Why am I writing this series of articles?  Well, due to an article I wrote a couple of weeks ago and the number of emails I received about it would be my reason.  The article, “More Android Apps” covered where to get some of the best, latest and also worst applications around for your Android devices.

From the emails I received questioning me about what I had on my tablet (Toshiba Thrive) here is my personal list of Thrive apps that I am currently running, with links to each app.  I will not discuss what each app does here because you can easily click them and read all you want on the Android Market.

I am breaking them down how I have them grouped using the first app I will mention, ADW Launcher EX.  The list right now if from my “Reading Folder”.

• B&N Nook
• Barcode Scanner
• Bible
• Evernote
• Facebook
• Fox News
• Moon+ Reader Pro
• Office Talk Free
• OfficeSuite Pro
• Google Reader
• Sportacular
• StumbleUpon
• USA Today
• Wikipedia
• WordPress

More next timer about my, “Media Folder”.

Tags: android, barcode, barcode scanner, bible, books, e-reader, ereader, Evernote, facebook, Fox, fox news, google, launcher, moon, news, nook, office, pro, Sportacular, toshiba, WordPress, yahoo

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

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