Notes from the Help Desk…

When you are editing a large spreadsheet, you may want to lock the row or column headings into place so that they don’t scroll when you scroll the other cells in the worksheet. Excel calls this freezing panes. You can freeze any number of rows at the top of the screen or any number of columns on the left side of the screen, or both.

To keep row and/or column headings visible as you scroll:

1. To freeze one or more rows, select the row below the row you want to freeze.

To freeze one or more columns, select the column to the right of the column you want to freeze.

To freeze both rows and columns, click the cell below and to the right of the cells you want to freeze.

2. Select Window | Freeze Panes.

To remove “Freeze Panes” so that the worksheet scrolls normally:

1. Select Window | Unfreeze Panes.

When panes are frozen, you typically move in the bottom or lower right pane. However, you can click into any frozen pane and scroll around it.

2 + 3 * 4 =

Which is the correct answer?

a.) 24
b.) 20
c.) 14

If you were paying attention in junior high school math class, you know about the Order of Operations, which dictates that formulas evaluate multiplication and division before addition and subtraction.

Therefore, Excel reads this formula as 2 + 12, not 5 * 4, and the correct answer is 14. (24 is not an option, but someone in class always guesses it, so I thought I’d throw it in).

If you need a handy mnemonic for remembering the Order of Operations, or the order in which formulas are evaluated, remember

PEMDAS, or

P lease Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally

(P = Parentheses, E = Exponent, M = Multiplication, D = Division, A = Addition, S = Subtraction).

Have you ever wanted to use PowerPoint to show a collection of pictures? PowerPoint contains a Photo Album feature exactly for this purpose. There’s no need to insert the pictures one slide at a time. PowerPoint will even take the pictures directly from your digital camera!

Here’s how:

1. If you want to create the Photo Album from pictures on your computer, start by copying all the pictures you want to include into one folder. It will be easier to select them later.
2. Create a new blank presentation.
3. In PowerPoint 2003, select Insert | Picture | New Photo Album.
   In PowerPoint 2007, click the Photo Album button in the Illustrations grouping on the Insert tab of the ribbon and select New Photo Album…
4. PowerPoint will display the Photo Album dialog box:



5. Select File/Disk if the pictures are in a folder on your computer. (Select Scanner/Camera if the pictures are on your digital camera.)
6. Navigate to the folder containing your pictures, hold down the CRTL key, and click on each picture you want to include. If you’re including all the pictures in the folder, press CTRL + A to select them all.
7. Click the Insert button.
8. In the Album Layout section of the dialog box, you can make each picture fill the slide by selecting Fit to Slide. You also have the option to put 1, 2, or 4 pictures on a slide, with or without titles. If you choose to add titles, you will have to go into each slide and type the titles.
9. If you select 1, 2, or 4 pictures per slide, you can also select the Frame Shape that will border each picture and a
   Design Template for the slide background.
10. Click Create.
11. PowerPoint will create the presentation with the options you selected.
12. Navigate to the first slide and edit the title and subtitle, if you wish.

If you want to pause during a PowerPoint presentation for a break or for a discussion, you can black out the screen by pressing the B key. Press it again to return to the presentation.

In a light room, you can white out the screen by pressing the W key. Press it again to resume the presentation.

You can use the AutoContent Wizard to create a new PowerPoint presentation if your content is close to one of the AutoContent options, such as a marketing plan, a project overview, or an employee orientation package.

The AutoContent Wizard prompts you for information and then creates a complete presentation based on your responses. The presentation will include text and graphics that you can then modify to meet your own needs.

To create a presentation using the AutoContent Wizard:

1. Open the New Presentation Task Pane.
2. Select New | From AutoContent Wizard.
3. PowerPoint will open the first screen of the AutoContent Wizard:



4. Click the Next> button to start.
5. Select the options in each screen regarding presentation type, style and option.
6. PowerPoint will create the presentation.

As you work with a database, it can become fragmented so that it uses disk space inefficiently. Compacting the database rearranges the way the database file is stored on the disk so that it takes up less disk space and works more efficiently.

In addition, it’s possible that your database can become damaged or corrupted, although this is not a common occurrence. Typically, a damaged database will behave unpredictably. For example, a search may not display any records, new records may not appear, or deleted records may still show up in a table. In some cases, Access will inform you that your database is damaged when you try to open it.

To compact and repair the current database:

1. Select Tools | Database Utilities | Compact and Repair Database.
2. Access will compact and repair the database.

You can also compact and repair a database that is not open. For this to work, you must not have any database open. Also, when you compact and repair a database that is not open, Access will create a copy of the database and compact and repair the copy. The original will not be compacted and repaired.

To compact and repair a database that is not open:

1. Make sure that no database is open.
2. Select Tools | Database Utilities | Compact and Repair Database.
3. Access will display the following dialog box:



4. Select the database you want to compact. Change drives and/or folders, if necessary.
5. Click the Compact button.
6. Access will display the following dialog box:



7. Type a new name for the database. Change drives and/or folders if necessary.
8. Click the Save button.
9. Access will create a copy of the database, using the name you specified, then compact and repair the new database.

TIP: When Should You Compact a Database?

It’s a good idea to compact your database after you delete information.

Here are some general tips for designing and maintaining databases from one of our experts:

1. When developing forms and reports, focus on functionality first. Once things are working correctly, then you can make them look pretty.
2. When designing tables to hold contact information, try to break information down into its parts.
   Separate name into FN, MI, LN, and Address into Add1, Add2, City, State, Zip, Country.
   It’s easy to put things together afterwards if necessary, not so easy to break them apart.
3. Always back up files (the whole .mdb file, or specific forms, reports, etc.) before making changes to them.
4. On the database menu, Tools>Startup has useful options like setting a form to open automatically, and hiding the database window on open.

When database development is finished, split the database, putting tables in the “back-end” database, and forms, reports, queries, etc in the “front-end”.

Just open the database and go to Tools>Database Utilities>Database Splitter, and follow the instructions.

Splitting improves speed, reliabilty, and convenience, especially in a multi-user environment.

If you like to edit images on your Web site with Photoshop, it’s easy to make Dreamweaver use it as the default image editor.

First, you have to select Photoshop as your primary image editor for jpgs (and gifs, etc.). To do so:

1. Select Edit | Preferences.



2. From the Category list, select File Types/Editors.
3. Select the file extensions you want to associate with PhotoShop.
4. In the Editors section , click the button with the Plus sign (+).
5. Dreamweaver will open the Program Files folder.
6. Double-click the Adobe folder.
7. Double-click the Photoshop folder.
8. Select the Photoshop executable (Photshop.exe).
9. Click the Open button.
10. Dreamweaver will add Photoshop to the list of editors.
11. Select Photoshop in the list and click the Make Primary button.

When you want to edit an image in Photoshop from a document in Dreamweaver:

1. Select the image.
2. Click the Edit Images button in the Property Inspector.

This problem seems to come up a lot in our classes: You have a list of names in a column. Each cell contains both the first and the last name.

You need to have the first name appear in one column and the last name in the next column. (Or you have the city, state and zip code in one column and you want to split them up into three columns.) And, of course, you don’t want to re-type the whole list!

Excel has a feature to deal with this problem, but most people don’t know about it. Here’s how to split up the text into different columns:
(Let’s assume the list of names is in column A and there is data in several columns to the right of column A.)

1. First, insert two columns to the right of column A. (You really only need one, but like me, you should be paranoid about losing important data. The extra column is a precaution.)
2. Select Column A.
3. Select Data | Text to Columns.
4. The Convert Text to Columns Wizard Step 1 will appear:



5. Assuming the first and last names are separated by a space, select Delimited and click Next.
6. The Convert Text to Columns Wizard Step 2 will appear:



7. In the Delimiters section, check Space, remove other checks, and click Next.
8. The Convert Text to Columns Wizard Step 3 will appear:



9. In the Column Data Format section, select General or Text, and click Finish.
10. Your text should now appear in two separate columns:



11. You can now delete the extra column you created as a precaution.