Windows 10 – 10 Productivity Tips

Have you ever wondered why that co-worker in the next cubicle is able to maneuver through their computing world with such ease, where you seem to struggle with what should be a simple task?  Perhaps it’s because they know a few simple tricks that don’t seem to get much attention during the office training session.  […]

Excel – Convert Numbers to Text (avoid the pitfalls)

Converting numbers in Excel to text is a common practice and has many benefits.  Let’s look at two very common scenarios: Scenario #1 – Preserving leading zeroes If you are entering part numbers, employee IDs, postal codes, etc… there is a high likelihood  that the sequence of numbers may have leading zeroes. Part # – […]

Excel – Entering Fractions

When you think about entering a fractional value in Excel, you may be tempted to convert the fraction from its original base value to a Base 100 value. THE LONG, HARD WAY (most people’s way) Suppose you measure the height of your child on a door every birthday and you want to calculate the average […]

The F4 Key – Microsoft Office’s “Swiss Army Knife”

One of the lesser-known keyboard shortcuts is also one of the most versatile.  I am speaking of the enigmatic F4 key.  At its core, the F4 key simply repeats the last action you performed in the program.  Whether invoking a simple bold action in Word, deleting a row in Excel, or inserting a shape object […]

Microsoft Office – Quick Access Toolbar (Awesome “Hidden” Feature)

When Microsoft Office 2007 switched from the traditional dropdown menus and toolbars method of delivering program features to the now widely used Tabs and Ribbon delivery system, one of the abilities they revoked from the users was the ability to customize the program controls.  Knowing that they (Microsoft) would have angry hoards with torches and […]

QlikView – Intelligently Hide & Show Objects/Sheets

When it comes to delivering data in a visually compelling manner, there are few programs on the market as capable as QlikView; a product developed by Sweden-based Qlik ( www.qlik.com ).  Because of the sheer volume of displayable information, the viewer can be easily overwhelmed with stories and possible idea paths.  To help minimize the […]

Microsoft Project – Calculate Days Between Two Custom Dates

Microsoft Project packs more “bang for the buck” than most any other Microsoft Office application.  With just a small amount of data input, the user can produce mountains of useful analysis. Because MS Project shares many characteristics of a traditional database, users can take advantage of a myriad of pre-loaded database fields for storing information; […]

Excel – Performing Mathematical Operations Using Copy/Paste

There are a LOT of different ways to manipulate numbers in Excel.  After all, manipulating numbers is Excel’s specialty.  There are times when you have a data set that you need to manipulate against another data set but you don’t want to create a third data set that contains the manipulation results. Example #1 In […]

Write Shorter Excel Formulas (Trick)

Writing formulas in Excel is a fundamental task performed millions of times per day by people all over the world.  Unfortunately, many of those formulas are longer and thus more complex than necessary. When you are referencing cells from different sheets, Excel must recognize when a cell is on a different sheet as the formula […]

Excel – The BEST Dynamic Data Validation Dropdown List

Excel Data Validation lists are a great way to expedite data entry ensure consistent data entry reject undesirable information One of the few and far between shortcoming of Data Validation lists is the fact that with long lists, they have to exist somewhere in the workbook.  The existing list supplies the entries displayed when the […]