Manage the Office Task Pane

Practical panels
Though you’ll see them often, the Task Panes discussed so far have limited everyday use. Much more practical is the Clipboard, which is common to the core Office applications. This is where items copied using the Copy command (or the Ctrl and C keyboard shortcut) are stored before being pasted.

The Office Clipboard (which is an extension of the Windows Clipboard) can store up to 24 items, on an earliest-copied, earliest-removed basis. So, copy a 25th item and the first item you copied will be deleted. Note also that the Office Clipboard’s contents are reliant on at least one Office application remaining open: close all Office programs and the Clipboard’s contents will disappear.

Duly warned, access the Clipboard Task Pane by choosing it from the dropdown menu or by holding down the Ctrl key and double-tapping C. Note that this latter shortcut works even if the Task Pane is currently hidden, so it’s worth remembering. With this Task Pane displayed, it’s possible to see exactly what’s in the Clipboard’s stack of copied items. For more detailed directions on how to work with this Task Pane, see our step-by-step guide.

Another handy pair are the Styles and Formatting and Reveal Formatting Task Panes, though these are available in Word only. Access them from the Task Pane’s dropdown menu. The former is useful when applying or altering the look of text throughout a document. It lists all the styles and formatting used throughout the document. Hover the mouse pointer over an entry in the long list and click the down-pointing arrow for a pop-up menu: use this to enact document-wide changes the selected style. For example, if you choose Delete, then all text that matches the selected style will be deleted. Perhaps more usefully, the Modify Style option pops up a dialogue box that allows you to change the style for all matching text.

The Reveal Formatting Task Pane, meanwhile, shows more detailed information on the selected text, along with quick links to useful formatting dialogue boxes, like Alignment, Font and Indentation.

We’d also advise getting acquainted with the Research Task Pane, which is on offer in Word, Excel and PowerPoint. This provides a way to search for information via a range of reference books and online services. Now while this might sound redundant in the age of Google, having a ready research pane right next to the document you’re working on is really convenient.

Finally, if you’re in need of images to illustrate your work, we thoroughly recommend exploring the Clip Art Task Pane, which is accessible in Word, Excel and Powerpoint. Obviously, this is a place to find clipart,
but it also holds a stock of movie files and audio clips, which may come in useful to those building presentations or interactive spreadsheets.

Though the Clip Art Task Pane is straightforward to navigate, we do have a couple of tips for efficient use. Begin by typing in a word into the search box at the top and click Go ­ the Task Pane will fill with a matrix of results, displayed as small icons: to paste an item straight into the open document at the editing point, just click its icon. Alternatively, hover the pointer over the item for a moment and click the down-pointing arrow to access a pop-up menu with more options.

Note also the ‘Search in’ and ‘Results should be’ dropdown selections at the top of the Clip Art Task Pane. The first allows you to specify where Office looks for results: click to remove the tick from ‘Web Collections’ to stop it looking online, thus speeding up the process. However, remember that Microsoft’s online clipart collection is vast, so you could miss out on some good results.