Free productivity tools for Word, Excel and Visio

This site provides productivity tools that enhance the standard editing fuctions of Word, Excel and Visio, allowing you to concentrate on the content, and not be distracted by mechanical editing functions and other tedious activies.

I've been working on these tools over the last few years. They clearly indicate that I need to get out more, but I hope that you like them.

Looking Forward

The tools to be published are listed in the Wish List tab.  Leave a comment if you would like to promote a tool up the list.

Releases will be made roughly every 2-3 weeks, with advice and suggestion posts made as required in between.

Word Tools

The Word tools consist of a series of Word macros that have been developed over several years to help me become more efficient at creating document content.  I use then all each
day and regret not having them available when I move to a machine that does not have them loaded.

The table tools scheduled for release shortly are really important to my work.  They allow me to create consise content in tabular format without the heavy overhead of renumbering entries and carryng out tidy functions like removing unwanted lines and punctuating the entries.

There are also some simple functions such as the bookmark tool that are a gentle introdction to VBA delvelopment for Word.

Typing Productivty

Typing Productivity is a set of rules and strategies that amps up Word's autocorrect function into a clever typing prediction system.  It will improve your typing accuracy and improve throughput by actually typing less. I'll inlcude a dictionary of the standard vocabulary mapping and prove tools for you to import these into your dictionary and allow you to add and manage your own abbreviations.

Visio Tools

The visio tools are also a series of macros that really speed up some of the tedious aspects of Visio documentation, such as make shapes the same size, numbering shapes, and keeping things lined up.  There are some clever enhancements to the standard swim-lane diagram, and value added updates to public domain BPMN templates.  I have also developed a handdrawn template for process flows for that informal look that helps communicate idea.

Excel Tools

The Excel tools I have created over the years are quite context or tasks specific and I'm working through them to find those that have a general application.

Ideas 

Let me know if you have ideas for tools and if you have any ideas for improvement.

Martin