Trimming Excess Excel Cells

Question: I use Excel for the church accounts. I have several worksheets for one workbook/file. On one of the worksheets there have somehow got over 14,000 rows below the area I actually use. I have tried to delete them by highlighting the unwanted rows and selecting delete rows to no avail. It makes it very tricky using the slide bar accurately, so how can I get rid of the unwanted lines please? Thank you. Kind regards, Mary

Answer: Mary, let me tell you there is no magic bullet for this one. But there is a way to get rid of the extra empty space at the end of your workbook. This is the solution I know works.

Let me review a few short-cut keys I use all the time and how I used them to work this issue out. The first one is Ctrl+End. This keyboard combination will take you to the “end” of the worksheet, however far it may be. Ctrl+Home will bring you right back to the beginning of the worksheet. Cell A1. Armed with this information, add the Shift key and you have a powerful tool for selecting a wide range of cells all at once.

For example, if you want to select the range of cells A1 to the end (or all the cells that occupy space in your worksheet, place your cursor at A1 by clicking on it or hitting Ctrl+Home. Now hit Shift+Ctrl+End and you will notice that ALL your work is highlighted – including the seemingly empty cells at the end of your document.

Unfortunately, highlighting the empty cells and deleting them or emptying them does not bring the end of the document to the end of your work. Excel for some reason keeps track of the space you have used and stretches your worksheet each time you insert cells, rows or columns, but it does not shrink to size once you’ve deleted content.

Here’s what I suggest you do. First insert a new worksheet in your workbook by clicking on Insert then Worksheet . Come back to your original worksheet and place your cursor at the end of your work. You can either mouse over to the last column and row, or you can use your arrow keys to move to that cell. Now click Shift+Ctrl+Home and all your work will be selected. Now press Ctrl+c. This command copies the selected area.

Finally, move to the new worksheet. You will notice that the cursor is on A1 by default. Press Ctrl+v. This command will paste the content copied from the previous worksheet starting at A1. The good news is no extra empty space will exist at the end of this worksheet. Your scroll bars will be thick and manageable.

To get the column widths exactly like your previous spreadsheet, do the following operation: click on edit, then paste special.  At the pop-up menu select column widths and click ok.

Once you are satisfied with your new worksheet. You can delete the old one by right-clicking on its tab at the bottom of your workbook and selecting Delete.

This operation takes a little bit of work, actually, but well worth it.

Spam: Digital Junk Mail

When I was a kid, I ordered a gadget from the back of a magazine. Shortly after that, I began to receive “exclusive offers” from would-be mail order marketers. I was pretty excited to receive these letters in the mail. I thought it was cool. That is how I got my first credit card, and my first music CD, and countless other things offered to me as a special buy from what we call junk mail. I still get junk mail, but I don’t think it’s cool anymore. SPAM, is the digital equivalent of junk mail. Usually unsolicited, emails bombard us everyday in hopes of selling more vi@Gr* or get rich quick schemes. In this article, I will offer a number of solutions for this nuisance; assuming you think of spam as a nuisance.

Solution #1

Use rules with your email client.

Solution #2

Get a disposable email address.

Solution #3

Get you own personalized domain for email and total spam control.

Using email rules

Most email clients (applications or programs that let you read electronic email) have a way of sorting emails based on some rules. For example, you can create a folder within your email program and call it “family.” Then, you can create a rule that checks your incoming emails “from” field for unklejoe@yahoo.com. If the mail is indeed from your uncle Joe, then the email will get sorted out to the “family” folder. In the same way, you can create a folder, and a rule or set of rules that would sort out spam by checking the subject for specific words or phrases such as *doctor, *pharmaceutical, etc. and sending the suspected email to the “spam” folder. Once there, you can quickly glance in the spam folder in case an innocent email has met the rule. Another more drastic measure would be to create a rule that sends these offending emails directly to the trash. But, I don’t recommend this because some important emails do get mistaken as spam sometimes.

Using a disposable email address

Internet Service Providers (ISPs) sometimes grant the use of more than one email account. Usually, a main email account that cannot change and a small number of piggyback email accounts. If you have this option, you can create disposable email account that you can destroy when you start receiving too much spam. Then, create another disposable email address. You can use the main email account to communicate with your family, friends, and reputable companies, and use the disposable email address to enter sweepstakes, drawings, or surveys that require you to have an email address to participate (and later sell your email address to spam for a profit.) Just remember never to give your main email address to anyone other than those you trust.

Get your own domain and email service

For about $3.50 per month, you can own your own email service with a personal name like juan@myemailservice.com or me@theruizfamily.net. Once you own your own domain and email service, you call the shots. Consider the following scenario: Juan decides he needs to take control of his spam situation. So, he buys the domain “askjuan.net.” Now, Juan can create email addresses that are easier to use than the standard juanru3456@yahoo.com. In addition, Juan now has complete control over his email and spam by using a combination of a tool called Spam Assassin and employing rules in his email client. Spam Assassin is a very easy to use free program that scores and tags each possible spam email. Juan’s email rules sort all the tagged email to a special folder for quick inspection. Juan has complete control of his spam situation. Juan is happy. In addition, with your own mail service, you can create an unlimited number of virtual email aliases. What that means is you can create an email address to subscribe to newsletters or jokes, and you can monitor who sells your email to spam. Say you subscribe to the Educate PC newsletter. You can just make up something like epcnews@myemailservice.com. Since the epcnews email does not exist it will be forwarded to your actual email account. Now, if you start getting email addressed to epcnewswith content not related to the Educate PC newsletter, you’ll know that Educate PC sold or shared your email address to others. At this point you can create a rule to “trash” all mail coming for epc, and tell others not to subscribe to the offending service. Problem solved.

Conclusion

Spam is a nuisance, but it can be controlled. Using resources you already own, you can sort your mail so that you only read wanted emails. Some of you are lucky enough to have the “extra” email addresses you can use right from your ISP. But owning your own email service is affordable and the most effective way to defend yourself from that pesky spam. The best news is, I can help you set it up.

Put SPAM in a Can With My Canned Solution

Are you interested in exploring option number three in detail? I just happened to take inventory of my resources and concluded that I can offer you this personalized service. Simply put, I can help you get a domain name, and setup your email service, manage it and help you create your client rules for $40 per year. That is only a little over $3 per month. You’ll get one main email address and unlimited virtual email addresses. Contact me for more details: Click Here

Sound Applet Missing

Question:
I just read your answer to the lost volume control question. My problem is the same but different. The volume control vanished after the installation of XP Service Pack II. When I try to check the box to restore it to the taskbar I get …

Windows cannot display the volume control on the taskbar because the volume control program has not been installed. To install, use Add/Remove Programs in Control Panel.

I’ve searched for a CD and/or floppy that would go with the sound and haven’t found anything. HELP! – Janet

Answer:
The answer to this one involves going to your device manager and inspecting the sound devices. When hardware on a computer does not work properly or as expected, this is the place to look first.

  1. Right click on MyComputer
  2. Click Properties
  3. Find and click on the tab labeled Hardware
  4. Click on the button Device Manager
  5. Find the Sound, video and game controllers option and click on the [+] to expand the list. (It may already be expanded if there is a problem)
  6. See if you have a “?” by any of the things listed here e.g. the sound device, right click on it and delete it.
  7. Restart your computer.

When the computer has restarted it will prompt you to install a newfound hardware device. I recommend you let the wizard do the installation. Just follow the prompts and accept all the defaults. Windows will attempt to find suitable drivers in its extensive (but not complete) database. If it finds a driver that fits your sound card, it will install it and your problem will be solved.

If, on the other hand, it fails to find suitable drivers for your sound system, you will need to find the specific driver from the internet. There are many repositories out there. A good one is geeks.com. Find out the brand of your sound card and do a search for that particular brand. If your sound card is integrated with your motherboard, then you will need to know the brand of your motherboard.

Sometimes it really is the equipment that isn’t working properly

by Emy Nelson Decker

Do I trust my own judgment? Yes, most of the time, until it comes to computers.

The other day, I had received my slide scanners and was setting them up with my new Mac G5s. What a scanning lab I was going to have! Brand-new, top of the line equipment! I got the three scanners out of their boxes, pulled the plastic wrapping off of them, hurdled past the manual, warranty, free offers, etc. and plugged the first one into my computer.

The first one worked perfectly. I had installed the easy-to-use Nikon software correctly, and it was scanning beautiful images. In fact, it even worked with an old batch feeder attachment (Nikon SF-200) that I had inherited with this job. This accessory allows me to set it to scan a large batch of slides automatically.Things were really going along well.

I set up the other 2 slide scanners with the other computers: one for the students who work part time in the collection and one for the assistant curator. I saw no reason at the time to try them out at the time. I had installed the software in exactly the same fashion, had used the same order of operations as described on the box and figured all was well. I threw away the boxes and went about my day.

A student in the fine arts program approached me later that day and asked if I could scan about 50 slides for him. I was delighted to, it meant using my new scanners. I set him up at the scanning station used by people in the department with scanning requests and students. I set up the batch feeder so that he could go about his day and clicked scan. I went back to my work.

The batch feeder jammed. This happens fairly often, especially if the slides are in cardboard mounts as opposed to Gepe brand plastic and glass mounts. It was when I checked on the saved scans that I noticed the problem. The preview of the images looked fine. The actual scans, however, were very faded and had a striped, almost corduroy-like pattern across them. This was nothing Photoshop was going to be able to fix.

I figured I had missed a setting. It had to have been something I had done or a step I had missed. I moved the batch feeder over to the assistant’s scanner and set it up to work over there while I played around with the Nikon settings on the scanner that had not worked properly. Everything looked fine. I racked my brain trying to figure out how this was different from the one I had that was working with no problems.

I called our tech folks out to take a look at it and they suggested that maybe the scanner was defective. I didn’t believe that too readily because I thought it statistically unlikely that two scanners (with radically different serial numbers) would have the exact same problem. I was sure it had been my mistake – either in installing the software or in arranging the settings.

After hours of this fiddling, I finally broke down and called Nikon tech support. Over the phone, they had me try a bunch of different things. When asked, I told them that the green “on” light had been flashing rapidly, and they said that was a sure sign that the equipment is malfunctioning. The light is supposed to flash slowly and once it is ready to accept a slide, the light steadies. The scanners themselves were broken.

Today I mailed them back to Nikon as I was instructed to do. Of course, the original boxes are gone, though they told me that would not be a problem. I found the warranties, a copy of the e-mail exchange I had with the Nikon folks after the phone call, and something resembling a receipt from the University. I wrote a brief description of the problem and sent them via UPS back to Nikon in New York.

As I was throwing away the boxes, I remember thinking to myself that perhaps I should try the scanners before I toss the boxes and packaging. I convinced myself that it wouldn’t be necessary.

Sometimes equipment doesn’t work properly. That is obvious and I am willing to bet it has happened to almost everyone at some point.

I wish I had kept all of the paperwork and I wish I had tried out the machines before assuming it was going to be fine and leaving myself in a world of hurt trying to find a sturdy box and all of the warranties, etc. to mail back to them. I believed that I had done something incorrectly. Sometimes when the equipment does not work, it is actually because there is something wrong with it.

I think there are two camps of people. The people who assume that if it does not work, then it must be the faulty equipment and the people who assume that they themselves must have done something wrong and will spend hours trying to fix something that simply needs to be shipped back to the company.

I count myself in the latter group. Although this is standard practice for most people, do not throw away anything until you know for sure that the equipment is working properly. At least wait until the warranty expires. Oh, and it helps to read the manual every now and again, too. I will wait now, hoping that my brown, previously used “University Press” box makes it to the Nikon service center and that the contents are repaired quickly, free of charge (they were purchased just a few weeks ago!), and returned very soon.

Sharing Home Network Printers

My friend Tim and I are of the belief that the Internet is probably going to catch on.  As more people become used computers, they may even have two or more of them at home.  Computers are becoming more powerful and less expensive in a short amount of time.  However the disparate technology from a few years back does not make those computers obsolete.

Even though one might have bought a new computer to upgrade the old technology, one may find that it is very possible to continue using the old computer and form a home network.  And because of that, one also may find a need to share resources such as printers.  In this paper, I put together three separate tutorials that are very closely related: sharing a printer; connecting to a shared printer; and finding the computer name of the shared printer.

Sharing printers on your home network:

Start with the computer where the printer is physically installed.
1)    Click on “Start”
2)    Find and click on “Printers and Faxes”
a.    One or more installed printers will show up in form of Icons.
3)    Right-Click (mirror the click instructions for left-handed mice) the printer to be shared within your computer network.
a.    A pop-up menu will show a list of actions
4)    Click “Sharing”
a.    A pop-up window will appear with multiple tabs.  The “Sharing” tab should be in front.
b.    Two options are available
i.    “Do not share this printer”
ii.    “Share this printer”
5)    Click on the option “Share…”
6)    In the “Share name:” box, enter the name by which you will recognize this printer in your network. For example: Canon2100, or MainPrinter, or Office, etc.
7)    If you will be sharing this printer with computers with a different operating system, Click on “Additional Drivers”
a.    This is only necessary if you do not want to install the drivers for this printer on the other computer(s) manually.  Otherwise, ignore this instruction.
8)    Click “OK” – You are finished sharing the printer.

If I missed anything in this tutorial, please let me know.
—
Connecting to your shared printer from another computer in your network.

Before you do this operation you will need to know the name of the computer with the shared printer and the name of the shared printer (step 6 above.) If you need to find out the name of the computer follow the instructions below: “Finding the computer name”
1)    Click on “Start”
2)    Click on “Run”
3)    Type the following \\(the name of the computer sharing the printer)\(the ‘Share name’ of the printer -see step 6 above-) in the box labeled “Open:” for example: \\officecomputer\canon2100, or \\toshiba23x\mainprinter,
4)    Finally, Click on the “OK” button… and wait.  When the window with the newly installed printer appears, the printer is ready to print.

If I missed anything in this tutorial, please let me know.

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Finding the Computer Name:

To find out the name of your computer follow these instructions.  Note, the name of your computer I am referring to, is not “Sony Vaio”, “Compaq” or “GateWay.”  It is a name by which your computer is known to your network.  It may not even make sense, as in “bl002xyz95.”  The point is that in a network, each computer member must have a unique name.  Otherwise, your network could become wacky and you may end up with some serious problems that could only be fixed by renaming the offending computer(s.)

Now for the task at hand:
1)    If you can see the “MyComputer” Icon on your desktop, right-click it.
2)    (Optional) if you CANNOT see the Icon on your desktop, click “Start”
a.    Find and right-click on “MyComputer”
3)    Click on “Properties”
4)    Click on the tab labeled “Computer Name”
5)    Find the following in that window: “Full computer name:” to the right of this is your computer name. Note it, write it down, memorize, etc…
6)    Click the “Cancel” button.
You are finished. – Now you know your computer name –