Here is a great section from the Apple site that brought all those (great?) memories rushing back. Appleworks Tips and Tutorials.

With the font still as Times and the screen shots showing a Mac OS 9 interface you would expect these tips not to be entirely relevant to a site named Mac OS X Tips.

However almost all the tips are just as relevant today as they were 5 (or 10?) years ago. Most are general tips to help with word processing and spreadsheets, and could be applied to Microsoft Office or any similar Application.

Here's a few tips and tricks for Microsoft Excel.

To insert the date as a time stamp (i.e. it won't change next time you change the document) press Control-Semicolon ( ; ). To insert the time, press Control-Shift-Semicolon. If you want a date and time that updates, type

=NOW()

into a cell.

Here's a quick way of making pop-up menus: Enter the pop-up choices into a series of out of the way cells. For example Oranges, Apples, Lemons, Pears into K1 to K4. Click on the cell you want the pop-up menu in, and in the Data menus choose Validation. Click on the Settings tab and choose List from the Allow pop-up menu. In the Source box that appears, enter your data range For example,

=J1:J4

and click OK.

To tidy things up, select cells J1 to J4 and choose a white text colour to make them invisible.

If you find yourself with a Microsoft Word document that is password protected and you don't know the password, there is a work around to remove the protection, and allow you to edit the document again.

First open the document, and save it as a Rich Text Format (RTF) file. Close the file and then reopen it again in word. Select Tools -> Unprotect Document, and now the password is no longer required. Finally save the file as a word document again.

Sometimes copying from websites or odd applications leaves your text with strange formatting, links and spacing when you paste it into word or TextEdit.

One way of clearing this up is using the Services menu, if your source application supports this. Start by selecting the text you want to copy, and going to Application Name -> Services -> Summarize. A new window will open and you will see a clean version of your text. Drag the slider to 100% so all your text is included, then copy to the clipboard and paste into your text editor.

An alternative method, for when you are pasting into TextEdit, or if your source application doesn't support the services menu, is use the make plain text option. Paste your text into TextEdit and choose Format -> Make Plain Text (Command-Shift-T). This should strip most of the formatting, and to be on the safe side you can summarize the text as well.