Excel

Line Weights
If you are using Excel graphics in a publication make sure the graphics are not drawn using the finest line weight available in Excel, as they reproduce on the imagesetter as hairlines which are unprintable. The next weight up is fairly heavy, about a one point line, but at least you can print it!

Publisher

Tints
MSP users can get grey tints in objects by selecting the right colours (The fill patterns from publisher produce terrible tints for printing). Yellow gives a 10%, Silver 20%, Aqua 30%, Lime 40%, Fuchsia 50% and Red 60%.

Getting Rid of Useful Tips
Once you know your way around Microsoft Publisher (and other Microsoft products) you may find the "Useful Tips" are more annoying than useful. To switch them off go to the Tools pulldown menu and select Options... Click on the View More Options button. Near the bottom under Reminders and Quick Demos, click on Activate to remove the cross.

Saving
If you forget to save your work regularly, and use MS Publisher, you can set it up to automatically remind you. Just go to the Tools menu, select Options and choose Remind to Save Publications box. You can select how often you want to be nagged (default is 15 minutes), and it will pop up a box reminding you to save if you haven't.

Word

Objects
When dragging around photos and objects, word automatically snaps to the ruler marks, to avoid this, hold ALT for a 'free roam' mode.

Layout
Make sure you are working with the standard A4 size in your document. To check, go to 'File' > Page Setup properties, you can also edit your margins from the edge of the page, the default is about 2.5cm, this can be taken out to 1cm if you need the space.

Outlook Express

Sounds
If you have your computer in-store and have permanent internet access (ie. Broadband, ADSL etc.) You can setup outlook to check for emails at certain intervals (say every 15mins or so), and get the program to play a sound that you'll hear to let you know new email has arrived. To do this, go to Control Panel > Sounds and Audio Devices, select the Sounds tab and scroll down until you get to New Mail Notification (under the windows heading) and locate your desired file.

Attachments
Sometimes Outlook is defaulted to not let you access any attachments that it's unsure of, this can be a real pain sometimes when trying to access most documents that you know aren't viruses. Namely MS Office documents and PDF files. To enable this feature, go to Tools > Options, select the Security tab, and

Email Header
To change the "header" part when you send out emails (i.e. the header part appears in quotes, followed by your email, e.g. "Type Tamer" ()
Go to Tools > Accounts..., then make sure you are in the "Mail" section, select your account and click "Properties" on the right. You just need to change the "Name" field under the General tab.