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Haven't made any games for a while...oh, wait, I made one last week! Oh, well, it doesn't hurt to make another one I guess :-)Actually, this is a type of game that I wanted to make for a while. I remember Debra Dalgleish who owns the Contextures site ...

Those Battleships Are Back Again!

Happy New Year everyone! Did you have a nice holiday? Mine was one of the best ever :-)One of my first games was Battleships. It was fun to make, my VBA skills were very lacking at the time so I mostly used formulas and conditional formatting.Thi...

Excel 2010

Got Excel 2010? So do I. Looks like some good stuff has been added, right?In case you are wondering, I have updated JMT Excel Utilities to work with Excel 2010 but it's still in "beta" at the momment. I will do some more testing over the next week or ...

Excel 2007 Colors - Color Tools

Better late than never, I have made some improvements to my main utilities again. The color picker and the GETTINTANDSHADE function are more acccurate. I also added a new tool caled "Show Excel 2007 Color Details" which shows the Theme, Tint And Shade, Co...

Days Per Week Between 2 Dates

Out of all the formulas (formulae to the more educated than me) that I work with, I would say that Date formulas are the hardest to get right. Maybe not so surprising considering how weeks don't divide nicely into months. It really is very naughty of them...

More Chart Tools

I recently added 2 new chart tools to JMT Excel Utilities -Reposition Data LabelsResize ChartThey are rather simple tools compared to what you might pay for. Then again, they are free :-)Here is the download link.

More Stuff For JMT Excel Utilities

When I don't blog for a while, it could mean I've decided to become a normal human being (at least pretend) or I am up to something...Well, if you believe the former, I'm sure Santa or the Giant Intergalactic Popsicle will bring you a nice present thi...

Formula Tools

2 new tools have been added to JMT Excel Utilities.Find Precedents and DependentsAn alternative to using Excel's built-in auditing tools. A form appears listing the addresses of all precedents or dependents of the active cell, including other worksh...

Right Click Menu Items for JMT Utilities

Despite some major changes to the user interface in the more recent versions of Excel, the right click menus have remained relatively unchanged. In Excel 2007, Filter and Sort appeared on the Cell right click menu (a good idea). I see the Paste options fo...

Fun and Games

Now you see it...Last year, I made one of my Excel games. You know the one - you shuffle the numbers around until you get all of them in order.I decided to make a userform version and added to my main add-in, JMT Excel Utilities. My games collection...

Latest Version Of JMT Excel Utilities

Recently I have made a number of improvements to my utilities. Sorry for not posting sooner!CHOOSEFROMRANGE and CHOOSEFROMLIST are 2 useful new functions. You can use them to return a random value from a range (for the former) or a custom list (for th...

Classic Excel Colors Remade

Im pleased to announce a major rewrite of the code in my Classic Excel Colors add-in.Although mostly okay, I had noticed that some colors did always not change as expected and made some version/selection specific amendments to the code.I also a...

Auto Cell Edit

Auto Cell Edit is an addin that edits cell entries as you make them.Toggle the addin on and also what other options you want to be edited -Column Width (Autofit)Row Height (Autofit)Proper CaseFirst Letter Upper CaseSpell CheckWhate...

Capturx For Excel

Ive been meaning to write about this for a while but things have been busy :-)Last year I was asked by the Adapx company to try out their Capturx add-in for Excel.Using their digital pen, you can write on their forms when printed on paper, then ...

DIY Slicers

Better late than never...After seeing Microsofts post about Slicers on their Excel blog, I thought it might be fun to make my own version. Maybe I cant wait until the official release of 2010?Anyway, I put together something that would show wh...

Gmail delete button

Sometimes, it's the little things that make all thedifference. One of the few real annoyances I've complained about in Gmail is the purposeful (on Google's part) lack of aDelete button. A while back, I tried GreaseMonkey and a script that provided this capability and promptly had my Gmailaccount suspended for "unusual activity".

One burned, twice shy. I rely on Gmail for too manyinteractions to take a chance on losing access over a button.

I'm happy to report that a new version of theGmail delete button is now available inboth GreaseMonkey script and compiled form. I've been using the compiled version (you do not need the GreaseMonkeyengine to use this) for a week now with no problems. Thank you Arantius!

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Que jumps into eBooks - offers free Office 2003 guide

Que Publishing has jumped into the eBookbusiness and is offering a free eBook guide to Office 2003 to introduce their new electronic versions of the 10-MinuteGuide series.

Que is offering a free download ofthe 10-Minute Guide to Microsoft Office 2003 (PDF e-Book) for free to quickly learn how to use Office task panes,customize your Office applications, use the Office web integration features, and migrate from your older version ofMicrosoft Office to the 2003 edition. This PDF e-Book can be printed, saved, and e-mailed without limitations.

Afull line of 10 Minute Guides on all of the Microsoft Office 2003 applications are available in Secure Acrobat PDFformat (DRM restrictions apply on saving the file and printing) for $6.95 each. The current promotion knocks 10% offthat price. Registered members of the site get a 30% discount which brings the price per title to under five bucks.

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MindManager add-ins for SharePoint

Mindjet continues to find interesting waysto integrate MindManager into Microsoft's products. The latest addition is a set of add-ins that integrate mind maps into SharePoint, Microsoft'scollaboration server. Maps can be posted to a SharePoint space and checked out for local editing using MindManager 6.Very nice.

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Claritude releases SpeedFiler for Outlook

Claritude Software has officially released SpeedFiler. I've covered SpeedFiler during its beta phase (here and here) and have found it to be awelcome addition to my Outlook environment. The two things this add-in does that have saved me enormous amounts of timeare:

Filing new e-mails in a subject folder rather than dumping them into the Sent Items folder. Idon't always want to do this but when I do, it's a great time saver. You have the option of selecting any folder as thedefault repository for new e-mails you send or, like me, can choose on an individual message basis when you want toredirect where the message gets filed.
Keeping my hands on the keyboard. I can file any message byinvoking the SpeedFiler hotkey (CTRL Shift V) and typing the first few letters of the destination folder's name. Muchfaster than using the mouse. I tend to use the SpeedFiler toolbar wen I'm in pen mode on my Tablet PC which is also agreat time saver since SpeedFiler caches the most recently accessed folders in a handy drop-down menu.

Asingle license costs $19.95 and a trial version is available.

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Engadget picks the best of CES

Engadget was all ove the Consumer Electronics Show this past week and they've justput together a list of the best gadgets they saw. From personal video to big screens, they have assembled a selectionof objects guaranteed to inspire some lust. Go check it out.

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Sniping from the sidelines at Google Pack

I didn't make it to CES. I'm bummed about thatfor a number of reasons (although I can't say I feel too deprived at missing the $18 hot dogs, endless taxi lines, andsardine can crush). Sitting on the sidelines, I've been able to take it all in courtesy of the crew from Engadget and my Tablet PC buddies JKand Rob.

The big buzz all week was about what Google would orwould not be announcing. True to their word, they did not mention a Google PC (except to repeatedly deny any interestin building such a beast) and flatly denied interest in a Google OS when asked directly by Weblogs, Inc.s JasonCalacanis after the keynote. Instead, they fired the expected shot across the bow at iTunes and other purveyors ofdownloadable video, announcing some interesting partnerships with CBS and the NBA.

The other announcementwas Google Pack - a collection of Google's software applications augmented by acurious selection of third-party products that Google wants to download, install, and monitor en masse on your PC. Ihave to agree with Joe Wikert ofWiley who points out that in the book publishing world this is called shovelware. Some folks in the Tablet PC worldare even less charitable and call it crapware.

Google Pack includes:

Adobe Reader 7
Ad-Aware SE Personal
GalleryPlayer HDImages
Google Desktop
Google Earth
Google Pack Screensaver
GooglePicasa Photo Organizer/Editor
Google Talk
Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer
Google Video player
Mozilla Firefox with Google Toolbar
Norton AntiVirus 2005 SpecialEdition
RealPlayer
Trillian

According to Danny Sullivan at SearchEngineWatch, the impetus behindthis was the pain Larry and Sergey themselves experienced when setting up new PCs, having to click through countlessscreens of wizards, EULAs, and confirmations. Yes, it can be time-consuming to set up a new PC but I'm not buying intothis assortment nor am I interested in having Google scan, probe, and poke around my system. There's a fine linebetween being helpful and being intrusive and Google Pack steps over it in my opinion. The Google Updater, the gluethat binds this collection, is essentially a back door into my PC for Google to inventory and manage my software.

In theory, you get to choose what'sinstalled and what's not. But apparently in practice, this doesn't quite play out. Norton, the worst selection in thispackage, apparently is installed by default, forcing you to then remove it from your system. Anyone who's wrestled withthe mess this product leaves behind will probably have the same reaction I did - ummm... no thanks.

Not onlythat, it's a trial subscription, similar to what comes pre-installed on many systems today. After the trial, you haveto pay and pray - pray that you won't get hosed when the next version of Norton is released. The tales of Nortonupgrade and subscription woes you can find easily enough by Googling the product name are enough to convince mostpeople to stay far away from this product.

Firefox? Got it thanks. Ad-Aware? Ditto. Acrobat Reader? I useAcrobat Pro and absolutely do not want or need the Reader program installed.

I suppose a novice user witha shiny new PC might find this useful. Personally, I'd rather configure my family and friend's machines myself. WillGoogle grab some desktop real estate with Google Pack. Oh yes, I think they will. Is this, as a few wags have opined, aTrojan Horse? In many ways I believe it is.

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Win a free GTD seminar and signed book

The good folks at InBubbleWrap have hit the gold mine with today's offer. Enter for your chanceto win a free pass to a Getting Things Done seminar and autographed copy of the book signed by David Allen. This ispotentially life-changing stuff we're talking about here folks. Head right over and enter now.

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Call Log makes the Treo even more useful

Chapura has released a great tool thatmakes the Treo 650 an even more powerful mobile tool. Call Log allowsyou to take notes related to any call you make (or receive) while you are on the call or after the fact. These notesare then synchronized to your Outlook Journal as a new record associated with the contact you were speaking with.

I use a Bluetooth headset when I'm on a call on my Treo to keep my hands free for other essential tasks (likeholding the steering wheel when I'm driving - but that's another sermon). As I've been using Call Log for the pastcouple of weeks, I've been typing notes right into the call log record as I talk. Which means I no longer have to besitting in front of my PC or rely on pen and paper to capture notes from the call. It's a great mobility solution.

These notes are easily accessed in Outlook once I've synced where they can then be transferred to a mind map,e-mail message, or other digital file. And, as an added bonus, Call Log lets me use the Treo's 5-way Navigator in away the standard Call Log application built into the Treo doesn't.

Call Log costs $29.95. A trial isavailable.

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Hyperwords extension out of beta

Hyperwords is a new Firefox extension that provides an incredible rangeof actions you can perform on selected text on any page you can open in your browser. Options include search, referencelook up, mapping, tagging, blogging, and e-mailing. I love the power!

What I didn't love in the early betareleases was Hyperwords popping its menu every time I selected some text. Simply stated, it got in my way. I mentiondthis to the developers and they assured me hat the official release would provide control over how the menu wasinvoked. I'm happy to report that Hyperwords now provides a number of options to manage the menu's appearance (seeimage below).

Every option in Hyperwords has a single letter shortcut key associated with it so you canquickly invoke a particular operation by a series of letters to execute the command you wish to select. For example, ifI want to tag a page in del.icio.us, I simply tap g, p, d.

Hyperwords is free and currently works in Firefox 1.5 on Windows, Mac OS, and Linux. An Internet Explorer version isbeing considered.

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Google honors MLK with today's logo

"I have a dream... " I remember hearing Dr.King's most famous speech (I was a lad of 9 at the time) and the uproar, furor, passion, and celebration it usheredinto our lives. Over the years, I've listened to this speech many times and it has never failed to touch me deeply andgive me hope. These closing lines give me chills... always have... always will.

"And when this happens,when we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every tenement and every hamlet, from every state and every city, wewill be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestantsand Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old spiritual, "Free at last, free at last.Thank God Almighty, we are free at last.""

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The winds of change are blowing

I've had this phrase set on my various instant messaging clients for the past few days and it's prompted more than a fewcurious inquiries about just what is up.

This will be my last post here at The Office Weblog. I've beeninvited to contribute at ZDNet where I will be writing under the title "Office Evolution". Don't click just yet - I'll be back online sometimein the next few days, once the wires get twisted together and the lights start blinking.

I've had anincredible time writing here at Weblogs, Inc. I jumped when Jason Calacanis invited me to join a handful of otherbloggers. Back then, the promise of this network was just that - tons of potential and and a lot of big dreams. Thesepast two years I've had the great fortune to work with some fantastically talented people, make more than a few goodfriends, and have had a chance to speak with, interview, and pick the brains of a number of scary smart people.

After almost two years, nearly 2500 posts, and more than 2 million words, I am really excited about this newopportunity to explore the changing way we approach work:

Office: Not just the obvious office software suite coverage but also Software as a Service, Web 2.0online applications, and the changing nature of office and knowledge work (think time-shifting, virtual teams andcompanies, telecommuters, and free agents).
Productivity: I lovetalking about techniques and tools to get more done. Whether it's Getting Things Done, a great new add-in for Outlook,a compelling life hack, or even a Moleskine Journal, if it relates to reducing stress and creating more time to focuson what's truly important, I'll be all over it.
Mobile Computing:From the Tablet PC to the Treo or Smartphone, we're getting cooler mobile toys every day. Not only do the latest mobileplatforms offer more computing power, better battery life, and greater usability than ever before, the variety of formfactors is increasing at an incredible pace. The recent introduction of the Nokia Internet Tablet and the refresh ofthe OQO palmtop are good examples of net-gen mobility tools that continue to push the envelope on portability andpower. USB thumb drives with a complete suite of software are another trend I'm simply fascinated by and plan tocover.

As you can probably tell, I'm just a little bit excited. ;^)

Check me out at the newaddress and let me know what you think.

See you on the other side...

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Firefly Season 2 - help make it happen

Shiny. The Firefly saga may not be over yet. A group of folks are trying to bringback one of my all-time favorite sci-fi series are rallying the browncoats to demonstrate there is enough fan supportto warrant a new series. Alternative distribution is the key - they're thinking about pay-per-view, monthly DVDmailings, and streaming episodes to your PC or Mac. You can create a profile to add to the demographic data they'reassembling to convince the production and distribution companies this can fly. Check it out, add your profile, and keepyour fingers crossed.

UPDATE: From the Season 2 page, it's clear this is an independenteffort:

"We are an independent production company and core group of Browncoats. We are not affiliatedwith 20th Century Fox or Universal Pictures.

We are currently pursuing the rights to continue the seriesfrom Fox and make it available to the fans, either directly or via another broadcaster.

The optionalinformation collected at this site is simply used to determine where and how the series should be marketed toconsumers. (that's you!)

This site is NOT a solicitation for funds. If anyone claiming to represent thissite, or any other site for that matter, asks you for money or sensitive personal information, you should report itimmediately."

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egoSurfing - like web surfing only it's all about you

The latest game tomeasure your online cred is called egoSurf and it searches across a number ofdomains including Google, Yahoo!, and Technorati to determine your score. The score is curious at best and suspiciousat worst but the toy is fun to play with and the resulting multi-dial display would make a fighter pilot smile. You cansubcribe to an RSS feed for your egoSurf too (not sure why you'd want to do that but you can). I was going to pretend tobe shy and retiring but since a number of other bloggers, including my podcast partner James Kendrick, have been posting theirscores, I figured I'd play along.

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Great, in-depth review of Office 12

Filed under: Business Applications

ActiveWin.com has a very well-written andhevaily illustrated review of Office 12 written by Andrede Costa. This is, to date, one of the two best resources I know of for people who either could not or chose not toparticipate in the beta of the next generation suite from Microsoft (Paul Thurrott's preview is the other). As I(and other beta testers like Ed Bott) have stated in the past, therules for writing about the beta are kind of murky. I'm glad Andre got permission to write such an in-depth andextensively illustrated review. If you're at all curious about what's coming in the next version, you will be too.

Hat tip to Bink.nu

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SpeedFiler 1.0 release candidate

Claritude Software has just announced the firstRelease Candidate of their forthcoming SpeedFiler add-in for Microsoft Outlook. Installation instructions and downloadinformation is available here. I first discussed SpeedFilerin a December post. It is a lightweight*add-in for Outlook that makes the process of filing incoming and outbound e-mail messages a lot easier and is quiteadaptable to a number of productivity workflows including Getting Things Done andMichael Linenberger's Total Workday Control.

SpeedFilerwill cost $19.95 for a single-user license when it is released. A discount is offered if you subscribe to the Claritudee-mail newsletter.

* Lightweight, in this context, is a good thing. As many Outlook users know, some add-ins canconsume significant RAM and CPU resources and make Outlook... well, cranky. I've found SpeedFiler to be very wellbehaved in Outlook 2003.

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Time Bandits: a great GTD article in American Way

I just received a note from a business acquaintance that he'd just finished reading "Time Bandits", an article inAmerican Airlines' in-flight magazine about David Allen's Getting Things Doneproductivity system. He told me it made the article even more enjoyable because he knew a certain blogger who wasquoted throughout the piece. Chris Tucker, the author, interviewed me months ago. Frankly, I had all but forgottenabout our chat until I got the e-mail this evening.

It's a fine article (no, not just because I'm in it).Tucker does a terrific job documenting how GTD has impacted individuals and companies large and small. My bloggingbuddy Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, is alsoquoted in the article.

It's been quite a month (and it's barely half over).

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Happy 250th Wolfgang

Today is the 250th birthday of WolfgangAmadeus Mozart. Google marks the occasion with a nice logo and searchresults page. NPR has a slew of articlesand links.

I remember as a kid going with may parents to the Young People's Concerts at Lincoln Center in NewYork. These concerts, performed by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra were first led by Leonard Bernstein and later byMichael Tilson Thomas. I have fond memories of trips to the city to listen to some fabulous music followed by lunch(usually crepes at The Magic Pan) and maybe a trip to F.A.O. Schwartz (if we didn't fidget too much during theconcert).

Mozart was one of my favorites because of the stories the great conductors told about him and theawe they obviously held him in. My other favorite was Stravinsky. It wasn't until years later that I learned howscandalous this was ;^)

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No more personalized menus - hooray!

Jensen Harris reports some very welcome news on his Officeblog - Personalized Menus will no longer be switched on by default when Office is installed. Since the introduction ofthis feature, the default preference in Microsoft Office has been to have the Personalized Menus feature - one ofMicrosoft's most ill-advised attempts to be helpful IMO - turned on by default.

Personalized Menus truncateevery menu in Office applications in an attempt to make navigating easier. The theory was that, over time, Office wouldlearn which menu items you used most often and would present those options in the shortened menus. The very first thingI do when I do a fresh install of Office is turn this feature off.

Now you might be thinking this isn't sucha big deal - what with the new Ribbon UI in Office 12. Yes and no. Many of the Office applications (the main OutlookUI, Visio, Publisher, Project) are not getting the new interface in Office 12. There are a number of reasons why andJensen has written some great posts explaining the reasoning behind these decisions. The long and short of it is this -beginning with the next build, Personalized Menus will only show up if you want them to.

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SnagIt 8 redefines "best" in screen capture

I've been a huge SnagIt fan for a long time. It's a staple ingredient in my must-havelist of tools. and it's one of the first things I install on my system when I either rebuild or get a new toy.TechSmith has just announced SnagIt 8 and the new features and shiny interface are a great example of an upgrade thatdelivers solid value, improved usability, and a whole new set of "this is so cool!" ways to think about usingcaptured content. Here are a few of my favorites:

Copy Web Pages with Links: You can capturea Web page with SnagIt and all of the links remain clickable.You can save the capture in a number of formats thatsupport embedded links: Web page with image (.mht), Adobe PDF, (.pdf) or Macromedia Flash (.swf). The links areembedded in the capture and clickable.

Add Interactivity: SnagIt's new hotspotfeature makes adding interactivity easy. Use SnagIt's hotspot feature to specify parts of the image that candisplay text or images when moused over or open a Web page when clicked. These interface features allow you to addhelpful hints, explanatory illustrations, or even create a functioning prototype of a Web page or applicationinterface.

Save as PDF: Self-explanatory. Save any screen capture as an Acrobat file - agreat addition to the wide range of file types SnagIt supports.

A comparison chart showing all of thefeatures in SnagIt 8 and earlier versions is here. A newSnagIt 8 license can be yours for a very reasonable $39.95. If you are a current user, you can check your upgradeavailability from SnagIt itself on on the web - discounted upgrades are available for current customers. If you've yetto try this indispensable tool, a 30-day trial version can be downloaded here.

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Gmail update: a Delete button

At first I thought I was seeing double.Long frustrated by Google's refusal to add a delete button to Gmail, I had installed the compiled Greasemonkey script Iposted about a while back and it's been working fine. A short while ago, I clicked on the button and... nothinghappened. I looked to see what might have gone amiss and saw not one but two Delete buttons. I disabled the add-onbutton in the extensions dialog, restarted Firefox and...

SHAZAM!

There was a shiny new Deletebutton. This hasn't been officially announced yet (no red text at the top of the page) but the Digg kids are all overit. If you use Gmail, expect to see it show up sometime soon.

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PowerPivot Part 4 of 4: A geographic visual display of 18 million US Census records

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 18:00:00 -0400

Part 1: http://www.dailydoseofexcel.com/archives/2010/02/26/powerpivot-part-1-of-4/Part 2: http://www.dailydoseofexcel.com/archives/2010/02/27/powerpivot-part-2-of-4-prepping-the-census-data/Part 3: http://www.dailydoseofexcel.com/archives/2010/03/02/powerpivot-part-3-of-4-conditional-shape-colors/In this tip I discuss integrating the result of a PowerPivot analysis of a large data set (18 million records) into a geographic map using a method I call Conditional Color of Shapes.For a version in a page by itself (i.e., not in a scrollable iframe as below) visit [...]

Charting House

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 09:00:47 -0400

I was watching a DVR’d episode of House recently and I became aware that the amount of show between commercials was changing as the show went on. The commercials were getting closer together. Then at the end, a long run of show between the last commercial and the credits. I did what [...]

Language Detection

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 09:00:05 -0400

Carim asked an interesting question:Do you think a UDF could determine the string language … ?In Switzerland, there are three national languages (German, French, Italian) and it would be very handy to have an UDF return in which language a given string is writtenMy first thought was to create a group of common words in [...]

Importing text files in an Excel sheet

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 04:27:54 -0500

Hi there!Many times it is a newsgroup post which triggers me to do a writeup on a specific subject. This time, a user asked how he could import a csv file every month, without having to go through the hassle of renaming the file and re-defining the import settings each time.Opening the file in Excel [...]

Using the MATCH Function for a Linear Search and a Binary Search

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:43:01 -0500

Given the problem I have with images and blog posts, I’m trying something new. I uploaded the content of the post to my website and am using an iframe to post it here. Yes, the UI experience is somewhat different than scrolling the entire browser window but hopefully it is something most people [...]

Keno Odds

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:37:44 -0500

We were trying to figure out the odds on keno the other day. There’s something about statistics that doesn’t create appropriately strong synapses in my brain. I got an A in stats in college, so I know I can retain the information long enough to be tested on it. But put me [...]

Getting Array Data from a Filtered List in VBA

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 16:50:31 -0500

Getting data from an Excel sheet into an array is usually best accomplished with a statement that looks something like this:vMyArray = Sheet1.UsedRange.ValueI thought it would be keen to fill an array from a filtered list, so I codedSub ArrFilteredList() Dim vArr As Variant vArr = Sheet1.UsedRange.SpecialCells(xlCellTypeVisible).Value [...]

Plain and Pretty

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 06:30:44 -0500

Mike Alexander tells me that I have to sell, so sell I shall.First, the pretty:Microsoft MVPs Jon Peltier (Peltier Technical Services) and Mike Alexander (DataPig Technologies) are joining together again to bring you our acclaimed Excel Dashboard and Visualization Bootcamp!This 3-day boot camp is designed for Excel users who need to more effectively synthesize [...]

Office Automation

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 08:00:58 -0500

Someone asked if anyone automates Office applications any more. That struck me as kind of funny. If I had to guess, I would guess that there are more lines of VBA code (poorly written or not) that automate Office applications than all the COBOL, VB6, PHP, and any other language you can think [...]

PowerPivot - Part 3 of 4: Conditional Shape Colors

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 21:13:11 -0500

Part 1: http://www.dailydoseofexcel.com/archives/2010/02/26/powerpivot-part-1-of-4/Part 2: http://www.dailydoseofexcel.com/archives/2010/02/27/powerpivot-part-2-of-4-prepping-the-census-data/As mentioned in the Part 1, I had developed this technique to conditionally color shapes some time ago. Based on customer feedback and my own experience I made changes to simplify the various connections required to make it all work.Also, documenting the technique was easier to do with a webpage [...]

Excel 2010 Beta Released

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 15:35:09 -0500

Last month Microsoft released the beta version of Office 2010. The new version includes new versions of all the classics: Word, Powerpoint, Sharepoint and our favorite, Excel 2010!Here is a short video from Microsoft about the new changes:See What’s New in Microsoft Excel 2010

Excel Conditional Formatting

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 10:46:32 -0500

Excel has a strong and often missed feature, called Conditional Formatting, which allows you to format a cell depending on a rule [it's value]. This can be very useful for worksheets like Product Quantities and Dates. Let me show you what I mean.Lets start off with a simple chart of products quantities in the warehouse.We’ll [...]

VBA Routine to Sort Sheets

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 13:21:49 -0500

The following routine will sort the sheets in a workbook alphabetically. The flag Sort_Mode_Descending can be switched between descending and ascending as required. The routine is case INSENSITIVE.Sub Sort_Sheets()Dim Sort_Mode_Descending As BooleanDim No_of_Sheets As IntegerDim Outer_Loop As IntegerDim Inner_Loop As IntegerNo_of_Sheets = Sheets.Count'Change Flag As appropriateSort_Mode_Descending = FalseFor Outer_Loop = 1 To No_of_Sheets [...]

VBA Routine to return Column Letter of Cell

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 23:27:03 -0500

The standard Excel Column Function returns the number rather than the letter of the column e.g:Column(E4) returns the number 5 rather than the letter EColumn(AD12) returns the number 30 rather than AD.The following function returns the letter rather than the number of the column. So in the above two examples we have the letters [...]

VBA: Extract Number From String

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 11:16:49 -0500

The following function will extract the numerical portion from a string:Function Extract_Number_from_Text(Phrase As String) As DoubleDim Length_of_String As IntegerDim Current_Pos As IntegerDim Temp As StringLength_of_String = Len(Phrase)Temp = ""For Current_Pos = 1 To Length_of_StringIf (Mid(Phrase, Current_Pos, 1) = "-") Then Temp = Temp & Mid(Phrase, Current_Pos, 1)End IfIf (Mid(Phrase, Current_Pos, 1) = ".") Then [...]

Find the nth Word in a String

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 11:54:19 -0400

The following function will find the nth word in a string:Function Find_nth_word(Phrase As String, n As Integer) As StringDim Current_Pos As LongDim Length_of_String As IntegerDim Current_Word_No As IntegerFind_nth_word = ""Current_Word_No = 1'Remove Leading SpacesPhrase = Trim(Phrase)Length_of_String = Len(Phrase)For Current_Pos = 1 To Length_of_String If (Current_Word_No = n) Then [...]

Adding and Naming Sheets to Excel Workbook

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 16:44:44 -0400

The following code works opening a workbook. It automatically adds a new sheet and labels it with the date. It also checks to see that the sheet doesnt already exist to allow for the possibility of it being opened more than once a day.This code makes use of the Workbook Open Event and must [...]

Adding and Saving Workbooks

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 14:16:57 -0400

The following code will prompt the user for the name of a workbook. It will then create and save a newworkbook with the same name.Private Sub CommandButton1_Click()Dim Workbook_Name As StringDim New_Workbook As WorkbookSet New_Workbook = NothingWorkbook_Name = InputBox(Prompt:="Workbook Name.", Title:="Enter the WorkBook Name :")Set New_Workbook = Workbooks.AddWith New_Workbook.Activate.SaveAs Workbook_NameEnd WithEnd SubTo download the .XLSM file [...]

VBA Function to Show Cell Formula

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 08:58:32 -0400

The following UDF will return the formulae for a given cell reference:Function Show_Cell_Formulae(Cell As Range) As String Show_Cell_Formulae = "Cell " & Cell.Address & " has the formulae : ' " & Cell.Formula & " '"End FunctionSo if we have:Where the cell B7 has the formulae : =MAX(B5:G5) then we can type [...]

Matching Multiple Items

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 23:58:59 -0400

Imagine that we have the following 2 lists each consisting of 3 columns of data:And we need to find those items that are in List 1 that are in List 2. However ALL 3 columns of data must match for items to be in both lists. One way would be to construct a comprehensive IF [...]