Archive for October, 2009

Auto numbering in Word

Friday, October 23rd, 2009

As part of my role as Senior User Centered Design Analyst I find myself working more with Word typing up reports and analysing designs and user interaction patterns as apposed to coding and design these days. Yesterday I found out a great trick in Word, and I use the word trick very loosely here as it is a standard feature of Word that I just hadn’t tapped into before now. Using the Numbering icon I can auto number rows in my tables, and if I change the order of the information in the rows the numbers automatically update for me. Magic? no, handy? YES…

For instance I was writing up an evaluation report which had over 50 findings (1 per row), as I was working in draft I would type up the findings in no particular order. During the time between draft and final stage I wanted to move the rows around so there was some logical flow to my findings.  This quickly become a time issue when I moved the rows as I would then need to re-number my rows, this was all before I knew about auto-number.

By setting auto number in the first column of each row, every time I tab to create a new row, the new row is given the next number.

Heres how you can Autonumber your Word Table too.

  1. Create your table in Word
  2. Place your cursor in the column you want to be the number column.  (Most common for my documents is the first). Now press the Numbering icon.  Looks like this numbering
  3. Note that a number 1. will now be displayed in the column. Insert another row and number 2. will be displayed and so on.
  4. Thats it, start typing and forget worrying about numbering your rows.

Easy…. Now for some format and output options.

What if you want to restart your numbers? right click on the list and choose restart numbering. This will end the number sequence from the point your cursor is placed and start again at 1. You and contine the sequence by choosing continue numbering from the right-click menu also.

What if you want letters not numbers? right click and choose bullets and numbering. From this window you can choose the customise button and even change the format of your numbers from 1. to 001. if you preferred that output. That is a handy one for me as I prefer a more structured and a uniform look.

Hope this tech tip helps you out. Until the next one…

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Keeping your site fresh

Saturday, October 17th, 2009

Spring is now upon us and we should be well and truely into spring cleaning, clearing out the junk around the office, backing up the PC, applying the patches, upgrading the machines and software. But do you think about looking at your website and updating the content? Most likely not, our experience has shown that site owners are not always the most proactive when it comes to updating their site, but while it may not be the most glamorous job, think of it this way, do you walk into Ford and want them telling you about the AU XR6 released in 1998 or do you want to talk about the new 09 FPV GTP? The same can be likened to your website, if you website is your 24/7 sales person, then arm them with the most up-to-date information you can.

Here are a few simple tips to updating and fine tuning your website.

Content stocktake
Starting from your homepage, go through all pages on the site checking that links are working along the way. On each page take note of the content and read the page from the perspective of a first time visitor to your site or someone who has not even heard of your business before. You will soon start to see that the content needs a refresh and while it made sence when you first wrote it, two years later you will have a different view and most likely want to make some minor adjustments.

Run a broken link report.
A broken link report will tell you if any of your links to pages within your site are broken. On the web there are not many things more annoying to your clients then to have them on your site looking for information and when they try to access the information you give them a big 404 error message. It is about offering good customer service and creating a strong and positive image to your clients that you take pride in how you present your business.

To run a report you can make use of many of the free tools online that will check through your site, or alternatively you can contact us to perform the task as part of the routine maintenance and updates on your site.

Check your stats
Check your access stats to see how people are finding your site, what are your most popular pages and what sites are linking to you. With this information you can start to make adjustments to your sites navigation, the way that pages link to each other and you easily see which pages are working for you and why.

So how do you get these stats? All sites hosted by 101 Web Technology have access to these stats via there sites, control panel. Contact us if you do not know how to access your control and we will be more then happy to assist and point you in the right direction.

101 Web Technology also recommends using Google Analytics for site tracking analysis. All sites built by 101 now come with the tracking scripts installed and reports are emailed at scheduled intervals. The reports are intuitive and 101 Web Technology is able to explain in an easy to understand way how you can extract the information out of the reports to ensure you get the most of the information.

So there you see a few ways to go through and fine tune your website this spring. To make it even easier for our clients 101 Web Technology offers cost effective maintenance packages to take the headaches out of your routine site maintenance.  To find out more please contact us or visit the maintenance package section of our website.

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