Microsoft Excel is pretty clever and usually the default choices it provides you are good, but sometimes it can be frustrating when it tries to help you and you can not find a way to alter the choices it makes.

Chart axis options are a common example of these frustrations. People often ask us how to override the default Axis Interval. Here is the solution for how to do that.

Say we have a spreadsheet containing daily sales figures.

The chart produced from this data would look like this:

Now, admittedly, that isn’t bad, but we can make the chart much more meaningful if we tweak that axis, right?

This is a little easier to work with I would say. How did we make that tweak?

The trick is to set up your chart then right-click the axis, then on the context menu that appears we click the axis formatting option.

From there you get to choose from lots of options, switching from the automatic defaults to settings you choose.

These are the settings I used above:

Summary

As you can see, while the defaults are not always exactly what we want, Excel usually does allow you to change them. The challenge is often knowing where the settings are hidden!

About the author

Yoav Ezer co-authors the technology and productivity blog Codswallop. He is also the CEO of a company that produces PDF to Excel conversion software.

For more Excel tips from Yoav, join him on Facebook or Twitter

Acting on the Data

When we start to see trends forming that is when we can build categories and decide a system of actions for those categories. For instance, we might push certain new messages to our support departments to be expedited automatically, while other less pressing issues can sit in a queue for a little longer.

When we have a ‘security’ issue come through we want to send them quickly to be handled by our ‘security specialist’. If a message contains a request that deal with writing Macros we would want one of the developers to help with that.

Does this sound like something you would like to use?

Processing the Results

What we need to do is have a button that launches our macro (download link) and processes the feedback messages.

When the button is hit we will check for various categories (on a second sheet) and list these categories in the next column:

The Macro

Sub WordCount()

    Dim vArray, WordIssue, ElementCounter As Variant
    Dim lngLoop, lngLastRow As Long
    Dim rngCell, rngStoplist As Range

    ElementCounter = 2 'setting a default value for the counter
    Worksheets(1).Activate
    For Each rngCell In Worksheets("Word").Range("A3", Cells(Rows.Count, "A").End(xlUp))
        vArray = Split(rngCell.Value, " ") 'spliting the value when there is a space
        vrWordIssue = ""
        ElementCounter = ElementCounter + 1 'increases the counter every loop
        For lngLoop = LBound(vArray) To UBound(vArray)

            If Application.WorksheetFunction.CountIf(Sheets("Issue").Range("A2:A" & Sheets("Issue").UsedRange.Rows.Count), vArray(lngLoop)) > 0 Then
            'this is to test if the word exist in the Issue Sheet.
                If vrWordIssue = "" Then
                    vrWordIssue = vArray(lngLoop) 'assigning the word
                Else
                    If InStr(1, vrWordIssue, vArray(lngLoop)) = 0 Then 'a binary of comparison
                        vrWordIssue = vrWordIssue & ", " & vArray(lngLoop) 'this will concatinate words issue that exist in Issue Sheet
                    End If
                End If
            End If

        Next lngLoop

        Worksheets("Word").Range("B" & ElementCounter).Value = vrWordIssue 'entering the final word issue list into cell.
    Next rngCell

End Sub

How it Works

The macro starts by creating a word list for each cell in the list of feedback messages by splitting the cell contents whenever there is a space. This creates an array in memory that we can loop through to test if the word exist in the “Issue Sheet”.

If we find a word that we want to check for, we assign the word to another list for later insertion into the final issue column.

Summary

As you can see, the output of this is we take unstructured data and produce something we can actually work with. That’s huge. This technique can be used for much more than the simple example we demonstrated here but I hope it gives you some inspiration for how you can process the text in your work.

About the author

Yoav Ezer co-authors the technology and productivity blog Codswallop. He is also the CEO of a company that produces PDF to Excel conversion software.

For more Excel tips from Yoav, join him on Facebook or Twitter

Using spreadsheets to analyze numerical or well-categorized data is relatively straightforward. It might not be easy necessarily, but at least you normally know exactly what to do. If you have ever been faced with open-ended text responses, perhaps from a survey, emailed questions or feedback forms, you know how tricky it can be to make sense of it.

The problems are many. Non-standard formatting, having to manually read each response to understand its content, variable length, and those are just the first that come to mind.

What we need is some way to drill down automatically to see if there are any common patterns, and therefore have an immediate starting point to start interpreting the responses.

A Potential Solution

Say we had a spreadsheet containing all the website feedback from the last few weeks.

What if we could count occurrences of certain words or phrases? We could then see if there were issues most prevalent on the minds of our customers.

First of all we need to make a list of all the words contained in the feedback. We can do this using a hash table or “Dictionary”. This is like an array, but instead of the items in the array being held against a number they instead are indexed using a keyword. Using this system we can store a word, such as the word “Data”, and then count how many times this word occurs.

By “Splitting” the text in the cells wherever a space is found we can crudely grab all the words used. Obviously this is not a pure approach; there will be badly formatted responses or other delimiters that would need to be cleaned. For our purposes though it will work well enough.

First Results

As you can see, while this approach is encouraging in that it worked as intended, the results are not yet useful. We need to exclude superfluous words and get to the “meat”. The traditional approach to this kind of indexing issue is to compile a “stop list” of words and phrases that can be safely ignored.

Armed with this list we ought to be able to now generate a clean set of data from which we can begin to draw conclusions.

Full Solution

So we have learned that for a full solution we need to create a macro that goes over the response text in our first data sheet and it should create a list of words, taking care to ignore words we determine to be irrelevant, listed in a “Stop List” sheet. Then for each word our macro needs to count how many times each word appears. This word list and associated word count should appear in another sheet we will call the “Issue List”. That list should be sorted in descending order so we can clearly see which issues are most important to our customers.

Here is what our data set looked like when we ran the macro against a set of feedback. We had to run it a couple of times to build up our specific stop list. I imagine this will be a common theme when you try it yourself.

Probably not surprising that in this particular result we see Data and Excel score highly, but I am intrigued by the issues around the Security responses.

The Finished Word Counting Macro

Here is the completed macro so you can use it in your own projects.

Sub WordCount()

    Dim vArray As Variant
    Dim lngLoop, lngLastRow As Long
    Dim rngCell, rngStoplist As Range

    With CreateObject("Scripting.Dictionary") 'declaring object array, Items can be any form of data, and are stored in this object array.
        Worksheets(1).Activate
        For Each rngCell In Worksheets("Sheet1").Range("A1", Cells(Rows.Count, "A").End(xlUp))
            vArray = Split(rngCell.Value, " ")
            For lngLoop = LBound(vArray) To UBound(vArray)

            If Application.WorksheetFunction.CountIf(Sheets("Stoplist").Range("A1:A" & Sheets("Stoplist").UsedRange.Rows.Count), vArray(lngLoop)) > 0 Then
            Else
                If Not .exists(vArray(lngLoop)) Then 'if the word is not in the array then its true.
                    .Add vArray(lngLoop), 1 'adds the word to object array.
                Else
                    .Item(vArray(lngLoop)) = .Item(vArray(lngLoop)) + 1 'if the item or the word already exist in the array it will just increase the keys which is the number of word count.
                End If
            End If
            Next lngLoop
        Next rngCell

            Worksheets("Issue").Range("A2").Resize(.Count).Value = Application.Transpose(.keys) 'this line shows the retrieval of the word count stored in the array.
            Worksheets("Issue").Range("B2").Resize(.Count).Value = Application.Transpose(.items) 'this line shows the retrieval of the word added in the array.

    End With

lngLastRow = Worksheets("Issue").Cells(Rows.Count, 1).End(xlUp).Row
Range("A1:B" & lngLastRow & "").Select
    ActiveWorkbook.Worksheets("Issue").Sort.SortFields.Clear
    ActiveWorkbook.Worksheets("Issue").Sort.SortFields.Add Key:=Range("B2:B" & lngLastRow & ""), _
        SortOn:=xlSortOnValues, Order:=xlDescending, DataOption:=xlSortNormal
    With ActiveWorkbook.Worksheets("Issue").Sort
        .SetRange Range("A1:B" & lngLastRow & "")
        .Header = xlYes
        .MatchCase = False
        .Orientation = xlTopToBottom
        .SortMethod = xlPinYin
        .Apply
    End With
Worksheets("Issue").Activate
Cells(2, 1).Select
End Sub

Summary

By no means am I saying this is a silver-bullet solution. You still must read the responses and deal with them appropriately. What you gain by doing this is an overview of the kinds of issues your customers are talking about, and perhaps a way to “score” your feedback.

Perhaps you can spot trends over time, or overlay “sentiment” by analyzing the balance of positive and negative words, and correlations between them? I wonder if it is possible to turn this data into one of those pretty keyword charts used in Web2.0 sites?

How might you use an approach like this in your work? We would love to know your ideas…

About the author

Yoav Ezer co-authors the technology and productivity blog Codswallop. He is also the CEO of a company that produces PDF to Excel conversion software.

For more Excel tips from Yoav, join him on Facebook or Twitter

Update: Part 2 of this article can be found here.

Thinking about upgrading to Microsoft Office 2010?

Each upgrade brings exciting new features, but new versions of your favourite programs can take some getting used to. It’s no different for those of us here at Microsoft who create the Office programs than it is for our customers.

To ease the transition, we’ve put together six handy Office 2010 migration guides to help you step up to the newest versions of Microsoft Access, Excel, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Word.

Note you will need a PDF reader installed to view the guides.

Source:

Have any cool tips and ticks to share for those wishing to upgrade to Office 2010?  Let us know in the comments.

PDFTiger is a desktop application that quickly and accurately create PDF documents from Word, Excel, Powerpoint, txt or Images. PDFTiger can also convert PDF files into editable MS Word Documents, Rich Text Documents, Plain Text Files, Images, HTML Files, and Shockwave Flash SWF Files.

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Instead of using lots of resources on graphics and fancy animations, the developer have downgraded the user interface to a minimum. Freeing up resources for the more important tasks.

Features

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This PDFTiger Giveaway Promotion will be CLOSED on Oct 21, 2010.

Go here for more information: http://www.pdftiger.com/giveaway.html

In this part, I will be covering some software that are specifically written to assist computer users in reducing paper wastage, as well as help in saving printing inks (they are expensive!) The software covered are mixed with free and commercial versions, and I list out the pros and cons for each software, and give some recommendations for those who are looking at a free solution. There is one common characteristic for all these software: all of them will be installed as a virtual printer in your operating system to streamline the printing process. So let’s begin with the first printing software:

GreenPrint (Free and Commercial)

Headquartered in Portland, Oregon, GreenPrint offers three versions of their printing software which aimed to save paper, ink and trees. GreenPrint World, which is a free version specifically for home users only, and includes all the basic GreenPrint features (save as PDF, remove images, texts, and pages etc.), with a price of unobtrusive advertisements in the user interface. No luck for MAC OSX users, the free World Edition only supported Windows XP/Vista/7, both 32-bit and 64-bit. There is another version, namely GreenPrint Home Premium priced at $19, is a better featured GreenPrint (faster preview, no advertisements etc.), which supports Mac OSX. However, I personally think that the free version is quite adequate for most of the users, except that you can’t really bear with the advertisements embedded in the user interface.

The interface of GreenPrint is quite self-explanatory, where all the functions available to the user are well-defined with the icons. There are also some counters tracking all the costs and savings that the user has made using the software. Click on the counters at the bottom bar will lead you to the GreenPrint Report, which is an interface showing a detailed statistics on your printing behavior. Below shown the interface of Green Print:

Pros/Cons

• Free with advertisements, only supported Microsoft Windows (World Edition)
• Better version available at $19 with advertisements (Home Premium)
• Options to remove images, texts, and pages
• Save as PDF option
• No multi-pages per sheet option
• Have an option to plant a tree for $1

iPrint (Free)

A completely free solution provided by Inzone Software Limited, iPrint is an eco-friendly printing utility that can help computer users to save cost in printing, which can be used either at home or for business purposes. Besides being a free forever software, it has some nice features equipped with it as well – it has multiple pages per sheet options (2-in-1 and 4-in-1), plus it can collect all the printing jobs in one interface, which is useful for batch printing. Though natively iPrint doesn’t come with a PDF creation feature, but it can be easily solved by installing a PDF printer such as PrimoPDF.

Similar to GreenPrint, iPrint has a simple interface with self-explanatory icons. In the software interface, the user is able to remove unwanted pages by just double click on them, however there is no option to remove images or texts from the document, unlike in GreenPrint. Nevertheless, iPrint does have a simple counter for the savings made by the user.

Pros/Cons

• Free forever
• Option to remove pages
• Multiple pages per sheet option (2-in-1 and 4-in-1)
• Collect print jobs within one interface
• No save as PDF option
• No options to remove images and texts

PriPrinter (Commercial)

I must say that PriPrinter is one of the eco-friendly printing software that have the most complete features, not to mention the nice GUI (Ribbon UI), however, they do not have a free version. Standard edition cost you about $34.95, which does not contain PDF creation and text editing features. The complete Professional Edition PriPrinter is at $87.95, which might be worthy for those who related in the printing industry, but it is definitely an undesired price tag for a normal computer users. Nevertheless, they do provide a free trial of both versions without time limit, with small banner printed on each page as a trade-off, which I personally feel that it is quite acceptable for personal usage (check the screenshot below, notice the red color small banner).

Feature wise, Pelikan Software KFT’s PriPrinter is quite unbeatable. Besides using the Ribbon UI, it has a high quality rendering engine which allows the user to perform print preview in many ways, including in 3D mode (which give you an idea how does the printing look like in the real life). It also has numerous options for the page layout and printing mode for the user to choose during a printing job, which allows a high flexibility printing pattern. With the Professional Edition, you can even edit the content on the fly (highlight, black out, correction), which is definitely a good feature.

Pros/Cons

• Highly customizable printing job
• Fully featured
• Ribbon UI
• 3D preview mode
• Storable printing history
• Unlimited free trial with small printed banner
• No free version

FinePrint (Commercial)

Besides PriPrinter, FinePrint is another alternative but cheaper version which contains numerous of features for printing jobs.  At a price of $49.95 for a single license, you get pretty much all the necessary functions for smart printing, including multiple pages per sheet, remove graphics (which can be remove individually), remove pages, double-sided, content editing (delete, highlight, redact). I have been using FinePrint for quite some time, and one of the feature I liked the most is the printer setting wizard. This wizard will run a series of printing tests for your printer to determine the settings, especially on duplex printing settings, which helps a lot if you always deal with double-sided printing using a non-auto duplex printer. FinePrint can also archive the printing jobs, so if you need a identical copies of the printed materials in the future, you can just open the archived printing job and you are ready to print it again.

Unlike PriPrinter, FinePrint has a much simpler interface, and most of the functions are accessible from the user interface, but definitely not as customizable as in PriPrinter. However,it is not surprising that some computer users would prefer a simpler interface rather than a complicated one, so FinePrint is a good choice for them. Although it is a commercial software, but it does offer a free trial without time limit, and similarly, the print out will have small banner of FinePrint.

Pros/Cons

• All necessary features are included
• Simpler user interface
• Printer setting wizard
• Storable printing job
• No Save as PDF option
• Unlimited free trial with small printed banner
• No free version

Which is the best at the cost of zero?

All software introduced above have their own pros and cons, and at the cost of nil, it really depends whether the user is able to bear the small banner in the trial version. If you can, get yourself PriPrinter if you looking for highly customizable printing job, or go for FinePrint if you prefer a simpler and easy-to-access interface. Of course, if you do mind about the small banner and would like to have a clean printing from the software, go for both GreenPrint World Edition and iPrint. The only setback is that you can’t have both content editing (offered by GreenPrint) and multiple pages per sheet (offered by iPrint) work together. I have tried to go for a bypass trick, which I first edit the content of the document in GreenPrint, and then transfer the printing job to the iPrint (and vice versa), but the printing doesn’t seems usable (texts rendering goes haywire).

Besides the four software above, there are another two software that I would like to introduce as a companion for them.

Best companion

PrimoPDF

Being the world 1st free PDF creator (as claimed by them), PrimoPDF is a PDF creator which can be installed as a complement to those software that not having PDF creation feature, such as iPrint and FinePrint. I have been using it to generate PDF for quite some time, and it rarely fails me, so I strongly recommended PrimoPDF for PDF creation task in Microsoft Windows.

To download PrimoPDF, head to their official page and get it installed in your Windows XP/Vista/7.

iReader (Firefox and Google Chrome only)

Besides the printing software, it will be the best if the content of the printing can be filtered before sending them for the printing job, especially web content. While some of the websites do have a printer-friendly option, but somehow it doesn’t available for most of the websites containing great articles. With iReader, those unnecessary elements in the webpage (banners, website header, background etc.) are all removed and a clean article is able to be generated from a full-featured website. Using our own website and my article as an example, you can see the difference before and after using the iReader for content filtering. After the filtering (or clutter-free processing), you can print it right away using the software that I have introduced above, either on the paper or into digital format. There is one minor problem with this option though: the separation between pages might cut a line of texts or image into half since the article is rendered in a clutter-free and continuous manner, but I believe it doesn’t cause much problem in most cases.

^{Before using iReader}

^{After using iReader}

If you are using Mozilla Firefox, proceed to their official add-ons site for iReader. Else, if you are using Google Chrome, it is available in Google Chrome Extensions gallery.

Conclusion

With some assistance from the software and a little bit of effort from the computer users, I believe that paper wastage can be reduced to a very low level. Hopefully all the software covered in this article are able to help all the readers in reducing paper wastage due to unnecessary/mistaken printing. Don’t hesitate to share this article to your friends/relatives or anyone that involved with tons of printing everyday; it does not only save the printing cost, but it does reduce paper wastage and save the tree, and indirectly save the environment from further devastation. If you have any comments/suggestions to this article, don’t hesitate to let us know.

This article is a continuity of the Print Smart to Reduce Wasted Paper – Part 1 [How To].

Before going into the software that can assist in smart printing, there are a few techniques/tips for everyone which can be applied prior to any printing in order to reduce paper wastage:

• Ensure the printing is definitely necessary: It is not surprising that most of the paper wastage is caused by the unnecessary printing, either at home, school, or working place. For example, part of the wastage is caused by the webpage (which does not have a printer-friendly option) printing that usually has some unnecessary elements printed on the last few pages. Thus, do consider and ensure the printing that you are going to do is definitely necessary, and look for an alternative besides printing (eg. e-books on mobile phone, pdf etc.).

  

• Printing technique: Besides that, there are a few minor printing techniques that can be easily applied just before the print, but unfortunately most of the users aren’t aware of them. Below are some techniques that can definitely help in reducing paper wastage:
  • Double-page printing/Duplexing: Most of the people tend to print using a single-page mode, which definitely can contribute to paper wastage, since the blank side usually become useless. While it is inevitable for formal documents such as official contract or thesis, just to name a few, but duplexing is strongly recommended for the printing meant for self-usage or for informal sharing. It has been found out that one can potentially reduce at least 30% of the paper wastage per year if duplex printing is selected as the default printing option.
  • Multiple pages per sheet: I believe this option isn’t a stranger to most of the computer users, especially those who always deal with PDF document. Most of the PDF readers, such as Foxit Reader or Nitro PDF Reader have such an option for the user, and this is definitely one good technique in reducing paper wastage, ink wastage, and printing cost. However, most of the users do not prefer to print the documents using this option because they find that the text size is a little bit too small for them to read. While it might be true for some documents produced with small font size, I find that the document with standard font settings (Times New Roman, 12) printed with ‘2 pages per sheet’ still having a very high readability, not to mention that each printing can help to save 50% of paper usage, compared to usual printing. A similar option is also available in Microsoft PowerPoint, but it is definitely not user-friendly and environmental-friendly, and we will see why in Part 2.
  • Content editing: Most of the time, when an article is printed, especially from a webpage, it will have the unnecessary elements from the website printed on the paper as well, such as images, advertisement texts, unrelated contents etc. This can hurt the trees a lot as those unnecessary contents printed are contributing to paper wastage. So one way to reduce the wastage caused by the content is of course – content editing. For example, if the necessary part from the article is the texts only, try to copy and paste all the contents to a word processing software, then remove all images and unrelated texts, which can end up with a clean article with better readability and more printer-friendly. Although the editing may take some of your precious time before the printing, but the outcome definitely worth it.
  • Print Preview: Print preview can provide the user an idea on what is going to be printed out, and it is available in most of the document processing software (eg. Microsoft Word), and also in printer driver level. Although it is just a preview without editing capability, but this is another technique that can possibly help in reducing paper wastage, especially in eliminating  misprint of documents.
  • Print into digital format: Since it’s first release in 1993 by Adobe Systems, PDF, or Portable Document Format has became one of the most famous document digital format in many industries. There are certain times that one might wanted to save a page or two from a website for future reference, so besides printing them out in hard copy, one can also print (or save) them into digital form, such as in PDF, which can be accessed faster in the computer, and reduce unnecessary printing. There are already tons of software and web tools that can assist the user in converting the desired content into PDF documents, so this technique is very easy to be applied by every users.

All the above tips/techniques should be able to help in reducing the paper wastage, and I hope you find them useful. In part 2, I will be covering some software (free and paid versions) that is specifically built to assist the user in smart printing, and assist our readers in choosing the right tool at the right cost to reduce paper wastage. Meanwhile, if you have any other tips or tricks in smart printing, don’t hesitate to let us know, I am sure the readers would like to know them as well.

Reference

Copy This! Results of the Citigroup-Environmental Defense Partnership to Improve Office Paper Management (New York: Citigroup and Environmental Defense, November 2004) <http://www.edf.org/documents/4138_Final%20Citigroup%20report_11-1-04.pdf>

In Part Two…

In this part we are starting off  using some of the commands you should know, and then create a Macro that decide filename, which folder to use, before exporting the document to PDF-format. I am also going to show you how to create a button to trigger the macro.

As in the first part, I am using Office 2010. Even though the code and programming are the same in older versions of Excel, the images and buttons may differ from what you see on your screen.

Enough Chit Chat, let’s get this party started…

Quick Introduction to VBA and Excel

As mentioned earlier (in the first Part) VBA is Visual Basic Light. The programming language is object-oriented, meaning we create code that relates to objects like Cells, Sheets and Workbooks. Each Object has many functions (or actions) and each function has settings we can use; like Object Name, Value, Id etc. Don’t worry about remembering them all, VBA has a built-in tool that show you a list of available settings for each function.

In addition to the objects – we are going to use what we call Variables. Variables temporarily store data we are going to use later (think of it as small post-it notes). To keep track of our variables we declare them (give them names). This is usually done in the Macro Header. We will get back to this later.

One last thing: In VBA we don’t use the name Macro. Instead we call it SUBS. The Sub has a begin-code and an end-code, which declare the Macro Name and End:

Sub EmptyIt()

… Content Here …

End Sub

Some of the functions we are going to use

Every function we use will trigger an event inside the Excel workbooks. When using Excel you maneuver within Cells and Sheets. Each time you Select a Cell it becomes Active. Instead of Clicking on a cell, we can tell the macro to do it for us. First, we tell the macro which Cell to activate, using the function RANGE (Cell reference enclosed in parentheses and quotes).  Then we tell it what we want to do; “click it”. The code looks like this:

Range(“B2″).Select  (or Range(“B2″).Activate)

To WRITE something in that Cell we have to use a different function: ActiveCell.

ActiveCell.Value =”Write this into the Cell”

To READ the contents of the Cell we need to use a variable. As mentioned earlier the variable has to be declared (given a name). Then we can write something in it. The code would look like this:

Dim CellContent
CellContent = ActiveCell.Value

Then we can use that information later on – even if the content of that cell should change.

To Move between workbooks or Sheets we use the functions called: Sheets or Workbook, like this:

Workbook(“prices.xls”).Activate
Sheets(“Calculations”).Activate

Creating a Macro

Now we should be ready to create our PDF Macro. For this lesson I have created a document containing a simplified order form. You can download it at the end of this article. The workbook contain the macros used in these articles. The first macro has been created using the RECORD MACRO function.

To make the macro as versatile as possible we are going to create a new worksheet: “Settings”. This Sheet is going to store information like default filename, default save-to folder(s), and order handler. Later we can add functionality like Open After Save, Overwrite existing … etc.

This will allow other users to change settings without having to edit the macro.

1. Rename your main sheet to “Form” (Right click the sheet tab, choose Rename).
2. Create a new worksheet within your document, rename it: “Settings”.
3. In the workbook add some Labels to describe what information to store, and fill in the default values. (See example).
4. Return to the Form Sheet (The main sheet)
5. To create a new Macro, Click on the Macro Icon. In the Text box, type in the name for the Macro: “CreatePDF” and Click the Create-Button.

In the VBA-Editor you will now see an empty Macro, looking like this:

Sub ToPDF()

End Sub

All our code will go in-between these two lines. First we declare our post-it notes (variables):

Dim Name As String
Dim Stamp As String
Dim WhereTo As String
Dim sFileName As String

Now we need to retrieve data from the Settings Sheet, add the following lines:

Sheets("Settings").Activate
Range("B5").Activate
WhereTo = ActiveCell.Value
Range("B7").Activate
Stamp = ActiveCell.Value
If Stamp = "" Then Stamp = Date

The Cell references B5 and B7 may differ from your settings sheet. Use the apropriate cell references.

Then we will retrieve the customer name from the form:

Sheets("Form").Activate
Range("E5").Activate
Name = ActiveCell.Value

Next, we put the data to good use, by creating the filename:

sFileName =  WhereTo & Name & "_" & Stamp & ".pdf"

“sFileName”, “WhereTo”, “Name” and “Stamp” are the variables we use. The “=” sign means that the following information is to be stored. We link the information from each variable using the “&”-sign. Text is added between the quotes. The finished variable could look like this: sFileName = "C:\Sales\Thomas_09092010.pdf".

Last Thing we do; add the Save To PDF Command:

ActiveSheet.ExportAsFixedFormat Type:=xlTypePDF, Filename:= _
sFileName, Quality _
:=xlQualityStandard, IncludeDocProperties:=True, IgnorePrintAreas:=False, _
OpenAfterPublish:=True

Create Button

Okay, before we test that everything works, let’s make a button to trigger the macro. In order to do this (in Office 2010) we need to activate a hidden Tab on the ribbon (older Office, look for “Form Controls”).

1. Click on the Green File Tab
2. Choose Options
3. In the Options Dialogue, click “Customize Ribbon”
4. In the List Window to the right, there is a list of all the available Ribbons.
   Locate the one Called: “Developer” and Check the box next to it
5. Click OK to Save

Activate (Open) the Form Sheet, and click the Developer Tab in the Ribbon. In the middle of the Ribbon there is an icon called “Insert”. Click the little black arrow below it.

In the pull down menu, choose the first element that looks like a little grey button. With the crosshatch pointer, draw a button somewhere in the Sheet. This will trigger the Form Button Event Menu.

Choose the Macro you would like to run, and Click OK.

Now that the button has been created, we need to edit the Button label. With the button still activated, click the button text. This will allow you to type directly on the button. Write something clever on it, then press Enter.

Click somewhere on the sheet, to disable the button edit function, and to activate the button.

Now, all that is left, is to save your document. Make sure you save it as a Macro Activated Excel Document (xlsm).

DOWNLOAD

This File: Documents contains both an 2010-Version (xlsm)  and the XP-Version (xls).

Next Part

Part 3, will take this macro functionality longer. We will add Error handling, and make sure we don’t overwrite existing files. We will add more settings to the “Settings” sheet. Then we will add another Macro just for fun.

Using Advanced Macros

Most users have come across the word MACRO, one time or another using Excel. A macro is a recording of sorts, that stores your actions, step by step. Macros are used to eliminate the need to repeat the steps of common tasks over and over. Tasks such as adding or removing rows and columns, selecting a range of cells, or changing textcolor, fonts etc. In Excel, macros are written in Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). For those who cannot write VBA code, Excel allows you to record a series of steps – using keyboard and mouse – that Excel then converts into a macro.
In a few upcoming articles I am going to show you how you can create powerful and effective macros that hopefully will take your Excel experience to another level. How about letting Excel Copying Sheets, renaming them, Choose filenames, choosing between file locations and save the document as PDF sound ?

Sounds interesting ?

Great, let’s get started…

For most users, macros are an unvisited territory. Some try to record a macro and never see the full potential in it – or the usage for it. And some, create macros of tasks they do repeatedly, over and over. Like formatting cells, copying formulas etc. And it ends there. Not so any more.

Built into the MS Office Platform you will find something called VBA (Visual Basic for Applications). This is a light version of the programming language adjusted to work within each application (and across). And this is where we can harness the power of Excel. Imagine being able to Export/Import data between Excel and Word, creating automatic reports and letters. Programming Office to your needs.

Programming ???

Don’t despair – it is not as hard as it sounds. By combining the Macro Record functionality, with some small coding efforts you will come a long way. Learning as you go. Before we get into that, lets record a Macro.

Record a Macro

I am using the new Office 2010 in these examples, but you may use any Excel version you choose. However, not every icon or menu will have the same name and/or appearance, though the functionality will remain mostly the same.

I use the Excel cell references like this:

• [B2] = Click on this specific Cell
• [B2:C3] = Highlight these Cells

Open a blank Excel Document and click on the VIEW-Ribbon. All the way to the left is the Macro Button. Click on the little black arrow underneath the Macro Icon, and choose: “Use Relative References”. This setting allows us to use the macro anywhere we like, as opposed to a set area in the worksheet.

NOTE!
If you have Excel PRE 2007, you will not have the “Relative References” choice. You must instead, select the cells BEFORE recording the macro to avoid it locking to specific Cells.

Click the little black arrow (under the macro icon) again. This time, choose “Record Macro”. Call it “First”, Click OK.

• Now, Click on a Cell [B2], and type: “This is My first Macro Recording”.  (Normally, you won’t be typing text when recording macros but, in this example we are).
• Select a sample of cells around the text you wrote [B2:D3]
  (if you don’t use 2007/2010, hold down the SHIFT key and create the selection using the arrows, right and down).
• Click on the HOME-Ribbon, and set text color to RED and Background Color to Yellow

Click the little black arrow once more, choose “Stop Recording” (In Pre 2007/2010 Excel you will have a small floating window, containing the “Stop Recording”-button).

Highlight a new cell [H5]. Click on the Macro Icon, showing a list of available macros. Highlight the Macro we just created and Click RUN.

What you see is that Excel now replicates our steps, on a new set of cells. Choose a different Cell, and try it again to see that it works.

What the code looks like

To see what the code looks like, click the Macro Icon again, choose the macro and click EDIT.  This will open the VBA editor and show your macro:


Sub First()
'
' First Macro
''
ActiveCell.FormulaR1C1 = "This is my first Macro Recording"
ActiveCell.Select
Selection.Font.Bold = True
With Selection.Font
.Color = -16776961
.TintAndShade = 0
End With
ActiveCell.Range("A1:D3").Select
With Selection.Interior
.PatternColorIndex = xlAutomatic
.Color = 65535
.TintAndShade = 0
.PatternTintAndShade = 0
End With
End Sub

What you see is the VBA-Code necessary to do the task you recorded (it may differ from this example). We will get back to the code later. But if you want to play around with this, try changing these settings (marked RED in the example):

• .Color = -16776961 -> .Color = -16776981
• .Color = 65535 -> .Color = 255

Close the VBA Editor and run the Macro again.

Next Part

Read next part

In the next parts I will teach you how to write a Macro from Scratch and how to target specific cells and sheets.  We are also going to create a macro that Export documents to PDF, choosing filenames, folder and open the finished file in Acrobat Reader.

Chrome uses the source code of an open source project named Chrominum. The project is in version 7 at the moment.

At the time this article was written Google Chrome stable version is 5.0.375.127.

And the Beta version is 6.0.472.36

Every time a new version of Google Chrome is released, features change, so is important to know what exactly we are talking about. If you want to test the new version of Chrome but don’t want to uninstall your current installation use the Canary version.

The Canary version is always newer than the Beta but it installs in another directory. This way you can have two different versions installed.

1. Changes to the User Interface

Left Buttons

If you like a minimalist user interface you will love Chrome 6. The new interface, even though the changes are not so spectacular, makes the browser look lighter.

Buttons on version 5:

And in version 6:

In Chrome 6 by default, as the image shows, the bookmarks toolbar is disabled.

When a page is loaded, the refresh button behaviour and aspect changes so you can stop it.

Right Menus

Google is looking for simplicity so why use two menus instead of one? This changed on version 6.

Right menus in version 5:

and in version 6:

So the new menu has everything on it:

In the tools menu you will find the rest of the options:

2. Better Standards Support

It is very complicated to compare how different browsers support standards. With a standard like HTML5, that offers so many features, is even more complicated. HTML5test.com tries to at least give us a clue about this. This site runs several tests and gives a number with the results.

For this post I have made a comparison between the last versions of the most popular browsers:

• Chrome 5.0.375.127 Stable version scores 197 points
• Chrome 6.0.472.36 Beta 217 points
• Chrominium 7.0.497.0 (56316) 222 points
• Internet Explorer 8.0.7600.16385  27 points
• Internet Explorer Platform Preview 1.9.7916.6000 96 points
• Firefox 3.6.8, 139 points
• Firefox 4 Beta 3 190 points.

I have tested a pre release of Firefox Beta 5 that scores 190 points

The maximum is 300 points.

3. Better performance

Firefox 4 and Internet Explorer 9 are going to have hardware acceleration implemented. At least for now, Chrome 6 doesn’t have this feature, but that doesn’t mean is not going to be faster than Chrome 5.

Google claims that the new beta is 15% than the previous beta release.

4. AutoFill

This is one of the key features of Chrome 6. The idea is to use the browser to store personal information. The user can choose when to share this information with a website. The system allows, at least  in the Beta version, to store addresses as you can see in the image:

or a credit card:

Once you do this, you choose when you want to use the information to complete web forms. To know more about Autofill read: Webpages: Form AutoFill. Remember that this is still a Beta version so wait for the stable version to use with your credit card.

5. Native PDF

Chrome has native support for PDF but is not enabled by default. If you don’t want to use the Adobe PDF reader you can use this option.

Native PDF can be enabled by opening a new tab and typing about:plugins and clicking enable under ‘Chrome PDF Viewer’.

6. Synchronization

Now Chrome can use  synchronization for bookmarks, preferences, themes and AutoFill data, with the exception of credit card numbers.

Have you tried the latest build of Chrome 6?