Maria’s Guides

Get sample pages from the book.

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

Another quick spreadsheet to show off the capabilities of Excel.

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!

A quick little project.

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.

Keep track of the latest content on the companion Web site for Mac OS X: Visual QuickStart Guide.

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.

Sample Files from the Book.

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)

Files from Creating Resumes Letters, Business Cards, & Flyers in Word: Visual QuickProject Guide.

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