Excel Tips

Excel Tips

Look like the master of Excel with these easy tips

1. Freeze Panes. Have you ever scrolled through an excel sheet and wished that the column and row headings would scroll with you? They can. Simply go to View – Windows – Freeze Panes. It may take a few tries to get the exact result that you want. For further tips search Freeze Panes in the Help menu.

2. Landscape. It may sound silly but nothing is worse than printing out an excel sheet and expecting just 1 page and getting 2 or oh no 3. Most of the time if you change the page orientation to landscape many problems can be solved. Change the orientation by going to Page layout – Orientation – Landscape. Psssst, if you hit the print preview button and then click close, little dash lines appear where the page cutoffs are.

3. View Formulas. Ever wonder what formula is lurking in a cell? Press Ctrl and ~ at the same time. Excel will display the cell formulas in place of the results. But don’t worry the actual numbers are still there, just press the same combination again and excel will once again hide the formulas.

4. Wrap Text. Once a little known feature, the Microsoft Gods have now granted it premium real estate on the home tab in excel 2007. Wrap text makes all the text that you have typed in a given cell visible, usually by increasing the height of the cell. In older versions of excel the wrap text feature is still available select the cell you would like to wrap text in – right click – select format cells – then select the alignment tab – check the wrap text box.

5. Paste Special. Ok so there’s paste and this other thing called paste special which one do I use? Well, use paste when you just want to well paste. But let’s say that not only do you want to paste but you want the formula or the formatting of the cell to paste too. Well you could click paste and then reformat the cell or you could click paste special and have excel do the formatting automatically. To get to paste special you have to right click on the cell, it’s not one of the buttons at the top of the page.

Microsoft Office 2007 Ribbon Bar Search

I really like Microsoft Office 2007. But I will admit that the ribbon bar takes a little getting used to. At ThrottleNet, we are always trying to find better ways to use software. Microsoft recently released a Command Search for Office 2007.

You can find it here. http://www.officelabs.com/projects/searchcommands/Pages/default.aspx It gives you a search in your ribbon bar so you can find all of Office 2007's commands. It was easy to install and use. After I installed the search program, I loaded up Office 2007 and a new item appears in my ribbon bar labeled "Search Commands." I just typed in what I was looking for, such as "Headers and Footers." And I was instantly presented with the ribbon bar buttons I needed.

I definitely recommend this to anyone who is transitioning from older versions of Microsoft Office to Office 2007.

Why ThrottleNet is Right for Your Company

ThrottleNet sets itself apart as a complete solution for your business technology needs. With our years of experience redefining how businesses operate, we have the capability in-house to bring your business full force into the 21st century.

"ThrottleNet is much more than a computer company. Our work combines thorough in-depth analysis, process engineering, and reliable technological solutions to provide our clients with solutions that outperform their expectations."

With over a decade of business computer consulting experience, ThrottleNet Inc. is the most cost-effective way of obtaining computer support in the St. Louis area. ThrottleNet Inc. is committed to providing solutions, not quick fixes. Every ThrottleNet Inc. engagement begins with assigning a dedicated network engineer to the customer account. This ensures our clients receive quality, consistent service and the attention to detail they deserve.

We’re Knowledgeable
ThrottleNet Inc. employs Microsoft Certified Systems Engineers (MCSE) and is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and Dell Authorized Reseller. Our consultants have years, not weeks, of experience providing support to over 200 businesses in the St. Louis area.

We’re Responsive
ThrottleNet Inc. has developed a unique approach to supporting our customers that allows us to respond to most support calls within four hours. In addition, we give each of our clients our cell phone numbers, so you’ll have immediate access to your consultant (as well as everyone in the company) when you are in a hurry.

We’re Accurate
We don’t want to come back and fix the same problem any more than you want us to. With our years of experience, we’ve probably seen it before and we know how to fix it right the first time.

We’re Friendly
Every ThrottleNet client has a consultant assigned to them, and our goal is to form long-term relationships with very satisfied clients.
ThrottleNet works on a team-based approach. Our consultants each specialize in one area of our business, and all of our consultants work closely together to bring you the best possible outcome for your business every time.
From ongoing network support to documenting and improving the way you do business, ThrottleNet has the certified & experienced staff to deliver the services and equipment you need to run a business in today's increasingly technology driven environment.

ThrottleNet Offers Microsoft Sharepoint!

Here are 10 major benefits Microsoft SharePoint can bring to your organization:

1) Improve team productivity with easy-to-use collaborative tools
Connect people with the information and resources they need. Users can create team workspaces, coordinate calendars, organize documents, and receive important notifications and updates through communication features including announcements and alerts, as well as the new templates for creating blogs and wikis. While mobile, users can take advantage of convenient offline synchronization capabilities.

2) Easily manage documents and help ensure integrity of content
With enhanced document management capabilities including the option to activate required document checkout before editing, the ability to view revisions to documents and restore to previous versions, and the control to set document- and item-level security, Windows SharePoint Services can help ensure the integrity of documents stored on team sites.

3) Get users up to speed quickly
User interface improvements in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 include enhanced views and menus that simplify navigation within and among SharePoint sites. Integration with familiar productivity tools, including programs in the Microsoft Office system, makes it easy for users to get up to speed quickly. For example, users can create workspaces, post and edit documents, and view and update calendars on SharePoint sites, all while working within Microsoft Office system files and programs.

4) Deploy solutions tailored to your business processes
While standard workspaces in Windows SharePoint Services are easy to implement, organizations seeking a more customized deployment can get started quickly with application templates for addressing specific business processes or sets of tasks.

5) Build a collaboration environment quickly and easily
Easy to manage and easy to scale, Windows SharePoint Services enables IT departments to deploy a collaborative environment with minimal administrative time and effort, from simple, single-server configurations to more robust enterprise configurations. Because deployment settings can be flexibly changed, less pre-planning time is required and companies can get started even faster.

6) Reduce the complexity of securing business information
Windows SharePoint Services provides IT with advanced administrative controls for increasing the security of information resources, while decreasing cost and complexity associated with site provisioning, site management, and support. Take advantage of better controls for site life-cycle management, site memberships and permissions, and storage limits.

7) Provide sophisticated controls for securing company resources
IT departments can now set permissions as deep down as the document or item level, and site managers, teams, and other work groups can initiate self-service collaborative workspaces and tasks within these preset parameters. New features enable IT to set top-down policies for better content recovery and users, groups, and team workspace site administration.

8) Take file sharing to a new level with robust storage capabilities
Windows SharePoint Services supplies workspaces with document storage and retrieval features, including check-in/check-out functionality, version history, custom metadata, and customizable views. New features in Windows SharePoint Services include enhanced recycle bin functionality for easier recovery of content and improved backup and restoration.

9) Easily scale your collaboration solution to meet business needs
Quickly and easily manage and configure Windows SharePoint Services using a Web browser or command-line utilities. Manage server farms, servers, and sites using the Microsoft .NET Framework, which enables a variety of custom and third-party administration solution offerings.

10) Provide a cost-effective foundation for building Web-based applications
Windows SharePoint Services exposes a common framework for document management and collaboration from which flexible and scalable Web applications and Internet sites, specific to the needs of the organization, can be built. Integration with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 expands these capabilities further to offer enterprise-wide functionality for records management, search, workflows, portals, personalized sites, and more.


These are the benefits listed on the microsoft.com site and have been very helpful when our clients have decided to deploy and design/create their own site. ThrottleNet would be more than happy to help you set a SharePoint site for your organization so feel free to contact us at anytime!

Confirmed! Exchange makes planning and collaboration a SNAP!

As a telecommuter, most of my days are spent in a virtual office. My connection to the physical office of our company is via technology most of the time. I rely on many different hardware and software solutions to keep me connected to my colleagues, clients and the daily business that goes on in the office.

Working from outside the physical office could leave me out of the loop in major ways, but luckily, technology can bridge the gap most of the time. One of the key solutions for me is the shared and public calendars via exchange service in Microsoft Outlook.

On the days I’m not in the office, I don’t know everyone’s routines and I can’t look across the room to see who’s door is closed or who is over at a someone else’s desk talking about the big game last night. But, by peeking at shared calendars, I can usually gauge the best time to call a manager or know when I can catch a busy salesman between appointments. (Other times, I simply have to employ the efforts of an office spy!)

As a project manager, I work with a team on setting priorities and weekly schedules. We’ve established a shared, public calendar, where we post our weekly schedules. At a glance, I know who is working on which project at a given time, which helps me in communicating internally and reporting and predicting progress for our clients. Also, if I see via email or otherwise that someone has been tied down to an unexpected task most of the day, I know we’re not going to make expected progress on a scheduled task. This is a great help in planning for the next week.

I am frequently charged with scheduling meetings for various teams that cross departments and include management, so there are a lot of different schedules to consider. With our exchange service, it is so easy! I simply open outlook and view everyone’s schedules together on one screen to find the right meeting time. Without this functionality, I’d be sending a string of emails back and forth before everyone found a matching opening in their schedules. In that scenario, by the time a consensus is reached, someone has usually filled the slot and you have to all start over. I can also be sure a meeting I’ve scheduled for my team members with a client is on all of our calendars and reminders are set!

Another great application I’ve found for shared and pubic calendars is to create calendars for spaces and resources in the office. Outlook public calendars can be utilized to schedule busy conference room time, use of shared equipment like projectors or a shared library of training films. Perhaps an intern or assistant works for several departments, his or her schedule might be on a shared public calendar. Basically, anything that is shared in an office can be tracked and scheduled via a shared MS Outlook calendar.

Outlook also allows for special permissions-based use of all shared and public calendars. Administrators can determine who can view and edit any given calendar.

But, just because you have Outlook, doesn’t mean you can start sharing today. This is a special feature of work environments that are connected via an Exchange Server or Online Exchange Service. This is a low-cost upgrade to Pop email service and worth every penny in the benefits for scheduling and collaboration within an organization!

Once you’re on Exchange, Start here to begin utilizing shared calendars in your office:

http://office.microsoft.com/training/training.aspx?AssetID=RC010333631033

Vista Service Pack 1.... Finally an OS I can use!

Anyone who knows me knows that I have (had?) a very strong opinion about Vista. I felt that it was released way too early with far too many bugs. Early adopters and new PC buyers were essentially an expanded beta test of software that was not ready for the mass market.

Worse, Microsoft turned a blind eye to many of the problems for months... insisting reports of poor performance and stability issues were isolated incidents or vendor specific. Regardless of who you believe (every columnist/user in the country or the company that produced the OS), Vista had issues. No doubt.

I bit the bullet relatively early and used Vista (along with one of my business partners) for about six months for my office PC. It's probably important to remember that we are a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, giving us access to all the latest and greatest MS software. In addition, being a tech company, I really don't skimp when it comes to my own equipment, and I replace my laptop about once a year. It's good to stay ahead of the curve in my business so when customers have questions, I have answers.

It was a disaster, that I stuck with it for six months is a testimony to how much I'll suffer for our industry. It was reminiscent of Windows ME, and if you don't remember that little gem there is a reason why. Simply put, to an IT person, it just didn't exist (kind of like Microsoft BOB which was supposed to revolutionize the user interface). It came between Windows 98 and 2000 and was laughable.

Vista was slow to boot, and after log on, my computer was completely useless for at least 15-20 minutes (no exaggeration, I timed it). I did every bit of tuning that could possibly be done, and still it was a mess. It wasn't even CPU utilization so much as hard disk utilization. It would just sit there and bang away forever for some unknown reason. Disabling search services and all start up items didn't seem to help.

Then there was the copying of files. Windows suddenly decided that it had to examine every file copy operation. Even copying small files from my PC to the network would take 10-20 minutes for no good reason. It would just say "calculating" forever. I didn't need to know how long it would take, I just needed to copy the silly thing. It's not like I was going to change my mind about copying a file. I needed it to get from point A to point B, just move the silly thing.

Don't even get me started on the "security," which is a nice way to say "Rather than actually secure all the flaws in our OS, we're just not going to let you do anything useful with your computer without jumping through a million hurdles." Plus, they removed Telnet & Hyperterminal. I'm in IT, I need Telnet for troubleshooting. They said it was because it is insecure. That may be, but no one in the world who knows how to use Telnet is going to do anything stupid, and it's only 200K, so it doesn't even waste much space. Yes, I know SSH is safer, and I use it for many operations... but I can troubleshoot mail flow issues a lot faster with Telnet than logging in to a bunch of servers.

Plus, I had problems with application timeouts, crashes, or just flat out not starting up like they should. There were all kinds of compatibility issues, even with modern stuff.

Finally, one Saturday in October, we had a downgrading party and went back to XP and Office 2003. It was a happy day and like getting together with an old friend again. Happiness with my computer was once again a way of life, not just wishful thinking.

Then, Microsoft finally released Service Pack 1. Dare I try it again? Well, since my whole business revolves around Microsoft-based software, I felt it was my duty. Sometimes you just have to jump out in front of the line of fire.

I'm happy to say though, Service Pack 1 for Vista fixed ALL of the problems I had. I've been running smoothly ever since. Copying files is smooth, the security issues were worked out, and it is fast, fast, fast on the same hardware. Fast boots and fast shutdowns. Finally, I can use it for business and feel like it is an improvement over XP.

Should you try it? Well, I am a pretty firm believer that you should only move to Vista if you have a good, modern PC that is less than a year old and preferably a PC that was not the cheapest one available when you bought it (what can I say, quality matters).

Despite my affiliation with and dependence on Microsoft, know that I am a pretty demanding consumer. If I'm happier with Vista than with XP, there is probably something to be said for that.

Free Stocking Stuffers

It is that time of year where we are spending all of our money purchasing gifts for others and for ourselves. I thought I would take this time to list some of my favorite utilities that are highly useful and will not cost you a thing.

All of these are free downloads that can save you time and effort when trying to solve or prevent problems with your PC or computer network. Consider them stocking stuffers for your USB flash drive!

SIW http://www.gtopala.com/
SIW stands for System Information for Windows. This program will show you absolutely everything you could possibly want to know about your PC. It will list out all of your installed hardware. It will show all installed programs. It will show installation serial numbers for MS Office and Windows. It will show you all of the stored passwords on your system. Basically, if it is a part of your PC, you can see it listed here.

The program is small and does not install. You can run it directly from a USB drive. It works on all versions of Windows.

I cannot tell you how many times I have found SIW to be a handy tool stored on my USB drive.

SIW is free for personal use in a non business environment. A technician’s version costs about $70.

UBCD4WIN http://www.ubcd4win.com/
Ultimate Boot CD for Windows. This program is an offshoot of the Ultimate Boot CD for *NIX systems. UBCD4Win is a bootable recovery CD that contains software used for repairing, restoring, or diagnosing almost any computer problem for Windows. It comes loaded with antivirus and antispyware tools, imaging and backup software, hard disk drive recovery tools, support for burning files to CD or DVD and several diagnostic tools.

I have personally used this CD to restore a lost partition table on a Domain Controller server. If the partition was not repaired in this particular circumstance, the whole network would have had to be rebuilt. By not having to completely rebuild the entire network, it helped me save a client several thousand dollars worth of labor.

Obtaining and building the CD is a little involved but the tutorials and wizards included with the program are easy to follow.

Uptime http://microsoft.com/
This small utility from Microsoft tells you how long your workstation or server has been running. The most useful thing you can do with this utility, however, is to use it with the /s flag at the command line. The result will give you a listing of how often your computer was restarted and will show you any Blue Screen of Death error codes if your PC shut down as a result of one.

I like to put a copy of uptime.exe in the Windows directory to make it executable from the command line. I will then run this command:

C:\uptime /s > uptime.txt

This will put the results of uptime into a text file on your C: drive called uptime.txt.

Then

C:\notepad uptime.txt

will open the results of uptime in Notepad.

WinDirStat http://windirstat.info/
Windows Directory Statistics can help you find out just why your hard disk drive is full. It breaks down how big each of your folders are on your hard disk drives.

CCleaner http://www.ccleaner.com/
CCleaner will clean up dead registry entries and help clean out temporary files not needed by Windows any longer. It will also clean out your internet history if you would like it to. I use it regularly to help keep my workstations running efficiently.

CutePDF http://www.cutepdf.com/
CutePDF can create a good looking PDF from almost any Windows program. It is smaller and faster than Adobe Acrobat but not as fully featured. If you are looking for basic PDF documentation at a low cost, give this a try.

IP Scanner http://www.angryziber.com/ipscan/
Angry IP Scanner is a handy utility to see what IP addresses are active on your network. I mostly use this tool for finding IPs of Wireless Access Points and network printers. As of last month, Symantec had added this software as a virus/spyware threat and will delete it from your system. However, I have used this program for several years and it is not dangerous and does not install anything on your system that you did not intend to install.

RDP Remote Enabler http://www.intelliadmin.com/
If you have ever had to access a workstation on a network via Remote Desktop but it was not enabled you will know great frustration. With RDP Remote Enabler, if you can remote in to another computer on the same network (say, the server) you can enable Remote Desktop on the target PC.

NetStumbler http://www.netstumbler.com/
This program will help you find and troubleshoot your wireless network. You can verify network configurations, find locations with poor coverage in a WLAN, detect causes of wireless interference and detect unauthorized access points.

MS Defender http://microsoft.com/
SpyBot http://www.safer-networking.org/
Defender is now built into Windows Vista and is available as a free download from Microsoft for XP. I have found that when you install Defender on XP, it does a very good job for preventing further spyware infection—especially if you install it immediately after you install XP. Defender does not do so well in actually cleaning up your PC once it is already infected. Instead, I use SpyBot for infections. It is fast, free, and effective.

Auslogics Disk Degrag http://www.download.com/Auslogics-Disk-Defrag/
You should defragment your hard disk drives once a month. This free and easy to use program is quick and efficient. It will help keep your PC running like the day you first used it.

Free Commander http://www.freecommander.com/
Free Commander is a nice alternative to the standard Windows file manager. It has a tabbed and multipanel interface, built in Zip and archive handling, checksum verification and it allows you to customize your column views.

Royale Theme for XP
Tired of the same old Luna theme for Windows XP? I was. I found this official theme on the MS website:

New Zealand Bliss version:
http://www.microsoft.com/

Windows XP Media Edition version:
http://www.softpedia.com/

These are just different enough to refresh your desktop.

I hope you find some of these programs useful. If you do, please support the author of the software. Most free software programmers accept donations in return for the free service they provide.

Mark Barhorst, MCP
ThrottleNet, Inc.
mark@throttlenet.com

Mark Barhorst is a Microsoft Certified Professional. He has been working on complex business IT needs since 2001.