Formatting a document definitely increases its readability and visibility. I’m sure you make paragraphs stand out by applying different formatting styles. Now let me ask you a question. How often do you need to apply bold, italic, and underline (all at once) formatting to text in your Word, PowerPoint, or Excel documents?
If you answered, “a lot,” read on.
We’ll help you reduce that three-step process to one. Three steps right? You can press the B buttons, IU or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + B, Ctrl + I, Ctrl + U.
No more. You will have a button at the end of this tutorial that can do all three in one click. And this is just an example, you can use this method to create several such buttons for repeated formatting.
The idea is to record a macro and then assign it to a button. The button can be placed anywhere in the ribbon or the quick access toolbar. I prefer the latter, like the one shown in the diagram below.
Note: This tutorial is based on Excel 2013. The steps and procedures are still the same on Word 2013 and PowerPoint 2013; and somewhat similar on lower versions of the suite.
Record a Macro
Step 1: Navigate to View -> Macros -> Record Macros.
Step 2: Name your macro, give it an optional description, and select the scope. Then click ALRIGHT.
If you want, you can assign it a keyboard shortcut. I personally ignore that so as not to override the default shortcuts.
Step 3: Whatever you do after clicking ALRIGHT will be recorded as a sequence of actions. So check the nodes B, I and U as shown in the diagram.
It keeps recording until you press the stop button placed on the status bar. Click the stop icon when done.
Step 1: Navigate to Customize Quick Access Toolbar -> More Commands.
Step 2: From the left drop down select macro.
Step 3: Select the macro you created then click the . button Add button. That will bring your command to the right.
Step 4: To make identification easy, you can assign it an icon of your choice. To do that, select the added macro (on the right) and click Change button. Then assign an icon and press ALRIGHT to get out.
Next time you want to apply bold, italic, and underline formatting to selected text at the same time, all you need to do is click the macro button you created.
Awesome, three steps just reduced to one!
Note: This button is a one-way operation. It can apply formatting but clicking it again by selecting text with the formatting applied won’t undo the formatting.
Conclusion
If you think this is fun and fast, you should create some more macros for the tasks you perform regularly. I’m sure they will save you some formatting time. I have created many things for myself and I can assure you that they are really useful.
Categories: How to
Source: thpttranhungdao.edu.vn/en/
