It’s been a while. Life and all that jazz.
Have some fresh-off-the-press Canada Day fireworks off the CN Tower in downtown Toronto, Ontario! 😎😎
And now for some photos:
Hi there! Ms. Compy Fix-It here, with another remedied Excel “issue.”
My use of quotes is intentional. In truth, Excel is not at fault (for once), but it can certainly throw a person for a loop!
Have you ever decided to run a pivot chart, but no matter what you do, you can’t get the bars to space themselves evenly?
This happened to me today when I was testing out a dashboard I was making for a manager to use. It was making me increasingly annoyed until I finally sought the answer from Google. But it was no use! My searches were returning results from Excel tips to the suggestion that I’d somehow grouped two worksheets together….. no luck. I had to figure this one out myself.
Thankfully, the hair-pulling episode was quicker than anticipated, and involved trying to create a new Chart Type. As soon as I selected Stacked Column instead of the standard Clustered Column, the spacing issue was fixed. So, that made me ask myself what was different about that type of chart – and I realized the ‘extra spacing’ between the bars in my chart were actually placeholders – for data that just didn’t exist in my testing entries. Picture this: I had Resources, and Task Statuses. Excel’s Clustered Column chart type defined specific placeholder for each of the Task Statuses, so while I may have entered a test entry that Anthony’s task was In Progress, and Amber’s task was Completed, I hadn’t entered that Anthony also had a task that was Completed. So the placeholder for Completed for Anthony was empty, mimicking a spacing issue (see below).
But once the data fills in, each ‘space’ allotted for a Task Status will fill up, and only when they each have a data point will it look evenly spaced (see below).
I realized the clustered column wasn’t what I wanted to use anyway (not for a workload assessment!) but I thought I’d better post my findings here in case there’s someone out there getting as frustrated as I was, simply because there is not enough sample data to show the cause as clearly.
*****
Actually, three Excel issues plagued me today. This one I was able to resolve, but the other two I will ask for your help as part of the greater Excel community out there:
So, my dearest reader! If you happen to know or have a suspicion about what caused either of the two situations above please write me in the comments section. Or if you have had any similar experience, please let me know – you never know what additional details may lead to solving an Excel mystery!
Respectfully submitted,
Ms. Compy Fix-It 🙂
Please note: These are done all in good fun. As you may guess, I’m a huge Jays fan. If you are the owner of the original pictures and would like me to remove my mashup version please let me know. All that said, hope you enjoy!!
And my crowning jewel….. This took probably about 5 hours and I wasn’t sure how it’d turn out….. Went to bed at 3 when I was done!! Click on this to view larger, quite a lot of detail in there, and 10 of the current Jays’ roster (sorry to those I had to leave out ;))
Howdy world!
Ms. Compy Fix-It here, and I’m in a great mood. I managed to resolve an issue I encountered yesterday which has been bugging me since. That’s a long time for me to be perplexed. 🙂
Without further ado, my issue was this:
I researched. And researched. And pondered. And researched again.
And then I found a clue. On a few sites, they’d mentioned a Norton Antivirus add-in was the cause of their troubles, but I don’t have Norton so I knew that couldn’t be it. But one site mentioned:
Tip 1116: Meeting invitations are stuck in the Outbox | Outlook Tips
More Information
If you are having a problem with your mail not sending but aren’t using Norton Antispam, check your add-ins. Other antivirus and antispan add-ins, as well as iCloud, have been known to cause problems sending Outlook items.
Hmmmm…….. well I first had to search how to get to my add-ins – they’re not something I play around with too much. From Outlook’s own Help file (Wait, what? You mean it was actually helpful? It’s a miracle!):
Enable or disable add-ins in Office programs
Outlook
On the Tools menu, click Trust Center, and then click Add-ins.
Great, easy enough. So I get a list of my add-ins and realize – I recently downloaded Evernote for Windows! I’m not sure why it took me so long to remember that, but I suspect frustration blindness had taken over. 😉 Anywho, I disabled the two Evernote add-ins, and voilà! It works again. So be aware that if you’re suddenly running into an issue of Outlook sending e-mails but not your meeting invites, check your add-ins!
Sincerely,
Ms. Compy Fix-It 🙂
I have a story about learning Spanish…..
I took a couple Spanish courses in high school and enjoyed it, so when I went to uni for languages, I took a bunch more. I was to the point where I could have decent conversations in the classroom, and could understand a fair bit.
However.
One year my parents and I are in a Florida supermarket. My mom is searching for her butter-like margarine that will melt when she puts it on toast. Now if you knew my mom, you’d know this was very important to her….. 😀 So I go to ask the guy stocking the shelves, but he indicates he only speaks Spanish. So, being the educated lady I am, I start to speak Spanish with him. The only problem was, I didn’t know how to say “butter”. It had never come up in my school teachings about El Cid or Spain or any other normal topic taught in Spanish courses. To make matters worse, I also didn’t know the word for toast, or melt.
What I did know was the words for ‘hot bread’ and a heckuva lot of hand gestures.
The poor stock clerk had no idea what I was talking about and soon, he had a couple coworkers trying to understand me and my crazy-talk, and finally he beckoned his English-speaking boss over, who recommended a kind to my ever-persistent mother.
For that reason, I will never forget the Spanish word for butter ever again: mantequilla 😀
Howdy, it’s been a while. Ms. Compy Fix-It here, looking for a recommendation.
Can any one of my dear readers recommend a good blogging app for Android? I think it’d be fun to blog on my phone but using my browser is just a bit too clunky.
Toodle-oo!
bold lies
of life intersected
a pretty impression, worn out and connected
tall tales
they crumble when eaten
their taste an astringent, unlikely to sweeten
bald truth
your yearning’s not normal
a city disaster no more, just informal
lame duck
adrift in the crosshairs
continues to swim, anywhere, unawares
L.M. 4:25 p.m., January 20th, 2015.
Where are you, my peaceful mind?
you call on me, from time to time
you make me question what is mine
through fields of corn, and city grime
where are you, my active mind?
you dart, you dash, you intertwine
my habits, as I’m so inclined
but choices, hardly worth my time
where are you, my precious mind?
to what decree are you assigned?
to what degree are you aligned?
and are these questions really mine?
L.M. 1:03 p.m., January 20th, 2015.