Behind the Scenes in My Online Business
If you’re celebrating Robert Burns Day at the office today, here’s a poem that you can recite, before you dig into your first spreadsheet of the day. This Ode to Excel was written by ChatGPT, based on my prompts, and I hope you enjoy it!
Continue reading “Ode to Excel for Robert Burns Day by ChatGPT”
Every Saturday, I use Excel to plan our menu for the upcoming week. Everyone does that, right? Sometimes there are special events or activities during the week, so I take those into consideration when planning the suppers for those days. This week, there is a very important event, and I hope you’re planning for it! Continue reading “Spreadsheet Day 2018 Supper”
It’s hard work to set up a new WordPress blog, even though it’s promoted as “a few clicks and you’re done”. The bare bones might be set up in a few clicks, but there are many more steps to complete, before you’ve got a working blog. I’m making notes here, on some of the key steps, just in case I’m every foolish enough to try this again. And if you’re starting a new blog, maybe this will help you too.
Thanks for answering the 3-question survey that I posted last week, about which Excel versions you’re using. I’ve compiled the results, so you can see what people are using. Is it close to what you expected?
Do you like to get a new computer, even though it means a few hours of setting things up? I’m still setting up my new laptop, and experimenting with Excel 2016. There’s lots to do! And there’s a very short survey at the end of this post, so please answer, if you can.
Which number formats are most popular in pivot tables? I have my guess, but wanted to see what other people thought.
So, I decided to create a survey in SkyDrive, using the new survey builder feature. Well, it’s new to me – I can’t remember how long it’s been available. Things didn’t go well, but the survey is included at the end of this article.
I logged into Skydrive, and found the commands to build the survey. You can start one from the main panel, which is handy.
Or, start a survey from the Excel Web app.
It was easy to create the questions – the survey builder has a clean layout, with the question setup opening at the side.
In a few minutes, my survey was ready to share.
There was a button to create a link to the survey, so I entered that in Firefox, to test the survey.
It worked well, but the results aren’t date stamped, and there’s no built in charting of the results. Half the fun of taking a survey is in clicking that button, to see how other people have responded.
Also, I couldn’t see a way to create embed code, to put the survey on a blog. There might be a way to do that, but it’s not obvious to me.
So, that SkyDrive survey attempt was a disappointment!
I headed over to Google, where I had created surveys before, and built the same survey in a couple of minutes.
To the Excel Web Survey’s credit, I did find it slightly easy to follow the flow of setting up the survey, and making edits to the questions.
After building the survey, you can create a link, or get the code to embed it in a website. So, I followed the link, and filled in a survey, to make sure it was working correctly.
When you complete the survey, you’re offered the chance to see the results. Nice!
And, back in Google Docs, I can see the survey results, and each record has a date/time stamp.
I hope they add these features to the Excel Web survey tool soon, because they are deal breakers for me!
Anyway, here is the completed survey form, so please answer the 3 questions to help me see which number formats are most often used in pivot tables. Thanks!
And here is the link, in case you can’t see the embedded form below.
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My favourite tweet in yesterday’s Excel Twitter collection was this one:
Does that ever happen to you? Maybe it’s not pivot tables – it could be another one of Excel’s powerful, but frustrating features.
You start a workbook, then add a bit of code, or a fancy formula, and things suddenly go south. So, you try to troubleshoot the problem, wander over to Google for some research, and before you know it, an hour has passed. Oop! There goes your productivity.
But, if pivot tables are your problem, I’ve published a couple of articles this week that might help you out.
On my Excel Pivot Tables blog, there is sample code that prevents people from selecting the “(All)” option in a report filter drop down. That can be useful if you’ve got worksheet formulas or links that depend on one item being selected.
Here’s the link to that article: Block Selection of All in Report Filter
And on my Contextures Blog, you can find sample code that lets you list all the pivot formulas in the active workbook (calculated items and calculated fields).
Here is the link to that one: List All Pivot Table Formulas
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Do you use Windows Live Writer (WLW) to write and upload blog posts?
I’ve been using it for a few years, and it’s an efficient way to manage multiple blogs. You can open WLW, select a blog name from a drop down list, and then post an article to that blog.
Since I upgraded to WLW 12, using Windows 8, I’ve had trouble getting videos to upload correctly. I copy the embed code from YouTube, and paste it into WLW, and the video appears.
However, when it’s published on the blog, something has happened between WordPress and WLW, and the videos are stripped out.
To fix the problem, I have to log in to the blog’s dashboard, and paste the embed code in the HTML page there. After that, the video works correctly, but it’s a pain to have to do this for every upload.
If you’ve figured out a better solution, please let me know.
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