DigIT and I will be discussing how to use different views when trying to locate files or other items on a computer.

Editor: DigIT, can you explain why this topic recently caught your interest?

DigIT: My regular computer operator (my human friend) was recently complaining that she could not find a file on her computer. I asked her which one and when she told me, I was able to find it immediately. I could not understand why my friend had trouble. She attempted to explain it to me, but I found her reasons confusing; she mentioned a strange character named Waldo that seemed to always be missing.

E: Oh, you’re referring to the Where’s Waldo book series. Those are fun—what don’t you get?

D: Why do you humans like Where’s Waldo?  It seems pointless to me if you do not like looking for things.

E: Well, Where’s Waldo started out for younger children, most of whom would only be playing games or doing learning activities on a computer.  The adults, like your friend, would typically be working; trying to produce things for other people.

D: She told me that finding a file is like looking at a Where’s Waldo picture, without the fun; that finding one file among all the other files should be easier.

E: That’s probably because Where’s Waldo is a game, and finding files is typically thought of as work for us.  Maybe you need to understand that we humans see the two similar tasks as entirely different things.  Work for a human is something we have to do if we want to eat, have a place to live, or have a computer.  Something like Where’s Waldo is for entertainment, something we make a choice about doing, which has an entirely different value scale.

D: That explanation makes it somewhat clearer, although I doubt I will ever understand you humans completely.

E: It works both ways, believe me. So, were you able to offer any suggestions to make files easier to find?

D: I really do not find those Waldo pictures very challenging, and finding files is something I do without even thinking. I recommended that she try eliminating some of the files; even rearranging them might be beneficial.  We discussed displaying the files in a different order, such as sorted by size or date.

E: Oh, yes, the Details view in Windows Explorer can sort items that way. It can be very helpful. But what can you recommend for locating other types of items, like e-mail messages? I often have trouble finding specific messages in my Inbox.

D: In e-mail, there are many ways to arrange items to make it easier to find the one you want, such as sorting by columns. You can also filter out some of the items to give you a smaller group to look at. In Outlook, Search Folders provide an efficient method of filtering messages by using a specific set of criteria.

E: Search Folders are great, and so are the built-in views.

D: I could elaborate further on changing views, but the options depend on which program you are using.  My human friend said she was going to provide some tips for some of the most common software applications.

E: She did, and I’ll be sure to post those on the blog entry for this podcast. Any last words, DigIT?

D: Please try to remember the view options, and the other tools at your disposal, to assist you when searching for specific items. It is unfortunate that most of my family has not mastered the trick of talking to humans. If they could, it would probably make life for you humans much easier, but I am afraid it might also shock many of you.

By the way, here is a trick you can use for solving those Waldo pictures. Just look for the pattern in his shirt, then check for the hat and glasses to find the exact match. But I digress; I will stick to those bits and bytes.

E: Thank you for joining us this week, DigIT. We look forward to speaking with you again in the future to gain more insight on the computer world from your unique perspective.

Here are the tips for this week. You can find links for these in the blog entry for the podcast, at www.productiveUpodcast.com.

• Changing the view in a Windows Explorer folder
• Using different views in Outlook
• Using different views in Lotus Notes
• How to create your own view in Outlook
• How to use the Full Screen Reading view in Word
• Creating and using Custom Views in Excel
• Using the Slide Sorter view in PowerPoint
• Changing the Zoom level in PowerPoint
• Using different message views on a BlackBerry device
• Using different calendar views on a Windows Mobile device

Thanks for listening to our podcast. If you have any recommendations for future episodes, be sure to let us know by writing an iTunes review, or by droppping us a line on Twitter @productiveUcast.

Music courtesy of Clayton & Fulcrum

But it’s a little early to be thinking of summer, isn’t it? So why would I mention this in the middle of February?

Oddly enough, even in the dead of winter, with temperatures in the single digits and several feet of snow piled up around the house, I still love a good ice cream sundae. Especially if it has peanut butter ripples, frozen pieces of candy, or chunks of cookie dough.

Some things are just better when they’re frozen, but a computer is definitely not one of them.

When your computer decides to freeze up or hang, it usually does so at a crucial moment, like when you’ve just spent several hours editing a Word document and haven’t saved it yet.

That feeling of dread sets in. You begin to panic, and then you fear the worst: that all your hard work will be lost.

Sometimes, unfortunately, this is the case. But there are some steps you can take to ensure that your work will be recovered in the event that Word crashes.

If you enable the AutoRecover feature, which is available in several of the Office applications, it will periodically save a backup version of the file you’re working on. Then, if the program quits unexpectedly, it will prompt you with the recovered file the next time you open that program.

There is no guarantee offered with the AutoRecover feature, and at times it will fail to recover your work, so your best bet is still to save frequently when working in a file. You may find it much easier to use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+S to save your work as you’re typing, without your fingers ever leaving the keyboard. If you can get into this habit, you might just find your left hand automatically reaching for those keys without you even realizing it!

When the Deep Freeze sets in, whether it’s Windows, an Office application, or a mobile device, we don’t want you to be left out in the cold. The tips for this week will provide you with a starting point for when it seems like all is lost.

• What’s Frozen? – How to determine whether it is Windows or an application that is frozen
• An Ounce of Prevention for File Loss – How to enable the AutoRecover feature for Microsoft Office applications
• Mittens for Your Computer – How to clear out temporary Internet files, cookies, and browsing history
• Save Your Fingers By Letting Your Fingers Save Your Work – Using a keyboard shortcut to save while working in a file

And since you can also experience crashes on mobile devices, here are a few tips that can help you with BlackBerry and Windows Mobile:

• Just In Case – How to back up your BlackBerry data
• How to Thaw a Frozen BlackBerry – Resetting a frozen BlackBerry device
• Frozen In Your Hand – Resetting a frozen Windows Mobile device

We hope you’re enjoying the podcast and all the tips. If there are any topics you’d like to see covered in a future episode, please let us know in an iTunes review, or leave us a message on Twitter @productiveUcast.

That’s all for this week. Try to stay warm even when your computer is freezing, and we’ll see you next time!

Music courtesy of Clayton & Fulcrum

The other day, the song “Counting Blue Cars” by Dishwalla came on and I found myself singing along with the lyric: “We count only blue cars…”

Nerd that I am, I couldn’t help but immediately conjure up an Excel formula to help them out:

=COUNTIF(Cars, “blue”)

It might be completely missing the point of the song (about which I’m clueless), but being able to count and sum based on conditions in Excel can be really useful.

The formula I used for counting blue cars is a good example of a simple COUNTIF doing what it does best: counting only those items that match the criteria you specify. In that formula, “Cars” could be replaced by a range of cells in an Excel worksheet that contain the names of different colors. The formula will return a number that represents how many of the cells in that range match the criteria.

COUNTIF’s summing counterpart is known as SUMIF. It works in much the same way: you tell it which cells need to match a criteria, you specify the criteria they must match, then you specify which cells will be summed as a result. This last group of cells can be in another column if needed. For example, a SUMIF formula can examine the text in cells C2 through C16 to determine which ones contain the text “red,” then sum the values in the corresponding cells from column B. So if C5 and C8 were “red,” the values in B5 and B8 would be summed.

In these examples, we’re just writing the criteria inside double quotes so that an exact match must be found. But let’s say you wanted to count how many cells match an approximate condition. For instance, if you specify the criteria to be “*ito” the formula will return a count of how many cells end in the letters “ito.” So burrito, taquito, and mosquito would all match the criteria. Mmm…I’m starting to get hungry now…and slightly itchy.

The asterisk in that formula is called a wildcard—it represents any number of characters. Likewise, you can use a question mark to represent a single character.

When you need to count cells that don’t have similarities, such as enchiladas and wool sweaters, using wildcards won’t work; but you can combine multiple COUNTIF formulas to get the results you need.

If any of this sounds confusing, just check out this week’s tips and you’ll get a better idea of how to set up these formulas.

Links to the tips are on the blog entry for this week’s podcast at www.productiveUpodcast.com, and they include:

• Let’s Sum If It Fits: Using the SUMIF function
• Count By Conditions: Using the COUNTIF function
• Creative Conditions: Using wildcard characters as criteria for SUMIF and COUNTIF
• Summing This Not That: Using the SUMPRODUCT function to sum or count using multiple conditions
• Arrayed in Splendor: Creating an array formula to sum based on multiple conditions

We’d love to hear your feedback on the tips and the podcast, so head on over to iTunes to write a review for us! And don’t forget that you can follow us on Twitter @productiveUcast.

Thanks for joining us for this week’s podcast. With these tips, you may soon find yourself counting blue, red, and green cars all with a single formula. See you next week!

Music courtesy of Clayton & Fulcrum

Chocolate chips, snickerdoodles, and gingerbread men by the dozen. We humans have a tendency to celebrate various occasions with food, and I am by no means opposed to this time-honored tradition.

More than the joy of indulging in the sweet treats, however, I am fascinated with the process of creating all these dozens of cookies, especially those for which a cookie cutter can be used.

Using just one gingerbread man cookie cutter, for example, one can amass an entire teeming population of a gingerbread village. But even though they are all born from the same dough and cookie cutter, are they all really the same? Heck no! During the decorating process, each one can be customized with gumdrops, icing, or other accessories. For instance, you can sharpen a candy cane to a fine point and arm your gingerbread village inhabitants so they can protect themselves in case the evil fruitcake monster attacks!

Oh, what? Like you’ve never armed your gingerbread men cookies with sharpened candy canes so they can protect themselves in case the evil fruitcake monster attacks?

Anyway, another process which many people undergo during this time of year is that of sending holiday greeting cards. And it just so happens that there is a tool that can aid in this process. A tool which, like the cookie cutter, allows you to create dozens of greeting cards from a single document, yet still personalize each one with ease.

I’m referring to a software tool in this case: the Mail Merge feature in Microsoft Word.

Performing a mail merge operation greatly simplifies the process of sending out personalized mass mailings. All you need is a merge document and a data source. The data source is typically a set of contact information fields, such as first name, last name, address, etc. These fields can be housed in an Excel workbook, an Access database table or query, or it can even come right from your Outlook contacts.

The merge document can be in the form of a letter, a set of mailing labels, or envelopes. This document gets associated with the data source file during the merge process. Then, wherever a piece of personalized information needs to appear, you can insert a merge field from your data source. During the last step in the merge process, you can choose to either create a set of documents from the merge document (one for each record in your data source), or just send the documents directly to the printer.

Of course, a Mail Merge will really only save you time if you know your way through the process. Since it can be a bit tricky for novices and pros alike, we’ll include some tips that should help you through it.

The tips include:

• Mass Messages: getting started with Mail Merges in Word
• Start at the Source: tips for setting up Excel data to be used in a merge
• Do Not Label Me: using the Mail Merge feature to create mailing labels
• Pushing the Envelopes: using the Mail Merge feature to create mailing envelopes
• Split ’em Up: using Excel’s Text to Columns feature to split data into separate columns
• Published en Masse: performing a mail merge in Publisher

In all seriousness, I think you need to really think this through. I mean, if the evil fruitcake monster attacks the gingerbread village and they don’t have any sharpened candy canes with which to protect themselves, it’s really going to get ugly.

Oh, well. Don’t forget to stop by and visit us on Twitter @productiveUcast, or head over to write a review of the podcast on iTunes!

Until next time, keep cranking out those cookies and holiday greetings by the dozen!

Music courtesy of Clayton & Fulcrum

It was a dry and brisk November evening when I got the call. Sitting at my desk with the blinds cracked just enough to allow the last rays of sunlight from the dying day to creep through, the ringing of the phone shattered the silence like a brick through a pane of glass. The dame was one-half shrill hysteria, two-thirds livid frustration, and just a splash of hopeless desperation. The recipe for a typical batch of Formula Frenzy. Combine and shake well; serve chilled and aggravated.

She had just written a formula in an Excel worksheet that was supposed to calculate her income and bill payments and return a tidy little budget for monthly spending. Instead, it returned the dreaded #N/A error. This is where I come in.

I’m a formula detective. It’s my job to examine the data, peer deep into the dark underlying elements that comprise a failing formula, and eliminate the errors. I told her I’d take the case. After all, I know the usual suspects; more importantly, I know the tricks to undo their devilry.

It’s not that hard, really. Most of the tools needed for the job are built right into the Excel application and readily available. I prefer to start with the “Evaluate Formula” feature. This one really lets you step right into the formula and break it down to pinpoint where the error occurs. That kind of hands-on approach takes a lot of the guess-work out of a long and complex formula, and has helped me successfully close many cases of Formula Frenzy.

For some of the simpler formulas, I tend to go right to the source: the Formula Bar. If you want to see what’s happening behind the scenes, this is for you. You can use the F9 key in the Formula Bar to convert a highlighted portion of a formula to its resulting value.

Another good trick to know is how to force all the formulas in the worksheet to show themselves. Sometimes it’s hard to tell what’s lurking underneath those cells, but the “Show Formulas” feature (also called “Formula Auditing Mode” in some versions of Excel) will bring all the formulas out of hiding.

It can also help to know where a formula’s coming from. Sometimes, being able to see which cells directly impact a formula’s result can shed some light on why it might be producing an error. As it turns out, Excel couldn’t have made this any easier. You can use the Trace Precedents arrows to point out exactly which cells a formula is affected by. The Trace Dependents arrows will show you which other cells are affected by that cell.

Then there are those cases of Formula Frenzy that can really leave your head spinning. This is typically a symptom of Circular References, which can occur when Excel is trying to calculate a formula that includes a reference to the cell it’s in. Makes me dizzy just thinking about it.

I’ve seen some bad cases of Formula Frenzy in my line of work. It’s not something I’d wish on anyone, so I’m leaving you with some tips that should help you avoid having to call me to bail you out when a formula goes awry.

The tips are posted on the blog entry for this podcast at www.productiveUpodcast.com, and they include:

• Let’s Evaluate: Troubleshooting faulty formulas with Excel’s “Evaluate Formula” tool
• Behind the Scenes: Using F9 to evaluate formulas in the Formula Bar
• Genealogy of a Formula: Using the Trace Precedents and Trace Dependents arrows
• Revelio Formulae: How to toggle the display of formulas on a worksheet
• Going in Circles: Understanding circular references
• Hidden in Plain Sight: Using the N function to add comments inside formulas

This should be enough to help you get your own formula detective agency up and running. Next time you come across a formula playing by its own rules, you’ll know just where to start snooping to solve the mystery of the #N/A error.

That’s all for this edition of the podcast. Until next week, be sure to head over to iTunes to write a review of the podcast, or drop us a line on Twitter @productiveUcast.

Music courtesy of Clayton & Fulcrum

Welcome back to the podcast!

This week’s edition…

“Out with the Old and in with the New”: Using Find and Replacê in Microsoft Office

I’m a bit of a digital packrat. I keep everything. Not only do I keep stuff, I also have multiple back-ups of the documents I have saved.

I suspect I am not unique, either. Recently, I was talking with a colleague and she admitted that she keeps everything too – but she never goes back to use it again. She said she makes backups so she has “just-in-case” copies, but readily admits that she creates the same documents over and over again from scratch.

When I hear her complaining about how she cannot remember how she worked around a particular glitch, I ask her the same question: “Why didn’t you just copy the old one and change it?” Her reply: “It’s too much work.”

It may seem like too much work, but repurposing content is an age-old practice. For example:

Did they cancel “Bewitched” when the first Darren didn’t work out? No, they just found another Darren

And then there’s Shakespeare. Why create new content when you can just replacê Romeo and Juliet with Maria and Tony and call it “West Side Story”?

Make your life easier; use Find and Replacê.

Almost every Microsoft Office program enables you to Find and Replacê, even the basic text editor Notepad.

In this week’s podcast, we offer Find and Replacê tips for a gaggle of Office apps. Among them:

• Change is Not Always Hard: Using Find and Replacê in Microsoft Excel
• Presto-Chango: Using Find and Replacê in Microsoft Word
• Go Green with PowerPoint: Recycle slides using Find and Replacê in Microsoft PowerPoint
• Adding can be Maddening: Using paste special to alter numbers in a worksheet
• Up to Date: Using update queries in Microsoft Access to update values in a table

That’s it for this week’s podcast. Until next week, and keep this in mind: It’s OK to reuse files, but not OK to reuse tissues.

You can find all of our tips on our blog at www.productiveUpodcast.com. Hate us? Love us? Have a suggestion? Tell us in an iTunes review. We would love to hear what you have to say.

See you next time!

Music courtesy of Clayton & Fulcrum

Sounds kinda Twilight Zone-y, doesn’t it?

“You’re traveling through another dimension—a dimension where there is no screen less than a light-year wide. On this journey into the unforgiving abyss of your imagination, maximum resolution spans multiple infinities. You’ve just entered…the Widescreen Zone.”

Not everyone has a monitor that requires a yardstick to measure, but a lot of people enjoy multi-monitor setups for their computers. Having two or three monitors at your disposal can be just as useful, especially when you need to have several windows open at one time.

Whether using multiple monitors or a high screen resolution, the problem you occasionally run into is one of increased distance. It was once only a stone’s throw from the bottom of your screen to the Formatting toolbar at the top of a Microsoft Word document; now it feels like your mouse cursor is trekking across the Sahara. I think I see the Bold button! Nope, it was just a mirage.

Well, let go of that mouse and rest a while at the oasis, and I’ll let you in on a little secret: there’s a shortcut. In fact, there are hundreds of shortcuts, right at your fingertips. They’re called keyboard shortcuts, and once you get comfortable using them, you might just want to bury your mouse in the sand.

That Bold button that you wish could be just a little closer? You don’t need it. Just hold down the Ctrl key and the B key together to toggle Bold on and off. Ctrl+I for italics, Ctrl+U for underline. Looking for more advanced formatting options? Use Ctrl+D to open Word’s Font dialog, chock-full of all the wonderful checkboxes you need to add Strikethrough, Small caps, and Shadow effects to your text. I know what you’re thinking:

“Checkboxes, eh? Sounds like something I’ll need to click on. I’ll just reach for my mouse…”

Not so fast! Even within the Font dialog box, you can keep your hands on the keyboard and still apply any of the options you see before you. In fact, you can use keyboard shortcuts to navigate through any menu. While you’re still in the Font dialog box, take a look at the underlined letters for each option. Those are little cheat sheets for keyboard shortcuts that work in conjunction with the Alt key. Hold in the Alt key and press K, and you’ve got Strikethrough.

These keyboard shortcuts work in every Microsoft Office application, and some extend to other programs, too. There are links in this week’s blog entry to some great tips on using keyboard shortcuts. This week’s tips are:

• Showing Off Your Keys - displaying keyboard shortcuts in menus and ScreenTips
• Feeling Bold? – using keyboard shortcuts to apply text formatting
• Ctrl+D, Alt+K – navigating through menus and dialog boxes with the keyboard
• Text Downsizing – increasing and decreasing font size with the keyboard
• One Touch Formatting – applying number formats in Excel with keyboard shortcuts
• Hands-On Control – learning the keyboard shortcuts for Office applications

Thanks for joining us for week’s podcast. Armed with these keyboard shortcuts, hopefully you’ll find that the Widescreen Zone isn’t so scary after all.

Until next time, be sure to stop by www.productiveupodcast.com to leave us your comments. Also, follow us on Twitter @productiveUcast and visit our podcast on iTunes, where you can write a 5-star review for us!

See you next week!

Music courtesy of Clayton & Fulcrum

Well, it happened again. I’m almost positive I put both socks into the dryer, but only one came out. Tell me: where do the lost socks of the world go when they disappear? The Island of Misfit Socks? An exclusive club for singles? Maybe they have their own dating website, and they all go online in the hopes that they’ll find their perfect match. If so, I hope my argyle sock reads this:

Dear sock,

Your perfect match is here, in my dresser drawer, and it’s lonely. This is where you belong; come home.

What a frustrating experience. Sure, I could go buy a new pair, but then my original old sock would be a third wheel. The new pair of socks would try to have some time alone together and then this old sock would be hanging around and it would eventually just get awkward.

What I really wish is that life had something like Excel’s MATCH function. In case you’re not familiar, let me take a moment to explain it. If you have a worksheet that contains a column of data—let’s say, for example, articles of clothing—and another column that contains some or all of the same data, but in a different order, the MATCH function can help you determine which items appear in both columns. Not only that, it will also give you the row number in which the item appears in the first column. So if you know that one of the items in column B is “Sock,” and you want to know where that item can be found in column A, you can create a MATCH formula to tell you where in column A that item appears. It’s like map coordinates—better than GPS for misfit socks!

Once you have that formula mastered, you might want to try a more advanced formula like a VLOOKUP. This function will find a matching value in another set of data and return a value from an adjacent column. How does it work?

Well, let’s say you’re working in Excel and you have two worksheets of data. One contains Employee Names in column A and Employee IDs in column B. The second worksheet also has a series of Employee Names in column A, but they’re in a different order than the ones on the first worksheet. So if you want to find out the Employee IDs for these names, you can use the VLOOKUP function to look on the first worksheet for a match for each Employee Name on the second sheet, and it will return the correct Employee ID.

This can be extremely useful, especially in cases where you have thousands of records for which you need to return corresponding data.

There’s a lot you can do with Excel’s lookup functions if you know how to properly set them up. Here are links to some tips that will help you get started.

• Does This Match? – Using the MATCH function
• Vertical Challenge – Using the VLOOKUP function
• Look It Up – Using the LOOKUP function
• Data on the Horizon – Using the HLOOKUP function
• Show Me the Money – Using absolute references in formulas
• Go Away, #N/A – Checking for errors in formulas
• Pass or Fail? – Using VLOOKUP in a grading system
• Getting Clean Results – Nesting other functions in a VLOOKUP

You might also want to check out the tips in our previous podcast, Excel Hates Me! When 2+2 Isn’t Always 4 (VOL029), to make sure your data is clean. Otherwise, you might run into some errors when trying to find a match with these formulas.

Well, Excel’s lookup functions are really handy for locating data, but it looks like I’m going to have to hunt for this sock on my own. Shhh…be vewwy, vewwy quiet!

Thanks for joining us for this week’s podcast. Be sure to leave us a comment if there’s anything you’d like to see featured in a future episode.

And don’t forget that you can follow us on Twitter @productiveUcast, and you can also find the podcast on iTunes if you want to write a review.

See you next week!

Music provided by Clayton & Fulcrum

This week’s edition: “Inventing the Wheel was a One-Time Deal”

If you hang around any business office long enough, you’re likely to hear workers uttering the same banal buzzwords or expressions:

• “Is it Friday yet?”
• “Take that off-line and we’ll circle back later.”
• “There’s no need to reinvent the wheel.”

Some of these are examples of corporate jargon and some are just phrases that have become so overused that they no longer have any real impact on the listener.

I know someone who asks, “Is it Friday yet?” every day of the work week. Yes, even on Friday. The phrase has just become so deeply entrenched in his vernacular that it’s now as common a greeting as “Hello.”

You probably know people like this, too. Maybe they don’t use these particular phrases, but I’m sure you’ve heard them spout off common business slang without ever giving a thought as to how frequently these expressions are being used. Don’t they ever stop to listen to themselves? Can no one stop them??

Sadly, no. Tell your boss you’re sick of hearing him use the phrase, “thinking outside the box,” and you may find yourself living inside a box on the side of the road.

But let’s back up a moment to the expression, “There’s no need to reinvent the wheel.” As tired as I am of hearing people use this phrase over so many years, its meaning still rings true: “Why create something new when you can reuse something already created?”

To me, this points to one simple solution: templates.

Templates, in their many forms, serve the purpose of allowing us to create a basic design for something once, then apply that design toward creating many more similar things. Templates promote efficiency in many different industries. Even the clothes you’re wearing started out as templates in the form of clothing patterns. From just one pattern, several thousand identical t-shirts were created. Now don’t you feel unique?

In much the same way, template files can be created in many software applications. Microsoft Word, for example, allows you to create a document template. You can start with a new, blank document and then set all the options to your liking: create styles, set a default font, include some text in a header or footer, even include AutoText entries. Save this file as a document template, and now you can reuse it to create countless other documents that require the same styles, font settings, and other options. You can then add or subtract anything you like from this new document without changing the original template.

Sounds useful, doesn’t it? Maybe you’ve found yourself in this situation before: every month, you need to create a document on company letterhead. This might include a logo in the header with some contact information, and maybe a very specific font size and page margins. Maybe what you do every month is find the document you created the previous month, delete all the text from it, re-save the file with a new name, then type in your new text. Well, those days are gone. Today you can find that document you created last month, delete the old text, and then save it as a template. When you open the template, it’s already blank and ready to go with all the proper settings. Using this method greatly reduces the chance that you’ll accidentally overwrite any changes to that previous document.

Word isn’t the only application that makes use of template files, either. The tips included in this week’s blog entry will show you how to create templates for Excel, PowerPoint, and even Outlook.

This week’s tips include:

• Set the Standard: Creating new document templates in Word
• Making Normal Your Own: Setting formatting defaults on Word’s global template
• You Set the Rules: Creating a default template for Excel workbooks
• Put Some Style Into It: Creating and applying design templates in PowerPoint
• Déjà Vu: Creating an e-mail template in Outlook
• Give Your E-mail a Makeover: Using Stationery in Lotus Notes

So think about the files you work with on a frequent basis and consider creating a template for these. You’ll save yourself some time and effort, and you’ll avoid having to reinvent the wheel or anything else.

Thanks for joining us this week! If you have any other examples of corporate jargon that gets under your skin, let us know in the comments! Also, feel free to keep up with us on Twitter by following @productiveUcast, or visit our podcast on iTunes and write a review.

See you next week!

Music courtesy of Clayton & Fulcrum

This week’s edition…

“Excel hates me! When 2 + 2 isn’t always 4″

You know, one of the most frustrating (and often the most fascinating) part of using Microsoft Excel has to be just how helpful it tries to be.

For instance: I type the number 2 in a cell and again in the cell right under it. Go just below that and click the wonderful “add ’em up” sign (if you’re not sure what I am talking about, look on the toolbar for the button that looks like a Greek letter Σ) and presto—I get 4! Great! This is exactly how it should work, right?

Well, I decided to copy a table of information from the Internet the other day and tried to add up the numbers that I pasted, and Excel could not have been more wrong.

I was really curious as to why this might be happening. I didn’t feel like I could trust my good buddy Mr. Gates and his math processing whiz kid Excel. So I asked myself, “Self, are you crazy enough to act like someone in a horror film who knows the monster is going to get you if you go down into that dark place alone?” And just like in the movies, of course, my brain went, “But…it will be different this time. I’ve got your back.” So down the hole I went, searching for that ever-elusive spark of sanity.

First stop: little green symbols… Ooooo! Are they alien lights? Are they indicators of friends waiting for me to find them? Nope. Turns out, it was one of the newer features added a few years back to Excel that I tend to ignore. You know, like that crazy maintenance light on the dashboard of your car that you keep hoping goes away.

So what do they call these friendly helpers? They call them smart tags, as in, “Good day, ol’ chap! Tag, you’re it!” These little indicators can give you a lot of information on things that might be wrong with your data. Like, for instance, formulas that aren’t consistent. Or, in my case, numbers being stored as text.

Numbers being stored as text? Aren’t numbers just numbers? I mean, when I see a 2, it looks like a 2, smells like a 2…so why can’t Excel accept that it is a 2? As it turns out, when you add data to your spreadsheet from other sources like external databases, imported text files, or pasted data from a Web page, sometimes there are hidden little ghoulies in the system that you can’t see.

Here are a couple of common creatures that you sometimes conjure up when you’re trying get your information based on mojo created in other places.

• Spaces. Yes, spaces. Those little blank things between words, or my ears—you know, the empty kind. Just because you can’t see them doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
• Non-printing characters. Often information coming from different database systems can carry things like line breaks or carriage returns, useful for text-based applications, but useless for most people when they need to work in Excel.

So, what do you do? I say treat it like liposuction and just TRIM out the fat. Well, maybe not the same. TRIM is actually a formula function you can use to remove unwanted spaces in the content of another cell.

Or try using Find and Replacê, by first copying one of these “spaces” or even non-printing characters (you may not be able to see them, but you can touch them if you’re real careful), then run the Find and Replacê. When deciding what to use to replacê them with, use nothing. Just remember: you want to get rid of it and substitute in its place what should be there—nothing.

There are lots of methods and little quirks when it comes to getting rid of these little pests, so this week we have included some helpful tips on how to use many different techniques to exorcise that “evil monkey” in your closet. So why not stop on by and check them out at: www.productiveUpodcast.com.

This week’s tips:

• Mass Conversion – Using SmartTags
• You Get the General Idea – Using Text to Columns
• Just a Trim – Using the TRIM Function
• Clean it Up – Matching up values
• Trading Spaces – dealing with non-breaking spaces
• True Value – Fixing problem numbers using the VALUE function

Well, that’s it for this week. If you found these tips useful or have some questions you would like to see covered in a future episode, you can leave us a quick note on Twitter by following @productiveUcast. Or, if you just can’t get enough of us, let everyone know by writing a review of the podcast on iTunes.

See you next week!

Music Provided by Clayton & Fulcrum