Fix “Track Changes” in Word 2007

Hey guys – another Office 2007 tip here that I spent quite awhile figuring out and couldn’t find online.

The default way that “Track Changes” displays changes in 2007 is Inline, which  means that deleted text is kept in the paragraph, with a strike-through displayed.  Sometimes this is kind of cool, but in a document that gets heavily edited, it’s annoying to keep the changes inline. 

To make things look like 2003, where deleted text was shown in side bubbles:

1. Go up to the Ribbon, under Review, and click “Balloons.” 
2. Check “Show Revisions in Balloons.”  Chances are that the third option was selected by default: “Show Only Formatting and Comments in Balloons.” 

Now. however, all the changes will show up in balloons, and only the new text will show up inline, although it’ll be red so you can tell.  Nice!

Another thing to keep in mind:  Word 2003 doesn’t have the option to show changes inline, so your document will always look ok in 2003, whether converted on-the-fly or down-saved.

Revisions inline (2007 default): Clean on the sides, but difficult to read.

Revisions in bubbles (2003 style): Messy on the sides, but much easier to read the revisions.

He’ll take care of the rest

Funny — one place the Spirit never showed up for me was in spelling bees. I’m not bitter though.

“Settle it therefore in your minds not to meditate beforehand how to answer, for I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which none of your adversaries will be able to withstand or contradict.” (Luke 21:14-15)

Have you ever had a moment like Jesus is describing, where the words just came to you, and no one could contradict?  We usually think of these settings as when you’re “witnessing” to someone, but I think I’ve seen it in all different situations. We’ve been equipped to navigate this life, and I’ve seen the right words make an appearance at work, school, with friends, and yeah, when formally “witnessing.”  It’s pretty cool – we need to remember to have faith that the Spirit will give words when needed.  If we plan too hard what we’re going to say, we’ll drown out what could be the perfect words.  I’m keen to remember that as I prepare for my talk this week, and for the proposals that are due. 

Devouring houses

It’s my blog and I’ll cry if I want to.

“…who devour widows’ houses and for a pretense make long prayers.  They will receive the greater condemnation.”  (Luke 20:47)

When Jesus talks about the Pharisees devouring widows’ houses, he’s referring to the fact that the temple, and therefore the Pharisees, are supported by the donations of people.  Perhaps he’s foreshadowing the instance where the poor widow comes and gives a personal fortune to the offering box, in the very next chapter.

Let me get up on my soapbox for a minute, since this is my blog and I can do that.  If you are blessed with something, don’t waste it.  In particular, if you are struggling financially, and you receive a financial gift, treat it with the most respect you’ve ever treated anything.  Your prayers have surely focused on your finances at some point, and God has absolutely answered your prayer.  If you came across a burning bush, you wouldn’t tear it up and ruin it, so why would you treat the miracle of money from the sky any differently?

I say this because I’ve seen people in financial trouble absolutely blow money that’s gifted to them, and nothing makes me sadder and madder to see it.  I’ve actually given anonymous gifts, only to watch from the sidelines as the money is wasted — used not to pay off bills or get out of debt, but to pay for a vacation.  It hurts me, and it tempts me to wish I’d just kept it myself.  Obviously, that’s my own issue to deal with, but I don’t think I’d the only one who’s ever felt this.

Anyway, Jesus was clearly infuriated to see the Pharisees wasting the money that people gave in faith.  Chances are, the gift you received was something small and humble from someone who wasn’t rich.  You should assume that they’re watching to see it bless you, as if God watching isn’t enough reason to be responsible.

Ok, I’ll get off the soapbox now.  The air is a little hot up here.

Practice what you preach

Stop talking about me!

“The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat, so practice and observe whatever they tell you — but not what they do.  For they preach, but do not practice.” (Matthew 23:2-3)

It’s clear from reading the gospels that Jesus wasn’t fond of the Pharisees.  They were holding religion and tradition above God, and obscuring him to others.  But it’s important to remember that Jesus wasn’t against the law; he tells the disciples and the crowds that they should, indeed, practice the things that the Pharisees preach, insomuch as they preach Moses’ law. 

But what an indictment, telling them not to practice what the Pharisees practice.  He’s bypassed the Pharisees altogether, talking about them in front of them, knowing that he won’t change their behaviour.  It’s one thing to know that someone special doesn’t like you; it’s another to know that that person doesn’t think you’re even worth arguing with.

Let’s be sure to remember the spirit of Moses’ law, and remember that God is pleased by obedience.  Jesus didn’t come to abolish the law, but rather to fulfill it. 

Patient vineyard owner

Vineyard/go-kart track.

“He still had one other, a beloved son. But those tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’” (Mark 12:6)

One of the things that amazes me most abuot God is his patience.  This parable describes numerous attempts of the vineyard owner to go collect his fruit, but honestly, how many of us would send more than one delegation?  If I sent some of my people and they were beaten and thrown out, you can bet I’d be heading over there, with  no intention of taking prisoners.  In a way, this story is frustrating, b/c you know how it ends, and you know what it represents. 

We, here on Earth, couldn’t possibly be as wicked as the people in the story, right?  But if you read the history, it’s basically what happened.  And people want to hear prophets today just as little as they did then.

So what’s the lesson for us in all this?  One is that God is patient, but another is that he will have his justice.  We may not come across his prophets all that often, but we come across his children all the time.  Do we throw his children out of our places — and out of our lives?

Yeah, maybe we do.  And maybe we need to reevaluate.

Speechless

Wedding garment.

“And he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?’ and he was speechless.“  (Matthew 22:12)

This parable is rich in symbolism.  It might be the richest of them all, in fact.  The wedding going on is the kingdom of heaven, which plays off the description of the church being the brdige of Christ. Getting into the wedding will require the right clothes – clean and acceptable clothes.  Another symbol -  a metaphor for the cleaning and forgiving blood of Christ.  The one guy has nothing to say when he is confronted – a symbol for judgement day, when we’ll give an account of what we did with the life God gave us.

There’s more, and there might be other (more correct) interpretations, but those are three that stuck out to me.  I guess the thing about the man being speechless stuck out to me the most because the host first refers to him as “Friend,” as if it’s not the absense of the garment that gets him thrown out, but that he has no explanation.  That’s a toughie, huh?

Jesus will get us into the wedding feast, to be sure, but we still have to account for what we did with our lives.  Let’s be sure we have something worth reporting about too.

Exporting Powerpoint 2007 to PDF without degradation

Hey guys.  This is a departure from my usual posts.  I’ve been working hard all day on my talk for next week, and wanted to write about something I figured out – I’ll load this up with tags b/c I wasn’t able to find a solution online. 

I’ve been working from home, which has given me the distinct benefit of using Powerpoint 2007, as opposed to Powerpoint 2003, which we have at work.  2007 has huge, massive, gigantic differences over 2003, most notably some really advanced graphics stuff.  For instance:

Before (in 2003):

 After (In 2007, with about 10 minutes of work on the previous slide, completely within Powerpoint):

Yeah, my talk is totally going to be hot.

Haha.  Anyway, this wasn’t the point of my post.  I wanted to talk about exporting your Powerpoint 2007 talks to PDF.  You have to do this, because most folks are still using 2003.  Your laptop might die, and you’ll be stuck with the default one in the room. Your PPTX will probably get janked up if you try to open and convert-on-the-fly to 2003, especially if you have advanced graphics.

But here’s the thing.  If you try to convert to PDF using Adobe Acrobat (the Acrobat buttons in Powerpoint, Print to Adobe Acrobat, directly in Acrobat,  or even directly using the Distiller), there’s a good chance you’ll have problems, especially if you’ve got the aforementioned advanced graphics options in your talk:

• Stuff that’s been rendered in 3D won’t convert right.  Fonts will come out jagged, and weird lines will appear through things.  This is regardless of the image settings you have in the Distiller.
• Calibri, which is the default font in 2007, and which looks much nicer than Arial (since everything from 1994-present is in Arial), doesn’t always convert right – your talk might force to Arial and your spacing will get messed up (Arial is, in general, 2pt larger than Calibri at the same point setting).
• You’ll have font issues if you try to view your PPTX or your exported PPT in the free MS Powerpoint viewer.  You’ll get similar substituting of Arial for Calibri, and your spacing will go  haywire.

Believe me, I tried for hours to get the thing to convert nicely.  I removed all graphics compression, upped the resolution, and tried literally every avenue to access Acrobat on my computer, and they all came out degraded.  I even tried exporting the talk as JPGs, PNGs, TIFFs, and EMFs (not compatiable with Adobe!) and converting those — the exports looked fine, but Acrobat mangled those even more during conversion.

SO…here’s the solution.  It turns out that Office 2007 has native PDF conversion, if you’ve upgraded to SP2 (which happened a long time ago – run an Office update if you haven’t.  Instead of using the Acrobat buttons that embed themselves in Office, go to Save As and chose PDF from the list.  There won’t be any mention of Adobe or anything like that.

2 or 3 minutes later (for a large talk) and you’ll be all set.  Powerpoint knows how to convert itself properly, and you won’t get any distortion on your fancy graphics. Calibri will show up fine too!

 So there you go.  Hopefully you found this without too much trouble on the old Google.

Believe and confess

Confessing my favorite color. (Just kidding)

Nevertheless, many even of the authorities believed in him, but for fear of the Pharisees they did not confess it, so that they would not be put out of the synagogue; for they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God. (John 12: 42-43)

Not everyone’s heart was hardened, as some earlier verses might suggest.  Some believed but didn’t follow.  Not from a hardened heart, but from a weak heart — a fear of man. 

We need to remember that just believing isn’t enough; we must believe with our heart and confess with our tongues. This can be a life-or-death dilemma for some people in the world, but certainly not for us, so we have no excuse.  Just because your heart isn’t *hardened* like the Pharisees doesn’t mean it’s right.

Do the people around you know you’re a believer?  If you want to reach them (and you should) then that’s an important start.  You shouldn’t have to proclaim it, like proclaiming your favorite color; your faith isn’t a hobby or side interest.  It should be pretty clear from the way you talk about your life – what you do with your free time, your resources, your friends, etc.  Don’t be afraid to confess it – the glory that comes from man is fleeting compared to the glory that comes from God.

Talk abstract

Time’s running shorter and shorter for my talk, so I needed to provide an abstract to the folks at Wayne State.  Here’s the working one:

Vehicle electrification, while certainly a hot topic, is also one with a long and interesting history.  We’ll examine that history, from humble beginnings to the current state-of-the-art.  That history has not been without its challenges – some technological, others political, and some just plain bad luck.  We’ll take a look at the challenges faced in the industry, both past and present, as well as trends in addressing those challenges. Finally, there will be an opportunity to highlight some future technologies, including advanced research that Ford is currently engaged in. Selected research topics include advanced anode morphology control and kinetic Monte Carlo modeling.

Let’s hope they don’t grill me on something I know nothing about – a distinct possibility since I’ve only been in this field for a year.

In season (and out)

I wonder where the stem was…

When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs.  And he said to it “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard it. (Mark 11:13-14)

It might seem a little harsh for Jesus to wither this tree because it didn’t have any figs.  After all, it wasn’t even fig season.  But remember that Jesus always does things for a reason.  In this case, there’s a lesson in him finding no figs (and a lesson in the tree withering, which we see later). 

The question is, what does it mean to be “in season?”  A seasonable time is when it’s most convenient or ameneble to grow something.  It’s not impossible to grow things out of season, though, as we all know when we eat watermelon in December. But it’s easier in season.  Things are cheaper in season, things are expected in season, and things are sought out in season.

If we’re not careful, the fruit in our own lives can end up similarly restrained.  We will have fruit when it’s most convenient, or when it’s cheapest, or when everyone would expect us to, or when we know people will be looking.  But, as Paul teaches in 2Tim4, we need to be ready in and out of season. 

Jesus is using the fig tree as a metaphor for our lives – we should be ready with fruit whenever someone needs it.  Fruit is what our faith produces – it’s what the Holy Spirit produces.  If there’s no fruit, then something got disconnected along the way.

Think about the fruit in your life, and ask yourself, if Jesus came by for a fig right this instant, would he find any?