Number 299 - April 2008

Introduction To Spreadsheets And Ways To Use Them You Probably Didn't Know About - Part 2 of 2
By Ron Hirsch, BRCS Member & Contributing Editor january 2008 Contact Ron at: Ronhirsch1439@comcast.net
This month's article is the second and final part of the introduction to spreadsheets.    In the first Part. I suggested that you take a little cruise around whichever spreadsheet program that you may have installed on your machine.    Hopefully, some of you have done so. Some Different Uses For Spreadsheets    1. use Quattro Pro, for both the classical activities of spreadsheets and also those involving little or no math. Below is a listing of various items, for which I use a Quattro Pro spreadsheet to do the job.    While one could also do many of them using a word processor, it is easier in my view to use a spreadsheet. And. if you already have Quattro Pro or Excel available, why not use it?    Most of the uses below are items that people would never even think of creating via a spreadsheet.    Hopefully, these uses will invoke curiosity in some of you to venture into the world of spreadsheets. Address / Telephone Directory    1. My master address and telephone directory , for all personal and business information, was one of my first projects in 1987 using Lotus 1-2-3 ver 2.0.1. It has progressed through eight different spreadsheet program versions since 1987.    Now, it is nicely formatted with alternate areas of shading and lines and contains about 700 records, over 20 pages. Asset Schedules    2. For various tax and financial purposes, I needed schedules of certain assets. I generated a spreadsheet, with all the applicable information listed and various arithmetical functions assigned to the proper places.    Each year, all I have to do is review individual items and adjust the shares, or dollar amounts, involved as applicable. The spreadsheet instantly calculates all the necessary results and the final figures in a matter of seconds. I then save the new spreadsheet, with the latest figures, under a new name for the current year. Chart and Slip In Card    3. In my household security system each keypad has a little slide-up panel with a removable piece of paper to identify the 14 zones in the system. Each zone has a writeable area of 0.1 "xl.0".    Try using those spaces to handwrite a legible label. Instead, I went into Quattro Pro, set the column width for column a to 1", and the row height for rows 1 thru 14 to O .1". I then set the font to 7 points, and entered the zone information. Next, I formatted all the cells to have lines all around, copied the small chart twice, below itself (for the 3 keypads), and printed it out.    After cutting around the outside of each chart, and placing one in each keypad, it is very legible, and looks like a "factory" job.    4. In a like manner, I generate a "polished" slip-in card for my desktop telephone. It too has a small card where you can write the names and numbers for the preprogrammed one touch dialing feature.    I set up a master layout in Quattro Pro, used lines and shading to make it "pretty" and then entered in all the info, printed it out and slipped it into the phone--where it now looks like a professional job.	Layouts    5. I have very complex wiring and layouts for my computer areas, and my home theater system.    I generate a detailed diagram of everything using a spreadsheet. I outline the cells which have text in them for various pieces of equipment.    To show interconnections, I draw lines between the cells, with arrows showing the flow and add text comments all over to clarify things and make any necessary notes.    While it's true that I could scribble all this down on a piece of paper, that's not my modus operandi.    The resulting printouts are very professional looking, and make understanding what I did easy to see, even years later.    The above are very straightforward spreadsheet uses. I have many other uses, which are far too complex to list here. But, needless to say, many of my spreadsheets do "number crunching" for me, where an hour's worth of pad and pencil work can be accomplished in seconds by the computer. Quattro Pro    The formatting capabilities of today's Quattro Pro are extremely diverse. I format all my work nicely to make it much more pleasant to work with.    I can remember how things were 14 years ago. The font one used was what the printer could supply, often only Courier and mostly with limited or no font size choices. There was no color, no lines, no shading. It's hard to believe that spreadsheets today are the descendants of those early programs. Macros    Quattro Pro has a very powerful macro language.    Macros are essentially mini programs that the user can generate to perform a group of repetitive tasks, and make life much easier. You don't have to learn complex programming to use macros.    In its simplest form, Quattro Pro can record the macro a series of steps that the user makes. The user then assigns a "name" to that series of steps, and can replay them whenever desired. Macros in Quattro Pro are similar to macros in WordPerfect, but the actual protocol differs.    In one of my larger spreadsheets formatting, maintenance, and preparing to print can be an arduous tasks, so I recently generated a whole series of macros to do those jobs for me. A group of seven tasks that could each take several minutes to do, now get done by clicking a button, in one second.    Once you get comfortable with using Quattro Pro, macros can bring you into the "jet-age." A future article may get into this area. But, before you can run, you must crawl, and then walk.    I have spent many thousands of hours doing things with Quattro Pro, at least half do not use any of the exotic capabilities that spreadsheets offer. However, the ability to manipulate information can be a very handy tool. Conclusion    If you've ever worked with a database program, you'll have a good idea of what a spreadsheet can do. For doing less complex database activities, a spreadsheet can do the job just fine.    The material presented here is only the small tip of the iceberg of what can be done with programs like Excel and Quatb"O Pro. So, rather than installing some new program of questionable worth, why not try out and hopefully learn something that's very worthwhile.    I guarantee that once you venture into the world of spreadsheets, you may decide that the time spent there is both rewarding and satisfying.
Number 299 - April 2008