There are many tools available to help you prepare for migration to Office 2007. The 2007 Office Resource Kit has white papers, books and other tools that you can download, such as the Migrating to Excel 2007 white paper.

One of the tools is the Migration Planning Manager kit, which contains an Office File Converter that will do a bulk conversion of your Office XP or Office 2003 files. By converting the files to the newer version, you’ll be able to use all the new features, without individually converting each file as you open it.

The Migration Planning Manager utility and release notes are available for download on the Microsoft website. Also, Doug Mahugh describes the process in detail on his Office Interoperability blog.

Filed under: Excel, File Management | No Comments »

How many times has this happened to you? You have a graphic. You’re trying to find an exciting new way to prepare it for your blog or website.

You could scale the graphic, remove the graphic’s tail, head and bones, and serve the graphic as you would any other graphic dinner. But why bother, now that you can use Rovco’s amazing new computer tool, the Super Shrink O’Matic ‘08.

Yes, graphic user, the days of troublesome scaling, cutting and gutting are over, because Super Shrink O’Matic ‘08 is the tool that lets you use the graphic with no gif waste, and without scaling, cutting or gutting.

Here’s how it works: Catch a graphic, remove the hook, and drop the graphic - that’s the whole graphic - into the Super Shrink O’Matic ‘08. Now, adjust the control dial so that the graphic is blended just the way you like it. Yes, it’s that simple!

With apologies to fellow Canadian, Dan Aykroyd, and the legendary Bass-O-Matic.

Filed under: Excel, Graphics, Utilities | No Comments »

Sure, you can use Twitter to let everyone know what you had for lunch, or all about football practice, or what you fished out of the swimming pool, and plenty of people do just that. However, you can also use Twitter to ask for feedback, share links, or give quick updates on your business or industry. If you listen, you might pick up some ideas that you can turn into blog posts, or apply in your business.

Find and follow a few people in your industry, and a few others with interests in a different area. Stick with them for a little while, and if they’re boring, or too chatty, move on, and find a couple of new people. I follow some Excel colleagues, business associates, friends, and a few people in marketing, which is an area that I want to learn more about. If you’re looking for someone fascinating to follow, you’ll find me here.

A couple of days ago I found TwitterFeed, which sends your blog feed to Twitter. This might help a few more people find your blog and become subscribers. It requires an OpenID login, so I had to set that up, but the rest was very easy. Now, once a day, my new blog posts appear as Twitters.

For everything you ever wanted to know about Twitter, check the Twitter Fan Wiki. It has lists of users, groups, related applications, and tons of other tips and ideas.

Filed under: Blogging, Excel, Twitter | No Comments »

Use the free web application, LibraryThing, to catalogue your books, see what people with similar tastes are reading, and share reviews. There’s also an Early Reviewers program in which publishers provide free advance copies of books, for members to review. However, there are many more requests than copies available for most books, so your chances for a free book are slim.

Sign up is quick and easy — just enter a user name, password, and optional email address. With the free membership you can catalogue up to 200 of your books. For a $10 annual or $25 lifetime membership you can catalogue an unlimited number.

To add a book to your catalogue, just enter a few words from the title, or other info.

Click Search, and LibraryThing will return a list of matching items. Click on a book in the list, and it’s added to your library. You’ll see how many other members have added the book, and any reviews they’ve written. There are over 480,000 members, and 30 million books catalogued, so you’re bound to find a few people whose collections are similar to yours.

Other features include special interest groups and a Local Connection page, that shows events, libraries and bookstores in your area. If you’re an author, you can connect with your readers, and participate in an Author Chat. You can import a wish list from Amazon, or other sources, and export your library as a CSV or tab-delimited text file.

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This week there were several twitters about Excel and music, but no consensus on the type of music that works best. There’s also a growing number of twitters comparing Excel to Apple’s Numbers. There are the usual battles with Excel, and even a few people talking about pivot tables. And apologies to all the cat lovers, but the last comment in today’s list is my favourite.

Excel is Music to My Ears

• Sitting down in front of Excel for an epic planning session, and “Don’t Stop Believing” from Journey comes up on random play. Good or bad?
• Listening to the Across the Universe soundtrack and entering this never-ending mailing list into excel. Such a pain.
• Listening to Josh Ritter’s “The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter” while I enter invoices into my budget tracking excel spreadsheets.
• absolutely loving Pandora.com today. really helps me on days like this where i am using Excel constantly.
• Listening to Metallica, grinning like an idiot, trying to keep my head and feet still - trying to block out mind numbing excel work!

Excel vs Numbers

• Excel is ugly and smart. Numbers is pretty and stupid.
• When I open an excel doc in Mac Numbers I feel like I’m personally giving Bill Gates the finger…and I like it.
• Maybe so, but when I couldn’t add a trendline in Numbers, I switched to Excel. One piece of crap or another.
• Excel = bane of my existence. I hate virtually everything about it. Unfortunately, there’s no suitably powerful alternative. Numbers = joke.
• Figured out how to individual schedules for teachers using iWork Numbers. Not flawless enough for picky me, but more handsome than Excel.
• Just spent an hour debugging a cell forumlae in Numbers. Remembering fondly the VB back-end to Excel.

The Zen of Pivot Tables

• Ever say to yourself, “nothing in my youth prepared me to create pivot tables in excel” or is it just me?
• One of my staff is getting very excited about pivot tables in Excel. She is quite odd
• the zen of msft excel - find peace in your pivot table
• Pivot tables? No accounting for taste
• It’s 2.30am, I got a problems with Excel pivot tables, half a pack of crisps, it’s dark, and I’m wearing sunglasses.

Let the Battle Begin

• There’s a minor Excel/Windows Vista tantrum going on in the living room. I’m readying the tranquilizer darts.
• pushing enter on an excel doc at work all day maybe merits its own drinking game
• welcome to the dark side, where we use Microsoft Excel and see little white boxes in our sleep, like a less fun Tetris
• no matter whose Office suite you use 20 years from now, you’ll be using the same Excel formulas. They’re not going away; learn them
• Excel Charts makes me want to punch kittens. It is SO Monday.

Filed under: Excel, Twitter | 4 Comments »

If you’ll be travelling soon, you might want to learn a few key phrases of another language before you go. Free language lessons are available online, at the BBC website. It’s good to see Nick’s tax dollars hard at work.

It’s too late to learn much Mandarin before the Olympics are over, but you can study French, Urdu, Welsh, Japanese, and many other languages.

The Quick Fix page has a list of essential holiday phrases that you can print or download as an mp3 file. Take these along on your travels and you’ll be able to say “Sorry, I don’t speak Albanian,” “We were robbed,” or “Danger! Avalanche!”

Filed under: Travel | 2 Comments »

If you’re frustrated or pleased with a company or product, you can join the discussions at Get Satisfaction. The site is similar to the Microsoft newsgroups, with a wide range of questions and comments. Company employees are encouraged to participate, and customers help one another.

You can ask questions, describe problems, voice an opinion, or help someone else. Microsoft is participating, and there are a few Excel questions listed.

There are hundreds of other companies too, so if you’re looking for help, or want to evaluate a company or product, this might be a good place to start.

Filed under: Customer Service, Excel | No Comments »

Maybe I’m the last person in the world to learn this, but with two big monitors to navigate, I find this tip pretty handy. You can add a Links Toolbar and My Desktop Toolbar to the Windows Taskbar!

I’ve added many programs and files to the QuickStart toolbar in the Windows Taskbar, and use it frequently throughout the day. I also use it to find open windows — occasionally I’ll right-click on the taskbar, and click on Cascade Windows, or Undo Cascade, to sort through a mess of windows that I have open.

Add a Links Toolbar

But I had never explored the Toolbars menu, and its options, until a couple of days ago.

Now I’ve added a Links toolbar and Desktop toolbar to the Windows Taskbar, and can quickly open the sites and files that I’ve stored in those locations. No more exhausting trips all the way across a monitor, to double-click on a file shortcut. I just click on the Desktop toolbar, and click on the file listed there.

Add a Site to the Links Toolbar

• To add a site to the Links toolbar, you can drag its icon from the browser address bar, onto the Links toolbar.
  
• Also, if there’s a link on a web page or news feed, you can drag that to the Links toolbar.
• You can also add a site to your Favorites, and store it in the Links folder, so it will appear on the Links toolbar.

Filed under: Windows | No Comments »

When answering newsgroup Excel questions, or doing testing for client projects, I often create a quick table, with a few rows and columns. The headings, such as a list of months or weekdays can be generated by using AutoFill. That just leaves the body of the table, where I want some numbers for the test.

I used to calculate numbers with a RAND or RANDBETWEEN formula, then copy and paste the results as values. But that’s a lot of steps when you’re in a hurry, so I built my own number generator, that runs with a click or two. The values aren’t important, I just want something to populate a table, pivot table or quick chart.

I wrote macros to generate numbers in different ranges, and added these to a toolbar menu. You could add toolbar buttons, or assign shortcut keys to run them. In Excel 2007, add them to the Quick Access Toolbar.

My macro code is shown below. Do you have a different way to create dummy numbers for testing?

‘====================================
Sub SRandRange()
Dim c As Range
Dim x As Long, y As Long
Application.EnableEvents = False
Application.ScreenUpdating = False

x = Application.InputBox(”Start Number”)
y = Application.InputBox(”End Number”)

For Each c In Selection
c.Value = randbetween(x, y)
Next

Application.EnableEvents = True
Application.ScreenUpdating = True
End Sub
‘====================================
Sub SRand10()
Dim c As Range
Application.EnableEvents = False
Application.ScreenUpdating = False

For Each c In Selection
c.Value = Evaluate(”=ROUND(RAND()*10,0)”)
Next c

Application.EnableEvents = True
Application.ScreenUpdating = True
End Sub
‘====================================

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This Saturday, when you’re relaxing at home after working with Excel files all week, what will you wear? This Equations t-shirt looks like the perfect choice.

And next week, when you head back to the office, you might find this Calculator Belt Buckle useful. The ad claims that it’s “Great for accountants, cheaters or math geeks alike.” And what could possibly be wrong with that?

Filed under: Excel | 3 Comments »