document. However, it’s also possible to
link rather than embed a picture – the
advantages being that your document
size is kept down and any changes to
the original image are also updated in
the document. On key disadvantage,
though, is that if you lose the picture
file you originally linked to, it will also
disappear from the document image.
To link rather than embed a picture
in Office, insert a picture from a file in
the usual way, but click the down
arrow next to the Insert button where
you’ll see options to create a direct link
as well as link and embed the file. In
LibreOffice, you should tick the Link
box to link rather than embed a file.
MULTIPLE CLIPBOARD ITEMS
By default, Office stores everything
you copy or cut to the clipboard during
the current session – across all open
Office apps. To view and access these,
make the Clipboard Pane visible by
clicking the Clipboard’s More button on
the Ribbon’s Home tab.
PASTE SMARTLY
By default, Office pastes items in a
specific way – either retaining the
source formatting or attempting to
match it to the document styles it’s been
pasted into. You can override this
behaviour via the Paste drop-down
button on the Home tab – you’ll see
options for plain text as well as a special
option that enables you to paste it in a
specific format, such as HTML code.
Some Office applications, such as Word,
enable you to choose a different default
paste behaviour – look under File >
Options > Advanced – and tailor it to
specific paste events, such as pasting
text from other documents or apps.
There’s no default setting in
LibreOffice, but you can bypass the
frustrating Paste Special menu by
mastering keyboard shortcuts. Don’t
like the current combination for
unformatted text (Ctrl-Alt-Shift-V)?
Select ‘Tools > Customise... > Keyboard’
and select ‘All commands > Paste
Unformatted Text’ to change it.PASTE FORMATTING
Need to restyle a block of text or object
to match another? Simple: first, select
the object containing your desired
style. Next, click the Format Painter
(Office) or Clone Formatting
(LibreOffice) button. Finally, click the
paragraph or object you wish to restyle.
Note: in LibreOffice, only the
character formatting is cloned by
default – to apply paragraph formatting
as well, hold Ctrl-Shift as you click.SHRINK TO FIT
Frustrated because the document you
want to print runs on to a new page by
just a couple of lines or so? If you’re
using Microsoft Excel, click the Morebutton under Page Layout > Page Setup
and use the ‘Fit to’ options to scale
accordingly; in LibreOffice’s
spreadsheet app, Calc, select Format >
Page > Sheet and look under Scale.
In Word, to add the Shrink One Page
command to a suitable Ribbon tab or the
Quick Access Toolbar. When clicked,
Word will attempt to resize document
fonts to reduce the page count by one.ADD THUMBNAIL ICONS
TO OFFICE DOCUMENTS
It’s possible to replace the default Office
icons with thumbnail previews of your
documents. To apply a preview to a
single document only, look for the Save
Thumbnail option in the Save As dialog.
You can make this the default
behaviour in Word and Excel – each
application needs to be tackled
separately. Navigate to File > Info, click
Properties and choose Advanced
Properties. You’ll see a ‘Save
Thumbnails for all Excel Documents’
command or similar. Tick this and click
OK to apply across all your documents.Shortcut Points toCtrl-X/Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V Cut, copy or paste selected itemCtrl-N/Ctrl-O Create new document/open existing documentCtrl-P Print current documentCtrl-W Close open documentCtrl-F/Ctrl-H Launch the Find dialog/launch the Find/Replace dialogCtrl-Z Undo the last actionCtrl-Y Repeat the last action or redo an undone actionCtrl-Ctrl-Home/Ctrl-Ctrl-End Select everything before/after the cursorCtrl-mouse wheel Quickly zoom into or out of any open documentCtrl-[ / Ctrl-] Decrease/increase font size by a single point10 general Office shortcuts
The following shortcuts work across most Office and LibreOffice apps.Make Word and Excel documents
easier to recognise by adding
thumbnails in place of file icons.