Making mailing labels using the wizard in office 2016

At this time of year it is time to drag out the address book and start writing all those Christmas cards to friends and family. I wonder just how many people have moved or changed their family affairs in the last year. A mailing list on your computer really helps with such mundane tasks. Dog eared address books are being replaced by the next generation on their phones.

Using Microsoft Excel we can maintain an address list that can be simply updated and used in combination with Word to print out mailing labels or address books whenever we need them. we can even sort them for posting or emailing.

I have posted two tutorials to help you out with this one.

Making an address book with Excel

Making mailing labels with Word and Excel

Have fun and say goodbye to trying to read your own crossings out and scrawl on an address book from the 80's

Touch up and restore old photos

I have been editing and restoring photos for many years and love the change in the world and the people in it. Photos used to be so prim as people had them as a treat. The only pictures that look so stuffy now are those from weddings. Nowadays we are so used to seeing smartphones and cameras around we don't blink when somebody takes a picture. Of course so many of them are simply taking pictures of themselves.

The most common issues with old photos are not cracks and tears but colour loss and fading. Most modern photo editors do a great job of restoring such things within minutes. Amateurs carrying out retouching struggle not through technical limits but tend to work with a copy of the photo which is too small.

Photos of 15cm x 10.4cm or less are the most common that I come across especially of former service people and football team. More recent photos are much larger and usually show water or colour fading blurring the images. Images from flat bed scanners made actual size are common looking great on phones but being only 450 pixels x 300 pixels not so good to print as they are losing lots of detail.

Tablets and phones have great scanner apps (like Microsoft Office Lens) that take high quality images and correct for distortion. I can't help but think that they will not be as good as a properly scanned image at 1200 or 4800 dpi (dots per inch).

A few tips that have served me well.

• Work in black and white on old photos
• Crop images after you have done as much repair work as possible
• Know when to stop and don't make the images too perfect as they look false when they are over restored
• If the starting image is very small then re-sample it larger, do your editing and then re-sample it smaller before printing out
• Remember the rule of thirds when making images larger for print, upscale no more than 1/3 larger to produce the best images.

Follow this link for getting started with repairing old images

so easy to get to scam site

I was updating my email passwords today. Always a good thing to do regularly especially when I have several email accounts to do. I don't do it every 45 days or daily as some extreme users may. But every few months I do shuffle my passwords to keep them fresh. I do recommend using two random words with some numbers for all your passwords. This lessens the likelihood of anyone breaking into your stuff or stealing your identity.

However imagine my surprise when I mistyped outlook.com in my browser when I had this screen appear

Bogus outlook web screen

All I did was to add ouutlook.com to my browser and I was rewarded with bleeping and the message displayed above. Closing the screen with alt F4 did not work. So it was good old power off that saved the day. At no time was I tempted to interact with the screen. Stay sharp out there folks

At no time did I think it was real - look at the address bar for a clue if you need it.

Today we tackled ebay

We set out to auction a lamp shade on eBay.  We were given the shade but really could not get on with it. Our group members were enthusiastic to use eBay.
Lets see if anyone bites. 

How we did it

1. We logged in an existing eBay account (but discussed setting up a new one).
2. We took some pictures on a tablet
3. Using Google Photos we copied the picture across to a PC and cropped the image to make it nice and clear
4. We then prepared our eBay listing. and added a decent description and set up a 7 day auction
5. We discussed tips for using eBay

It was a lot of fun especially for a small group and our group was keen to see the outcome the following week.

eBay is great for buying and selling and millions of people agree, and the queues at our local post office confirm. However, many just give up when selling after an initial poor experience as they do not appreciate that they may be selling something at the wrong time. Take on the tips that eBay offer for successful buying and selling.

• Avoid reserve prices if possible
• Post lots of pictures of what you are selling and give a good description
• Make sure that you list with the right keywords and categories.
• Be prepared to offer free posting
• Be ready to respond to buyer questions promptly.
• Don't worry if you have to re-list your item.

Wonkey donkey offers office skills to anyone needing the basics and more

May the Ass be with you all but don't be one

I have a blog to support my office skills course. The course was designed to help people improve their office skills by illustrating what happens when Office skills are not utilised in a small business and things go bad. 

The Wonkey Donkey sanctuary is an fictitious organisation that we designed the elements around. The office manager has gone AWOL and left a pile of receipts and papers and through the course we work out basic accounting, record keeping, PR, Rotas and calendars, mail merging and damage control.






The course involves the use of
Microsoft Office

• Word
• Excel
• PowerPoint
• Publisher
• Cloud file management
• Blogging and websites

The course is a little different from most in that it concentrates on efficient ways of doing tasks to speed up learners with shortcut techniques and a focus on 'Get it done' rather than a complete guide to all the features of each application. Every session is based around a real life scenario that has actually happened in my consulting experience. In some of them, real-life people were failing but didn't have to with a little guidance.

Typically writing a letter we spend less time on setting up the document template and more time on typing. 

The get it done ethos

• Get typing and keep typing ignoring spelling mistakes
• Proof read and spell check
• Cut and paste paragraphs to improve readability or emphasis.
• Dolly up - Format text and add styles for headings etc.

This often is the opposite to the way that people in the workplace type

• Set up headings etc
• Type - correct-add formatting- type-correct-type- change formatting-move paragraphs.....
• Dolly up

In my experience the former method is much faster is more likely read over properly, has more focus and sometimes even makes more sense.


This course is available for group or individual tuition. 
Click here for a typical set of lesson plans
If you wish me to provide a course simply email me at teachitsussex@gmail.com

watch out Hailsham you scammers

I shall be in Hailsham on Tuesday next week for the second of three sessions on Scamming and how to avoid identity theft. It seems ludicrous that so many people are being conned but this is the fastest growing UK industry. I hope to see you there. Contact me for details.

challenge 10 resources improve

I am pleased with the challenge 10 blog as it is filling out as a resource. Still no feedback from my students but perhaps they are just a bit shy! I have included PDFsheets for Windows and Mac keyboard shortcuts. Also there is a short piece on Microsoft OneNote. I still am finding Google Keep a bit more flexible for my needs. However, as I get more stuff on either system the structured approach of OneNote may win out over the Google challenger. I find that I never use evernote anymore. Its probably because most of the time I am using my phone and tablets to capture my information on the fly.

Reading up on other blogging alternatives I am drawn to the various commentators that say that blogger is just too limiting. I must beg to differ since it is easy to set up, does not require special hosting and has most of the features that I didn't even know I needed. The templates may be limiting but of course you can always edit the HTML if you are so inclined. So for now goodbye wordpress and other hosted solutions.

Challenge 10 blog started

I started the challenge 10 blog so that you can follow along with my course challenge 10 and feedback how you are doing with it.

Please let me know how it is going. The blog and all its resources are found here at this link

CHALLENGE 10 BLOG