News and useful links from Spreadsheets Direct.
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My Solutions service is going from strength to strength. Most answers are currently sent within half an hour during work hours or within 12 hours at the weekend. Just to recap the service, email your problem to solutions@spreadsheetsdirect.com, await a reply, pay the £1.50/$3/€1.90 charge and await a file with your answer and description of what it is doing.
It's only a few days to go to the start of the British Open Golf Championships at Royal Birkdale and my home town of Southport has been gearing up for it for months now. Rumours are rife that George Clooney will be in town amongst other celebs. Tiger Woods might not be coming but there are 156 golfers attempting to win the honours. It won't be easy as, having cycled down past the course the other day, I can vouch that there will be some strong winds to take into account even if it is the sunniest day of the year. For anyone wanting to run a sweepstake in their clubhouse or office then you'll be pleased to know that I've put one together for you. It can be found at http://www.spreadsheetsdirect.com/examples_open_golf_sweepstake.html
Due to the number of participants I've set it up for 39 people, each getting 4 golfers for their money. Full instructions are on my site. Good Luck!
If anyone is planning on visiting and after an info on Southport drop me a mail and I'll see if I can help.
If you've ever found yourself pulling your hair out trying to get a formula to work or been trying to get conditional formatting to work with no success then my new Spreadsheet Solutions Service will be just for you. Send in your queries and for a cost of £1.50 (approx $3, €1.90) the answer will be sent directly to your inbox! Check out the Spreadsheet Solutions Service page on my site for more details.
Just spent most of the morning/afternoon trying to get on to my laptop after Vista decided to show a black screen with just the mouse arrow instead of the login screen. Looking round the net it appears to be a common problem with Vista but none of the fixes worked for me.
Eventually I found that the following fixed the problem:
On bootup press F8
Select the Repair option (already highlighted. I missed it to start with thinking it was the heading).
On the program that loads choose the option to restore.
On the list of restore points choose one from a few days earlier when you computer was last working. My last restore point had been created the day before the problem and was created due to a Windows update so assume this must have caused the problem.
Once the restore has finished you should be able to login as normal.
It's Wimbledon fortnight from Monday 23rd June to Sunday 6th July so I've added a results tracker to help you keep track of how Federer, Nadal, Murray, Ivanovic, the Williams sisters et al are doing. Due to the number of players in both the Gentleman's & Ladies championships I've split them up into two files. The files contain three sheets, the first 3 rounds for the top and bottom half of the draw are split over two sheets with rounds 4 to the final on the third. All you need to do is add the game scores and the rest will work it's self out.
The file can be found at http://www.spreadsheetsdirect.com/examples_wimbledon_2008.html
There was a slight problem with some ranges which was giving the wrong results, should now be fixed.
I've added a sweepstake sheet for anyone wanting to run one in their office. Like the Grand National one you just need to print the tickets off, get your entrants to pick their teams, enter their name and team number on the SWEEPSTAKE sheet and the rest will sort itself out. The entry cost and percentage split can be changed as desired.
There's only 3 weeks to go to the start of the Euro 2008 football championship in Austria & Switzerland. None of the home nations might have made it but there will be plenty of Premiership players past, present and future on display. To help you keep track of what's happening I've created a spreadsheet which will work out league postions from the scores you enter. Check it out at http://www.spreadsheetsdirect.com/examples.html
If any of you are after any spreadsheet books then my mate has recently gone live with his new bookshop site Prontobooks. The link below should point you to the spreadsheet books..
http://www.prontobooks.co.uk/Results.aspx?Search=spreadsheets&Format=Books
I've added a Thunderball checker complete with history checker to the file. Downloadable from http://www.spreadsheetsdirect.com/examples_lotto.html
I received an email from a friend last week with some pictures of songs expressed as spreadsheet graphs. Very clever and funny too.
Opera Mundi has been withdrawn this morning and replaced by first reserve Ardaghey so if you've done your draw already you'll need to take it into account. The file has been updated to reflect this change so anyone downloading from now will be okay. http://www.spreadsheetsdirect.com/examples_sweepstake.html
The final declarations have been made and the sweepstake kit is now available for download from http://www.spreadsheetsdirect.com/examples_sweepstake.html If you need help picking a horse try www.stickapinin.co.uk
Just found that final declarations are on Thursday so the file will be available soon after that.
I've added a new page to the examples for the download of my Grand National Sweepstake Kit. The file isn't available yet as final declarations haven't been made but should be there for download on either Wednesday or Thursday. http://www.spreadsheetsdirect.com/examples_sweepstake.html
I've been working on a little project over the last couple of weeks and it's now working well enough to allow other people to use it. www.stickapinin.co.uk will help you if you're undecided on what horse to pick at Cheltenham this week. All you need to do is select the race and click the pin to get your pick. With plenty of quality horses with little between them you might be better off just sticking a pin in so why not!
Just a heads up on a Grand National Sweepstake kit spreadsheet that I'll release when final declarations have been made (either Wednesday 2nd April or Thursday 3rd). You will just need to input the entry fee, players names and then print off and cut up the horse names. I'll announce it on the feed/blog when it's available.
Here are the links to the three main search engine webmaster pages . They will allow you to enter your sitemap and give you other useful bits and bobs.
Google Webmasters lets you upload your sitemap (http://www.xml-sitemaps.com will help you quickly create one to Google standards.) and check what pages Googles looking at. One nice bit is that it will show you what search result you are for queries.
Yahoo submit site will let you add your site and feed to Yahoo's engine.
MSN Live webmaster enter your site to MSN and check what backlinks you have.
With the price of some pieces of software in the hundreds it can be an expensive time adding all the programs you want to your computer. Luckily there are usually alternatives to be found for most programs which have the added bonus of being absolutely FREE! Here's a list of 8 free alternatives to everyday bits of software (actually more than 8 programs as the first one is made up of 6)
1) Open Office If you don't fancy paying the £80 or so for Microsoft Office, Open Office offers an excellent alternative. Included in the suite are Calc spreadsheet program which will let you open Excel files and create as good as you'll get in Excel although Excel macros and some formulas won't be compatible. Writer is the Word alternative and, not being a big word processor user, seems to do most of what Word does. Base is a database program which is sadly lacking from the basic versions of MS Office 2007. If you know how to use Access then you should pick it up easily enough. Draw is useful graphics package that lets you do sketches or more complex drawings. Impress is the PowerPoint of the suite. Your old Powerpoint presentations will work in it too. Math allows you create mathematical equations to enter into your other OpenOffice files.
2) Mozilla Firefox is a web browser alternative for Internet Explorer that is faster and more secure. You can have multiple tabs open at once to keep things tidy on your Taskbar(which has now been incorporated into IE7). Firefox also lets you install Add-ons, small pieces of software that can do various things to help improve your surfing experience. If you've got all your favourite sites in your IE bookmarks then they can be easily imported by clicking a few buttons.
3) Mozilla Thunderbird is Mozilla's email client answer to Outlook and with it being from Mozilla it gives you numerous Add-ons to install at your pleasure. Setting up accounts is fairly straightforward. You can also create filters to run on your mail to send them to certain folders or to send automatic replys.
4) Gimp is a Photoshop alternative that allows you to manipulate your photos to a high level. Most of the tools in Photoshop are available so makes it ideal if you're just starting to learn how to change your graphics.
5) AVG Anti Virus will give you protection against any pesky virus' that will try to infiltrate your system. Daily updates mean you've always got the best defense.
6) 7-zip gives you a free means of compressing or decompressing any zip files you might need/have. It is especially useful if you need to open your zipped files after the Winzip free trial has expired.
7) Nvu offers a nice free alternative to Dreamweaver allowing you to easily create your webpages. You can easily tab between different views allowing you to see the source code, a preview with html tags or how it would look in a browser.
8) Ubuntu If you're stuck on an old version of Windows but can't afford to update to Vista, Ubuntu is a nice alternative. Based on Linux it's a free operating system that comes with an easy way of installing all the programs you could possibly need, all of which are free. It will take a bit to de-windowsise yourself but once you get used to it you'll find it fairly straightforward. One drawback is that you won't be able to use your windows software on it unless you use an emulator but with free updates at least you won't have to pay a few hundred pounds out every few years to stay up-to-date.
I've added a basic version of the betting odds calculator file that I've been working on. The file will allow you to enter odds for up to 20 events and calculate win or each way returns. You can also pick selections from the entered odds to go into a double, treble or higher accumulator and see what winnings you could get back. This is only a basic version as I am working on adding other bet types such as a Yankee and Lucky 31 but it takes a bit of time to get all the various bets involved in them working correctly. I'll update when it's fully finished (maybe in time for the Cheltenham festival). The file can be found at http:///www.spreadsheetsdirect.com/examples.html#11. Hope it helps and good luck.
Here's a list of 10 top links that I've found useful in the setup of my business and creation of my website:
1) UK Business Forums An excellent forum that covers most things that you need to know for running your own business. Lots of knowledgable people on who can answer your questions.
2) WebCEO All round SEO program that lets you research keywords, optimize your site, submit/check search engine links, anlayze traffic and more. It does cost about £6 a month for the basic but I've found it worth the money. The traffic analysis gives you the search terms used to get to your site and also lets you keep track of any file downloads from your site.
3) Adbrite When you get banned from Google Adsense(I lasted just one week on it!) try Adbrite as an alternative way of monetizing your website or advertising your own.
4) AdsFlip A nice free way of advertising your site. You earn credits to advertise on the network by displaying other people's adverts on your site. Lets you advertise with banners or text only adverts.
5) Google Adwords It's the easiest way of getting your site on the first page of Google results and with Google controlling nearly three quarters of web traffic it's a must for a business especially in the early days.
6) Google Analytics free webpage traffic analysis.
7) Google Webmaster Tools Submit your sitemap and find out how your site is doing on Google.
8) Xinu Returns SEO site tool. Lets you quickly run a report showing how well your site is doing in search engines and social bookmark sites.
9) Yahoo Answers Answer some questions relating to your business area and in the source box add your site. Simple way of getting traffic from a major site.
10) Business Link Government run site that gives you all the information and links to forms etc that you need to set up your own business.
Just realised that I hadn't put a link up to a calendar file that I'd actually created a month or so ago. It gives you all 12 months and if you change the year at the top the days will update automatically. It should also print nicely on an A4 sheet of paper. You can find the link at http://www.spreadsheetsdirect.com/examples.html
I found nice little widget that allows you put your blog in a widget that can be added to your sites. It's called Blidget and it's free too which is a bonus.
Over the past 8 months since my site has been up it's always suffered from the problem of looking correct in Explorer but messed up in Firefox. Today I've finally managed to find a solution on a site and it's so simple too. Basically you just need to enter margin: 0 auto; in the div that is going out of alignment and it the page should appear in Firefox as it does in Explorer. Wonderful!
The lotto checker file on http://www.spreadsheetsdirect.com/examples.html has been updated so that it you can now check against historical draws by downloading the results file from the National Lottery site.
I'm working on a betting odds calculator file which will allow you to enter multiple odds and work out your winnings from singles, doubles, accumulators etc. Got it working up to the accumulator stage and now trying to work out the best way to do Heinz & Yankees etc. Will update when it's ready.
Nothing to do with spreadsheets but found an excellent time wasting game in
Line Golfer.. Try your hand at the available holes or design your own. Great fun.
Just uploaded a budget v actual file to help keep track of your personal finances. It can be found in the usual place.
http://www.spreadsheetsdirect.com/examples.html
