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I don’t use the full range of Excel, and the people who create it don’t think like I do. Those two factors make the directions difficult for me to follow. Halfway through I’m thinking “What are they going on about??” It just isn’t how I would do it. If you have the same problem and have figured out a few tricks, send them in. Here’s one of my own:

Sometimes I need to count more that one variable in a line, but I can never remember the formula. I finally saved a small spreadsheet with the formula in and called it, “How to Count Multiple Variables in Excel.” Imaginative, aren’t I? If you can’t remember it either, use this formula:

=IF(AND(D3=”d”,E3 =”yes”), 1, “0″)

That means if cell D3 consists of the letter “d” and the cell E3 has the word “yes,” count it. If not, enter “0.” The last set of quotations is for the value “if false.” If you leave out the zero and just use:

=IF(AND(D3=”d”,E3 =”yes”), 1, “”)

Excel will leave the cell blank if both variables are not true.

Of course you would use your own cell numbers and entries.

Click into a blank cell at the end of the column you’ve been entering this formula into and choose “Autosum.” You can find this by clicking on ∑ in your toolbar, by choosing “function” from the insert menu (or pane in 2008), or right clicking then choosing “insert function.” If you use one of the latter methods, you’ll then need to choose “sum.” If you click on ∑ and haven’t pulled down to another choice recently, it will default to “sum.” One click totals! Any way you do it, you’ll have the total number of rows that meet your criterion of having both the specified variables. Clever bugger, isn’t it?

Have an Excel question? Send it in here. More about Excel:

Excel Wiki

Reversing Last Name First Lists into a Single Excel Column

Counting Check Marks

Everything Pasted into One Cell!

How to View Excel on Multiple Monitors

Don’t all respond at once – your silence is deafening me.

2007 is a shock to the system. If you haven’t seen it yet, here’s what you need to be prepared for: Microsoft has taken the “language” we’ve known since the mid-eighties and changed it. They’ve moved from a single menu system to tabs (which they call “panes.” I call them “pains.”) The menu bar is a list of the pane choices. Once you choose a pane, you see the tool bar appropriate to that pane.

Below you see the “Home” pane in Word.
 

If you were to click on the “Insert” pane, you would see this:

Get it?

When I tested it, it seemed familiar enough that I thought I would adjust pretty easily, but it’s been a chore. I encourage you to spend some time attempting complex tasks before you have a 42-page PowerPoint due in an hour.

The things that really flummoxed me were things like finding borders for a table in PowerPoint. They’re taken formatting backwards a couple of decades. You have to choose a pen color, choose a pen size, then drop-down to each side you want a border on, one at a time. No more just opening a window and clicking the borders you want. Oy! The real stopper was finding where the heck the borders were (Table/Design pane).

The truth is, new things stink. They aren’t the old things, therefore they’re wrong. Forget how much you yelled at the old thing, this new thing stinks. In a year, this will be the old thing and the only right way to do it, but it in the meantime, it stinks!

While you’re waiting for it to become the old thing, I have a few tips for saving yourself in an emergency. First of all, the answer is, it’s under that picture on the top left. When you’re losing you’re mind, look there. Basically, it’s the old “File” menu. It tends to flash in some programs, which makes me block it out – I don’t even see it as something to work with.

The next important thing is right next to it: see that little group of icons on the top left? There’s a pull-down arrow next to them. Pull down to “More Commands.” On the left side, highlight “Customize.” You’ll see a pull-down box, probably saying “Popular Commands.” Pull down to “All Commands.”  All available commands will be listed in alphabetical order. Choose the ones you expect to use often and click the arrow to put them into the pane on the right. You can highlight them and use up and down arrows to arrange them. When you finish, click OK and all those icons will be at the top left, next to the big round (possibly flashing) icon. You may not want them there forever, but at least you’ll be able to find things.

And when all else fails, “Help” is that teeny, tiny blue question mark that blends right in located in right corner of the toolbar, er, pain.

While you’re swearing, think about this: the Mac version of Word 2008 is much, much worse. There are no tabs – you have to pull down every single palette, one at a time from “View” one the toolbar. A pallet pops up and floats around, in the way. You have to keep minimizing and maximizing it. New things stink.

Some of you have asked about meetings in Outlook turning up an hour (or several hours) off. How to Manage Time Zones in Outlook has been updated to address these  random changes.

Does your meeting title–or even the meeting itself–suddenly appear to be gibberish? It’s the Blackberry’s fault!  Look at item 6 in the Outlook FAQ.

Whatever software you want to use, that picture is in the wrong format. Word to the rescue!

If, for example, you just removed the pink highlights from the boss’ receipts in Photoshop so they wouldn’t appear blacked-out when you fax them with his expense reports (are you a star, or what?), but now you need to insert them into something that only accepts JPG (okay, I can’t come up with a reason why you would need to do that…just go with it), you can solve it with Word.

Insert your PDF into Word (Insert…Picture from file)

Right click and choose “Save as Picture…”

In the “Format” drop down box, choose “JPG”

Voilà!

Ever booked a room in Outlook only to discover at meeting time that there’s a roomful of people glaring at your team for interrupting their meeting? You booked that room…you know you booked that room…and you did. It’s in the meeting notice and the room accepted. You sweetly–and self-righteously–point this out to the invaders, only to discover that they have a properly accepted room reservation, too. Find out what happened here.

The Outlook FAQ has updated. A question about the handling of long distribution lists and the frustation of the name check feature has been added and answered.

Looking for the Forum? Click here.

We tend to think of PDF files as carved in stone, but if you have Acrobat Pro, you have a chisel. It’s not always easy, but there are some tools for touching up text that often work quite well. Today was not one of those days for me.

I had a document that merely needed a change to the signature block. Piece of cake. Open it in Pro, use the the “Touch Up Text” tool and change it. Do you hear the gong? If the document has been created in a font that your system doesn’t have, you can’t edit the text. Nope. Not at all. No cheating, no tricks, not gonna happen. Deep breath: there’s a workaround.

See that little camera? It’s called the snapshot tool. Click on the camera, then drag around the whole document except the signature block. As soon as you let go, it’s on your clipboard. Paste it into Word and drag your margins out to the edges. You should now have the same page you saw in the PDF with room at the bottom. Add in your signature block and you’re finished. Have a footer? Do the same thing with the footer; just paste it after the signature block.

OK, it’s not perfect because – DUH! -you don’t have the font. It’s better than not having the document, though, and you can do the signature in a similar font and disguise it with italics or bold, or insert it in a harmonious font.

And that was my day.

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There’s a new addition to the Outlook Wiki about dealing with time zones. You can find it here.

Looking for the Forum? Click here.

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!