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!
Hello again!
Today I encountered a really annoying problem in Excel. In switching between open files, suddenly some of my dates were converted to numbers. September 3rd, 2014, became 41885, and all my columns expanded. I knew I’d hit something by accident, but no amount of Undo would fix it, and even changing the column’s Number Format to Date didn’t make them appear as dates!
Turns out, I had accidentally hit Ctrl + ` instead of Ctrl + Tab to shift between open Excel files. This turns on Show Formulas! So simple, yet it took me a good few minutes to figure it out. So if you’ve searched for this issue and found this post, Ms. Compy Fix-it is here to tell you you’re not alone!
So, if you find your columns unexpectedly expanding, and weird things happening to your data, check to make sure you haven’t accidentally turned on Show Formulas!
Hi everybody! (“Hi, Dr. Nick!”)
Ms. Compy Fix-It here, with another workaround for all you folks wrestling with Excel 2007’s quirks. This one is to do with Excel ignoring your pretty horizontal axis and deciding to do its own thing……
So let’s start off with my chart:
This looks okay to me. But say I’d done some resizing within my Whole Chart Area and things have moved around a bit.
Whoops, that looks ugly! The horizontal axis label’s on top of the legend and we can’t have that. So, I’m going to resize the Inner Chart Area to move it up, right? Well watch what happens.
Wait, since when did my data become negative?
I initially thought it had to do with the way I resized it. I even drew a chart to figure out whether it was the Inner Chart Area or the Outer Chart Area resizing that made it a problem. Turns out the problem is partially about resizing and partially about this:
Ugh! So then I zoomed in to 100% and it fixed my chart……… but guess what? My other charts started messing up their horizontal axis-crossing data!
So…… turns out I don’t know a fool-proof method for getting rid of this quirk. However, I do know that sometimes altering the Inner Chart Area and/or the Outer Chart Area can fix it, and other times the Zoom can fix it.
If you know why this is and can help us all out, please leave a comment!
Well hello there! It’s certainly been a while. I hope everyone’s been doing well and not having too many computer struggles.
I am happy to report that I have a workaround for that annoying (and completely inexplicable) Excel 2007 quirk of not allowing chart data label resizing. I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve struggled with this, so I’m very excited to share my workaround with you, even if it’s not a complete fix.
(I’m working on making 3 charts fit in a very tiny space, so forgive the use and misuse of gridlines, titles, etc.. I’ve had to pare it down to barebones 🙂 )
See how ugly they are?! Ugh! Well read on to see how to force it to use that extra space around it, like the pretty last graph.
In order to describe it properly, I’ll have to define what I mean when I say certain things:
“Whole Chart area” – the area that includes the chart, its axes, the title, and the legend (see below)
“Inner Chart area” – the area that gets selected that includes the data and not much else (see below)
So, in my struggles with this, I’ve noticed a few things:
So! If you want to adjust your data labels – say they’re crazy-thin like mine above:
Has this helped solve your problem? Let me know in the comments! 🙂
Hi folks!
Ms. Compy Fix-It here! Come to your (potential) rescue once again.
Today’s topic is one I’m happy to say has been resolved: Manhattan skylines in PowerPoint Print Previews.
Never heard of them? Well, some people have called them that because they are vertical bars that are not in your document, but suddenly appear when you print or hit Print Preview. Depending how many you have, you can end up with quite a dramatic print job.
I encountered them when trying to print a coworker’s slide, and honestly was surprised they showed up in the Print Preview – I thought this might be one of those weird printer configuration/”it’s not us, it’s your printer” Microsoft kind of issues, but I was wrong.
I did some digging, and was surprised to not find very much that was helpful. I looked closely at the bars and could see they all seemed to stem downward from a title. Have a look below. I deleted all but the titles, as the rest is irrelevant.
I thought maybe it had to do with text box fill, but that came up empty. The clue that pushed me to the Ms. Compy Fix-It idea came from this link: http://www.mombu.com/computer_design/acrobat/t-unwanted-vertical-lines-on-screen-and-on-print-3586463.html from sharon_bloor. She suggested it was a text issue, and although the font didn’t appear strange or particularly new, I thought it was worth a try to just Ctrl+A (highlight all) and change the font to Calibri. Sure enough, when I hit Print Preview, the bars were gone.
Hope this helps someone else!!
Yours in PowerPoint suffering fixing,
Ms. Compy Fix-It 🙂
Ms. Compy Fix-It is taking a break from fixing the eccentricities of my computer today, to share her/my thoughts on a well-established practice that she/I believe needs re-assessment. That practice is….. the “3 tries and you’re locked out” approach to logins.
In this day of Life Itself being carried out largely online, the average user needs (or at least uses) approximately 8 passwords (see here, page 5). That means that sometimes we may forget which one was being used for which site….. a fairly common occurrence I’m sure. To reduce frustration of your customers, I’d strongly suggest that if you must have this security check in place, allow the user to try at least 8 times to get their password right. Keep in mind, too, that if your site allows for user names to be repeated, someone may be attempting to access another’s account by accident, and suspend its use.
Just a little tidbit for web developers out there to consider when creating password-based logins.
Hi all, Ms. Compy Fix-It here, with another life-saving (or at least semi-interesting) tip for PowerPoint.
Have you ever been revising an old file that had a lot of unwanted notes, and thought, “Gee whiz, I wish I could delete all of these notes with the click of a button!” Well, you can’t. But you can click about 3 buttons and should get to your result. Beautiful? I think so, too.
Here’s how, thanks to: Ohad’s blog.
Go to your presentation. Make sure you save it. Copy the following text to use later:
Dim objSlide As Slide
Dim objShape As Shape
For Each objSlide In ActivePresentation.Slides
For Each objShape In objSlide.NotesPage.Shapes
If objShape.TextFrame.HasText Then
objShape.TextFrame.TextRange = “”
End If
Next
Next
In your presentation, open View, then click on Macros. In the Macro Name field, type RemoveNotes (or whatever name you want to use in order to use it again later for other presentations).
Click Create. It’ll open up your VBA, which for all I know means Very Big Anomaly. Anyway, don’t click anywhere else because it’ll bring your cursor right where it needs to be. Here’s where you can paste that coding I had you copy earlier.
Now click X to close (don’t worry, it’s not going to close your whole presentation). If you’re not back at your presentation, click X again (you just closed the VBA window!).
Now you should be back in your presentation, and don’t worry, you’re not supposed to notice anything different. Now, you go to View again, Macros again, and you should see your Macro in the box list. Select yours, click Run, and bingo, you’re done! Okay, a few more than 3 buttons, but still, wasn’t that easy? 🙂
Enjoy!
Ms. Compy Fix-It here, bringing you another episode of computer frustration resolution. Today’s topic will be the random row that just won’t unhide. You may have intentionally hid it, and now it’s causing you trouble because it’s just that shy. Here’s what you can do:
That’s all folks. Let me know if you have other instances where this happens, or if you have another problem altogether! I’m all about the detective-iness.
Hope that helps! 🙂
Hi all, Ms. Compy Fix-It here.
Today, I found a new suggested solution to my PowerPoint constantly crashing. I had the problem where any editing of embedded charts/graphs using Excel would often cause it to freeze and require the computer to shut down PowerPoint and “try to recover data”. Sometimes, it recovered all of it; other times, barely any. I used to have this problem frequently with a computer that ended up having a hardware issue, so I used to blame that. Then, I got a second-hand laptop to try, and boy, still a lot of crashes. Finally, I get this, a barely-used HP beaut with big screen and presumably better system. Well, guess what?
SO! I figured I couldn’t be the only one, and did some more digging online….. my spec-i-al-i-ty! (Wow, I just realized that was quoting one of my favourite childhood movies, The Neverending Story….. I heard the professor’s voice saying that, so I tried to spell it out accordingly. haha I am a true geek.)
Sure enough, I found this site. Again, thanks to Microsoft Answers, someone suggested getting this HotFix. So far, so good. I’ll report back if it’s junk, though 😉
One thing to note: if you do download this fix, make sure that your problem is exactly what is written in their description. I don’t want you installing unnecessary patches for problems you may not have….. and also, be sure to follow their instructions (including backing up stuff). I don’t want people to say I didn’t warn them in case it doesn’t work quite right. I also did a System Restore point, though I don’t know what the difference is between that and a Backup, to be honest. I just didn’t have any DVDs/time to run the backup, so I thought that was an okay alternative! haha hey I never said I knew everything about computers….. heck, why do you think I’m Ms. Compy Fix-It?!
Anyways. One other thing to note: for me, when I installed the fix, I got scared because when I went to my folder to retrieve a file I’d been working on, it was in PowerPoint Viewer! I thought it did something to my program/deleted it or something, but all you need to do is right-click your file and go to “Open with…..” and it should give you a choice to select the Default Program, and your regular PowerPoint program should be there as an option. Make sure to check the box, “Always use the selected program to open this kind of file” to ensure all the rest of your PowerPoint documents open as they normally did.
Happy PowerPointing!
Hi all, Ms. Compy Fix-It here, with another gem of a trick to help you.
So, I was working on some scatter plot charts in Excel, and needed to add labels. As it is, when you click “Show Data Labels” in Excel, it gives you the two pieces of data in the form of coordinates. Now, maybe that’s helpful for some people, but it is a lot more useful to me to actually describe each point in the form of a variable name. I knew someone out there must have had the same thought, so I did a quick search which proved I was not alone.
Thanks to this site, I was referred to the program XY Chart Labeler, which did exactly what I was hoping: added labels to my data points. You even have the option of where to place the labels, which I’m sure will be quite helpful too.
Hope this helps!
— Ms. Compy Fix-It
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