Tag Archives: office

fixed : Two-sided printing in MS Word for Mac

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Question :

I usually work in Apple’s Pages.app to do my text editing, but now someone sent me a school document that was made in MS Word. It opens just fine in Word for Mac, but when I want to print, I can’t find the “Two-sided printing” option…

How can I do Two-sided printing in Word for Mac ?

Answer :

As always, the solution is simple, you just have to know where to look and what to look for…

…anyway, here’s how-to do this in Word 16 (2021) :

Note : in older versions it is similar, but sometimes slightly different (just one of those things to know is that “Two-sided printing” is called “Duplex printing” on Windows and therefore also in older versions of MS Office for Mac…)

  • open the document in Word for Mac
  • press the [CMD] + [P] key combo on your keyboard to open the Print window ( or goto Word > File > Print )
  • click on “Copies & Pages” and choose “Layout” from the pulldown menu
  • in the Layout settings view, see that “Two-Sided” is listed, with the option to choose “Long Edge Binding” (for portrait mode documents) and “Short Edge Binding” (for landscape mode documents)
  • > note that if “Two-Sided” is not listed here, your printer doesn’t have the option to print two-sided automatically, and you will have to do the two-sided printing manually [see below]

That’s it !

If your printer can’t do two-sided printing automatically, you can do this to get two-sided printing manually :

  • open the document in Word for Mac
  • press the [CMD] + [P] key combo on your keyboard to open the Print window ( or goto Word > File > Print )
  • click on “Copies & Pages” and choose “Microsoft Word” from the pulldown menu
  • in the Microsoft Word settings view, set “Print:” to “Even pages only”
  • then go back to “Copies & Pages” and at “Pages:” set both “From:” and “To:” to 1 and click the Print button
  • when your print is ready, draw a huge arrow on the back of the printed page pointing upward like the text on the front side
  • then put the page in the printer’s feeder drawer and make sure the arrow you have drawn on it is on the upside and pointing into the printer drawer and close the printer drawer
  • then click on “Copies & Pages” and choose “Microsoft Word” from the pulldown menu
  • in the Microsoft Word settings view, set “Print:” to “Even pages only”
  • then go back to “Copies & Pages” and at “Pages:” set both “From:” and “To:” to 1 and click the Print button
  • now look at the printed page that comes out and figure out how to put the pages in after having them printed on one side (make sure you have this correct before proceeding ; if you can’t get your head around this, just redo the above steps and print a new testpage)
  • now, get ready to print the entire document :
  • press the [CMD] + [P] key combo on your keyboard to open the Print window ( or goto Word > File > Print )
  • click on “Copies & Pages” and choose “Microsoft Word” from the pulldown menu
  • in the Microsoft Word settings view, set “Print:” to “Even pages only”
  • then go back to “Copies & Pages” and at “Pages:” select “All”
  • then wait for all even pages to print
  • when done, flip over the bulk of printed paper the way you figured out to be right (using your test page as a reference) and put it back in the printing drawer
  • make sure that not only the orientation is correct, but that the first page is on top and the last page is at the bottom also
  • click on “Copies & Pages” and choose “Microsoft Word” from the pulldown menu
  • in the Microsoft Word settings view, set “Print:” to “Odd pages only”
  • then go back to “Copies & Pages” and at “Pages:” select “All”
  • then wait for all odd pages to print
  • …now check if your document is printed correctly on both sides !
  • if not… you have gotten your page flipping incorrect… too bad… you’ll have to redo from start…

That’s it !

enjoy 😉

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fix : send iOS Pages document as Word document from iPad

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Question :

I have MS Office running on my Mac, but it’s not Office 365, so on my iPad I can’t unlock all editing features of Word, PowerPoint and Excel for iOS …so I only have the option to open, view and read Word documents, PowerPoint presentations and Excel sheets.

At this moment, I only have my iPad available and not my Mac. Is there any way to quickly do a little editing on a Word document on my iPad, even though I don’t have Office 365 ?

 

Answer :

There are several options to do so. You could use Google Docs or Office 700 (an OpenOffice version for iOS), but you probably have Apple Pages already installed on your iPad, so that is most likely the quickest solution :

  • open Pages.app on your iPad
  • under “Locations” find the Word document you want to edit
  • you will see that the Word document is opened as if it were a Pages document
  • now edit it as you wish
  • when finished, click on the button top-right (the button that looks like a circle with three dots in it)
  • in the menu that appears on the right, click on “Export”
  • in the pulldown menu that appears, click on “Word”
  • in the popup window, click on “Save to Files”
  • in the next window, select a location to save the Word document, then click “Save”

That’s it !

enjoy 😉

fixed : change the Currency-format of only a few cells in Numbers (from iWork)

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Question :

I’m using the Apple Numbers spreadsheet-app (from iWork) and I want to use multiple currencies in one spreadsheet (US dollars, GB pounds and Euros). I tried “Create / Change Custom Cell Format” from the “Format”-menu, but there the currency is set to default to my local currency (Euros) and I can’t change it…

This must be possible, right ?

But, how do I do it ?

Answer :

The trick is you should change the currency format of a (group of) cell(s) in the “Inspector”…

Here’s how to :

– in Numbers, select the cell or cells of which you want to change the currency

– then click on the “Inspector” (info-sign shaped button on the right of the upper bar of the spreadsheet-window)

– in the “Cells”-window that opens, choose the tab marked “42” (*)

– there, under “Cell Format” you should change the default “Automatic” to “Currency” and choose the one you want to use

That’s it !

😉

(*) this is probably a subtile reference to “The Hitchhikers Guid To The Galaxy (H2G2)”, where 42 turns out to be the answer to “the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything”…

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fixed : import contacts database from Excel into AddressBook

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A common question of Windows-to-Mac-switchers is “How can I import my contacts from Excel into my Mac ?”.

Here’s the way to import a contacts database from Excel (Mac or Windows) into Apple AddressBook :

  1. open the contacts database in Excel (on Mac or Windows)
  2. save the contacts database under a new name (e.g. “addresses-export.xls”), to make sure you will have a emergency-backup
  3. rearrange the data in the (copy of the) contacts database in such a way that the upper row will only contain column headers, and every next line will only contain the data of one contact (with all data in the correct column)
  4. for street addresses you will need 4 (or 5) separate columns : “street name (including home number)”, “postal code”, “town”(, “province”) and “country” ; if you want to include both a home and a work address, you should make that 2x 4 = 8 columns
  5. make sure to use separate columns to match the different data groups you have, so make separate columns for “home phone”, “work phone”, “mobile phone”, “home fax”, “work fax”, etc.
  6. if you have completely rearranged the data to suit this layout, go to “Save As”
  7. choose the option “Format : Comma Separated Values (.csv)”, choose an easily accessible location to save the file (e.g. on your Desktop) and click “Save”
  8. quit Excel
  9. open Apple AddressBook
  10. click on the ‘button with the plus sign’ in the lower left corner to create a new group and choose a proper group name for the addresses you are about to import (e.g. “Excel import January 1st”)
  11. then, in the upper menu bar under “File”, choose “import”
  12. select “”addresses-export.csv” (or whatever you’ve clued your database file) from the Desktop (or other location where you’ve saved it) and click “Open”
  13. you will now get a “Text File Import” window, in which you have to indicate what the  right name of each ‘column’ should become in Apple AddressBook
  14. for addresses you will have do this in a way that might not be obvious : first select “Address (home)” or “Address (work)” next to the “Address”-heading from your Excel-file, after that an the list will automatically extend to include “PostalCode”, “City” and “Country” (note that this will leave an extra “PostalCode” and “City” just below, that you have to change to the “Do not import” label.
  15. If you’re done setting this up, double-check it again (if you don’t set this up properly and faultless, the outcome will not be acceptable, and you will have to redo the complete import-procedure)
  16. make sure that the little checkbox is checked next to “Ignore first card” and click “OK”
  17. if you will now look in the “Last Import” group (the green group) you will see all imported data
  18. now, just to be sure : double-check some data to make sure everything has been imported the way you want it
  19. then select only one contact from the “Last Import” group and press the CMD+A (“Select All”) to select all contacts and then drag the entire selection onto the group that you’ve previously created, named “Excel import January 1st” or what you’ve called it
  20. Note : the “Last Import” group is only a temporary group, so to make sure you will be able to easily find your Excel-imported contacts as a group in the future, the group “Excel import January 1st” has been created ; if you decide at any time that there’s no need anymore to be able to access these Excel-imported contacts as a separate group, you can easily delete the group name “Excel import January 1st”, without deleting the contacts themselves from AddressBook

…after following this step-by-step instruction, you will have all your Excel-contacts in AddressBook also !