards and forwards between the two. So, I'm going to create a custom Heading 1 and a custom Heading 2 and have them alongside the default Heading 1s and 2s in the Styles pane.

Now, to do this, we simply go up to the Styles dropdown, and we have a "Create a Style" button. So, let's click on "Create a Style." It's going to open up the "Create New Style from Formatting" Styles pane, and this is where we can name our custom styles. So, I'm just going to name mine "DA" and we'll call this "DA Heading 1." I can then choose "Modify," and it's going to allow me to set the formatting that I want for this particular style. So, let's go to our Font dropdown. I'm going to choose, let's go for something different this time. I'm going to go for Aptos Black, and I'm going to change the color. Let's make this a dark purple. Now, I'm also going to put a border around the outside to make this really different and so it stands out. So, remember, we can go down to the Format dropdown, and we have other options in here. So, let's choose "Border." And now I can choose the kind of border I want. So, I want one all the way around the outside. So, I could choose "Box." That's going to do that. And I could even modify the color. So, let's make that purple as well, and let's make it a little bit wider. You can see in the preview what that's going to look like. So, let's click on OK and OK again. And you can see exactly what happens there. So, now in the Styles pane, notice that I have my new style "DA Heading 1," but I also still have my original Heading 1 style. So, if I decide that I don't particularly like this new style, I can simply click on Heading 1 and it's going to put it back. Now, this is actually the title. So, I want to click on Title style just there. What I want to do is apply my "DA Heading 1" to Introduction and the following headings. So, you can simply go through applying this style where necessary. Let's do it one more time, but let's create ourselves a Heading 2. I'm going to go back to "Create a Style." This time, we're going to call it "DA Heading 2." Let's click on "Modify," and we'll set this to Cambria. Let's make it green again. This isn't going to look particularly great, but let's make it bold. And let's also give that a border as well. So, this time, I'm just going to put a border running across the bottom. So, I'm going to have a green border, and I'm happy with this thickness. Now, if you don't want to choose one of these preset styles, you can simply click on the preview to tell Word where to add the border. So, I want it just across the bottom. Let's click on OK and OK again. And you can see exactly what that looks like in the Styles pane.

Now, again, because of where I was clicked, it's applied it to a piece of paragraph text, which I don't want. So, let's just set that back to normal. I actually want this to be a Heading 2. So, let's click a new style. So, super easy to create our own styles and apply them. And this is by far the safest method if you don't want to have to mess around resetting the Heading 1s and 2s back to default if you make a mistake or decide you don't want that formatting.

And the final point to really mention here is how you can delete styles. Because again, if we click the dropdown next to "DA Heading 1," "Remove from Style Gallery" doesn't actually delete the style. All that will do is remove "DA Heading 1" from this little Style Gallery up here on the Home ribbon. And if we click on "Remove All," it's just going to remove that heading style from the heading ones in the document. It's not actually going to remove the style. So, if you want to get rid of "DA Heading 1" and "DA Heading 2" permanently, again, this is something you need to do on the Developer tab. Let's open up "Document Template" and jump to the Organizer. Now, it's from here that we can delete styles. So, you can see here on the left-hand side, where we have our document styles, I've got my "DA Heading 1" and 2. And all I would need to do is select the style and click on the "Delete" button in the middle. We can say "Yes to All," and we're going to do the same for Heading 2. "Yes to All." And then click on Close. And you'll see that those have now been removed from the Styles pane.

Now, if we jump back to Home, you might notice in the Styles Gallery, we now have these two blank spaces. If you do see those just there, if you right-click, this is where you can say "Remove from Style Gallery." And now we're back to normal.

It's time now to do Exercise 8. And in this exercise, we're going to practice some of the skills that we've learned in this section of the course. So, the first thing I'd like you to do is open the file "Exercise 8 The Solar System.docx" from the exercise files folder. And I'd like you to create your own style set for the Title and Headings 1, 2, and 3. And these styles can be formatted as you choose. Once you've done that, and you've applied the styles to your document, I'd like you to use the Organizer to remove the styles you've just created. And I'd also like you to make sure that those styles are removed from the Style Gallery. That's all I need you to do in this exercise. If you'd like to see my answer, then please keep watching.

So, this exercise is all about practicing creating style sets and removing them. So, we're going to create a new style set for the Title style, Heading 1, Heading 2, and Heading 3. So, let's click up in the title area. I'm going to click the dropdown and choose "Create a Style." I'm going to call this "DA Title." Let's click on "Modify." And remember, I said I don't mind how you format these. So, I'm going to do some very basic formatting just to save a little bit of time. So, I'm going to change this to, let's go for Aptos Black. I'm going to make this quite a bit bigger. In fact, let's make it bigger than that. Let's go for 22. And I'm going to make this a dark blue color. Let's click on OK. And you can see there, it is added to my Styles pane.

Let's do the same for Heading 1, 2, and 3. So, we're going to go to "Create a Style." I'm going to call this "DA Heading 1." Let's click on "Modify." And then we can go in and change it to whatever we like. So, I'm going to stick within the Aptos family if possible. Let's go for Aptos Display for our Heading 1s. I'm going to make those bold, and I'm going to change the color of these. Let's make these a lighter blue. And click on OK.

Let's create another style. This is going to be "DA Heading 2." And click on "Modify." And this time, we're going to choose, let's go for Aptos Light. I'm going to make these a lighter blue. And click on OK. Now, I'm not going to do Heading 3. I think you've probably got the idea just here. What you should end up is with four new styles: Title, Heading 1, Heading 2, and Heading 3. I can then go through the rest of the document applying my Heading 1. And we can also apply our Heading 2s. So, you should have ended up with something that looks like this. Obviously, the formatting will be different depending on what you chose.

Now, the next thing I asked you to do was to actually remove those Styles. So, all of that hard work is about to be undone. Now, for this, we need to go to the Developer tab. We need to open up "Document Template," and we need to jump into the Organizer. Now, there is Heading 1. Let's select it and click on "Delete." "Yes to All." There's Heading 2. Let's delete it. "Yes to All." You'll also have Heading 3 in there, so you're going to need to delete that out. And there is "DA Title." So, I'm going to get rid of that as well. Click on OK. And now all of my styles are back to how they were originally.

The final thing I asked you to do was to go to the Styles Pane, and if you can see blanks in there, right-click and just choose "Remove from Style Gallery."

Well, congratulations, everybody, for making it all the way to the end of this course. By now, you should feel that you have a good solid foundation when it comes to working with documents in Word. So, I hope you feel at the conclusion of this course that we've helped you move towards that goal. Remember, if you'd like to go back and do a little recap, you can watch any of the videos. And also, remember that you have access to the course and exercise files folders if you want to practice. And that is really the key here: practice, practice, practice. Try out your new skills on different types of documents, different examples, and you'll be a Word expert in no time. So, all that's left for me to say here is thank you so much for choosing us. I hope you enjoyed this course. Once again, my name is Deb. Bye for now. If you're not a subscriber, click down below to subscribe so you get notified about similar videos we upload. To get the course exercise files and follow along with this video, click over there. And click over there to watch more videos on YouTube from Simon Says IT.