July 2009

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jethro's picture

Default sorting options in Excel

This article has been written in response to a readers question.

CB107982_LoRes Traci writes:

When I take a spreadsheet that someone else has created & remove some unwanted columns & rows, add a notes column of my own outside of the last column of their original spreadsheet, it won’t pick up that last “notes” column when it sorts.  If I highlight the entire document it will, but most people don’t highlight the whole thing when they sort.  We share this document with other people, they sort it and don’t realize that they didn’t sort the notes field.  Do you know of a fix to include the extra added “notes” column in the “my data has headers” “sort by” option that will travel with the document?

jethro's picture

Excel News from Charley Kyd

Introducing IncSight DB

Charley Kyd has extended his offerings for business excel users with a new product called IncSight DB.

Unlike his first plug-n-play dashboard product, this one links its reports to an Excel database. This design offers several great advantages:

  • It should take less than an hour to set up a report.
  • Reports can be updated in seconds each period.
  • The Excel database can contain formulas that return data from PivotTables, text files, OLAP databases, and other sources.

You can see a video of IncSight DB at his site, which shows how he sets up a new dashboard in about 20 minutes.

Charley is offering a $10 coupon for all orders of $50 or more. But the coupon will be good only for the rest of July. So if you're thinking about ordering, now's the time.

Coupon code: July 2009

When you order IncSight DB, enter this code in the payment form and choose Apply. After you do so, you'll see the discount amount subtracted from your order.

Charley also writes about Excel 2010

Gordon Atkinson's picture

What I like About the Mac

 Leopard Spaces

Last time I told you that there were some awkward moments in making the switch from PC to Mac. But in spite of those, there are so many things I love about the Macintosh. Let’s start with the minor things.

jethro's picture

Fashion Sales

Be Warned - Geek girls (and other readers of the gentle female persuasion) may be excited after viewing the following notices of clothing on sale! Boyfriends and husbands should watch for signs of wallet fingering and wardrobe shuffling and muttering – “There’s no room i here - what can i throw out to make room for all these yummy clothes?” Spyjournal takes no responsibility for sudden increases in credit card limits.

These adverts were found on Missy Confidential - not affiliated with Spyjournal.

Brisbane

3400_2996abdb7066_204x347

Madaboochoo are having a massive warehouse sale where you could win $5000* worth of new season designer clothing.

All you have to do to win this amazing prize is come along on the day of the sale and purchase any item of clothing.

*Please see the website for full terms and conditions of entry www.madaboochoo.com.au

WHEN
Saturday 25th July, 2009- one day only.

WHERE
Unit 9, 21 Duntroon Street, Brendale, Brisbane

jethro's picture

Random stuff - and politics

What ever you do or don’t like about the Rudd Government (or is that the Labour Government? We tend to blur these things, but we shouldn’t) this little story should give you some insight into the man Kevin Rudd. Now lets see if he follows through!

Update - the group 78 people were forcible evicted.

Mollom – the Drupal spam management system created by the creator of Drupal Dries Buytaert - has blocked 100 Million spams. We use it here but recently its been letting a few through on the comment system. so our apologies for that.

Robin Good reviews GoogleWave – article written by John Blossom

Windows 7 Media Centre background can be changed and more here

Jenine’s write up of the latest Girl Geek Dinner – with my piccies.

jethro's picture

Virtual PCs

I have been building / rebuilding a lot of virtual PCs lately.

image We use them a lot in our software development because we need to be able to develop in the same environment as the client has. Many clients are still stuck on XP and Office 2003. So we build a virtual machine that has this OS and Office installation.

I have been accepted into the Office 2010 tech preview, and was trying to build a Windows 7 64bit beta virtual machine to load the 64 bit Office applications into. I was unable to do so and it relates to something to do with hardware virtualisation. Personally I think this is just an issue with the windows 7 64 bit beta architecture because I was able to do it using a fresh real hard drive.

On the way I have found some tools and websites that have been helpful.

jethro's picture

Catching up

Life has been going by too fast to write about it. Sorry about that – but sometimes it happens.

Here's a quick summary of the last few weeks.

  • Major software development project that the Jethro team has been working on coming to the point where it is to be installed at the clients for testing. Now in testing, bug fixing and finalisation stages. This has been a massive project and taken almost every weekend for the last 2 months.
  • Another software development job coming to completion this week.
  • Firming up new contracts with clients so as to ensure a steady income stream for potential new full time staff.
  • Finalising the hand over to Gordon of the Web Services Management. He now handles most of this on his own.
  • Installation of two new servers and decommission of three old ones. Migrating all the users, setting up remote access for all our staff and troubleshooting the inevitable problems.
  • IMG_6869Basketball coaching – preparing for a competition in September.
  • Football – have had to skip due to some niggly injuries and inability to play.
  • Photography – Nelson Lai came to me to take me through a professional shooting tutorial, followed by a real live model shoot and then post shoot editing techniques in Photoshop. Wow what an amazing day. I have started editing photos and will slowly display them as I get them done. There are already some up on facebook for those who connect to me there, and the public  flickr and redbubble accounts get the better quality versions.
  • Family – with so much work on I have prioritised family time over other activities (including blogging). Hence why I have not gone to football training and skipped a game I would dearly have loved to play in. We went to see Ice Age 3 the other day and have also gone to game zone, gone to the bike riding park and spent a lot of time watching Masterchef together.
jethro's picture

Recent Photos and Outings

From the bike park

2009-07-11 Bike Park 020 2009-07-11 Bike Park 154 2009-07-11 Bike Park 0632009-07-11 Bike Park 0602009-07-11 Bike Park 045 2009-07-11 Bike Park 0432009-07-11 Bike Park 097  2009-07-11 Bike Park 0512009-07-11 Bike Park 0392009-07-11 Bike Park 071 2009-07-11 Bike Park 078 2009-07-11 Bike Park 090 2009-07-11 Bike Park 134 2009-07-11 Bike Park 104  2009-07-11 Bike Park 138 

jethro's picture

Excel Links for today

Dick Kusleika writes:

The Excel object model provides the Application.CalculationInterruptKey property to control how/if calculation can be interrupted. xlAnyKey is the default and it pauses whenever the user starts working. xlEscKey only pauses when the escape key is pressed. It’s used when you want to allow the user to interrupt calculation, but you want to make sure they do it explicitly and not by accident. xlNoKey prevents interruption. It seems that any time you calculate in code, you should set this property to xlNoKey, then set it back.

Full article here

My stats for June. Not quite as good as J-Walks – though my bounce rate is better!

image

jethro's picture

Links Galore

Windows 7 – the news keeps on coming in!