J-Walk & Associates, Inc.

Musical Resignation Letter

A Microsoft employee calls it quits

So Bye, bye Excel and I
It's been 3 good years, oh how time has flown by
With devs in the hall drinkin' whiskey and rye
Singin' forever recalc or die, forever recalc or die

Another PUP Sale

By popular demand,  we're conducting another 24-hour sale for Power Utility Pak.

You'll save lots of money, on either version of PUP:

• PUP v7:  $7.77 (normally $40.00)
• PUP v6:  $6.66 (normally $39.95)
• The complete VBA source code is available for an additional $20.00

The sale begins at 11:00 am U.S. Eastern Time on Tuesday, March 27, and will last for 24 hours.

Click here for the 24-Hour Sale Order Form

Spread the word. This is a great opportunity to buy a PUP license for everyone in your office.

Excel 15 Features

Found here:  Exclusive- Microsoft Office 15 features and improvements

Microsoft is aiming to make Excel 15 easier for folks who need to visualize large data sets that they are working with. A new Quick Analysis Lens feature lets Excel 15 users quickly access ways to visually represent data, and Recommended Charts and PivotTables helps surface the best way to visualize certain information based on data patterns. Flash Fill, a new feature to Excel 15, will also simplify the reformatting and rearrangement of data in an Excel spreadsheet. Excel 15's Touch Mode feature is designed to let users browse through charts, graphs, and tables on tablet devices with their fingers and hands.

Excel 15 will also introduce some new chart formatting controls that use a fully interactive interface to fine tune charts quickly. Chart animations will also let chart users see and understand every different change in their charts as new data points are added or existing numbers adjusted along the way. Microsoft is also building in a new Start Experience for Excel 15 that provides access to a collection of professional designed templates, including ones for budgets, calendars, forms, and reports.

I haven't seen it, so I have no idea if this is accurate or comprehensive.

The Spreadsheet Page Is 16 Years Old

Today is the 16th anniversary of The Spreadsheet Page. It's now old enough to drive.

Here's how it looked in 1997, the earliest archived page:

Excel-related RSS Feeds

I keep a fairly comprehensive list of RSS feeds from Excel-related blogs: Excel Blog Headlines.  Today I added a new one, from Doug Glancy. His site has a clever name: yoursumbuddy.

I was going to clean up the list, and remove sites that haven't been updated in a while. But then I decided to leave them in -- just in case they come back to life.  Plus, it required too much effort.

Excel 15

I've been keeping my eye on the news for stories about the next version of Excel. Not much so far, just rumors. For example: Microsoft planning beta of next-generation Office 15 suite in January.

The software giant is currently preparing final milestone builds of Office 15 in preparation for a full beta in late January, according to sources familiar with the company’s plans. Microsoft Office 15, the codename for the next version of Microsoft’s popular productivity suite, is tentatively scheduled for a beta 1 milestone in late January. Microsoft will provide a Technology Preview of the software initially, expected at CES 2012 alongside the Windows 8 beta.

That didn't happen.

Office 15 will be designed with touch at the heart of the applications. Microsoft has redesigned the general look and feel of its popular Outlook email client to make it usable by touch, pen and mouse… Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer confirmed in September that the company is preparing a Metro style version of Office. You ought to expect that we are rethinking and working hard on what it would mean to do Office Metro style,” said Ballmer

How To Be Employable

Here's some advice: You will always be employable if you know how to do this

One recruitment professional claims to have identified the secret of eternal employability in financial services: advanced Excel skills.

“There is always steady demand for people with advanced Excel,” says Dominic Connor at P&D Quant Recruitment. “It is an excellent safety net for when it hits the pan.”

Using Excel to ensure employability means familiarising yourself with pivot tables, VBA, importing and exporting data from SQL servers and more complex elements like DDE (dynamic data exchange strings).

And this:

The great joy of all this is that it’s easy to learn, argues Connor. “All you need to do is to buy a book by Walkenbach and work your way through from beginning to end,” he suggests, “The joy of Excel is that everyone knows how to do it, but not many people know how to do it properly.”

Elevens

Today I entered a formula, and got six 11's.

How Many Books?

I got an email from someone who wanted to know the total number of books that I've sold.

Answer: I have no idea. I suppose I could dig out all my old royalty statements (which are on paper), spend a day doing data entry, and come up with a total. But that's way too much work.

Then I remembered that Amazon provides data from BookScan for authors. The only data available is for the past eight weeks:

That's 7,367 books sold in 56 days, which works out to an average of 131.6 per day. I've been writing books for about 18 years, but sales weren't always as good as they currently are -- although they have also been much better. So let's assume 100 books per day for 18 years. That's 675,000 books.

Today Is Spreadsheet Day

It occurs once per year: Spreadsheet Day.

The Spreadsheet Day blog celebrates the joy and challenges of working with spreadsheets. October 17th was voted the best day for Spreadsheet Day, because VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet for personal computers, was released on October 17th, 1979.

Please celebrate responsibly.

Do You Hate Mailing Stuff?

I pay my bills online, but sometimes I get a bill that requires me to write a check and mail it. I hate that!

Then it occurred to me that the Power Utility Pak coupon in my books are just as inconvenient. So here's a deal that's valid for the next seven days.

If you own one of my books, and would like a discounted price on PUP v7.1 (for Excel 2007 and later) or PUP v6 (for Excel 2003):

Send me an email with the subject "PUP COUPON" and tell me:

1. Which book you have
2. The version of PUP you want
3. The price shown on the coupon in the back of the book
4. The first word on Page 100.

If your email passes my rigorous proof of purchase test, I'll reply with a URL where you can make a credit card payment online (or, use Paypal if you prefer). When the payment is processed, I'll send you download instructions.

Excel And Scotch

At Computer World: What fine whisky can teach us as end user computing professionals.

The famous connoisseur Jim Murray said of the 1974 Ardbeg Provenance: "This is the finest whisky I have ever tasted. As close to perfection as makes no difference."

Ever notice that every once in a while, something comes along in which it seems heaven, earth and the stars were aligned? It's as if all of the ingredients came together to create something so amazing, it's hard to imagine it could ever be matched.

Microsoft Excel is IT's answer to the 1974 Ardbeg Provenance

I felt this way when I used Microsoft Excel in 1996. At the time I was a geologist responsible for accurately steering an oil drilling bit 3,000 meters below the surface of a Montana farm field.

With Excel and the magical help of John Walkenbach's advanced Excel programming books, I could create a graphical representation of the well bore's profile from downhole telemetry data, condensed so that the drillers and I could easily see which way the bit was going thanks to Excel's charting functions and some tricky Visual Basic wizardry.

It seemed there was nothing that Excel could not do.

Excel Champ

Congratulations are in order: UK student wins Microsoft Excel World Championship.

UK student Rebecca Rickwood has won a global competition to find the best user of Microsoft's spreadsheet software, Excel 2007.

Rebecca, who is 15, was one of 228,000 competitors from 57 countries. She beat 78 students in the final round.

Competitors were required to perform timed tests to demonstrate their skill at making spreadsheets.

She scored 100%. Can't get much better than that.

I'd like to see that test.

Google Plus

Anybody using Google+ yet? It's Google's answer to Facebook and Twitter.

I've never used Facebook, and I don't really like Twitter. But I'm having lots of fun with Google+. It's very confusing at first, but once you get the hang of it, you'll be impressed.

You can read my public G+ posts here. If you have an account, you can post comments. And if you like, you can add me to a circle so you won't miss any of the (usually) nonsense I post.

Right now, Google+ is in beta and new accounts are by invitation only. Here's an offer for you: If you're a PUP user and you'd like a Google+ invitation, send me an email and I'll pull some strings and get you on board.

I have a few prominent Excel bloggers in my circles, but I haven't seen much Excel content. That might change in the future. Mostly it's just fun time-wasting posts.

Bad Charts On Wikipedia

Jorge Cameos urges everyone to Change Bad Charts in the Wiikipedia.

Corporate annual reports and the Wikipedia are two great resources to find really bad charts. We can’t do much about corporate reports, but we can actually change the Wikipedia articles. So, here is an assignment for you: find a bad chart and replace it with one that actually makes sense from a data visualization point of view.

Here's an example, from List of U.S. states and territories by population.