I’m always the last to know…

Peachpit said they were putting a free chapter of my book online as a sample. We even discussed which chapter to use. But I somehow missed the memo that said it was available for download.

It is. Download Chapter 7 from Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard: Visual QuickStart Guide from Peachpit Press’s Web site as a PDF file.

Enjoy!

Occasionally, I’ll release updated pages to my books when something has changed or is otherwise incorrect. I did that the other day when I released updated pages 90-91 of my Leopard book for Spotlight feature corrections.

This morning, I got a message from a reader who had downloaded the revised pages. She wrote:

I just bought your excellent book, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, and noted the corrected pages 90-91 online. A suggestion: Could you have the .pdf pages (and also corrected screenshots, e.g., Figure 5) be the same size as the pages (or figures) in your book ? That way, one could paste the corrected pages over the original pages rather than having to fold 8.5 x 11 paper in half.

I admit I was baffled for a moment. You see, the pages are the same size. The PDFs were created from the same document Peachpit’s production department uses to print the book.

But just in case I was missing something, I printed out pages 90-91 from the PDF to make sure. They were the same size.

Well, that isn’t exactly true. Like the reader who wrote to me, I printed the pages on standard (in the US anyway) 8-1/2 x 11 inch paper. So the pages were that size.

But the content was the right size. So I advised:

When you print the pages from Adobe Reader, make sure Page Scaling is set to None. Print on regular paper. Then cut the pages down to the book trim size, 7 x 9 inches. You will be cutting off part of the gray thumbtab because it’s set up with a bleed.

I hope that helps anyone else interested in inserting pages into their copy of the book.

As for screenshots that I put on the Web site, I’ll make an effort to get them down to the right size in case you want to paste them over the old shot in the book. But they might not print the same size they appear onscreen. Besides, the figures in the book tend to be a bit small. Wouldn’t you rather have them larger so you can see them better?

Or maybe it’s just my middle-aged eyes…

A few last-minute changes to Spotlight in Leopard slipped through the editing cracks. These changes affect a number of screenshots in Chapter 5 and the text on pages 90-91 of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard: Visual QuickStart Guide.

The main change in the screenshots is the way the Spotlight feature enables you to indicate search locations. The Search line near the top of the dialog includes buttons for This Mac and whatever folder was active or selected when you used Spotlight or the Find command. The Where criteria line is gone. Instead, buttons in the Search line enable you to specify whether you want to search Contents or just File Name for the search word or phrase. Here’s the revised Figure 5:

The text on pages 90-91 was modified to better explain how the Search locations criteria looks and works and to remove reference to the Where criteria. Readers of the book can download the revised pages as a password protected PDF file. The password is the second word in the heading on page 90 of the book. Enter this word as it appears in the book when prompted by Preview, Adobe Reader, or any other PDF reader software. You may want to print these two pages and insert them in your copy of the book for future reference.

If I find any other errors in the book, I’ll provide updates here.

If you have questions about the book or need clarification for its contents, please don’t hesitate to post your question as a comment in the book’s Q & A. Be sure to read the comments that appear there first; your question may already be answered.

With Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Apple has finally phased out Mac OS 9. The Classic Environment, which enabled you to run Mac OS 9.2.2 from within Mac OS X is no longer supported in Leopard.

Don’t whine! Let’s face it — Mac OS X has been out for years now. It’s pretty amazing that it supported Mac OS 9 for so long. At this point, Mac OS X users shouldn’t need support for Mac OS 9 anymore. You should have upgraded all your applications for Mac OS X by now.

That said, we pulled the Classic chapter from my Mac OS X QuickStart Guide for the Leopard revision. Rather than throw it away, we decided to release it here as a freely distributable PDF file. And remember, my Tiger book is still out there for the folks not ready to step up to Leopard.

So here’s Chapter 18: The Classic Environment. Enjoy!

In an effort to trim some fat from my Mac OS X book for its Leopard revision, we decided to cut the existing Unix chapter from the Tiger book. This freed up 44 pages for new material about Leopard’s new features.

But there’s nothing wrong with this older material. It’s still pretty much valid. So rather than discard it forever, we decided to make it available as a free download in PDF format.

So here’s Chapter 19: Unix Basics for Mac OS X. Enjoy!

Want to see some sample pages from my Excel Visual QuickProject? Here are a few links.

• Front Matter (including complete Table of Contents)
• Excerpt from Chapter 3

Interested in seeing a sample of one of my Mac OS Visual QuickStart or QuickPro Guides? Here are a bunch of chapters for recent editions:

• Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard: Visual QuickStart Guide
  Table of Contents
  Chapter 7 (coming soon)
• Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger: Visual QuickStart Guide
  Chapter 4
• Mac OS X 10.3: Visual QuickStart Guide
  Table of Contents and 1/2 of Chapter 4
• Mac OS X 10.2: Visual QuickStart Guide
  Table of Contents and 1/2 of Chapter 4
• Mac OS X 10.2: Visual QuickPro Guide
  Table of Contents and 1/2 of Chapter 5

Site visitor Jamie left the following comment on my recent post, “Random Number Generator for Excel“:

maria dont spose u know how to split a four digit number like 2365 into 4 different numbers 2 3 6 5 in all different cells in excel without having to do it manually just wandering please tell me if you know a way thanks

I had an idea of how to do this with the MID function, which is a text function. I just didn’t know if I had to convert the starting number to text before extracting the digits.

So I whipped up the attached worksheet and popped in the formulas. The answer: no, you don’t need to convert the number to text first.

The MID function has 3 arguments:

• text is the text you want to extract characters from. For this example, it’s the four-digit number.
• start_num is the number of the first character in the string you want to extract. For this example, it’s the digit number (1 though 4).
• num_chars is the number of characters you want to extract. For this example, it’s 1.

You can examine the formulas in the spreadsheet for yourself to learn more. Download it here.

Hope this helps, Jamie!

I just happened to visit a Web site that used another Web site to generate random numbers for contest giveaways. To me, an Excel user, that seemed like a silly place to go to get a random number when you could easily generate one on the fly within Excel.

So I whipped up a tiny Excel spreadsheet to do the job. You just put the minimum value in one box and the maximum value in the other and Excel generates a random number between the two for you. To generate additional random numbers in the range, just press Command-= (on a Mac) or Control-= in Windows. The worksheet is protected so you can’t accidentally delete the formula that does the magic.

Although I created the worksheet in Excel 2004 for Mac OS, it can be opened in Excel 2003 and Excel 2007 for Windows, too.

Want a copy? Download it here.

If you want to keep track of what’s new on my Mac OS X VQS book’s companion Web site but can’t remember to stop in regularly and don’t want to subscribe to the RSS feed, let this widget keep track for you.

Simply install the widget on your Mac and open it on your Dashboard. From that point on, each time you open the Dashboard (while connected to the Internet), the widget is automatically refreshed and will display a list of the most recent articles. See an article title that interests you? Click it to open the corresponding page in your Web browser.

You can also click links to:

• Learn more about the book on Peachpit Press’s Web site
• Buy the book at a discount from Amazon.com
• Visit my personal site and blog

And clicking the book cover in the image takes you to the book’s companion Web site.

Download

You can download the most recent version of the widget here:

Download Mac OS VQS Widget 0.1

Installation Instructions

1. If necessary, double-click the downloaded ZIP file icon to extract its contents.
2. Double-click the MacOSVQS.wdgt file icon.
3. When prompted to install the widget, click Yes.
4. When prompted to keep the widget, click Keep.

For best results, keep the widget open on your Dashboard. Then checking for new content is as easy as opening the Dashboard.

Version History

March 28, 2007
Version 0.1
First version of this widget.

Feedback?

Use the Comments link for this post to let me know what you think about this. It’s my first widget effort and I’d love to get some feedback. (Be gentle with me, please.)

You can also use the Comments link to ask questions about the widget. I will provide all support for it on this post.

The following files either appeared in the book as illustrations or as sample exercises, or were created to provide additional examples of how Excel works. Be sure to check the comments for each file, if appropriate.

• Excel Basics (xlsx, 33k)
• Mixed References (xlsx, 14k)
• Functions (xlsx, 32k)
• Loan Amortization (xlsx, 72k)
• Database (xlsx, 122k)
• Text File (txt, 15k)
• Consolidation (xlsx, 25k)

Here are the files from my Word QuickProject Guide:

All Files

Chapter 3

Letterhead.dot
flyingm.tif

Chapter 4

Smith-102104.doc

Chapter 5

Resume.doc
Resume-Long.doc
Resume-Short.doc

Chapter 6

BusinessCards.doc
flyingm.tif

Chapter 7

Flyer.doc
AnotherFlyer.doc

Chapter 8

Envelope.doc

Chapter 9

ReturnAddressLabels.doc
PeachJamLabels.doc

The following sample files were created for use with Creating Spreadsheets and Charts with Microsoft Office Excel 2007: Visual QuickProject Guide. This book covers Excel 2007 for Windows only.

Each of these files represents the project workbook file at the end of a chapter. So if you wanted to follow the steps for Chapter 6 but didn’t want to do Chapters 1-5, you could download the Chapter 5 file and use that as a starting point.

• Chapter 2: Create a Workbook File
• Chapter 3: Build the Budget Worksheet
• Chapter 4: Duplicate the Worksheet
• Chapter 5: Consolidate the Results
• Chapter 6: Format the Worksheets
• Chapter 7: Add a Chart
• Chapter 8: Share Your Work

I just added the following two excerpts for my Excel 2007 Visual QuickProject Guide to the list of book excerpts available for download. These files are in PDF format and are roughly 1 MB each:

• Front Matter, including Table of Contents and Introduction
• Excerpt from Chapter 3

These files should give you a good idea of how the book is laid out and what it contains.

The book should be available in stores by December month-end. It’s currently available for presale on Amazon.com for the excellent price of $11.55 (that’s 32% off).

Want to see some sample pages from my Excel Visual QuickProject? Here are a few links.

• Front Matter (including complete Table of Contents)
• Excerpt from Chapter 3