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How to Excel (with Excel)
Legal academics have a well-known aversion to numbers. But Excel – for all its faults – can be a huge help when managing large amounts of data, be it numbers or words. I have used Excel to analyse cases, build tables and charts, and manage all sorts of data. We spoke with Christina Ward, Liaison Librarian (Research) at Melbourne Law School, about essential tips for using Excel for academic research. Our tips: To swap rows and columns in a table, copy the table, select “paste special” and click transpose. To reverse rows or columns in a table, try this trick. To manage data, the sort and filter functions are incredibly…
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Microsoft Word
Love it or hate it, Microsoft Word is ubiquitous in an academic setting (at least, for those of us who don’t use LaTeX!). But are you using Word in the best way? Are there tips or tricks you are missing, that could save time or agony? We spoke with Christina Ward, Liaison Librarian (Research) at Melbourne Law School, about the essential tips for using Word for academic research, and navigating large documents (like a PhD!). Comparing documents: do you have co-authors who always forget to track changes when amending a document? Has a copy editor returned your files to you, but failed to identify the changes? Comparing documents will be…
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How to Excel (with Excel)
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Reference management
Do you spend hours fussing with footnotes or battling with bibliographies? Does the thought of resubmitting that article fill you with fear, because the house style is different? Are you spending valuable funds on research assistance to fix footnotes? There is a better way: reference management systems can transform your research. Introducing: Zotero Zotero is my preferred reference management system. It is easy to use, integrates well with other software like Word, and can be adapted to your individual referencing needs. The best bit: it is free. It can be downloaded here. For legal academics, there is an extension of Zotero called Juris-M. This offers additional functionality if you often…
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How to Excel (with Excel)
