Tag: AskQ

Use Google to Find Your Phone

Honey, have you seen my phone?

You don’t need a tracking device to locate your Android phone. Just log into your Google Play Store account and access the Android Manager.

You can have your phone send out a Here I am! ring, or lock the device with an “If found, please return..” message;

…to reunite you with your lost loved one.

To Locate your Android Phone

  1. Go to https://play.google.com.
    Note: you will need to be logged into your Google account.
  2. Click the settings googlesettingsgearicon and select Android Device Manager.
    Your phone’s location location-icon-png-14will appear highlighted.
  3. Select preferred option(s):
    a. Click Ring to have your phone ring.
    b. Enable and Select Lock to secure your phone.
    c. Click Erase to wipe your personal data.

Cheers!

hɔuᴉnb

Related posts:

Comments and questions are always welcome!

Heading and Bookmark Shortcuts

In addition to making it easy to generate PDF bookmarks from a Word document (click link to see  how) , Headings and Bookmarks afford your reviewers an easy method of navigation.

headings-and-bookmarks

Here are shortcuts to Applying Heading Styles and Creating Bookmarks.

To quickly apply Heading styles

  1. Select the item by placing insertion point anywhere on that line of text (Heading styles will auto-apply to the entire paragraph).
  2. Hold CTRL and SHIFT down and press 1, 2, or 3 to apply that corresponding outline level (e.g., CTRL+SHIFT+2 applies Heading 2 style).

Note, only the first 3 Heading styles have shortcut keystrokes pre-assigned to them. Alternatively, you can also Press CTRL + SHIFT + S (Apply Style shortcut) then select or enter the style name.

To create Bookmarks

  1. Select the text to bookmark.
    Note: Unlike Heading Styles, you must select all text to be included in the bookmark.
  2. Press CTRL + SHIFT + F5. The Bookmark dialog appears.
  3. Enter your bookmark name:
    -name can contain only letters and/or numbers
    -name cannot begin with a number
  4. Click Add.

Note: If you use the same name as an existing bookmark the original will be overwriten without warning.

Cheers!

hɔuᴉnb

Related posts:

Comments and questions are always welcome!

Auto-generate Bookmarks in an Acrobat PDF

autobookmarking-in-acrobat

 

An earlier post showed an easy keyboard shortcut for creating bookmarks. Here’s an even easier method of creating a PDF from a Word document, where the bookmarks, practically, create themselves. And the beauty of it is that it preserves the outline hierarchy (i.e. creates indented bookmarks) as defined in your document.

Note: The document must either be in outline format (with Heading styles), or formatted with Word-generated bookmarks.

Click here to watch ~1 minute demo

Converting your Word Document into a PDF with Bookmarks

  1. In Word: click File, Save As, then Browse to select a folder to save to.
  2. On the Save As dialog, in the File name area, enter the file name.
  3. Click the Save as type drop-down and select PDF (*.pdf).
  4. Click Options…
    autobkmrk1-options
  5. Check Create bookmarks using: and select Headings.
  6. Click OK.
  7. Click Save.

Cheers!

hɔuᴉnb

Related posts:

Comments and questions are always welcome!

A Driverless Tesla?

Tesla’s  Driverless Assisted Car

Following a software update that will soon be released, some Tesla owners will gain a co-pilot.

reverse

Although not yet driver-less, the software enhanced Tesla will:

  1. Self-park
  2. Change Lanes
  3. Use assisted steering to maintain speed, and distance from, other cars
  4. Warn the driver against drifting out of the lane

For more on this, and to view the Tesla Model S Auto-Steer test drive click here to continue to TechCrunch

 

Additional reading…

Cheers!

hɔuᴉnb

Cascading Data Validation Lists

..with thanks to  Melodie S. for her help with this post.

A dear associate of mine asked for assistance with the following: How can you dynamically link a validation list, so that choices in one column control the list displayed in another?

Cascading Data Validation Lists3

The example above illustrates a Region – City validation list. The selection of USA in the Region column will display only U.S. Cities; selecting Europe will display only European ones.

The first step is to create Defined Names for the Regions and each of the City groups.
Cascading List - Named Ranges

Creating Defined Names:

  1. Select the cells that make up the list. Do not include the list header in your selection.
    For example, to create the Region list in the above example, select E3:E5. 
  2. Click in the Name Drop-down.
  3. Type a name for the list and press Enter.
    Note: Names must begin with a letter and should not include spaces.
  4. Repeat steps 1-3 for each list (i.e., USA, Europe, Australia).

=INDIRECT(ref): Returns the reference specified by a text string.

Using the INDIRECT function to reference the value in the Region column (e.g, Australia), the data validation list will display contents of the matching defined name (e.g., Brisbane, Perth, etc.)

cascading list validation dialogs

Creating the Data Validation Lists:

  1. For the first input column (e.g., Region) select the the cells where data will be input (e.g., B3:B15).
  2. On the Data tab, in the Data Tools group, click Data Validation. The Data Validation dialog appears.
  3. Click the Allow drop-down and select List.
  4. In the Source field type ‘=‘ followed by the appropriate Defined Name (i.e., =Region )
  5. Click OK.
  6. For the second input column (e.g., City) select the the cells where data is to be input (e.g., C3:C15).
  7. On the Data tab, in the Data Tools group, click Data Validation. The Data Validation dialog appears.
  8. Click the Allow drop-down and select List.
  9. Click in the Source field, type ‘=INDIRECT( ref ), where ref is the cell reference of the first Input cell in the prior column; e.g., =INDIRECT(B3) .
  10. Click OK.

Cheers!

hɔuᴉnb

Additional reading:

Excel Text 4 of 4: Using SUBSTITUTE to Parse Text

Excel is great at splitting text across multiple columns. For basic text separation (e.g. putting first and last name in separate columns) the LEFT and RIGHT functions work fine. But these functions fall short when applied to data that follow an inconsistent pattern. In the below example, the errant inclusion of a middle name wrecks havoc with our formula results.

Text4Substitute(2)

Using the SUBSTITUTE function one can identify and replace the last space in the cell with a uniquely identifying character (e.g., an underscore). This character can then be used as a delimiter to separate Lastname from full name.

ScreenShot-2015-Jun-03-126-AM

SUBSTITUTE: replace character(s) within a cell with specified character(s)

= SUBSTITUTE ( text, old text, new text, instance)
Note, instance is optional; when omitted, every occurrence of old text is replaced with the new.

Examples:

  • =SUBSTITUTE(“Mad Max”, “a”,“i”) returns Mid Mix
  • =SUBSTITUTE(“mississippi”, “i”,“”) returns msssspp
  • =SUBSTITUTE(“banana”, “a”,“Q”,2) returns banQna
LEN Counts the number of characters =LEN(“antidisestablishmentarianism”) returns 28

Click here for a 5 minute tutorial:

Cheers!

hɔuᴉnb

Additional reading:

Excel Text 3 of 4: Using SEARCH, MID & CELL to Display Sheet Name

Linking the worksheet name to a cell in the spreadsheet is easily accomplished using Excel’s CELL function. Once joined by the MID and SEARCH functions, you need only change the sheet’s name and the linked cell will update to match.

Click to view at full resolution
Click to view at full resolution

Displaying the Sheet Name in a Cell

Type (or copy and paste) the following formula into a cell

=MID(CELL(“filename”),SEARCH(“]”,CELL(“filename”))+1,100)

Note

  • The file must be saved; the CELL function will not return a value on an unsaved file.
  • Press F9 (if necessary) to update the cell after a renaming a sheet.
MID returns a portion of text based on starting position and number of characters. =MID(“Task Quickly”,2,5) returns “ask Q”; starting with the 2nd char, 5 charachters long.
CELL returns info about the cell, file or sheet. =CELL(“filename”) returns the path, filename and sheet.
E.g., C:\[Balance.xlsx]Sheet1
SEARCH returns  the number where the first occurrence of the search text is found, regardless of case.* =SEARCH(“A”,”Quantity”) returns 3;  ‘A’ is the 3rd character.

*The FIND function works similar to SEARCH but is case-specific.

To learn more about each function and understand why this works, watch this ~2½ minute video:

Cheers!

hɔuᴉnb

Additional reading:

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