Striving to Excel
20 January, 2009
Used well, Microsoft Excel can be an extremely useful tool. It contains a multitude of goodies; too many to cover in one article! If you are new to Excel 2007 or wish to delve further into it, check out the Microsoft Office Online tutorials. These are a great self-paced way to get up to speed. Point your co-workers or staff members here and reap the productivity gains; after all, the more you know about an application the better you can put it to use.
But we're not going to let you wander off into the online woods just yet. Here are a few little things we find cool, funky or just downright useful.
Filters
Auto Filters turn a simple list or table into an easy source of information. To turn on your filter, place your cursor on a cell in the table header, go to the Data tab on the ribbon and select Filter. This will allow you to very quickly group and view information based on what you choose to filter in or out of the list. Unlike sorting, filtering does not rearrange a range. Filtering temporarily hides rows you do not want displayed.
PivotTables & Charts
Creating a PivotTable will give you even greater flexibility in filtering and displaying the data held in complex lists and tables, so that you can quickly read and analyse the information contained within them. Rather than scrolling through multitudes of rows and columns, PivotTables will sort, group, filter and tally for you.
Charts on the other hand display information in graphical format to help you explore the relationships between data.Goal Seek
This handy feature allows you tell a formula what you want the answer to be and makes Excel work out the variables required to get it. Goal Seek works by adjusting the figures within your formula to provide the desired outcome.
Fill Handle
Instead of manually typing sequences, type the first few values of the sequence (eg serial numbers, dates, counters) and select those cells.
Now examine the bottom cell of your selected range; see the little black square at the lower right corner? That's the Fill handle. Drag it in the desired direction to automatically fill adjacent cells.Comments
Right clicking on a cell will (among other things) enable you to insert a comment. This can be a useful way of including instructions or information that otherwise does not fit into the column or row headings and would clutter your table if you tried. To add a little flair to the comments you can change their shape or even add pictures. Formatting comments is more fun than functional, but can certainly make your spreadsheet entertaining to create and read!
If you haven't upgraded to Microsoft Excel 2007 and would like to discuss doing so, contact us to explore your options.
Things We Love About...Microsoft Office OneNote
26 November, 2008
OneNote is one of those programs that you don't realise you can't live without - until you start using it. Between the advanced organisational features of Outlook 2007 and the powerful note taking ability of OneNote, if you are adventurous enough you really can do away with paper-based note taking.
If you have never used OneNote before then it is time to take a little trip. Open OneNote from the Microsoft Office suite in "All Programs" and let's get started.
OneNote offers you a "free-form canvas" upon which you can type, write, draw, and add images, text, graphics, links, screen clippings, even audio and video clips; any way you like. Picture an old-school notepad or lever arch folder, with tabbed dividers that you would label with your subjects, grouping together all the notes you took in class with their like minded counterparts.
That is the basic principle of OneNote - this handy program turns that old-school tabbed notepad into an electronic tool. You can separate and organise your notes by subjects or projects, or keep separate notebooks for different places and interests. You can print documents to pages for ease of reference or insert documents as a file or a link.
For mobile users who take their laptops everywhere it is entirely useful for taking notes at conferences, client meetings, training sessions etc. For anyone managing projects the ability to add notes and items, move and delete at will, to search and find information and to add more pages into any particular notebook when needed takes notation to a whole other level.
Templates such as Meeting Agendas, and Project Overviews (as well as a host of decorative starting points) add flare to an otherwise utilitarian page landscape. But by far the coolest functionality is the ability to collaborate and share notes with other users. By storing the notebook in a shared location (such as a network drive or SharePoint) multiple users can access and update notebooks at the same time.
Do you use OneNote? We'd love to hear from you if you do! Tell us about your experiences, what your favourite features are and any examples of how you use OneNote to help with your day-to-day workload. Drop us an email... info@correct.com.au
The Economy's Effect on IT
18 November, 2008
You must have been hiking in the Andes (one of my dreams) for the last few months not to have witnessed the media pumping us full of information about how bad the world economy is and how the Australian Dollar, in relation to the US dollar has dropped significantly.
By now you may have noticed that in the last few weeks, the price of computer equipment and software has generally gone up by 10-25%. This is a direct result of the Australian Dollar dropping about 30-40% of its value to the US Dollar.
Most of the large manufacturers; HP, IBM, Toshiba etc have raised prices, but only by about 10-15 percentage points, to prevent the market and their customers feeling the huge shock that would be inflicted if they raised their prices the full amount. They are also working on the assumption the Aussie Dollar shouldn't be sitting in the low 60 cents and will go back up, and in turn it has - at the time of writing this article the dollar is now back around the 68-70c mark.
To date, most of Microsoft's licensing has not changed price, only their OEM software (the type that comes when you buy a new computer) has gone up, as this is priced internationally against the USD every day.
Microsoft Australia has gone one better too; between now and the end of December, they have taken 15% off their Windows and Office Software purchased under the "Open" Licence agreement.
Our recommendation is to work with us and review the equipment you currently have and work up a list of suggestions that you can implement over the coming 6-12 months. This will let you adjust your budgets to accommodate for what essentials might be needed and quite possibly extend the useful life of the server and equipment you have now.
By having a plan, if one of the larger vendors runs a special then we/you could potentially take good advantage of it. It also minimises the impact of untimely surprises along the way.
And, while things may seem uncertain, remember - one of the best ways to combat the gloom is to maintain a positive attitude and to keep your goals in focus.
By Ryan Spillane, Managing Director
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