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What is the purpose of Powerpoint?

Dave Farquhar Office December 18, 2018December 19, 2018

What is the purpose of Powerpoint? You might be surprised how many people ask that. Once you reach a certain stage in your career, you can expect to use it a lot. But there are definitely right and wrong ways to use it.

Dave Farquhar

David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He started his career as a part-time computer technician in 1994, worked his way up to system administrator by 1997, and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He invests in real estate on the side and his hobbies include O gauge trains, baseball cards, and retro computers and video games. A University of Missouri graduate, he holds CISSP and Security+ certifications. He lives in St. Louis with his family.

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How to make a hanging indent in Word

Dave Farquhar Office October 23, 2018November 19, 2018

There are several reasons to use hanging indents when writing. Proper use of hanging indents include numbered or bulleted lists, citations, and dialogue lines in scripts. Here’s how to make a hanging indent in Word.

This works in Word 2013, Word 2016, and virtually any other version of Word you’re likely to be using.

Dave Farquhar

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Excel row height must be between 0 and 5.68″

Dave Farquhar Office October 2, 2018November 19, 2018

Last Monday, Excel greeted me with a new error message on my work machine, which happens to be a Mac. When I imported a CSV file and tried to change the row height to the default 16 points, I got the message that Excel row height must be between 0 and 5.68″.

I’ve been changing the default row height back to 16 for decades so I don’t know why Microsoft changed it. But they didn’t ask me. Complaining about it doesn’t help either. So I set out to find a workaround. While I observed this on Excel for a Mac, I would expect some versions of Excel for Windows will behave the same way as well. My copy of Excel 2013 on my Windows box hasn’t changed, but that’s the most recent version I have.

Dave Farquhar

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Extract a MAC address from Excel data

Dave Farquhar Office, security July 31, 2018August 3, 2018

A vulnerability scanner like Nessus or Qualys will record the MAC address of every computer it finds. But Qualys doesn’t output the MAC address in a nice column format. It mixes a lot of other data into the cell. So I had to figure out how to extract a MAC address from Excel data to give an infrastructure team an inventory they wanted.

Dave Farquhar

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Countif example: Data analysis with Excel

Dave Farquhar Office July 17, 2018November 19, 2018

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.

Dave Farquhar

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How to accept all changes in Word

Dave Farquhar Office, Software July 15, 2018November 19, 2018markup, microsoft word

Every couple of months or so, we have to collaborate at work on a Microsoft Word document and submit it without all the distracting markup in it. And it seems like it always takes four of us half an hour to re-figure out how to accept all changes in Word and remove the comments. This applies to Word 2007 and all newer versions.

Sometimes I also find the tracked changes and other markup causes weird problems, and the fastest way to make them go away is to get rid of the markup.

So I figured it might help someone. This is something that either takes you 30 seconds or 30 minutes. If you don’t do this every day, it’s likely to take too long. This is for those of you who can’t do it in less than 30 minutes.
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Dave Farquhar

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How to create a stacked bar chart in Excel

Dave Farquhar Office, Software July 15, 2018November 19, 2018excel, Plumbing, sprint

My boss’ management is clamoring for metrics. They want to know, at a glance, what we’re doing and how far along we are. Sounds like a job for stacked bar charts in Excel to me. So here’s how to create a stacked bar chart in Excel.

Figuring out a way to track our progress was fairly easy. Figuring out how to make Excel display that chart in a meaningful fashion… Well, that took about five hours. I’ll try to make it easier for you than it was for me.
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Dave Farquhar

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Convert HTML to Word

Dave Farquhar Office July 3, 2018March 14, 2022

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.

Dave Farquhar

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How to superscript in Excel

Dave Farquhar Office June 25, 2018November 19, 2018

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.

Dave Farquhar

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Uses of Microsoft Excel

Dave Farquhar Careers, Office May 30, 2018August 3, 2018

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.

Dave Farquhar

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