Rremove the Active Desktop Recovery screen

Never had an awful Microsoft "Active Desktop Recovery" screen after a crash? Here is how to get back your desktop background to normal:

1. Go to Run and type "regedit"
2. Go to –HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Desktop\SafeMode\Components
3. Find the key named "DeskHtmlVersion"
4. Right click on the key and select "Modify"
5. Under "Base", select the "Decimal" button
6. Change the Value data to "0" (zero)
7. Click OK

remove a link to an external reference in Excel

1. On the Data tab, in the Connections group, click Edit Links.

2. In the Source list, click the link that you want to break.

To select multiple linked objects, hold down CTRL, and then click each linked object.

To select all links, press CTRL+A.

3. Click Break Link.

Adjust the levels of the table of content in Micosoft Word

When you create a table of content in Micorsoft Word, the number of levels is guven automatically. If you want to adjust the number of levels presented, say you want to display only 2 levels instead of 3, here is how to proceed:

1) Press "Alt+F9" to switch to code field mode

You will se something like {TOC \o "1-3" \h \z \u}

2) Replace the 3 by 2
3) Press "Alt+F9" again to go back in the normal mode
4) Refresh the table of content

Format different colors in an Excel Chart (same-series data)

By default, within Excel, when you select a single-series chart, all data markers that represent the data points in that series are displayed in the same color. To use different color for each data marker, do the following:

1) Right-click on the data marker (i.e. the bar representing your data)
2) Select "Format Data Series..."

3) Select "Fill", then "Vary Color by Point" and close

The result is that each data marker have now their own color. Excel gives each marker a different color automatically.

4) If you don't like these colors and want to have another color for each specific marker, just do the following:

   a) Left-click on the data marker once --> All data marker will be selected.
   b) Left-click on one specific data marker --> Only this specific data marker will be selected
   c) Right-click on the marker and select "Format Data Point" --> "Fill" --> "Solid Fill" --> select your color