David L. Farquhar, computer security professional, train hobbyist, and landlord
Anything related to Microsoft Office
The lowly Countif function is one of the most useful tools for data analysis you’ll find in Excel and other spreadsheets. It’s also not all that well understood, I find. Knowing how to use it sure has made my job much easier since 2013, so I think there’s a chance it will help you too. Here’s a Countif example to show you how to use it.
There are at least two different ways to convert HTML to Word, depending on what you have to work with. I will assume you have your own reasons for wanting to make the conversion, such as needing more formatting options. Here’s how to make the conversion quickly and easily.
To do this, you only need Word and possibly a Web browser. You won’t need any additional tools or software to make the conversion work.
Sometimes you may need to superscript text in Excel, such as to display an exponent. But the superscript option is good at hiding. Here’s how to superscript in Excel.
As with many complex programs, there’s more than one way to superscript in Excel. That doesn’t help you much when you can’t find it, of course. This tricks works in Excel for Office 365, Excel 2016, Excel 2013, Excel 2010, and Excel 2007. In other words, every version of Excel with the ribbon.
Microsoft Excel is one of the most popular pieces of software ever. Many job descriptions cite familiarity with Excel as a requirement, or at least desirable. But no one was born knowing it. So let’s take a look at some uses of Microsoft Excel.
Maybe I’m the only one who ever has to do this, but here’s how to remove the last octet of an IP address in Excel using one (relatively) simple formula, not a series of calculations.
Why is Publisher hyphenating my words? That’s probably one of the most common questions I hear about Microsoft Publisher. There’s a good reason for it, but I understand if you want to disable it. So I’ll answer both questions.
Sometimes it’s helpful to be able to find words in all caps in Word. Microsoft Word, that is. This helps you find all the acronyms so you can make sure you spelled them out or explained them properly.
Double-checking acronyms is especially important when writing government proposals, which require you to spell out acronyms on first usage. If you’ve never written a proposal, be glad, smile, and nod. Many acronyms make good index material, so this trick helps when you’re writing an index. Also, acronyms are frequently jargon, so making sure you explain them adequately is just part of good writing. Or, if you’re a fan of high quality typography, you might want to find them all so you can set them in small caps for improved aesthetics and readability.
Here’s how you do it.
I got e-mail the other day from Turbotax saying someone had filed my taxes for me. Obviously a cause for concern, right? Here’s how I determined the message was fake in about three minutes. You can spot phishing e-mails with Outlook the same way.
Some people will tell you not to even open a message like this, but if you’re a computer professional, at some point someone is going to want you to prove the message was fake. I think this is something every e-mail administrator, desktop support professional, security professional, and frankly, every helpdesk professional ought to be able to do.
So here’s how you can get the proof. And generally speaking, Outlook 2010’s default configuration is paranoid enough that this procedure will be safe to do. If you want an extra layer of protection, make sure you have EMET installed and protecting Outlook.
I was making a chart in an Excel spreadsheet the other week and it insisted on adding trailing zeroes in the charts after the decimal point, even though all of my stats were whole numbers. Here’s the solution I finally found to get rid of trailing zeroes in Excel charts.
I couldn’t figure out how to justify text in Publisher 2013, but I finally found the way. Here’s how.
I did some layout in Publisher 2013 after having not done page layout in a decade or more, and Publisher 2013’s interface confused me a bit. I finally found two ways to justify text.
The fast, easy way: Highlight the paragraph you want and press CTRL-J. Done. I love keyboard shortcuts. Justify starts with “j,” so that makes the keyboard shortcut pretty easy to remember.
The harder, slower way: In the paragraph tab, click the down arrow in the lower right corner. In the “Indents and Spacing” tab, there’s a dropdown box called “Alignment.” Select “Justified,” then click “OK.” Scout’s honor, I looked past that option at least 17 times.
Oddly enough, once I used full justification, then I got a little icon in the paragraph section of the ribbon for that, but I’m 100% certain that option wasn’t there before.
Pro tip: If you’re going to justify text, make sure you enable hyphenation. Click inside the text box, then click “Format” under “Text Box Tools” under the ribbon. Justified text looks much better when hyphenation is on. Hyphens reduce the number of spaces the computer has to insert. Fewer spaces mean fewer “rivers” in the text, and that makes for a better-looking page. Here’s more on hyphenation if you’re curious.