Speedy formatting tips this month for Word and Excel using the built-in AutoFormats. Why spend ages formatting text and numbers yourself when Word and Excel's AutoFormat features offer professional formats in just a couple of clicks!

Excel's AutoFormat option is just brilliant and you can save an enormous amount of time if you use it. If the range of cells you wish to format has any empty columns or rows in it, select the cells first. If there are no empty columns or rows, just click anywhere within the range, don't bother to select it, because Excel will automatically select the range for you!

Choose AutoFormat from the Format menu and the dialog box appears. Scroll down to view the available formats, and when you have chosen the one you like click the options button to view Excel's six groups of formats. Click to switch any of these boxes off if you don't want to use a particular type of formatting. For example, you may have already formatted the numbers yourself, in that case switch off the Number Formats check box.