This should be the final time I write about my Toshiba Thrive.  Here are the 1st and 2nd articles.  (Well, OK most likely the last one.) But two more questions about it need to be answered. These were the most common questions I received about it from my readers.

First, it has Android Honeycomb as its operating system and it has been upgraded once since I got it six to eight weeks ago. Next, I run Nook software on it and it also has Kindle and other book reader apps for it. PDFs can also be read on it. If you do not know what a PDF is, do not worry, just skip that last part.

Finally about the Thrive; yes, you can work with Microsoft Word documents on the tablet. However, you will need to purchase an application to do it. I bought one called “OfficeSuite Pro 5” (market.android.com) from the Android Market, for a whopping $4.99. Yes, the prices for the applications range from free to (I believe the highest I have seen was $19.99.) They are reasonably priced to say the least. With OfficeSuite you can create, edit and save (online or on your tablet) Word, Excel and PowerPoint files along with other neat features.

OK, I think I am done. Be advised; I left a lot out but you will have to read more, email me or buy your own tablet PC and let me know what you think. I always like to hear from you folks.

Here is something you may want to consider purchasing for your tablet, smart phone, iPad or any touch screen using friends for Christmas this year.

Picture this, it is winter time, cold, snowing, icy rain, whatever the case may be ands you have on your nice warm mittens. Then your phone rings, you pick up your phone and see it is someone you really need to talk to. By the time you take off your gloves they have hung up. You then call them back, while your fingers are getting numb. Is there a better solution? You betcha!

Look for some touch screen gloves. I have had a pair for a couple of years and they are great. I am not talking about gloves with the finger tips cut off so you can use your touch screen device. These are gloves which actually have a special material built into the finger tips which reacts to your devices just like you were using your bare finger.

Some of them have finger tips that fold up out of the way, but I like the ones mentioned above much better. The special material finger tips work very well without having to do anything that takes more time.

You can find them online anywhere from $15 to over $100. My comment on that is the old, “Let the buyer beware.” My wife found two pairs this week in a local store for less than $5 for both!

Tags: acrobat, adobe, android, excel, honeycomb, microsoft word documents, office microsoft, operating system, PowerPoint, replace office, thumb, toshiba, Word

Many people do not care for the almost-new Menu navigation system for Windows 7.  I personally see where Microsoft could have made some additional changes; however, I still like it very well.  My favorite feature (which was also available in Vista, though not nearly as robust or accurate as in W7) is being able to click the Start button and type what you want to open or find.

Suppose you want to open a blank Microsoft Excel workbook.  All you need to do is click the Start button and type, "Excel".  Excel will be highlighted at the top of the list. You press Enter; it opens and is ready to go.  You could also press the Windows Key on your keyboard and begin typing.    It is the one on the left side of the spacebar that resembles the Windows logo.  You know the key; it is the one you never use.

Let me take you one step farther.  Let’s pretend that you have document which you created years ago.  You know that it is on your computer; however, you have no idea what it was called or where you saved it.  You do remember that it had the words, "Emerald City" somewhere in the text.  You need to find that email to write some more about Dorothy. 

Use the Start button again and type, "Emerald City".  Then relax as your computer searches your entire hard drive for any document including email that has, "Emerald City" in the text.  In just a few seconds it will appear in the list along with all the others (if there is more than one.)  Just as before, clicking on the correct file will open the document and you can read away. 

Of course, there is the standard procedure where you click Start, "All Programs" and scroll to the program you wish to start.  Then just click and go.  Of course this doesn’t find a particular document very quickly.

There are fancier solutions if you do not like the Windows’ Menus.  One I have used for years is called, "Desktop Sidebar" (desktopsidebar.com).  It is very customizable but will also take you a while to learn how to use.  It is easy for the geekier of you out there, but complicated if you are not used to "adjusting" things on your computer.

Another more simple to use menu launcher is named, "Rocket Dock" (rocketdock.com).   RocketDock is an attractive and fun program launcher.  It is neatly animated and pops at you when you hover the icons.  It supplies a pleasant modern interface which easily arranges your most used applications for quick access.  The downside  with both of these is you need to download, install and then learn how to use them.  For both of these free programs there are instructions on their respective sites.  Check them out if you want something new for your computer. 

Next week we will look at where one of my old favorites went and how to bring it back to life in Windows 7 the "Quick Launch Toolbar".

Tags: desktop sidebar, Email, emerald city, excel, excel workbook, hard drive, keyboard, menu navigation, microsoft, navigation system, new menu, quick launch, Quick Launch Toolbar, rocketdock, spacebar, start button, toolbar, windows 7, windows logo, windows menus

Last week we covered the first three items in Excel’s “Formula Auditing” tools: Tracing Precedents, Dependents, Remove Arrows and Show Formulas in Excel’s “Formula Auditing” tools. Today we will wrap up the last three features.

I am sure you have never seen an “Error” popup box in Excel. That’s not true, unless you are an Excel Pro and have never made a mistake. I picked one that is easy to reconstruct for this column.

I created a formula that divides a number by zero. I know you all know why you can’t do that. Okay, you were taught, but you don’t remember why not either. In Excel if you do that you will get, “#DIV/0!” which (if you speak Excel you know) means you cannot divide any number by zero (0). If you’re not sure what that means you can click the “Error Checking” button. This button is found under the Formula Tab and then in the Formula Auditing command group.

Once clicked, you get several options; “Help on this error,” “Show Calculation Steps,” “Ignore Error,” “Edit in Formula Bar” and others you can check out. This should help you figure out the error made and give you some guidance as to how to best correct it. The “Help…” link is usually the best to aid me.

Also, keep in mind you can get this same help directly from the cell containing the error warning. You will get a little green triangle in the upper left corner of the offending cell. When you click on that cell you will see a yellow diamond with an exclamation mark in it. When you click on the exclamation mark you will get the same list of options you saw in the previous area and you may click on the one you choose.

Next is the “Evaluate Formula” button, which I am not that fond of; however, it may really pay off for you. It will basically walk you through a complicated formula step by step. This gives you the ability to evaluate how each part of the formula works and even if it does work the way you designed it to.

Finally, one of the neatest Excel tricks for auditing formulas: the “Watch Window” command. If you haven’t tried it before give it a shot now.

Let’s say that you are working on Sheet 3 in your workbook and want to view changes occurring in cell A10 on Sheet 1. This is hard to do until you use the “Watch Window” feature.

Navigate to the Watch Window button and click it. Now go to the sheet and cell you want to view and click on it. Click the “Add Watch” button at the top of the window and you will always see the Book and Sheet name along with the Cell Name, (if you have named it) the cell address, value and formula, no matter where you go with Excel. You will see any change reflected in the watch window where you can immediately deal with it or be advised what is happening.

Let me know if you appreciate these looks at Excel and if you would like to learn more, or if you would like to explore other Office products.

Tags: arrows, audit, auditing, bookkeeping, command group, dependents, doubleclick, excel, excel formula, finances, formula bar, formulas in excel, guidance, microsoft, mistake, office, precedents, ribbon

At the end of last year I wrote a column with regard to Microsoft’s spreadsheet program Excel.  Due to the email response, (which to me at least was unexpected) it has now turned into three columns.  I guess there are more of you Excel users out there than I thought.

I have continued to get email questions about Excel, so today I thought I would give you a couple of other tips about auditing cells.  These are in response to reader questions.  Remember to email questions to me…I thrive on them.  (Well, OK, not really thrive, but I do like to get them.)

Tip #1:  Sometimes you need to look at all of the formulas on a spreadsheet.  You can click on each cell containing a formula and look at the top of the Formula Bar.   But that takes a while and what if you miss one?  In Excel versions 2007 and newer, the way to see them all at once is to navigate to the Formula Tab on the ribbon, look to the right side and find the "Formula Auditing" commands.  Once there, click on the "Show Formulas" button.  There all of your formulas are displayed at once.  Click it again to turn them off.  Now here is a really neat shortcut.   Just use the "CTRL + ~" key combo.  (Press and hold the Ctrl key and then tap the tilde key.)  Works like a charm! You can be located anywhere in a workbook and it works every time for showing and hiding formulas.

While at the "Formula Auditing" command area, let’s look at several more features.

Tip #2:  Trace Precedents and Dependents:  This may be too deep for you non Excel folks, but read on, you may add a couple of new words to your cyber vocabulary.  If you have a simple formula adding 1, 2 and 3 for a total of 6 (I hope you are all with me up to now at least) and something appears wrong you can poke around in the formula and figure it out.  Many times it is helpful to be able to view what your formula utilizes to find an answer.

In the formula above you can click on the cell with the answer/formula in it and click "Trace Precedents."  Poof, you get a little blue arrow showing you the cells used in the formula (shown on right).

To determine a dependent, click on one of the digits making up the list you are adding, say the "2".  Click "Trace Dependents" and you will get an arrow showing which cells in that spreadsheet depend on the value.  By using these two tools you can usually figure out why a formula is blowing up on you.  To clear the arrows, click the "Remove Arrows" button.

We will finish up formula audits next week and then move on from Excel…unless I hear from you.

Also, if you are a visual learner like me, you may want to visit the DoubleClicks.info site to see screenshots of what we talked about here.  (Hey, don’t worry, you are already here…have a great day!)

Tags: audit, auditing, bookkeeping, cells, email response, excel, finances, microsoft, office, office microsoft, reader questions, regard, ribbon, spreadsheet program, works like a charm

I know you have seen them in Excel workbooks before and wanted to add our own.  You know what I am talking about, those little red triangles in the upper right corner of a cell.

Additionally, when you hover your mouse over that cell a yellow box pops up with a red arrow pointing to the cell.  Oh yeah, that box has text in it concerning that cell.

The little triangle indicates that there is a "Comment" for the reader in the cell.  You already know how to read the comments but how to add, edit, remove and print them may not be in your skill set…yet.  Cell comments are useful for explaining information in a cell, explaining a formula you have in a cell, or just merely making a general comment about a cell for someone else to read.  One comment may only be added to each individual cell. Consider the recipients of the spreadsheet …too many red triangles will make the data confusing.

To create a comment, right click on the cell in which you wish to leave a comment and choose Insert Comment (you may also use the quick keys, SHIFT + F2).  The yellow box opens up with the licensed owner of Office pre-entered which may be deleted.  Type whatever you wish in the comment: any characters, numbers, letters, spaces, symbols, etc.  To close the comment box, click anywhere outside the comment box.

Position your mouse pointer over this cell and the comment pops up.

To edit a cell comment, right click on the cell that contains the comment you want to edit.  Choose Edit Comment from the menu that pops up and edit all you wish.  You may also change the size and location of the box.  Play with the edges of the box and experiment.

Now to delete a comment, once again right click on the Cell that has the "offending" comment.  Choose Delete Comment from the menu that pops up.

If you want to see the comments automatically while the sheet is opened, right click the commented cell once more and choose, "Show/Hide Comment".  It acts like an on/off switch so to hide it again repeat the previous step choosing "Hide."  Any "shown" comment will show up if you print the sheet, so make sure it isn’t hiding any data on the spreadsheet before printing.

You most likely realize that comments (unless revealed using above steps) do not print in a worksheet so you will have to change the print settings.  To make them print using version 2007 + go to Page Layout tab, Page Setup group, lower right corner arrow.  For pre-2007 versions click File, Page Setup and continue, click the Sheet tab and under Comments select whether you want them to print "as displayed on sheet" or "at end of sheet".

Go ahead, make some comments in your next worksheet.

Tags: comments, corner border, excel, excel workbooks, little triangle, marker, microsoft office, office, red arrow, spreadsheet, Tips, triangles, tricks

I had a huge response to my last column about Excel Tricks, so today I have a couple of additional tricks for you to try.

Pretend that you create a spreadsheet for your boss.  It contains your company’s weekly sales figures.  The dates are located across the top of the sheet (top row), the sold items down the left side (first column) and the totals at the bottom and right side where needed.

The boss reviews it and tells you that the info is accurate and looks great…with one exception.  He/she wants the sold items to be in the top row and the dates in the first column, i.e., the exact opposites of the current layout of these two components.

I am pretty sure that many of you Excel users have been here before.  You realize that you will basically need to recreate the data from scratch and it will take an hour or more to do so.  However, once you know how to use “Transposition” in Excel you will be done in about eight seconds or less.

Transposing basically flip-flops a table in Excel.

To make Transpose work its magic, first select (highlight) the cells you want to transpose…all of them including all cells, rows, columns, formulas, labels, etc.  Next, copy the cells you want to transpose.  You can copy them in the way you usually copy data.  I figure you are an advanced user so I won’t elaborate on multiple ways to copy the data.

Next, left click the cell at the location you want the top left cell to be located in the new flipped table.  Make sure that no other data is in that area including any of the original cells you are transposing.  If this isn’t exactly where you want its final location to be, don’t worry you can move it later.

From the new location, go to the Home tab, Clipboard group, Paste button, Paste Special and choose Transpose.  You may also right click in the new empty location and choose Paste Special and then choose Transpose.  That is it!

One note; all of your previous formatting (if any) will be copied into the new table.  You may have to fix some of the column widths, label colors, font sizes, etc.  I suggest you use the “Clear Format” feature in Excel, which you may not know about…yet.

To clear the formatting, first select the cells you want to clear.   In Excel 2007 or above, from the Home tab look in the Editing group look for an eraser-like button that may be labeled “Clear”.  Click the button and choose “Clear Formats”.  Then you may reformat the new table in the style that looks best to you.  In 2003 or before, use the Edit menu, point to Clear, and then repeat the choices above.

The other choices available under the eraser are: “Clear All” which totally empties the selected cell(s), “Clear Contents” which deletes the contents of the cells but leaves the formatting and “Clear Comments” which we will take a look at next week.

Tags: excel, Tips, Transposition, tricks

Several weeks ago I did a couple of articles about tricks using Microsoft Word and your responses truly surprised me.  I thought that I may hear from a couple of Office Geeks but I heard from quite a few of you.  First, thanks for the emails, I always enjoy them even when you disagree…that tells me that they are being read! 

Recent "emailers" have asked me to add a couple of Excel Tricks so today that is what we will do.  I cannot imagine that there are that many of you Excel readers out there but because of the email requests I will certainly give you some info.

I will figure that Excel users know all of the basics on how to write a formula, etc. so I will skip those things.  If you don’t know those basics you need to invite me to your office for a couple of training sessions.

Conditional Formatting is a basic staple of Excel; however, it has been my experience that very few people use it since, at first glance, it looks a little intricate.  I guarantee once you try out Conditional Formatting (CF to save space) a few times you will want to continue to learn different, very practical ways to use it.

CF allows you to change the formatting of an individual cell based on the results being displayed in that cell. For instance, you could make the text in the cell bold and purple if its result is greater than a certain value. You could even color the background of a cell based on the result of a formula.  There are many possibilities. 

To start off with: select the cell, or group of cells, which you want to format according to its value or formula result.  For this example we will want to format the cell to bold yellow text with a red background if the resulting value is above nine.

For Excel 2003 or earlier choose the Format menu, Conditional Formatting and then "Formula Is".

For Excel 2007 and above select the Home ribbon, the Styles group, Conditional Formatting. Drop down to New Rule and select "Format only cells that contain".

From here they will be similar, so choose the "greater than" option. Next enter the number (9 for our example) then change the text format color, bold it and the fill (the background cell color).

When the answer to a formula or the actual number entered into a cell is above nine, the cell will be highlighted for easy recognitions.

You can also apply this for dates, words, etc.  Play with CF and see how you can utilize it.   This was a very basic look at Conditional Formatting.  It contains many more features.  Let me know what you think after you give it a try.

Tags: Conditional Formatting, excel, microsoft, office

Today we will continue on with our last week’s discussion about tricks and tips for Office, which generated a lot of email, thanks!

Try this.

Open up a blank Word document and type the following sentence on a new blank line (without quotes) exactly as it appears here, without edits for spelling or capitalization. "teh cta adn teh hta cmoes bcak." Now press enter to go to the next line.

I bet you ended up with something similar to, "The cta and the hta comes back." Word automatically corrects most of the words for you. It also left two of them with red squiggly lines under them. Also, you may have one “comes” with a green squiggle. The red squiggles mean that Word could not find the word in its built-in auto-correcting dictionary. The MS dictionary has thousands of words and checks each word you type against the massive list. If the word isn’t present in the dictionary it marks it with the squiggle.

The green squiggle means that grammatically Word has an issue with the word. You handle the green ones the same as the reds. This green is unwarranted, so you must use your own brain on occasion.

To correct the spelling/grammar, use your mouse and touch (hover is the geek term) the offending word, then right click. Doing so will bring up a list of words that are close. Find the one that is correct and click it…presto, the spelling is corrected. You can easily correct the two above as "cat" and "hat." Even though Word’s grammar suggests “come” and not “comes” that is not correct.

What about the auto-corrected words? If you noticed Word also capitalized the first word in the sentence. You have just experienced another facet of Microsoft’s "Autocorrect" feature.

Go to another new line and type "(r)" with a space after it and you get the registered symbol. Try typing "(c)" and see it change to copyright symbol. Last but not least try, “:)”. Cool isn’t it?

There are many more autocorrects. Take a look at them in Word using:

Office 2010: File, Options, Proofing and then click, “AutoCorrect Options.”

Version 2007: Click the Office Orb, Word Options, Proofing and then click, “AutoCorrect Options.”

Versions 2003 and earlier: Click on Tools, “AutoCorrect Options.”

No matter which version you have you will now be at the same screen and may scroll down the list. You can play with the checked items, but be careful. None of them can destroy you, but they may make Word operate differently than you are used to.

You can add your own items to AutoCorrect. Let’s say that you always type "dog" as "dgo." In the AutoCorrect window type "dgo" in the left box under, "Replace" and then type "dog" under "With" then click the “Add” button. To finish, click OK at the bottom of the window and try it out on a document. Next time you type “dgo” it will autocorrect to “dog.”

If you wish to remove one of the items from the list just scroll down the list, select it and click the “Remove” button.

WARNING: I had an adult student once who decided to try this out at his office. The name of the company was "Arnold’s Road Equipment" (actual name of the company was changed to protect the innocent). He wanted to speed up his typing so he added "are" to be replaced by his company name. Think about that one for a couple of seconds. True story!

Tags: Auto, Autocorrect, Correct, excel, microsoft, office, PowerPoint, Word

When I originally started writing this column years ago it was going to be devoted mostly to Microsoft Office products.  Since that time I have written about those products and most everything under the sun, at least computer-wise.

Today, I am going back to the beginning and will answer questions I have received from several readers over the past months.  So today and for the next few weeks we will look at some tips for Office applications.

So you are writing a long document in Microsoft Word.  Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to track all of the changes made in that document throughout its history?  Tracking changes is a handy feature if you know you will be working on the file for a long time or if you are working on a document with others.  This will allow you to see what has transpired throughout the document’s life. 

To turn on tracking in versions before 2007 use the TOOLS menu and select "Track Changes." For version 2007 and later go to REVIEW tab on the ribbon and in the "Tracking" group, choose "Track Changes." 

Do not be alarmed. I am sure you will have many red lines, vertical bars and other unknown effects pop up on your document.  The text you add/delete will show up in red (maybe with lines) and some changes will be noted in a red comment box along the margin.  Personally, I do not like to track changes in a document since it gets sort of "junky" looking.  However, there are some really good reasons to track a document.

If you are feeling like you are seeing red a little too much, just reverse the steps for starting tracking and they will disappear.   You may also have to click an indented button in the Tracking group.

When you are on the receiving end of a tracked document you should review each of the changes shown.  To agree with a comment choose the "Accept Change" icon.  If you have reviewed the entire document and agree with all of the changes you can choose, "Accept All Changes."

Then as you edit the document your changes will also be recorded and tracked for the next person’s input.
 
As I started writing this I realized MS Office has many versions people still use so I would have to write three instructions for each tip.  The following is one of those, so check which version you have before changing the settings.

When you select text in Word (also Excel, PowerPoint, and several other Office programs) a little "Mini Toolbar" pops up over the selected text.  It has the bold, italics, font face, font size and many other formatting options available for you to easily click and change.  But if you are like me you prefer other ways to format your text and the mini-bar just gets in the way.

Here is how to remove it in three different versions.

Office 2003 and earlier, the versions without the ribbon:  Choose Tools, Customize, Options and then uncheck, "Show ScreenTips on toolbars" and/or "Show shortcut keys in ScreenTips."

Office 2007, the first with the ribbon:  Click the Office Orb button, Word Options, Popular, (which most likely will already be chosen) under "Top options for working with Word." Uncheck "Show Mini Toolbar on selection."

Last but not least: the latest version Office 2010:  File, Options, General, User Interface Options and finally uncheck, "Show Mini Toolbar on Selection."

If you try either of these and do/don’t like them, let me know.

Tags: excel, microsoft, office, PowerPoint, Tracking, Word

I have been written to by several of the "Double Click" readers as to why I have not mentioned Microsoft Windows 7 very often.  The answer is that there are about 50 bazillion other geeks out there, who have written about it relentlessly since it rolled out to the public in October, 2009.  I figured I would let the clamor die down some before I started.

Today I come out of hiding with W7 (get used to the abbreviation, it saves column space). 

I will start with the question that I usually get first. "Do you use W7, yet?"  Yes, I do, everywhere!  I have been testing the pre-launch versions of W7 for about a year now.  I have been using the final version since it launched. 

All of my computers run this new Operating System (OS) including my wife’s notebook, save one.  I still run Vista on my home desktop because that computer has more software and data on it than any of the others.  Rebuilding that particular machine will take several days to get "just right". Procrastination wins! 

The next most common question I get is, "Should I switch to W7?"  That really depends on you.  If you are not happy with your current OS (Vista?) and you have the extra money, sure go ahead and make the change.  If you do not have any complaints, why fix it if it ain’t broke? 

That being said, I will as good as guarantee that if you do go to W7 you will like it.  It looks similar to Vista. However, it is much faster since it uses less system resources.  It has many very positive features that you will like.

When conversing about W7 the next question usually is, "What do you like best about the OS?"  My wise guy answer is, "Everything."  However, the primary element I enjoy was also present in Vista; though, it did not function nearly as well…the search feature.

Say for instance I want to run Excel.  I can click the orb (used to be called the start button when it was rectangular) or press the Windows key on my keyboard and just type, "excel".  A menu list is generated with everything on my computer that has "excel" in it.  The Excel program is at the top of the list.  All I do is press the Enter key and Excel starts right up. 

If I know that I have a file with the words, "Windows 7" in it.  I just type it, like I just did, and three files are listed.  Three columns which I wrote; one each in April and June of 2009 and the one you are reading now.

That is a great, efficient and very speedy way to work.  So thanks, Microsoft, for that as well as the additional features we will be talking about in the future.

Tags: excel, microsoft, orb, Ron Doyle, vista, windows, windows 7, xp