Totally confused but always optimistic

We are all familiar with hidden rows and columns feature in Excel, but not many people that you can do the same with worksheets as well. This feature is extremely useful if you have a worksheet that is feeding data to a different spreadsheet. You can hide the worksheet and clean the visual appearance of your spreadsheet.

To hide a worksheet:

Right-click on the worksheet tab that you want hide and click Hide.

To un-hide a worksheet:

Right-click on any tab and click Unhide. You will get a list of all the worksheets that are hidden. Choose the one you want unhidden and click OK.

Aamer Javed Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Office

Last year I purchased a Locosys GT-31 GPS receiver prior to my overseas trip. My primary reason for buying this receiver was to be able to log coordinates and data points while I photograph, so it is easier to locate those pictures on a map. While I would have hoped there was an easier solution to my problem, this is the best I could do. The Locosys GT-31 would log data points at various intervals and then I would have to sync my photographs with the data points.

One feature of the GPS that I found useful Read more…

Aamer Javed Technology

When you want to add trailing zeros to a number in excel, the program will automatically make them disappear, unless the cell is formatted as a ‘text’. But in many cases, you want the cell to be formatted as a number or currency while still having a trailing zero(s).

Solution:
To preserve your number formatting while still having trailing zeros, just add an apostrophe (’) BEFORE the number. The apostrophe will not show up in your number while still preserving your number/currency formatting.

Aamer Javed Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Office

In my earlier post, I had talked about a Gmail feature which allows you to recall/cancel a message that you have sent, 5 seconds after you have sent it.

I had somehow missed the option where you can increase the 5-second interval to 10-seconds.

To change the 5-seconds to 10-seconds, go to your account settings in Gmail and the option will be under the first tab (General).

Aamer Javed Email, Gmail, Internet

“I told the doctor I broke my leg in two places. He told me to quit going to those places.”

–Henny Youngman

Aamer Javed Fun

Did it ever happen to you that you accidentally hit the send button when you didn’t want to?

Or sent an email to a group that you didn’t intend to?

Well, you can change your mind, after you send the email (Gmail users).

Here is how you do it:

Read more…

Aamer Javed Email, Gmail, Internet

It has been a while since I updated my experience with letstalk.com

For those of you who have followed my story in three earlier posts (and from the statistics, it seems there are quite a few of you out there), I had vowed to get my money back from letstalk.

Unfortunately, and as expected, they rejected my American express claim. I had planned to not pay American Express for amount of the phone and if they don’t listen, just close my American Express account. I figured that being a ‘valuable’ Amex customer, they will listen to my concerns and not force me to close the account.

In Dec/January, Amex informed me of their decision that they cannot recover my money from letstalk.com, and cannot help me further. As I was hoping, I didn’t try and close my Amex account, sucked in and gave in to letstalk.com fraud. I didn’t have enough spare time to go through another round of calls with Amex and their customer fulfillment people.

BUT, I will try and give as much online coverage to letstalk.com fraud and the fraudsters that run that company.

If you have a similar story, please leave a comment below.

Aamer Javed Current Events, Family & Personal

If you need to display numbers in thousands you can usually divide the number by 1000. But there is an efficient way of doing it, which will preserve the actual values.

Go to Format cells and switch to Number tab.

Click on custom and in the text box type #,#,

Read more…

Aamer Javed Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Office, Technology

If you are familiar with Firefox 3 or greater, you know that when you start typing a website in the address bar, all the pages visited on that site appear in a drop down (and not just the main page). This is very convenient when you want to directly browse to a specific page.

There is an even quicker way to do that, which is best illustrated by an example.

For example, I frequently visit flickr. When I type flickr.com on Firefox’s address bar, all the sub-pages on flickr (that I visited in the past) will appear in a drop down.

But when I also enter a space and page title for the page I want, it appears at the top.

2 examples below:

Very useful tactic when browsing LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, eBay or just about any website.

Of course, this is assuming you havent deleted your history.

Aamer Javed Firefox, Internet, Technology

If you are a heavy Microsoft Excel user you will occasionally run into a situation of having lots of data with empty rows in the middle and at random intervals. Instead of selecting each empty row and deleting it, particularly when it is a long file, there is a much quicker way.

Select the table or rows that include ALL of the data. Click Data and click Filter (Auto Filter in Pre-2007 version). The top most cell of your selected data will have small arrows. Click on one of the arrows and select Blank Cells. All rows with blank cells in that particular column will be visible. Now you can select the empty rows and delete them.

Aamer Javed Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Office, Technology