Screen Clipping Shortcut Key for OneNote After Windows 8.1 Update

After installing the Windows 8.1 update this morning, I was surprised to notice that my familiar Windows + S keyboard shortcut to take a screen clipping in Microsoft OneNote was no longer working. What happened?

In Windows 8.1, Windows + S is a keyboard shortcut that will bring up a Search bar on the side of your screen. If you want to take a screen clipping instead, you'll need to press Windows + Shift + S instead.

Windows + Shift + S

Don't like having to press the extra key? Me neither. Luckily, the OneNote team posted a blog entry here that explains how to set the keyboard shortcut to Windows + A. This is a slightly more advanced process that involves making a registry edit, but you can go ahead and change the shortcut to something else if you know what you're doing. Otherwise, just stick with Windows + Shift + S.

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19th Annual Skills Canada National Competition

The 19th annual Skills Canada National Competition is here at BC Place in Vancouver right now, and I'm thrilled to be here. If you've never had the opportunity to check out one of these events, then you're absolutely missing out. Students and apprentices from all across Canada come together to compete in over 40 different skilled trades and technology contests.

Everything was kicked off officially on June 5th with the opening ceremonies over at the PNE Forum, where teams from every province and territory paraded in with their flags, cheering wildly. There are even some teams from abroad that are here to practice for the upcoming WorldSkills competition in Germany. We were also lucky to be joined by special visitors Mag Ruffman, Mike Holmes, and Mike Holmes Jr., who have stuck around to experience the entire competition.

The competitors were busy at work yesterday and today at BC Place, with all of the excitement and intensity of the Olympics. One of the neatest things about the event is the ability to walk around and visit the different contest areas. You can check out the projects that everyone is working on, and talk with industry experts. This is my seventh year attending, and I continue to be amazed at how much I learn in such a short period of time.

A view of the floor. The Jumbotron was showing live images from the various contests around the stadium. As you can see, there was a lot going on.

From left to right: Stacy DuBois, David Boivin, and Caitlin Mayo - Team Canada 2009 Alumni at the Skills Canada National Competition in Vancouver, BC.

Offset printing is quite the art. Competitors in this area were tasked with mixing inks to produce specific Pantone colours, and operating a mechanical printer. I was interested to find out that the life expectancy of these sorts of printers is so much longer than the kinds of printers you find in a regular office. The ink used can be separated from the paper afterwards as well, meaning that the paper can be recycled. Apparently that's not possible with toner.

Hunter Engineering Company's alignment system demo - a company representative was explaining to me how their software works with information gathered from devices attached to each wheel and high resolution cameras. Matched against the specific model of the car from an extensive database, technicians can align the wheels with a very intuitive computer interface.

The robotics contest area is a treat for spectators. A crowd gathers to watch as teams compete head-to-head. Here you can see a robot moving a pallet into place, knocking out one of their opponents' pallets.

Over at the automotive service contest area, I learned that the cars you typically see on the road today are absolutely full of little computers. Computing truly is ubiquitous today, isn't it? There are so many different industries that find a use for it. What an exciting field to be in.

The official results will be announced tomorrow during the closing ceremonies. Click here to check out the live stream of the event happening Saturday June 8th at 1:00 p.m. PT. For more information on Skills/Compétences Canada and the awesome stuff they're doing, check out their site here.

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OneNote: Stop Automatically Inserting Long Printouts on Multiple Pages

OneNote 2013 has the ability to automatically insert printouts onto multiple pages for you. It's a handy new feature that could be useful in some situations, but for me it's just not a setting that I like. If you want to stop OneNote from doing this automatically and to get it to ask you each time whether you would like it on one or multiple different pages, just follow these steps:

1. Click on the 'File' tab on the ribbon, and then choose 'Options'.
2. In the 'OneNote Options' window that will appear, choose 'Advanced' from the menu on the left.
3. Scroll down to the bottom. The second-last option is 'Insert long printouts on multiple pages'. Clear the checkmark from this box.

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Word: Use Directory Grouping Features in Letter Mail Merge

This post is about an interesting problem that came to me by e-mail about a mail merge problem in Microsoft Word.

Someone from a training company wanted to send out summary data about in-progress courses to every student by e-mail. As every message would require a number of different records, it seemed logical to use the 'Directory' option. That wasn't a good solution, however, as the sender wanted to be able to use the e-mail integration features of the 'Letter' option. Here's how to use some 'Directory' features using 'Letters'.

1- Start a mail merge document using the 'Letters' option, and set up everything in your letter (including the data source).

2 - Go to the Insert Field dialog box (not a mail merge field, but just the regular fields) and choose 'Database' from the categories. Click on the 'Insert Database' button.

3 - Click on the 'Get Data' button, and choose the same data source that you used for your mail merge.

4 - Click on the 'Query Options...' button. Go to the Select Fields tab and make sure the right-hand list contains only those fields that you want to see in the table.

5 - Click on the 'Filter Records' button, and set up a criteria for the UserID field to be 'Equal to' arealuserid (choose any existing UserID and put it here - you will change this later, so it doesn't matter which one you pick). Click the 'OK' button.

6 - Click on the 'Insert Data...' button, and place a checkmark in the 'Insert data as field' checkbox. Click the 'OK' button.

7 - Now you should be back in your document, and you'll see a table there that shows the records for the UserID you chose. Press Alt+F9, and you'll be able to see the field codes. It will probably look like a mess. That's a good thing.

8 - Look right near the bottom of all of that code, and you will see a SELECT statement. In this statement, highlight where you had entered a random UserID, and now go up to your toolbar and insert the UserID mail merge field. What you're doing is setting the criteria to be equal to whichever UserID is currently being used for the mail merge. Make sure you keep the single quotes around the mail merge field and are only replacing the actual UserID.

9 - At this point, you might want to hit Alt+F9 again to stop seeing all of that code. Try to finish your mail merge, and you should see separate tables for each individual letter.

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Happy New Year!

It's been a while, hasn't it? I'm excited to announce that tomorrow I will have a shiny new post for you all. In the meantime, I just want to wish you all a very happy New Year! 2012 brought us some very exciting advancements in technology, and I'm excited to see what 2013 has in store for us.

To my fellow Microsoft Office addicts, please note that I am now using Microsoft Office 2013 and therefore my screenshots might look a bit odd to you if you're using earlier versions. As always, I am tagging my posts with the version of Office that I'm using because I don't maintain my older posts.

Keep the e-mails coming, I love to get your questions and feedback.

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