Scott's Jots

Poll

2009-04-09T18:41:00.002-05:00

Being more productive

2008-08-10T23:15:00.001-05:00

If you're in business for yourself you probably look for ways to be more productive - if not, you should. Over time, as we add new business processes, sometimes we incorporate inefficient practices. These practices get the job done but it might be that you could do the same job a different way and achieve a better product or the same product in less time.

Sometimes the slightest change can make a big difference. This post probably will not save your business thousands of dollars. But it might help you to breeze through some of those mundane tasks a little faster.

So rather than kill your productivity more, I'll get right to it. Learn to use both hands at the computer. That may sound crazy but think about what you do most while you're at your computer. Other than reading the screen, you are probably "driving" the mouse. In my July newsletter, I talked about using the right-mouse button to access context related menu choices. That is better than moving your mouse to the menus and dropping the menu down to select Edit and then Paste.

This tip works best for the right-handers out there. You keep your left hand on the keyboard home keys (A, S, D, F - wouldn't my typing teacher be so proud). As you drive the mouse with your right hand you can type keyboard shortcuts with your left.

Let's take a process of copying a sentence from one open document (such as in MS Word) and pasting it into another open document. On the original document you use your right hand to highlight the sentence with the mouse. Using your left hand press CTRL-C (the shortcut for copy). With your left hand press ALT-TAB. (ALT-TAB will cycle through all open applications as long as you hold down the ALT key and keep pressing TAB). Once you get to the second document you can release the ALT key. Now use the mouse to click the position where you want your new sentence to go. With your left hand you press CTRL-V (the shortcut for paste).

Without the above mentioned shortcut keys you would have to highlight the sentence. Drive the mouse to the menu bar and click Edit. Then scroll down and click Copy. Then maneuver the open windows with the mouse to select the second document. Next you would click where you want the sentence. Scroll back up to the menu. Click Edit and scroll down and click Paste. It can all be done with the mouse. But if you do part of the work with each hand you might can shave some time off each of these repetitive tasks.

Ok you might be saying how do I find all those shortcuts (without having to read the manual). Most of the time these shortcuts have been right there in front of you. Go to your favorite windows application. Most will have a menu bar and most will have a File and/or Edit menus. Click one of those menus and just to the right of the menu choice you will see the shortcut combination - usually a CTRL or ALT plus another key.

You might say there are too many to memorize. And I would agree. However, if you start looking at these shortcuts you will notice a trend in several applications. For example, "most" Windows applications follow common shortcut keys. A standard set of shortcuts would include the undo, cut, copy, and paste commands. These shortcuts are CTRL-Z, CTRL-X, CTRL-C, CTRL-V, respectively. Is it coincidence that they are all on the left side of your keyboard and can be manipulated with just one hand? Or is it just another conspiracy against left-handers? You decide.

Take note of the shortcuts to the actions that you do most and see if incorporating shortcuts into your computing helps you to be more productive.

Hey folks, do you want...

2007-10-19T14:00:00.001-05:00

Hey folks, do you want to know how to blog from your cell phone. Send me an e-mail and ask me how.
Click here to listen

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For you football fans...

2007-10-17T23:47:00.001-05:00

my latest project came as a request for a simple football picks site. he wanted to display his picks which corresponds to a segment on a local radio show. the site grew from there and is gathering some attention. check it out and submit your picks.

http://ClarksGridironPicks.com

A forum for the small business

2007-08-21T14:16:00.001-05:00

Jeff Lee has launched a new forum for the small businesses (and people who want to start a small business) in North Mississippi. A forum is a place where people can gather and exchange ideas. Browse through the site and see if you can find some ideas that may help you with your business. While you're there go ahead and throw in your two cents and maybe you'll help another.

Check it out at http://www.saltillobaonline.org

How to change your Hotmail password

2007-07-09T12:41:00.001-05:00

I was recently asked how to change a MSN Hotmail password. You might look around the page in your Hotmail inbox and not immediately see how to change your password. I overlooked it a few times myself. You may notice the Options link in the upper right corner of your inbox. Click Options and then you will be presented with a screen that has several features. Click Password and you will be able to reset your password.

Execute an Office Macro from a .NET Application

2007-07-05T14:33:00.001-05:00

I have a pretty extensive macro written in Excel VBA. I had a need to call this macro from a .NET application. Before I executed the VBA macro, I needed to set a couple of combobox controls located on the worksheet.

Most of the solutions found on the Internet referred to using VSTO (Visual Studio Tools for Office). One article I came across (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306683) explained how to setup a .NET procedure called RunMacro that would execute a VBA macro stored in an Office application. The article demonstrates that this same RunMacro procedure could be used to call an Excel Macro or Word, Accesss, or PowerPoint.

My solution was to bring the RunMacro code from the above article into my .NET application. Next, in my Excel VBA code, I added a proxy procedure that would receive arguments used to set the combobox controls and then execute the macro.

My proxy procedure in VBA Code was similar to:

Public Sub MyProxyProcedure(MyArgOne As String, MyArgTwo As String)
    Sheets("Sheet1").cboOne.Value = MyArgOne
    Sheets("Sheet1").cboTwo.Value = MyArgTwo
    Call MyVBAProcedure
End Sub

Public Sub MyVBAProcedure

'DO SOMETHING HERE

End Sub

My .NET Code to execute the VBA macro was similar to:

Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click

' requires .net reference to Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel
DIM oExcel as New Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.Application
DIM oWB as Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.Workbook
oWB = oExcel.Workbooks.Open("c:\MyExcelWorkbook.xls")
RunMacro(oExcel, New Object() {"MyProxyProcedure", _
strArgOne, strArgTwo})

End Sub

Private Sub RunMacro(ByVal oApp As Object, _
                                 ByVal RunArgs As Object())
oApp.GetType().InvokeMember("Run", _
    Reflection.BindingFlags.Default Or _
   Reflection.BindingFlags.InvokeMethod, _
    Nothing, oApp, oRunArgs)

End Sub

Now I am able to make use of the VBA Code I have invested and integrate into new .NET applications.

Google Apps - Email Notifier with Google Talk

2007-07-02T12:06:00.001-05:00

I have been using Google Apps for my domain for some time now. I have also helped some of my clients get setup with Google Apps for their domain. Google offers many tools that are beneficial to the small business for a great price (many times free).

Before using Google Apps for my domain I had a GMail email address as my primary address. I used the GMail Notifier to let me know when I had a new email message.

Since upgrading to Google Apps, I have installed Google Talk. (UPDATE: Google Apps users, download here.) Google Talk has the GMail notifier built-in to the application. So with a single install I have a messenger client and the GMail notifier sitting in my system tray.

What's so great about this GMail Notifier? Well, with a simple glance to the system tray, I can know if I have new emails waiting or if all my emails have been read. If you take a couple of days to respond to Aunt Sarah's email she still may forgive you. But if an anxious client has sent you an email, you might want to know ASAP when you receive the email.

I am including two images: one showing email waiting and one showing a happy empty inbox.

As you can see, it's pretty easy to tell that the left image is showing I have email waiting to be read. The right image lets me know all my messages have been read.

The notifier is also constantly monitoring your inbox. Whenever a new message does come in, the notifier pops up a quick window showing the sender and subject of the message received. It is then your choice to pop over and answer the email or wait until you're at a stopping point in your current task.

This is a great time saver that keeps you from having to remember to go check your inbox. And maybe it'll be just the tool you need to keep those customers happy.

Two Field Lookup with Excel VLookup

2007-06-21T21:37:00.001-05:00

I'm not a big fan of using Excel as a database application. It wasn't designed to be one. But some of the functions in Excel allow a lookup (or query, if you will) which leads some people to use it as a database.

The VLookup function encourages this thinking. You pass in a lookup value, a data range, and the column that contains the value you want to retrieve from the data range. There are some assumptions with the VLookup function.

Your data must have the Primary Key or lookup column as the first column in the data range.
The data must be sorted Ascending by the lookup column (first column)
The lookup column must contain single field, unique values

The VLookup has an optional parameter that lets you specify if you want an exact match or if you want Excel to choose the nearest value.

The problem I ran in to was that I needed to lookup a value based on two pieces of data. The function is designed to only lookup based on a single value.

SOLUTION:

My solution was to combine my two data fields into a single TEXT field and use that value as the lookup value. For example, my data was organized by Product ID in Column A and a Date in Column B. Column C held a quantity value that related to a specific product on a specific date.

I first inserted a column at Column A. This placed my Product ID in Column B, my Date in Column C, and my Quantity in Column D. In Column A, I entered a formula to calculate my lookup values. The formula is as follows for cell A2:

=TEXT(B2,"00000") & TEXT(C2,"yymmdd")

This formula converts my Product ID (which is a number value) to text and fixes at 5 digits with leading zeros if necessary. The formula then concatenates the Date value which is also converted to text in the format of year month day. So for Product ID = 1 and Date = June 22, 2007 my formula would return 00001070622. Copying this formula for all rows of data produces my lookup values.

Next the whole data range must be sorted by Column A (lookup values). Now the data range has been prepped for a two field lookup.

Whenever I want to query for a Quantity of a specific Product on a specific date, I would use a formula such as this:

=VLOOKUP( {cell with lookup formula}, {data range}, 4, FALSE)

NOTE: I tried to create and lookup formula inside the VLOOKUP function but Excel kept giving an error. So I created a formula outside of my report area that created the lookup value I needed to reference. I used this formula:

=TEXT({cell with Product ID I needed},"00000") & TEXT({cell with Date I needed},"yymmdd")

{data range} was the sheet and range (or could be named range) where my data table was in the workbook.

The 4 represents Column D where my Quantity data is. The FALSE in the formula tells Excel to make an exact match. I don't want to be returned an approximate value -- I want to know the VLookup found the actual quantity I'm searching.

Coloring an Excel tab through VB Code

2007-06-20T09:13:00.001-05:00

Recently, I had a project where I was populating more than 1 worksheet in an auto generated spreadsheet. Setting the tab name is helpful but adding an alternate color really sets the tabs apart.

This post will show you how to do that.

To test this code, open a new Excel spreadsheet.

Press Alt-F11 to open the Visual Basic editor.

Click the menu Insert | Module

Paste the following code block:

[code]

Sub ColorTab()
worksheets(1).Name = "New Tab Name"
worksheets("New Tab Name").tab.color = RGB(255,0,0)
End Sub

[/code]

Switch back to the Excel Application and press Alt-F8 to bring up the Macro dialog box. You should see the title of our new subroutine in the box. Highlight ColorTab and press Run.

Your result should be that your first worksheet now is renamed and colored red.

EXPLANATION:

The renaming of the tab is fairly straight forward. You can access the first worksheet by passing in the index of 1. Rename the worksheet by passing the new name to the .Name property.

You can also access a particular worksheet by passing the tab name instead of the index. To set the color of the tab use the .tab.color of the worksheet. You must pass in a color value by using the RGB function.

The RGB function takes three integers between 0 and 255 representing a Red, Green, and Blue component. The function results in a color value.

To help in creating the desired color combination, you can use varous tools to find the RGB values. A tool I found online can be found here: http://www.psyclops.com/tools/rgb/

New found favor with Blogger

2007-03-30T19:39:00.000-05:00

I've never been much of one to stick to blogging. I have started several times. I created a Yahoo! 360° blog because I already had a Yahoo email address. I posted once or twice.

I installed Mambo (which has now branched into a new product called Joomla) when I first started in the web business. Ok, technically this is a CMS (content management system). It had much more than just blog posting capabilities. It turns out it was more than I needed, too.

Later, I came across Wordpress when a client approached me who needed help with thier Wordpress site. Naturally, to learn more, I setup my own Wordpress installation. I worked with the templating system and managed to create a simple WP template. But I entered very few blog posts.

As I have been transitioning from the PHP language to the .NET world, I have become more familiar with the options there. One that I've come across several times is Community Server. Yep, you guessed it -- I installed it too. From a commercial standpoint, this package requires a purchased license. Community Server also has forums and allows multiple blogs per installation.

That brings me to today. I've known about Blogger for some time but have not tried it out. A positive attribute that I have just discovered about Blogger is the ability to upload a custom template. I thought you could only choose from a set of generally supplied templates. What this opens up is the ability for me to bring a website design and incorporate the same look into Blogger. Also, there is no license fee to use Blogger. You have the ability to enter posts through the web interface or third party desktop applications like Microsoft's Windows Live Writer. There is even a developer's API to allow a programmer to develop software to manage their blog from desktop applications or custom websites. I'll be diving into this soon.

Don't take this post as my recommending one blog solution over another. You would need to ask a true "blogger" to find a true review. I haven't used Blogger for long so I can't list many pros and cons. But I have a few ideas how I want to integrate this technology into some of my website designs.

Check back with my blog. This is my first post and hopefully there will be more to come. :)