mthomas.co.uk » Tutorials

Spreadsheet Tip: Calculating the end date of a loan or project

Mike Thomas — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 20:46:58 +0000

Not only do spreadsheets excel at calculating numbers, they can also calculate dates too. Imagine that you have taken out a 6-month loan and you want to know when it will be paid off (assuming that it is 6 calendar months from the loan start date) or maybe you have been assigned a project which must be completed on a certain date.

You know that it will take you exactly 6 months to complete the project so you need to know when to start.

The EDATE function, which can be used in most spreadsheet applications including Excel, Numbers and Google Spreadsheets, as well as open source applications such as Libre Office and Open Office will calculate the date that is a defined number of months away from another date.

The structure of the function is =EDATE(date,months)

Example 1: A Loan

Imagine that you have taken out a 6 month loan starting on 4th May 2012. The formula in B5 will calculate when the loan will be paid off (assuming that it is 6 calendar months from the loan start date).

The formula in B5 is =EDATE(B3,B4)

Example 2: A Project

You have been assigned a project which must be completed on 8th October 2012. You know that it will take you exactly 6 months to complete the project so you need to know when to start the project.

The formula in B5 is =EDATE(B3,-B4).

The second parameter (or argument as it’s known) is a negative and therefore subtracts 6 months from the date in B3.

Excel: Analysis TookPak Add-In

Note that if you are using Excel 2003 or earlier you have to install the Analysis ToolPak add-in otherwise the result of the EDATE function will display as #NAME.

To install the add-in, select Tools > AddIns and tick Analysis ToolPak in the Add-ins dialog box

Installing Lion in VMWare Fusion 3

Mike Thomas — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 22:14:58 +0000

I’ve not yet "upgraded" my 17 inch MacBook Pro (my "main machine" as I call it) to Lion. There’s a number of reasons for this – too many to go into here, but I think it’s probably a case of if it ain’t broke then don’t fix it. I know I’m going to have to do it sooner or later as at some point they’ll be some software that I can’t live without that will only work on Lion. But for the moment my Lion experience is limited to my 13 inch MacBook which was upgraded the day that the new OS was launched.

The MacBook is 4 years old and runs like a lame dog. It always has done to be honest. There’s no way I could seriously use Final Cut or Photoshop on it for example. It does have VMWare Fusion installed but if I want to run my Vista VM or my Windows 7 VM, forget it. I installed Lion on it, "because I’m an Apple Geek" and because I didn’t want to be left out. I’d already gone on record at the MacBites Live event when Lion was demo’d and also on MacBites episode 51 as saying that there was nothing in it for me.

However, it’s always handy to have an installation of Lion to tinker with plus, as a Podcast Host, I regularly have to check out some piece of software which no doubt will come with a 30-day trial at the end of which I’ll have to either buy it or remove it. So I decided the way forward was to create a Lion VM. The problem was that VMWare Fusion 3 (version 4 has just been released but at the time of writing I haven’t bought it) doesn’t support Lion as a Guest OS. Although Parallels 7 does allow you to create a VM with Lion as the Guest OS, it is activated and costs £35 a seat and although you are supposed to be able to convert Fusion VM’s to Parallels (I have 7 VM’s), I’m never quite sure how well that works.

Well I was in luck – it turns out that you can create a VM with Lion as the Guest OS using Fusion 3. However, there was a lot of terminal hacking. Here’s how to do it…

Create a blank disk image

Using Disk Utility, create a new image. To do this, select File > New > Blank Disk Image.

Name: MyInstaller – you can name it whatever you want, but be sure to modify the steps below accordingly.
Size: 5 GB (tip – use the Custom option)
Format: Mac OS X Extended
Encryption: none
Partitions: Single partition – Apple Partition Map
Image Format: DVD/CD master

Save the image – in this example I’ve saved it as "LionInstaller" in my Documents folder. The file will have a CDR extension

Once the new disk image is created, it should automatically be mounted and you should see "MyInstaller" listed in the Finder sidebar. If it does not automatically mount, simply find the CDR file and double-click it.

Mount the Lion installer image

To do this, locate the file “Install Mac OS X Lion.app” (this is the file that you should have downloaded from the Mac App Store when you bought Lion), right click on it and select “Show Package Contents”. Open the "Contents" folder and then the "SharedSupport" folder and double-click on InstallESD.dmg to mount the image. The mounted image should display as ‘Mac OS X Install ESD’ in the Finder Sidebar.

Mount the Base System image

The Lion installer image contains some hidden files. To get to them you’ll need to run the Terminal application. One of these hidden files is BaseSystem.dmg which is used to boot the system.

Open the Terminal application and at the $ prompt, type: cd "/Volumes/Mac OS X Install ESD"

Press Enter and at the next $ prompt type: open BaseSystem.dmg

The volume will mount as "Mac OS X Base System"

Copy the base system

Ensure that your installer image created in step 1 is mounted (if it isn’t find the file LionInstaller.cdr and double click it) because the entire contents of the base system needs to be copied to your installer image.

I recommend using the Restore feature in Disk Utility.

Click any drive in the Disk Utility Sidebar (1)

Click the Restore button (2)

Drag the "Mac OS X Base System" to the "Source" field (3)

Drag "MyInstaller" to the Destination field (4)

Click the Restore button at the bottom right (5)

Be aware that if you chose to "Erase destination", your installer image will now have the same name as the source, Mac OS X Base System. If so, rename it back to ‘MyInstaller’.

Once that is finished, you can eject the BaseSystem image as it is no longer needed

Setup the ‘kernelcache’ file

First the file needs to be copied from the Lion installer image to your installer image, then the boot configuration file updated to specify the location of the file. All these operations are performed via the Terminal using the following commands:

$ cp "/Volumes/Mac OS X Install ESD/kernelcache" /Volumes/MyInstaller/kernelcache
$ cd /Volumes/MyInstaller/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/
$ sudo vi com.apple.Boot.plist

Make sure the boot file contains at least the following key/value to specify the location of the kernelcache file:

Kernel Cache
\kernelcache

To do this, navigate to the Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration folder on the MyInstaller volume and open the com.apple.Boot.plist file with a text editor. If necessary copy the 2 lines:

Kernel Flags

and paste immediately below. Then amend the copied lines to:

Kernel Cache
\kernelcache

Save and close the file

Copy the installation Packages

Before the packages can be copied from the Lion installer image, there’s a file on your installer image that needs to be deleted. Use the Terminal to do this and be aware that this operation might take a few minutes because it’s copying several gigabytes of data.

$ sudo rm /Volumes/MyInstaller/System/Installation/Packages
$ sudo cp -R "/Volumes/Mac OS X Install ESD/Packages" /Volumes/MyInstaller/System/Installation/Packages

Flag the system as a server installation

In order to boot an OS X volume in VMware, it needs to be a server. The system checks for the existence of a file in a specific location and you can "fake" a server installation simply by creating that file using the following Terminal commands:

$ cd /Volumes/MyInstaller/System/Library/CoreServices
$ sudo touch ServerVersion.plist

Both installer images can be ejected.

Create a virtual machine – 1

Open VMware Fusion and select “New…” from the File menu.

Click the “Continue without disc” button.

Create a virtual machine – 2

Select “Create a custom virtual machine” and click Continue.

Create a virtual machine – 3

Select ‘Operating System: Apple Mac OS X’ and ‘Version: Mac OS X Server 10.6 64-bit’ and click Continue

Create a virtual machine – 4

Click the “Customize Settings” button and name and save the new virtual machine – my VM is saved as "LionTest"

Create a virtual machine – 5

From the Settings menu in VWMare Fusion, select “CDs & DVDs”

Create a virtual machine – 6

Click “Use disc image” and select your installer image (the one created in Step 1)

Create a virtual machine – 7

From the Settings menu, select “Hard Disks”

Create a virtual machine – 8

Deselect “Split into 2 GB files” for the pre-created hard drive and click Apply. Feel free to make any other changes to the settings with one caveat, you must use a SCSI hard disk; IDE drives are not recognized by the installer after it boots. Also, if the hard disk is going to be used as a boot disk, it cannot be split into separate 2 GB files, so make sure to deselect that option when the HD is created.

Replace the Virtual Machine’s NVRAM

VMWare Fusion’s default NVRAM will boot up previous OS X systems, but it will not boot up a Lion volume. The original article where I found these instructions had a link to an NVRAM file. In case that file disappears, I’ve linked to my own copy that you can download here:

Download and uncompress the NVRAM file.

Locate your VM within the Finder (mine is in my Documents folder and is called LionTest), right click and select “Show Package Contents”.

Delete the current nvram file if one exists – the file will have an .nvram extension

Copy the uncompressed and downloaded nvram file into the folder and rename it to match the name of your Virtual Machine (e.g. LionTest.nvram)

Now you should be able to run the VM and it will boot up and start the Lion installation process.

Installing Lion

After the installation disk boots up, the first thing you should do is run Disk Utility and format the hard drive. All the norms apply; GUID partition map, Mac OS X Extended (Journaled) format, etc. When done, quit to return to the installer.

Continue with the installation. When the installation is complete, it will attempt to reboot the VM using the freshly installed OS on the hard disk. It won’t boot, because it’s not a server installation.

Forcing the VM to boot from the CD

VMware will not let you change the startup disk in the VM’s settings, so you’ll have to force a change while the VM is running. Start the VM. As soon as you see the VMWare splash screen, hit the Escape key. This will bring you to a boot menu, select “Boot Manager”

Flag the new system as a server installation

After the VM boots from the install disk again, run the Terminal. I labeled my virtual HD, “OS X Lion HD” when I initialized it, so I would enter the following to ‘touch’ the system:

# touch "/Volumes/OS X Lion HD/System/Library/CoreServices/ServerVersion.plist"

Now you can quit the Terminal, choose Startup Disk from the Utilities menu and restart from the hard disk

Thanks

With thanks to http://osxdaily.com/2011/03/07/install-run-mac-os-x-10-7-lion-in-a-virtual-machine-with-vmware/

How to Close Apps on the iPad and iPhone

Mike Thomas — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 19:02:46 +0000

Earlier this week a colleague came to me with a problem with his iPhone. When he arrived at work that morning his battery was fully charged. By lunchtime it had dropped to 30%. He’d only made one call and has the data turned off. I asked him if he ever closes the apps and he just looked blankly at me so I explained.

Since iOS4 the iPhone and iPad can multi-task in terms of allowing apps to run in the background. Prior to this when you switched from one app to another, the app you switched from would automatically close. The app has to support background processing and most apps do. The benefit of apps running in the background means, for example, that you could be reading your email whilst, for example, Skype or your IM client is still running in the background, listening out for calls and ‘pings’.

The downside of multi-tasking is that it might be a drain on the battery. There’s no conclusive proof of this but if your battery level is dropping like a stone, it’s probably worth closing apps that are currently running. Unfortunately there’s no quick way to “close all”, at least not in iOS4 (who knows what iOS5 might bring) and turning the phone off completely doesn’t clear all apps from memory either. When the phone is switched back on, the apps that were running are still running.

To close an app, double tap on the Home button (that’s the big round one at the bottom) to reveal a panel of icons. These icons represent the apps that are currently running. The iPhone can only show 4 icons at a time. To display “hidden” icons, simply swipe your finger across any of the icons in a leftward direction.

Press and hold on any of the icons and after a second or two all the icons will start to jiggle and each one will have a “close” symbol (red circle with white horizontal line) displayed at the top left hand corner.

Tap the close symbol of the app that you want to close and the app is immediately closed. Repeat this process for each app you want to close.

Double tap the Home button again to close the “currently open apps panel”

As for my colleague’s iPhone, at the end of the working day, his battery was still showing 30%.

Outlook to iPhone: The Holy Grail (Again)

Mike Thomas — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 01:47:24 +0000

As regular listeners to MacBites and readers of this blog will know, I’ve been chasing the holy grail of having my work calendar available on my iDevices for quite some time. I’ve tried a number of solutions with limited success.

Last week Minster68 came up with a suggestion which was to create a contact in Outlook which was his Gmail account and then set up an Outlook rule to forward on any meeting requests to this email address. Once the email is received by the Gmail account, the meeting is automatically added to the Google calendar that is associated with the Google account. The Google calendar is then accessed via his iPhone.

So on Friday I gave it a go and I’m pleased to report that it works.

Rather than labelling my Gmail contact as iPhone, which is what Minster did, I labelled it as “CalendarSync” as I think that is a little less obvious than iPhone, and a little less alarming for the other attendees who might think we’re becoming an Apple only company.

My Outlook calendar is full of items that have been generated via a meeting request, most of which are created by other people. Unlike many people, I receive meeting requests for more than just meetings. For example, every time I’m booked to deliver a training course, our team’s Training Co-ordinator sends me a meeting request.

So I created an Outlook rule to automatically forward on meeting request emails to my CalendarSync contact, as suggested by Minster, and asked a colleague to set up a test meeting. The meeting request email came in, I refreshed my Google calendar and found that the meeting had been added.

Unlike Outlook, I don’t actually have to log in to Google and accept the meeting requests, they are just added to the calendar. Where a meeting is set up by me, it’s just a case of inviting the CalendarSync contact as Minster said.

As well as meetings, my Outlook calendar contains appointments, which are like iCal events. I use appointments for several purposes, primarily when I need to block off a period of time to work on a project but I’m not actually inviting anyone. I also use Outlook to record time spent on different activities so for example if somebody rings me with an Excel query and I spent 30 minutes on it, that is recorded in Outlook as an appointment.

To get appointments into my Google calendar, I can either invite the CalendarSync contact or change my way of working and use meeting requests instead of appointments and invite CalendarSync as the only attendee (you can’t invite yourself to a meeting).

My Manager and one or two others in the team have author permissions on my calendar so sometimes they add appointments too. As far as I can see, there’s no way of automating an email to Google for appointments created by somebody else, so I’m going to have to check for these and forward them on manually.

I have quite a few future meetings and appointments already in Outlook and as Minster said, these won’t be transferred across to Google. If these meetings and appointments have been created by me then I can open the item in Outlook, add the CalendarSync contact, save the item and the Google calendar will get updated. However, if the item has been been created by someone else then I have to use the forward command in Outlook, forwarding it to the CalendarSync contact.

I also tested what happens if a meeting or appointment is moved or deleted from Outlook and I’m happy to report that the Google calendar is automatically updated.

The only downside is that I now get a load of emails on my phone because my iPhone syncs to my Gmail account, however, that can be dealt with by setting up another Gmail account that is dedicated to this task and not attaching the mail account to the iPhone.

Finally, to get my Google calendar on my iPhone, which, after all, was the object of the exercise, I subscribe to it via BusyCal on my desktop Mac and via MobileMe synchronisation, the calendar items appear on my iPad and iPhone.

You can access your Google calendar directly from your iPhone – via Settings > Mail, Contact, Calendars > Add Account > Other > Add CalDAV Account (especially handy for non-Mac users)

So all in all, a good solution and thanks to Minster for the idea.

Creating an iCalendar File in Outlook

Mike Thomas — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 22:26:26 +0000

This week at work I was asked how to create a calendar shortcut icon within an outlook message. The lady in question wanted to send an email to a group of users explaining there was a seminar happening and to wanted users to be able to double click the icon to add the appointment to their calendar.

The solution to her problem is to create the appointment in Outlook (the only calendaring application we have available) and save it as an iCalendar file which can then be sent as an email attachment to her colleagues. This blog post provides step by step instructions for the whole process.

Step 1 – Create an appointment in Outlook. Enter the subject, location, date, time and any other appropriate information in the body of the appointment.

Step 2 – Save the appointment. In Outlook 2007, click the Office button and select Save As. In Outlook 2010, Click the File tab and select Save As.

Step 3 – Select a location to store the file (such as your Desktop) and enter a filename (or accept the default name which is taken from the Subject of the appointment). Leave the Save as Type set to iCalendar Format

Step 4 – Close the appointment. if you want to add it to your own calendar, click Yes to saving, otherwise click No

Step 5 – Add the file created in step 3 to an email as an attachment and send the email. You can now delete the file from your Desktop

The recipients should either save the attachment to an appropriate location (such as their Desktop) and open it by double-clicking it or double-click it from inside the email. In either case the appointment will be opened.

To add the appointment to their Outlook calendar, the user simply clicks the Save and Close button on the Outlook Ribbon.

The appointment is added to their calendar.

Presenter View in PowerPoint

Mike Thomas — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 21:14:27 +0000

Almost all of the training courses that I deliver involve PowerPoint. Let me be clear, I don’t mean that I solely deliver PointPoint training, rather, most of the courses require the use of PowerPoint. I have a few introductory slides (with not a single bullet point in sight!), I have a slide with contact details on that I display at the end and, for some courses, I have slides that are used to explain concepts.

When I deliver a live training course I don’t like to use cue cards or have a printout of the running order. So how do I remember which slide is up next and what about Speakers Notes?

I use PowerPoint’s Presenter View. It enables me to view my Speakers Notes along with thumbnail previews (which are quite large) of the up-coming slides on one screen (usually my laptop), whilst my audience sees the "real" presentation (running on the same laptop) on a large screen via a projector.

Over the past year, due to the nature of my role and the team that I work for, I have delivered more online courses than face-to-face courses and the great thing about Presenter View is that it works for online presentations too.

When delivering online, instead of connecting my laptop to a projector, I have it connected to a 17 inch monitor (this is not a special configuration for online delivery – this is my normal work setup – I can’t live without a dual monitor setup but that’s another story). The Speakers Notes and slide thumbnails will be displayed on the external monitor whilst the presentation is run in full-screen mode on the laptop (or I can switch this around to display the Speakers Notes on the laptop and the presentation on the external monitor).

The conferencing software (Webex at work) is configured to share a single screen so that the audience sees the presentation and not the Speakers Notes.

So. how do you set up PowerPoint to use Presenter View In PowerPoint 2007 and 2010?

Enable Presenter View

On the Ribbon, click the Slide Show tab (1) and in the Monitors group, ensure that there is a tick in the Use Presenter View box (2)

If Windows has not been configured to use dual monitors, the Display Settings dialog box from the Windows Control Panel will appear.

The Windows Display Settings Dialog Box – 1

Click the monitor icon to be used to display the Speaker Notes (1) and then select the This is my main monitor check box (2).

If the This is my main monitor check box is selected and unavailable, the monitor is already designated as the primary monitor – in my configuration, my Thinkpad laptop is been identified as the primary monitor.

Only one monitor can be the primary monitor at any one time. To change which monitor is the primary one, click a different monitor icon and the This is my main monitor check box will be cleared and made available again.

The Windows Display Settings Dialog Box – 2

Click the monitor icon for the monitor that will be used to display the full-screen presentation (1) and ensure that there is a tick in the Extend the desktop onto this monitor check box (2)

Click OK (3)

Choosing the Correct Monitor – PowerPoint

Although Windows has been configured, it is still necessary to ensure that PowerPoint is set up to output the presentation to the correct monitor.

On Ribbon, click the Slide Show tab (1) and in the Monitors group, ensure that the monitor on which you want the audience to see your presentation, appears in the Show Presentation On list (2).

Excel 2007′s Disappearing Macro Recordings

Mike Thomas — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 12:32:48 +0000

Whilst building a Graphical Dashboard for a client I discovered that the Excel 2007 macro recorder doesn’t record actions that involve placing and manipulating the drawing tools/shapes.

Dashboard – the word means different things to different people but I was recently asked by a customer to “build them a Dasboard in Excel”. The requirements were fairly vague but included:

A way to graphically display different sets of summarised data.
The ability to switch from one graph to another at the click of a button.
The ability to select the most appropriate chart for the selected data.
Drop-downs so that they could choose whether to display the data “by country” or “by month”.
Drop-downs so that they could select which country and which month to display.
On the column chart, they wanted to have a straight horizontal line at 95% to indicate the “Target”.

It was with this last requirement that I hit a brick wall. Rather than create a “mixed type” chart with a second data series fixed at 95%, I thought that the easiest way was to use Excel’s drawing tools to draw a line and then change it’s colour and thickness. This should take me 2 minutes with the Excel macro recorder.

Oh how wrong was I!

I recorded the process and when I looked at the VBA module..horror of horrors…there was no code. So I recorded it again…and again. “Something’s not right here” I thought, so off to Google I went.

It turns out that the Excel 2007 macro recorder doesn’t record actions that involve placing and manipulating the drawing tools/shapes.

However, Microsoft fixed this in Excel 2010. So I opened the file in Excel 2010, turned the macro recorder on and hey presto…I have a working macro. For those interested in the code (and feel free to copy and paste this into an Excel 2007 module)…

ActiveSheet.Shapes.AddConnector(msoConnectorStraight, 280, 69.75, 812, 69.75).Select
With Selection.ShapeRange.Line
.Visible = msoTrue
.ForeColor.RGB = RGB(255, 0, 0)
.Transparency = 0
End With

With Selection.ShapeRange.Line
.Visible = msoTrue
.Weight = 2.25
End With

Filtering Unique Values in Microsoft Access

Mike Thomas — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 20:06:20 +0000

At work, our team has recently started to offer eLearning courses. These courses are “bite-sized” (typically 15-20 minutes) modules, covering topics such as File Management, Excel formulae and setting mailbox permissions in Outlook.

Whereas delegates have to book if they want to attend a classroom-based course or a virtual training session, the eLearning courses (which have been created using Articulate) are hosted on our team’s website and can be accessed at any time by simply clicking on the name of the course on the website’s Course Catalogue page.

Unfortunately we don’t have access to a Learning Management System so in order to track usage of the eLearning, I added an additional table (tblTracking) into the Customer Relationship Management system that I built. The CRM system stores it’s data in a SQL Server database and integrates with the website to allow delegates to see what courses are available, when they are running and ultimately book a place.

When a user clicks on the name of a course on the website’s Course Catalogue page the following happens…if the selected course is an eLearning course (indicated by a value of True in the ysnELearning field in the tblCatalogue table) a record is added to the tblTracking table. It records the user’s Name (this is actually their Windows logonID and is automatically captured), the name of the course and the date.

As all my colleagues are familiar with Access, I’ve created an Access database that is linked to the SQL Server database. The Access database lives on a file share that we all have access to and provides an easy way to query the database.

In the screenshot below (which uses fictitious data), you can see that User1 has accessed the Excel Functions course and the File Management course. In fact this user accessed the Excel Functions course twice – once on 15th June and once on 18th June. This in itself is useful information as not only can we track usage of the eLearning, but we can also see whether people are accessing individual modules more than once. Users could do this for a variety of reasons – maybe they just want to run through it again or maybe they were interrupted part-way through and decided to start again from the beginning.

Another request from my Manager was to produce a list of users who had accessed each module but exclude users who had accessed the same module more that once.

To do this I created a new query:

I added the Name, Course and Date fields and then clicked the Totals button to display the Total row in the Query Grid. The Total row entry for strName and strCourse was left as Group By but the dtmDate was changed to First. This instructs Access to display the first date it finds for a combined Name/Course and so gives the desired result:

Defining and Using Range Names in Excel

Mike Thomas — Sun, 23 May 2010 09:00:50 +0000

Excel allows you to assign a name to an individual cell or a range of cells. That name can be used in a formula and can help to make the formula easier to understand. Names can also make it easier to navigate around a large spreadsheet. In Excel 2007 and 2010, names have a scope assigned to them, meaning that a name can be a worksheet-level name or a workbook-level name.

Defining a Name – 1

Select the cell or cells that the name will refer to

Click the Formulas tab on the Ribbon

Click the Define Name button in the Defined Names group

Defining a Name – 2

The New Name dialog box is displayed

Type an appropriate name into the Name field (1). The name should describe the data that will be stored in the cell(s)

Select the appropriate value from the Scope drop down list (2). In the example above, there are 4 worksheets – North, South, East and West. Each sheet is laid out identically. The range B2:E2 in each sheet needs to be assigned a name. In previous versions of Excel, each name would have to be unique, for example, SalesNorth, SalesSouth, etc. The Scope allows you to restrict the use of the name to a specific worksheet or, by selecting Workbook from the list, make it available throughout the workbook. Names must be unique within their scope. So you cannot have two identical names in the same sheet, but you can use the same name in different sheets.

The optional Comment field (3) is used to document the name

Refers to (4) indicates the range that the name refers to

Click the OK button

The Names Box

The Names Box is to the left of the Formula Bar, just above columns A and B. Clicking the dropdown arrow will display a list of Names in the current workbook. To quickly navigate to a named cell/range, simply select the name from the list.

To quickly create a name, select the cell/range that the name will refer to, type the name into the Names Box and press Enter. Names created in this way will automatically have Workbook scope applied to them.

If a name has been assigned to a cell or range, when that cell or range is selected, the name will be displayed in the Name Box – in the above screenshot, G1 has been assigned the name VAT

Using Names in a Formula

In the above screenshot, G1 has been assigned the name VAT. Instead of typing G1 into the formula in C2, the name VAT has been used. Not only is the name easier to remember than the cell references, but also the formula will make more sense to other users of the worksheet.

An additional benefit is that Names are always absolute. In the example above, when the formula =VAT*B2 is copied down the column, the new formula will read =VAT*C3, etc.

Word 2007 Images – Amending Alternative Text

Mike Thomas — Mon, 17 May 2010 21:46:49 +0000

The Save As PDF command in MS Office 2007 allows you to create a PDF from a Microsoft Office document even if you haven’t got Adobe Acrobat installed. However, if the Office document contains images (and the images have been inserted using the Insert > Image command rather than copy and paste), the image in the PDF document will have "alt text" attached to it.

What is Alt Text?

The purpose of alt text (short for alternative text) is to provide a textual description of the image. This description will be displayed as a tooltip when a user hovers their mouse over the image. The description will also be "heard" by anyone using screen reading software.

By default, the filename is used for the alt text as shown in the screenshot above. If the filename is either meaningless (for example1.jpg) or not overly-descriptive, it is recommended that the alt text is amended.

Changing the Alt Text – 1

To change (or remove – although that is not recommended for the reasons already stated) the alt text for an image, right click the image and select Format Picture…

Changing the Alt Text – 2

Click the Alt Text tab, delete the existing text and type in the new text into the Alternative Text box.

Click OK to complete the process.