Thursday 24 October 2013

Copying Photos to your iPad

A Fanboy's Lament

The sensible side of me resisted the iPad for so long. "What would I do with it?" I asked, sensibly. But once you've held one in your hot, little hands it's love at first sight. Resistance is futile. Like all love affairs, there is a dark side; the iPad only has a Lightning connector and I wanted to copy hundreds of photos from my camera.

The Apple Store will sell you a Lightning to SD Card Camera Reader but at a stonking 25 quid a pop it causes a sharp intake of breath. I don't know why I should be so mean when I'm looking at prices on the web while I am the world's worse retail victim when I'm browsing in the actual, physical Apple Store. I look at all their gadgets and gizmos and am happy, almost ecstatic, to find one I don't have and then eager to hand over wads of cash in return for a small, white plastic thing that may prove vaguely useful to me. Is this what they mean by being a "fanboy"?

The cheapo Lightning adapter
Or you can get one of these cheap plastic memory card readers on flea bay for a few quid. Very cheap plastic and nothing like as nice as proper, white Apple plastic.

And there's a trick to getting these adapters to work properly, you can't just shove them into your iPad and expect to copy your photos. You have to create a DCIM album on your iPad before you connect the adapter. DCIM (Digital Camera IMages if you must know) is a magic, reserved name in digital camera land as you've probably already noticed.

Making a DCIM album
So, fire up your iPad, go to your Photos app and choose Albums.  Tap the plus sign on the top left to create a New Album. Enter DCIM ("Dcim" works as well and I couldn't be bothered to test "dcim") then press Save. Slide your SD card into the card reader and plug the whole assembly into the Lightning connector. Wait 10 seconds or so and you will start to see thumbnails of all the photos stored on your SD card appear on your iPad screen.

Reading the SD card
Hum a happy tune while all the files are read and then press Import All. Your photos are imported into your Photostream, not your DCIM album. After that you can make your own albums and add photos from your Photostream. Leave your DCIM album empty.

I was using puny 2GB and 4GB SD cards and had no problems with reading the card. I would put serious money on these adapters not working with high capacity cards.

But I don't care; I'm not spending my pocket money on fancy-pancy, super-duper, high capacity SD cards. I'm saving up to buy a proper Apple card reader. A white one. Please don't tell anyone.







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Tuesday 22 October 2013

Excel, the Double-Click Tricks

Here's a selection of my favourite double-click shortcuts for Excel. I bet you know them already. If you don't then prepare to throw your toys on the floor.

Copying a Formula Down the Column

Double-click the Fill Handle
This the best one. I wasted long years of my life dragging formulas down the column until I discovered that all you had to do was double-click the corner of the formula cell.

I did'nt know whether to laugh or cry. It's so easy. Hover your mouse over the lower right-hand corner of the cell and wait for the Fill Handle (black cross) to appear. Then double-click to copy the formula down the column.

Copy down the column
So long as there are no blank cells in the previous column your formula copies all the way down to the end. The end of what? The end of the previous column, that's why it's a really bad idea to leave a blank column between your last data column and the column used for the formulas.

This double-click to copy down method is so much better than dragging that it's usually easier to delete your blank column, do the copying and then insert the blank column afterwards.

Adjusting Column Widths

AutoFit Column Widths
This method also works with row heights but it's dealing with column width problems where it really comes into it's own.

We are all familiar with the column width problem where you have the hash signs displayed in your cells. The last thing you want to do is start dragging the column wider, instead hover your mouse over the right-hand edge of the column until the double-headed arrow appears and then double-click to apply an automatic column width. This is based on the longest entry in the column.

Remember, work on the columns and not the cells containing the hash signs. If you have several columns to adjust, which is often the case, then select them first. Click on the first column letter and then drag across to select the others. Double-click between any two columns in your selection and all the columns are done in one go.

Using the Format Painter

The Magic Paintbrush
Most of the MS Office applications have a Format Painter control which you can use to copy all the formatting from one place to another. That's ALL the formatting in one go. But just once.

What is not so obvious is that when you double-click the Format Painter you can repeat your formatting by continuing to click on additional items. The Format Painter stays on until you deliberately cancel it by pressing the ESC key or single-clicking the control.

To use the Format Painter in Excel, apply formatting to a single cell or a range of cells and then either click (to paste the formatting once) or double-click. Now, select another cell or range and all the formats (fill colours, borders, fonts, number formats etc.) are copied from the source to where you have just clicked. As you do this you will see a paintbrush image attached to your mouse pointer.

Format Painter in action
The Format Painter control is found on the Clipboard group (on the extreme left-hand side) of the Home tab. In older versions of Excel the Format Painter tool is on the Standard Toolbar.

I laugh at myself every time I use the Format Painter as I used to think that the brush image meant "Paste" and I could not seem to get Copy and Paste to work properly. Then I learned Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V but I still used to copy my formats using the menu; Edit, Paste Special, Formats. Really sad.


Movement and Selection

You can double-click the border of the active cell to move it in any direction to the end of the current block of cell data.

Double-click the lower border and you move down, left border and you move left, right border to move right etc. You always stop at the first blank cell.

Instead of moving the current active cell, to select the range of cells down or across, hold down the SHIFT key as you double-click one of the borders. You expand your current selection down or across to the first blank cell.

Using the Keyboard

You can do all of this with the keyboard if you prefer. To move the active cell, press the END key and take your finger off it. Excel is now in END mode. Now, press any one of the four arrow keys to move in that particular direction.

Practice using the END key sequence a few times and then you can bring your SHIFT key into play to make selections. Hold down the SHIFT key and keep it held down as you press any one of the END and arrow key sequences.
















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Monday 14 October 2013

Excel Converting USA Dates to UK Dates

Converting USA Dates to UK Dates

Usually Excel date values don't cause any problems, you type them in with slash or dash separators and don't bother about the year value unless your date is for a year other than the current year. Excel automatically enters the current calendar year if you just give day and month values. 

Excel Date Converter
But you will have a problem if the country setting on your system has not been set correctly. Excel was written in the USA and uses their Month-Day-Year date convention so you will have to change it if you want to use the UK convention of Day-Month-Year.

The United States Declaration of Independence is clearly dated "July 4 1776" and there's little chance of their changing to suit us. You can't argue with the Founding Fathers.

The country setting issue is easily resolved, the real date problem arises when you have to share documents with your friends and colleagues from across the pond. Your opposite number in New York emails you data that was quite sensible when it was entered but when you open the document the dates go haywire. 

Happy dates!
You can Google formulas that will reverse the date evaluation for you but they are awkward to implement if you have to do this sort of thing regularly. In this article we are going to create a Date Converter that reverses the day and month values of any date directly in the cell without having to use formulas. The converter uses an Excel macro which is triggered when you click a shortcut button on your Quick Access Toolbar (QAT).

Converting UK Dates to USA Dates

It also works the other way round. So, if someone from the London office sends you a spreadsheet and the dates are entered in good-old-King-George Day-Month order you select your cells, click your shortcut and it whizzes the date evaluation around into nice, sensible Month-Day dates. 

Making the Date Converter macro

There's ten steps to go through here but don't let that put you off as they are very simple and the entire process will only take a few minutes. If you're not familiar with the term "macro" then allow me to explain. Macro is short for macro-instruction and is a sequence of instructions written in Excel's scripting language, VBA (Visual Basic for Applications)

Step 1. Recording a macro

Turning on the recorder
The first step is to record a macro into your Personal Macro Workbook. This is a hidden workbook that is opened automatically whenever Excel starts up, any macros saved in this workbook will always be available for you to use.

Go to the Macros control which is found on the extreme right-hand side of the View tab on the Excel ribbon. Click the bottom section of the control and choose Record Macro from the menu.



Step 2. Using the Personal Macro Workbook

Recording a macro
There is very little to do here other than to make sure that you record a macro in the right place.

When the dialog is displayed, change the Store macro in setting to Personal Macro Workbook. It's available in the drop down list. Don't bother with anything else. Click OK to start the recorder.

Whatever you do now gets recorded but there's no need to do anything. Just turn off the recorder and this step is completed. Click Stop Recording in the menu on the Macros control.


Step 3. Finding the recorded macro

Project Explorer Window
We have now created a module (Excel's storage area for macros) in the Personal Macro Workbook. The next step is to find this module, remove the recording and replace it with the instructions that will do the date conversion work for us.

This is done in the Visual Basic Editor. Press ALT+F11 to open the editor and then see if you can spot a window in the top left-hand corner which looks like this illustration. That's the Project Explorer window. If you can't see it, press Ctrl+R.

Look in the listing under PERSONAL.XLSB, you may have to click the plus sign nodes to open up the listing. If you've never used the Personal Macro Workbook before you will need Module1. If there are a set of modules visible then you need the last one. Double-click the module and you will display the code of your recording in the window on the right-hand side of the screen.

Step 4. Copying and Pasting the code for the macro

The recorded code
Your recorded macro code will look something like this illustration. Don't worry if it doesn't as we are going to delete it and substitute our own code.

Select all your code from the word Sub to the words End Sub and press the DELETE key.

Then copy and paste the code from the section below to replace the original.




This is the code for the date macro:

Public Sub DateConverter()
    Dim rngCells  As Range
    Dim rngCell   As Range
    Dim strMsg    As String
    Dim intDay    As Integer
    Dim intMonth  As Integer
    Dim intYear   As Integer
    Dim DateValue As Date
    
    On Error Resume Next
    
    strMsg = "Select the cells to convert:" & _
                  vbCr & vbCr & "Reverses Month and Day date evaluation," _
                  & vbCr & "i.e. MM-DD becomes DD-MM if possible."

    'Receive the input.
    Set rngCells = Application.InputBox(strMsg, "Date Converter", , , , , , 8)
    
    'Test for no input received.
    If Not IsObject(rngCells) Or rngCells Is Nothing Then
       GoTo Exit_DateConverter
    End If
    
    'Date Conversion Loop.
    For Each rngCell In rngCells
        If IsDate(rngCell) Then
            intDay = Day(rngCell)
            intMonth = Month(rngCell)
            intYear = Year(rngCell)
            DateValue = intMonth & "/" & intDay & "/" & intYear
            rngCell.Value = DateValue
        End If
    Next

Exit_DateConverter:

End Sub

Make sure that you copy and paste everything, starting with the word Public and ending with words End Sub. When you've pasted the code you will see that some of the words will turn a blue colour and some green. That's exactly what they should do.


Step 5. Saving the macro

Don't forget to save!
Now save the workbook. PERSONAL.XLSB is a hidden workbook so save it now as it's tricky to do it later. Choose File, Save from the main menu.

The macro is completed and we now get back to Excel by pressing ALT+F11 again. Or you can close the Visual Basic Editor window.

Step 6. Creating a shortcut for the macro

Customize the QAT
In the next few steps we shall create an attractive, easy to use shortcut for the macro.

The most obvious place to have this is on your Quick Access Toolbar. Point to the QAT (top left-hand corner of the Excel window), right-click and choose Customize Quick Access Toolbar from the shortcut menu.

Step 7. Customizing the Quick Access Toolbar

Choose from the Macros category
Excel's Options dialog will display and the Quick Access Toolbar section is activated.

Working from the top left-hand corner of the section, click the Choose commands from drop-down list.

Then click Macros in the list.




Step 8. Assigning the macro to the QAT

Adding your macro to the QAT
Your macro will be displayed in the list on the left-hand side. Select the macro and click the Add command button.

Your macro now appears in the right-hand list which shows you all the shortcuts available on your Quick Access Toolbar.

The next step is cosmetic and will make your shortcut button more visually attractive. Click OK now if you want to skip this final step.

Step 9. Modify the macro button

Assigning an icon to your macro
Click the Modify command button if you want to change the icon displayed for your macro and change the descriptive 'Screen-Tip' that pops up whenever you point at the icon.

There's an array of different icon images to choose from. Enter some text into the Display Name box to set the Screen-Tip text.

You don't have to enter "Date Converter", you can enter anything you like. Click OK to close the dialog and OK again to close the main Options dialog.


Step 10. Test the macro

The Date Converter shortcut
Everything's done but you always want to test it to make sure. Enter a few dates into your worksheet. Click the Date Converter button on your Quick Access Toolbar. Select the date cells when the input box appears. Click OK and all the dates get switched around. Reee-sult!


Date Converter Input Box
This is the input box that appears when the shortcut is clicked. It does not pick up your current selection- you point out of the box and select a range of cells or a column on your worksheet. All the dates in the selection have their month and day values reversed. Anything that is not a date is ignored.

Any requests

Leave a comment if you found this Step-by-Step useful and I'll post some more. I have loads of Excel  macros in my box of tricks, mainly things that I have found really handy over the years. Like, for example, password protecting all the worksheets in the workbook, protecting all the formulas in a worksheet, listing all the validation formulas used etc. Or anything else you can think of...

Happy clicking!

Friday 11 October 2013

Microsoft Excel 2010 Shortcut Keys

If you're looking for a full listing of all the shortcut keys for Microsoft Excel 2010 you'll find them in the first issue of the Charis Alexandra Training Newsletter. Over the next few months we shall be publishing comprehensive lists of shortcut keys etc. and reproducing some of the more popular articles from this blog in a handy, printable pdf format.

Excel shortcut keys
All the back numbers of the newsletter will always be freely available on our website and you are very welcome to share the link with your friends and colleagues. Of course, you might want to sign up to receive our newsletter as it is published.

Don't worry about being spammed. Our email security policy is quite clear, we will not share your details with any third parties. Ever! That's a guarantee. You can unsubscribe whenever you like.

Watch out for the next issue, it's our Microsoft PowerPoint special. Top Tips and ALL the shortcut keys. 


Wednesday 2 October 2013

Excel Top Ten shortcut keys

Top Ten Shortcut Keys

Excel shortcut keys
Ask ten people what their favourite Excel shortcut keys are and you'll get ten different answers. In no particular order, here's my personal choice of the ones that I can't do without. I'm not going to list ALL the Excel shortcut keys here because there are hundreds of them.

You can find a full listing of all the Microsoft Excel 2010 Shortcut Keys in our newsletter.





Ctrl+A  Select the Current Region

Select Current Region
Click a cell, press Ctrl+A and Excel expands your selection to select the Current Region. Press Ctrl+A again and the entire worksheet is selected.

The Current Region is defined as the current area of continuous data bounded by blank cells. In older versions of Excel you may have to press the key combination Ctrl+* to achieve the same effect (Ctrl+SHIFT+* if you don't have a dedicated * key)




Ctrl+Spacebar  Select the Current Column

Select Current Column
What, pick up my mouse and click the column letter. No way! Ctrl+Spacebar selects your current column and then to extend the selection to the left or right you hold down the SHIFT key and use the Left or Right arrow key.










SHIFT+Spacebar  Select the Current Row

Select Current Row
Well, I did say that it's a personal choice. Lazy-bones here selects the current row with SHIFT+Spacebar. Then keep the SHIFT key held down and press the Up or Down arrow keys to extend the selection up or down.








Ctrl+D and Ctrl+R  Fill Down and Fill Right

Fill Down
Fill formulas or data down the column by selecting down with the SHIFT and Down arrow key. Then Ctrl+D fills down the selection. Ctrl+R to fill across to the right.







Ctrl+`  Show/Hide Formulas

Show/Hide Formulas
You can't check that you've got your formulas entered correctly if you can't see them.

Switch between displaying the returned results of your formulas and the actual formula itself by pressing Ctrl+` (that's  usually the key under the ESC key in the top left hand corner of the keyboard)



ALT+=  AutoSum

AutoSum
Instead of clicking the AutoSum control every five minutes ALT+= enters a sum formula into the active cell. But it only does SUM and does not give you a choice of other functions.

See my article AutoSum Revisited for a few ideas on getting the best out of AutoSum.






Ctrl+ENTER  Range Entry

Enter into a Range
Pressing the ENTER key makes an entry into your current active cell. Ctrl+ENTER makes an entry into every single cell in your current selection. Make the selection, type in your entry and then press Ctrl+ENTER.

Constants (text or numbers) and formulas can be entered into a range in a single step. Formulas give you a relative reference for each cell, so if you get the first one right then all the others will adjust accordingly.

To enter data into a discontinuous range, make a multiple selection first. Select a cell or a range of cells then hold down the Ctrl key as you add to your selection by clicking on other cells or ranges.


ALT+ENTER  Insert New Line

Force New Line
Rather than wrapping the text in the cell whenever you want to force a new line press ALT+ENTER.

This is very handy for creating Excel source data for Tables or Pivot Tables where you maybe need to have multiple lines of descriptive text for a heading but retain the integrity of the single physical header row.



F4  Absolute Reference and Repeat

Absolute Reference
When you need Absolute References (dollar signs) in your formulas press F4. Succeeding presses of the F4 key return all the permutations of absolute and relative reference: $A$1, A$1, $A1, A1.

To make a single cell reference in your formula absolute, click somewhere on the reference then press F4. For a range reference or a series of references, drag across the references first before pressing F4.

F4 has a double life, when you are in Ready mode (i.e. not editing your formulas) F4 means Repeat. Say you have the tedious job of going through a worksheet and deleting some of the rows, delete the first one as you usually do and then select the next row to be deleted and press F4 to repeat the row deletion.

F11  Chart

Plot Chart from current selection
Pressing F11 plots a default chart on a separate chart sheet based on your current cell selection. Press ALT+F11 for an embedded chart on the active sheet.

Excel will automatically execute a current region selection if you start with a single cell selected in your chart data range.

To plot discontinuous ranges, make a multiple selection using your Ctrl key before pressing F11.





What's your favourite Excel shortcut key?


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Training Courses

If you've still got that "I just don't know what I'm doing" feeling then you might like to arrange an Excel training course for yourself or with some of your colleagues. It's really easy to book one of our courses and they're great value for money. See our website for full details.