The Tribe of Admins » How to…

Randomizing a List of Words or Names

tribeofa — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 23:13:32 +0000

You want to have a drawing, or you’ve created a word list for a party and want to mix them up and don’t want to have to go through the process of pulling them out of someone’s greasy fedora. Here’s how to do it in about 15 seconds:

in Column A, list your names.
in Column B, enter the following: =RAND()*300
What that will do is enter a random number between 1-300 into Column B. If you choose 1000, it will enter a number between 1-1000. Go wild.

Drag to copy the formula down the whole column. You’ll see something like this:

See the random number in column B? Now sort by Column B. Be sure to choose “no header.” The results are confusing to look at, because Column B has an imperative to randomize and will do so again immediately, but now look at Column A:

Voila! Random!
You can throw away Column B – you don’t need it anymore.

LauraJ’s Weblog : Excel tip: Split first name and last name into separate cells

tribeofa — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 23:30:47 +0000

Sometimes someone else says it so well, there’s no point in repeating it. I stumbled across this tip in LauraJ’s Weblog the other day. It’s yet another tool to use in our unending quest to split up first and last names (or any text) in an Excel column. Here’s the link: LauraJ’s Weblog

I’d quote her, but she uses pictures – bless her – and those wouldn’t carry over. Take a little side trip over to her site and then come on back for more about Excel. Thanks, LauraJ!

A New Webhost and Winning an iPad

tribeofa — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 22:20:24 +0000

I’ve stumbled across a new (to me) web host (where you place that new website you’re going to make) with a promo an admin’s gotta love: a campaign to end the use of the word “fail” as a noun. It will ‘fail,’ of course, but it’s a noble cause. The host is DreamHost. Their new-century contest for an old-century idea is this: Tweet the name “DreamHost” and be entered in a contest to win an iPad. The catch is that you mustn’t misuse the word “fail” in your tweet….but you wouldn’t anyway, would you?

It isn’t really a new host. According to friends who use it, they’ve been around for a the better part of a decade. They seem to be doing everything right. They’re employee-owned, they’re green, they’re both Mac and Windows friendly, they talk to you and they show their faces. The prices are excellent and they have all the right “stuff” available. They even offer you a “green verifier” button to demonstrate to your visitors that your site is carbon neutral. If I were starting up now, this is the host I’d choose.

What they don’t offer is ready-made site templates. If that’s what you’re after, try one of the other hosts discussed in earlier posts, like MacHighway (not just for Macs and all wind powered!), BlueHost (this link leads to a $6.95/mo promo), GoDaddy.com (20% off with this link) or HostGator (start up for a PENNY! Plans start at $3.96 and this is a green host).

Current promotions for all four are listed here. As always, purchases made by clicking on any links from this site help support the site without raising your cost.

Wanted: Guest Gurus

tribeofa — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 16:16:05 +0000

This site is heavily skewed to Microsoft Office, but there are a lot of other heavily-used software suites out there–Lotus Notes, “notably”–so if you have answered a lot of questions about some other piece of software, send in the questions and answers. People need you!

CONCURing on Exchange Rates

tribeofa — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 03:15:05 +0000

Those of you who use an older version of Concur as your expense client may discover a bug when your manager travels internationally. Once you’ve entered an expense type and entered a city in another country, a box will come up on the right asking for the amount in local dollars and the exchange rate (you can get this with a little math and the actual credit card charge. It will vary by posting date).

The rub comes when you have local expenses to enter. If you’ve already entered an international expense, the exchange rate box will appear and Concur will insist that your city is international. It’s easy to get caught up in it being wrong and miss the forest for the trees, so: you don’t need to do separate reports, or worry about entering the local charges first, or even learn to speak French. Just enter “1″ for the exchange rate. It won’t mess up your accounts payable department at all.

The latest version of Concur has–mercifully–repaired this bug.

Want to keep up with the changes here?

tribeofa — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 23:43:16 +0000

Want to be notified when there’s a change on this site? Down at the veeerrryy bottom of each page in microtype you’ll see “RSS.” If you know what an RSS feed is, you can stop reading. Assuming you don’t. here are the instructions:

Click on RSS. You’ll land on a new page with lots of information. Near the bottom of the right sidebar, you’ll see the word “actions.” Under that is a choice that reads, “subscribe in mail” (your results may differ – it may say something different in different browsers – I’m guessing that it will at least be similar). Click on that. If your email client is configured to allow it, you’ll find a folder in same area of your email as your inbox and personal folders. When the site updates, you’ll see a truncated version of the update or comment, with a link. Isn’t that cool? By me, the coolest part is that figured out how to put that RSS link in there, but you know aren’t required to share my POV. This will work an ANY site that has a link marked “RSS” or “Atom.”

You can also get the feed sent to your Google Home Page or Google Reader by clicking on ”+ Google” button below “RSS.”

The Forum is different. At the top of each forum and each topic, below the title and above the blue band is a black band with the word “subscribe‘ followed by “forum” or “topic.” Just click on that to be notified of any changes to that forum or topic.

How to view MS Excel on Dual Monitors

tribeofa — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 18:11:20 +0000

Excel opens multiple spreadsheets within one “shell,” which is sort of frustrating to people who use two monitors – rather defeats the purpose. The workaround is pretty simple. I blushed that it took me so long to figure it out, but you may be just as slow as I am so here it is:

Open Excel. Drag it to your extra monitor. Open it again. Reread what I just said – don’t make a new workbook…open it again. Bingo – one on each monitor. You can freely drag and drop between them.

Now…what to do about programs like PowerPoint with a “police” function that won’t let you open more than one instance of the program? Here’s a workaround: How to View PowerPoint on Dual Monitors

How to Convert a Scanned File to a Word Doc.

tribeofa — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 17:05:17 +0000

Convert A Scanned File to an editable Word doc

Steps

1. Scan the page you want to convert into a Microsoft Word document.
2. Save the scanned image in *.gif, *.jpeg or whatever format.
3. Open that image, go to “File->Save As” and name it “xyz.tiff” in the “TIFF” format as shown.
4. Go to “Start->Programs->Microsoft Office Tools->Microsoft Office Document Imaging”
5. Go to “File->Open” and open your scanned document that has been saved in *.TIFF format.
6. Go to “Tools->Send Text to Word.” You will get a prompt stating this process will take time, Click OK. This will take some time depending on your computer’s speed (a minute or two at the most).
7. When it’s done it will open up Microsoft word on its own and the scanned document will now be in editable mode.

Things You’ll Need

Microsoft Word 2003 or newer
Scanned image of the document you want to turn into a Microsoft Word document