templates

Travel Expense Calculator For Excel

1:30PM Angus Kidman | Keeping track of expenses on the road is always fiddly. Getting the discipline to enter the relevant information on your PC is something you’ll need to work on yourself, but if your office doesn’t already mandate an expense system, this Excel template will help simplify the process. More »

Track Writing Submissions With A Template

2:59PM Angus Kidman | Budding poets and aspiring academics have a common need — tracking where they’ve sent written work and whether it’s been accepted. One easy solution to that problem is to use a specifically designed tracking document. More »

Pin Outlook Templates To The Taskbar For Quick Access

6:00AM The How-To Geek | Reader Stephen writes in with an excellent, time-saving tip: you can create Outlook templates for frequently-used topics, and then pin them to the taskbar to make them easy to access. More »

Use The Day Grid Balancer To Recalibrate Your Work-Life Balance

11:30PM Jason Fitzpatrick | Balancing work, family life, personal time and more can be quite a tricky task compared to simply managing your time and tasks in the workplace. Use this handy worksheet to work on your life balance. More »

Floorplanner Presents Your Plans In 3D

5:00AM Jason Fitzpatrick | Looking to re-arrange the stuff of your house or plan a dream room? Floorplanner is a web-based tool for planning rooms and furniture layouts using a simple but powerful editor. We originally reviewed Floorplanner in 2007, but since then they’ve introduced some helpful new features. We originally dug it because of the easy drag-and-drop interface and the extensive library of furniture, fixtures, plants and more are still there. One of the principle reader complaints back then was the lack of 3D planning, but you can now plan in both 2D and 3D, switching between the views for a long view of proportion and layout. The free demo on their site doesn’t allow you to save, but does give you a feel for the tools and layout—though you might be tempted to sign up, after a little Sims-style rearrangement. Or, you know, they put that PrtSc key on up there on your keyboard for a reason. Floorplanner has a free and premium tier; the limitation on the free plan is one house or apartment floor plan. If you upgrade to Floorplanner PLUS for $US27.50 a year, you can create up to five home plans. Floor Planner [via GeekSugar] More »

Create Custom Planner Templates With Dynamic Templates

10:00AM Jason Fitzpatrick | If you’re a big fan of the templates at D*I*Y Planner, and we certainly are, you’ll be thrilled to know they have released a cross-platform program for generating your own templates. The application, at least the Windows version I tested, is stand alone and portable. It is currently limited to generating month/week/day appointment templates but will have other D*I*Y Planner templates like notes and such included in future releases. Automatic scaling to various US and international paper sizes is included, as well as the ability to tweak a host of smaller things like line weight. Completed templates are exported as a PDF file. Dynamic Templates is open source and cross-platform. Dynamic Templates [D*I*Y Planner] More »

How To Create Outlook Templates

3:00PM Angus Kidman | Microsoft’s Outlook Blog runs down how to set up and access templates in Outlook. Templates are one of those often-neglected options in email programs, but they can be really handy; much email communication is repetitive, and having information set and ready to send makes the task easier. With that said, the options for using templates are pretty deeply buried. Given that email editing is one of the few parts of Outlook 2007 that actually uses the Ribbon, it’s somewhat amazing that there’s no way of accessing templates from there. For a similar (and automated) approach online, check out how to send canned responses in Gmail. [Microsoft Office Outlook Team Blog] More »

Print Out PDF Graph Paper And Wireframes

9:00AM Gina Trapani | When you’re hard up for just the right graph paper for your project or drawing, you can print out what you need at designer resource site Konigi. The site’s offering of free PDF templates range from straight-up full-page graph paper, to wireframes, storyboards, and storyboard with notes. The templates are especially geared for web and visual designers, and made to scan as well (the title bar and grid lines are non-photo blue). For more ways to put your printer to good use, see our top 10 printable productivity tools. Graph Paper [Konigi via Evil Mad Scientists] More »

Google Docs Template Gallery Launches

9:56AM Gina Trapani | Google Docs now offers a gallery of spreadsheet, presentation, and document templates for use in your work. Whether you’re designing a resume, invoice, calendar, or slideshow, there are a few templates here to get you started. Template categories include Business, Calculators, Calendars & Schedules, Cards & Certificates, Letters, Presentation Designs, and more. You can also sort them by how many users each has and user ratings. To use a template in your Google Doc, from the New menu drop-down, choose “From template…” Google Docs Templates [via steverubel] More »