Staff Trainer | A Human Resource & Management Blog

I’ve launced a new blog just for Excel at http://www.exceltrainingboise.com.

For some free Excel VLOOKUP Tutorials click here.

The creators of Skype are at it again. This time- it’s Joost, free internet based TV. The opposite of youtube, it only airs professionally made programming. To add to the demand (Which has been considerable) they at first limited the amount of people that can download and watch Joost. You still have to be invited to get Joost, but now it’s a whole lot easier. You can get invited here for free.

Have you ever used radio buttons on your Microsoft Document, but to your dismay realize that only one button at a time- on the entire document- can be selected? You can simply work around this by using a group box.
In Excel, make sure your forms box is visible, select group, and simply draw it around the radio buttons. If you are printing the form, you can make the box invisible by right-clicking it, selecting format control, and under properties uncheck “Print Object.”

Can you use Excel’s text-to-speech functionality in VBA? You bet. Simply use this line of code: application.speech.speak and then specify your text in paranthesis or you can even use a variable. If your variable was called Announcement, your code would look like this:

application.speech.speak announcement

And to read text:

application.speech.speak (”This is the text!”)

Simple!

Here is a up-and-coming site I contribute to- check out some of the other contributors on Master the Business.com, you’ll find useful business info and advice on A LOT of topics. And please let me know what you think.

Stock Layouts is the professional design site I use and have purchased from in the past, and here are some free templates they give away to attract business. They have a postcard, brochure, newsletter and flyer template for free, and they work in Adobe apps, Microsoft Apps, CorelDRAW and even QuarkXPress.

Recently, I went to the DMV to renew my license. I failed the eye exam and had to get glasses for the first time in my life. Are glasses the only way to see Excel sheet tabs better? There’s no control in Excel that will do it.

That’s why you have to adjust your system settings to do it. Right click on your desktop, select properties, click appearance, and select advanced. You will see a drop-down box labeled item- simply select the scrollbar item and increase it’s size. For some reason unkown to mere mortals, sheet tabs are affected along with the scrollbars in windows- the only trick is to balance how much you increase it, as all scrollbars will also increase in size.

Here is a good site to look for add-ins- http://www.add-ins.com/ , just remember as with all sites, only download from sites you trust and use antivirus software to scan it.

Excel has the amazing ability to grow beyond it’s original programming with an “Add-in.” Add-in’s are basically mini-programs you add to Excel to expand it’s tools and options. For instance, there are add-ins that will sort your sheet tabs in order, add-ins that will display a stock market ticker in your worksheet, and add-ins that dramatically expand Excel’s analysis tools.

Some add-ins are free- go to the Tools menu and select Add-ins (Excel 2003 and prior). You will see a list of available add-ins, install them by simply checking the box next to their name.

You can also use add-ins from other sources- some are free, some are not- and they are available from many sources on the web BUT BE CAREFUL, add-ins may contain harmful code that can infect your computer, so only get them from trusted sources and always use anti-virus software to scan them first off. Most of these Add-ins are downloaded as zipped files, so you will need to extract them to a new folder. Go back into Excel and select Tools, Add-ins, then click on Browse. Navigate to the file you unzipped, click on the add-in file and Presto! New Excel.