n our last article, we looked at the basics of Microsoft Office, and took an initial look at MS Word. Let me point out before we go any further, that in these articles we are merely looking at the most basic of basics: These applications are extremely powerful, and if you wish to use them for anything more sophisticated, then I suggest you invest in a good book ? and there are many ? which will spend a detailed amount of time on the in-depth power of each application.

Continuing, then, with tips and tricks for use with MS Word. Lets explain what a Document, really is: A document is the file that you have typed, and should be saved on your hard-drive, if you wish to use it again.

The file is like any other on your system, except it has an ?extension? of ?.doc?. Extensions are useful to know for many applications because they are the indicator to the operating system and the applications, as to which program can open them (so, a file called ?bobfile.doc? is more than likely a Microsoft Word created document file.

The file is the magnetic representation, on your hard-drive (we covered this many months back), of everything that you have typed in, its formatting, design and overall appearance.

It can be moved around the system like any other file, but can usually only be opened by Microsoft Word.

Before we move on, a word about ?saving you document?, particularly if it is a long document.

As you type your document, you are simply entering text and pictures directly to spaces in the system?s memory. These spaces are being provided to you so that you can work swiftly and unhindered and will usually only be written to the hard-drive when you request it.

If your document is a long one (such as this article), I suggest you ask Microsoft Word to write the contents of your document to hard-drive regularly (for this 700 word document, whilst I am typing, at particular pauses in my thinking, I will save the file to disk, maybe three times). This is important because, should there be a sudden problem with your PC, should Microsoft Word suddenly quit, or some other incident ? if you have not saved your file to hard-drive, you will have more than likely lost everything you have typed, and will have to start over.

This can be infuriating, particularly if you have a long document. Thus, I would recommend that almost as soon as you start typing, you save a copy of your document to the hard-drive (using the appropriate menu item), and from then on periodically save it to ensure you protect your data.

Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet application ? an extremely powerful ?graph paper?, if you like, with built-in mathematical functions that allow us to carry out complicated mathematics on any set of numbers we choose to put into it.

Most earthlings have come across the need to type a letter, so its likely that most of you will have used Microsoft Word. Many of you have probably not used Excel.

The best way to understand what it does is to try it, so here goes: Open up Microsoft Excel and type into box number A1 (notices the letters across the top of the page and the numbers down the left): ?Bread?; into A2, type ?Eggs?; and into A3, type ?Milk?. Now, in the next column, type ?3? into B1; type ?2? into B2 and type ?1.5? into B3. Looks like a shopping list? Okay, lets add up the cost of our shopping: In box B4 type (without the speech marks): ?=SUM(B1:B3)? and hit enter. Note that Excel has added up the contents of the fields from B1 through to B3, and presented you with the result in field B4. Kind of clever? I have to tell you this is just the tip of the iceberg with Microsoft Excel, which has all the functions of a calculator and many, many more: It is routinely used in salary calculations, revenue forecasts, profit and loss accounts etc.

With a little thought earthlings can use Excel to help them manage their regular bills and income etc.

Have fun?!

@EDITRULE:Next time: Microsoft Outlook?