23 THINGS YOU CAN DO TO ROCK AT WORK AS A BUSINESS PROFESSIONAL

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1 Talk.com THINGS YOU CAN DO TO ROCK AT WORK AS A BUSINESS PROFESSIONAL 1. Use Photos As Your Background in PowerPoint Have you ever wished you could come up with something special that really reached out and grabbed your audience's attention when giving a presentation? You know, instead of just displaying text... a summary of the main ideas? Or maybe you want to create a dynamite poster or sign with sophisticated graphics one that just popped. We're not talking about a large scale, floor to ceiling visual, but the kind you put through your printer an 8 ½ x 11 document that you create in PowerPoint. These are great to put up in an office or use in a trade show. They can be quite handy for event announcements or marketing materials. One way to make your presentation (or sign) really sizzle is to use a picture or graphic as the Background. Read More Background Contact: Info@Tech Talk.com or call

2 2. Printing From Your Smart Phone Technology is changing so fast... and we're discovering new things each day that we couldn't do before. For example, did you ever think that your smart phone could do so many of the functions that your computer can even print? Living in such a mobile world, you may not always have your computer with you. However, with a smart phone in hand, you don't need to. It's gotten much easier to get work done and stay connected when you're not in front of your desk. And with recent updates, you can even print something right from your phone! Since you can create documents, view images and see website pages on your smart phone, doesn't it just makes sense that you can print from it too? Read More Phone Print 3. Adding Sound to Your Presentation Have you ever wanted to dress up a PowerPoint presentation with a little background music? You may want to add a sound effect to an individual slide, or add something to play through the whole presentation. For example, if you have a display table or booth, you could show a PowerPoint presentation that loops continually with an upbeat song playing. Or you could add a sound effect like a plane taking off or a cashier register ringing just on one slide alone to enhance your message. Read More Add Sound Contact: Info@Tech Talk.com or call

3 4. Insert a Chart Into a Document Have you ever created a report or presentation in Word or PowerPoint, and wanted to incorporate a chart from an Excel spreadsheet... or set of data cells? You could draw a Table and mimic the information, but that would be a duplication of efforts. Or maybe you could take a screenshot of the chart... but there's a better way! Your documents are more powerful when they contain data and charts... as well as text. And, depending on the method you paste the data from Excel to Word or PowerPoint, you can make changes in your spreadsheet and the chart will automatically update in the destination document! Read More Insert a Chart 5. Use the Symbol to Present a Sleek Image Have you ever seen the sleek little vertical lines separating words in a heading and wondered how you could do that? What someone has done is added the " " sign. It's called a vertical bar... or in the web design world it is a pipe symbol. It is used to dress up headings and lists. You may have also heard it referred to as a Sheffer Stroke, verti bar, vbar, vertical slash, poley, divider line or stick. Where do you find this vertical bar? It is located on a standard keyboard over the backslash key, typically under backspace... although this may vary. This key is very often overlooked, but there are some creative and interesting ways to use it in presenting information. Read More The Contact: Info@Tech Talk.com or call

4 6. Enlarging Text on an Internet Page to Read the Small Print Have you ever been on the Internet and had trouble reading the text? It was just too small! You wanted it bigger! Did you know you could press two keys together to instantly make the page larger? What you ll see on the screen will get bigger and bigger and bigger! You re not changing the font size, but enlarging (or reducing) everything on the page. There may come a time when you accidentally make a page larger or smaller and you want to know how to get it back to normal size. This trick will do it! Read More Enlarge Text 7. How to Use Keywords To Your Benefit If you know a little bit about "keywords"... you may think they don't really apply to you. Perhaps because you're not a web designer or you don't work in marketing. Without these words, or certainly the right ones, you simply won't be found as much as you would like. Read More Keywords If so, you might want to think again! Almost everyone these days ends up having an influence on what goes on a web page. You may write an article, create an event announcement, or craft a program description. Understanding keywords (and how to use them) is critical to helping people find your information on the Internet. Contact: Info@Tech Talk.com or call

5 8. Creating a PDF of Your Entire Excel Workbook Have you ever tried to create a PDF of an Excel file, but only one of the worksheets was included when you saved it not all the sheets that were in the Workbook? You could go into each worksheet and make individual PDFs to be able to share with others, but that's a lot of extra work! And it means you have separate files instead of having them all together in one. One of the reasons we want to create PDFs of Excel files is because we don't want people to make changes to the data. So you don't want to give them a live spreadsheet. And you don't want to go to the trouble of locking down the cells. So a PDF is a good solution. Read More PDF Excel File 9. A Mobile App to Enhance Your Photos Do you ever take pictures with your smart phone and want to post them to social media right away? But the lighting may need to be tweaked or there are some "flaws" that could be adjusted. Mobile phones make it super easy to take great pictures to share with others. It s not just for personal use, but in promoting your organization. If you want to engage your audience, no matter what you're trying to do, from a communications perspective, you need to use more pictures as they will help in establishing a better personal relationship. So what's the quick and easy solution to image editing right on your phone? Well... we're always looking for ways to re purpose tools. We found one that was originally created as a selfieenhancement app, but it's really a way to edit any type of photo. Read More Enhance Photos Contact: Info@Tech Talk.com or call

6 10. Speed Things Up In Outlook Does your Outlook run painfully slow and often freeze? Or worse yet, do you ever hold your breath when opening the software because you're afraid it may crash? is one of the primary ways we communicate with colleagues and clients so it is important to keep this program running efficiently. When it's being sluggish, it's kind of like ignoring the check engine light on your car as you're too busy to take it in to get it fixed. But if you keep disregarding it, one day your engine could bite the dust! There are settings that you can change once... and a few things you could do on a daily basis (that only take a few seconds)... to keep Outlook in better working condition so that it will save you anguish in the future. Read More Speed Up 11. Set Up Multiple Calendars in Outlook Have you ever wished you could have multiple calendars in Outlook to keep track of your appointments and obligations? Sometimes keeping work and personal items in two calendars makes it easier to separate reminders and action items. Why would you want more than one calendar? You might be... A consultant who wants to schedule a six month client program on a separate calendar. An officer in an association who wants to track all the events in one place. A busy executive and parent who needs to view both a business and home calendar at the same time. These calendars all have equal importance. Creating multiple schedules (like having several posted on your refrigerator or bulletin board) and viewing them side by side can solve this problem. Read More Multiple Calendars Contact: Info@Tech Talk.com or call

7 12. Poll Your Audience During Your Presentation Are you looking for a way to make your presentations more interactive? Would you like a fresh idea to catch your audience's attention and get powerful information at the same time from your participants? When you're in front of an audience using PowerPoint to deliver a presentation, it can be a challenge to pull people in and keep their attention the whole time. You may use stories, pictures or ask the audience questions and gather information by a show of hands. Well, there's an exciting tool that you can use to not only keep your listeners engaged, but to poll them during a presentation and get instant feedback. It's called Poll Everywhere. Read More Poll Everywhere 13. How to Use Quotes in a Search Have you ever done an Internet search and the results were so broad, with pages and pages of information to filter through, that you felt frustrated and wished you knew a smarter way to get the data you wanted? Or maybe you were trying to find a file on your computer with the Windows search tool but too many irrelevant documents were shown in the results screen. How about searching in your ? Wouldn't it be nice if you could find what you are looking for almost instantly? There's a search technique that you can use online, in and on your desktop that lets you filter out all the unrelated stuff, showing you just what you need... so that it makes it faster to find what you want. The trick is to put quotation marks around your search terms or phrase... especially when you are using three or more words! Read More Use Quotes Contact: Info@Tech Talk.com or call

8 14. Shade Alternate Rows in Excel differentiate one from another? Have you ever looked at a spreadsheet that was full of data and had a difficult time reading it? Perhaps your eyes crossed when there were rows and rows of information and nothing to separate or Wouldn't it be nice to have a snazzy, sophisticated and easy toread looking spreadsheet, especially if you're sharing it with others? In Excel there is a quick way of formatting your rows and columns so that they are easy to view and read. One way is to shade every other row (or column)! The cool part is Excel is now dynamic so that when you add or delete a row or column, the shading will adjust for you! Read More Shade Alternate Rows 15. Can You Use interest for Business? Do you use social media in your organization to promote products, services or maybe classes and programs? You'd have to be hiding under a rock these days to not know that social media like Facebook and Twitter can be used to not only stay connected with people, but used to promote organizations, increase program engagement and generate buzz for whatever concept you want.. Pinterest.com is one of the heavy hitters in social media at this time. In fact it has grown to be the 2nd highest method of referring traffic to websites (following Facebook, of course.) It has surpassed Google+, LinkedIn and YouTube. Pinterest is no longer considered a personal little social media platform for crafts and "Do It Yourself" projects. People now look to Pinterest to make purchases, get innovative ideas and promote causes. Read More Pinterest for Business Contact: Info@Tech Talk.com or call

9 16. Free Software to Perfectly Match Colors in Graphics Did you ever seen a color that you liked and wish you could reproduce it exactly? For instance, you have a logo with multiple tones and hues and you want to match one of the colors in it to use in a subheading in your document. Well... for years we've been using a free and simple tool that lets you pick any color on your computer screen and find the information you need to replicate it. It's aptly named ColorPic. This lightweight piece of software has one focus when you mouse over any color on your screen, ColorPic shows you the specific mix of red, green, blue (RGB) or Hex value for that spot. Read More Match Colors 17. Getting People s Attention with VideoScribe Software Have you ever wanted to do something creative to capture people's attention? Perhaps you're promoting a new program, have a training session you want to make interesting, or need an important communication message to be positioned so that everyone understands and embraces it. There is only so much that printed text can do. So, you might think video. Of course, there are all kinds of ways to show moving pictures and sound. But if you really want something creative, eye catching and attention keeping, you may try the "new" software / web tool called VideoScribe. Before we tell you all about it, a picture is worth a thousand words. So click the link below to see what we are talking about. It's called "white board animation". You can use it for both serious and fun topics. As an example, a VideoScribe presentation about Tech Talk. Read More VideoScribe Contact: Info@Tech Talk.com or call

10 18. Tips for Taking Videos with Smart Phones Have you ever taken a video with your cell phone, only to discover that when you transferred it to your computer (to edit or post it to YouTube), it was upside down or sideways or cut off on the edges? What a pain! Now that smart phones are so prevalent, it makes it easy to take short videos and post them to websites, social media, or share them with others via . For example, you may want to create a short video announcing an upcoming event your organization is hosting and then share it on your company's Facebook or website page. Smart phones make this possible even for the non techie. There are so many great tips to making great videos of course, sound, lighting and stabilization come to mind. However, if you know a few tricks up front about something as simple as how to hold your phone while shooting, it will save you time and frustration later. Read More Smart Phone Video 19. Convert Your Media Files to Another Format Have you ever received a file from someone, or downloaded an item from the web, only to discover that you didn't have the right software to open it? Purchasing a new program is probably out of the question for one file, and downloading free software to your computer might make you feel a bit uneasy. Maybe you work with colleagues who use Apple computers, but you have a Windows based PC. (Often file types need to be converted when you move from the Apple to the PC world and vice versa.) This could also true for files created on smart phones or tablets. So how do you open audio, video or pictures that are in a file type that your computer does not recognize? We discovered an online tool that will do it for you for free called This website provides a file conversion tool that can modify nearly any file to your preferred format. Read More Convert Files Contact: Info@Tech Talk.com or call

11 20. Using a Free Online Teleprompter If you've ever made a video (for training staff, promoting an event or communicating with students) you know how difficult it is to look into the camera... and at the same time... remember what you're going to say! Wouldn't it be nice to have a teleprompter right in front of you? We all know that the pros (elected officials, CEOs, news broadcasters) are using them so that they don't miss a beat in delivering a presentation. It doesn't look like they are reading a script. You may think using a teleprompter would be an expensive undertaking, only available to the professionals. Good news! We discovered a handy online tool that gives you great teleprompter features and it doesn't cost you a dime! It's available at Read More Online Teleprompter 21. Unlocking PDF Files to Make Changes Have you ever had a PDF file that you wanted to update or edit, but couldn't because you didn't have the original Word, Excel or PowerPoint document? Or, maybe you found a template on the web that you would like to use, but it was in PDF format so you can't make any changes. You can't even add your organization's information in the footer. Many people receive PDF documents (Portable Document Format) because they are a universal file type that most everyone can open and view. But what happens when you need to transfer that information into Word so that you can work with it? What a waste of time it would be to have to recreate that document from scratch. Guess what? You don't have to waste hours of time and frustration, you can put it through a converter and turn it into a document you can use instantly! Read More Unlock PDF Contact: Info@Tech Talk.com or call

12 22. Recharge Yourself in 60 Seconds Can you imagine having a simple technique that would take some of the craziness of the moment away? At work, in school or just in a busy day we can get so much more done (and feel great about it) if we could simply "power down" for a second, take a breath to "power up" again, and then move forward with strength and focus. Now there is a web tool (backed by a "powerful" mission) that will help you do just that in a quick 60 seconds. It's whil.com! It's free. It's simple. It's empowering... and it takes just one minute every so often... in your busy day. And the great part is that it gives back time, focus and energy. Read More Recharge Yourself 23. Find the Perfect Alliterating Adjectives Have you ever been writing something creative and needed a bit imaginative help? Do you want something catchy and original so that it will make on impact on the reader? Try using alliteration. Coming up with unique ways to describe products can be an art. One fun and creative way is to use adjectives that start with the same letter... This technique is called alliteration the occurrence of the same letter (or sound) at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words. It can be difficult and time consuming to "think" of words/adjectives to use this enchanting, engaging and exciting technique (see what we did there?). Look no further! Bookmark this simple website page so that you can come back to it time and again. It's descriptively called And the pages contain loads of help in coming up with adjectives that start with the letters of the alphabet, A, B, C, and so on. NOTE: There's no cost to use it! Read More Alliterating Adjectives Contact: Info@Tech Talk.com or call

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