The Spreadsheet at 25: 25 Amazing Excel Examples that Evolved from the Invention that Changed the World 9781932802047, 1932802045

Citation preview

25 AMAZING EXCEL EXAMPLES THE EVOLVED FROM THE INVENTION THAT CHANGED THE WORLD!

Holy Macro! Books

The Spreadsheet at 25 Copyright © 2005 Bill Jelen. All Rights Reserved Project Manager Art Director Production Assistant Cover Design Pre Press

: : : : :

Anne Troy Scott Pierson Lisa Davis Darcy Cloutier-Fernald Fine Grains (India) Private Limited

Contributors: Ted Lewis, Zack Barresse, Ivan Moala, Juan Pablo González, Jacob Hilderbrand, Brian Mulder, Mark Rowlinson, Duane Aubin, Julio Ahumada, Masaru (Colo) Kaji, Dr. Gerard M. Verschuuren, P.K. Hari Hara Subramanian, Melissa D'Arabian, Timmy Chan, Don Heckerman and Ravi Singh Published by Distributed by

: :

Holy Macro! Books, 13386 Judy, Uniontown OH 44685 Independent Publishers Group

ISBN 978-1-932802-52-8 LCCN: 2005921880 First Printing: March 2005 All brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

THE HISTORY OF SPREADSHEETS........................4 25 WONDERS OF THE SPREADSHEET WORLD.....36 COOL THINGS PEOPLE DO WITH EXCEL.............64 25 COOL THINGS YOU CAN DO WITH EXCEL......90 CONTRIBUTORS.................................................118

CHAPTER - 1

THAT CHANGED THE WORLD! Using rows and columns for th

19 Century

accounting can be traced back to August DeMorgan, a London mathematician in an 1846 book entitled Main Principle of Bookkeeping.

August De Morgan

5

1964

Richard Mattessich

A

Berkley professor, Richard Mattessich, realized that performing budgetary what-if analyses by hand was not productive. It could take a week to recalculate an entire budget, by which time the original assumptions would be obsolete.

6

In two books published in 1964, Mattessich proposed electronic spreadsheets for solving such problems. His Simulation of the Firm through a Budget Computer Program detailed a program that would allow rapid recalculation of a company budget. His book included the Fortran programming code to allow any firm with a mainframe computer to eliminate the mechanical pencils for the specific application of budgeting. Rather than being a general-purpose program like VisiCalc, Mattessich's approach required a knowledge of the Fortran language.

M

attessich was clearly on the right track in the 1960s. Unfortunately, the computer hardware of the time was expensive and not readily available to the masses. Companies typically used teletype terminals to dial into a time-sharing mainframe, where charges were accrued by the minute. It was the right idea, but it would take fifteen years before sufficient computing power was available at a low enough price for most companies.

7

1976 I

n the 1970's, personal computers were in their infancy. Byte magazine claimed to have 73,000 subscribers in 1976; people running computers like the TRS-80 or Commodore PET. Peter Jennings wrote MicroChess and sold the first copy in December 1976. It was one of the first computer games and eventually sold millions of copies. However, unless you were a hard-core chess fan, you probably were not going to pay $1000 to $2000 for a computer for the sole purpose of playing MicroChess.

F

or the average accountant, in 1978 a “spreadsheet” was still a large piece of green ledger paper with number figures written in with a mechanical pencil. Any accountant at the time kept a large eraser nearby because when you discovered that one number was wrong, all of the subsequent rows had to be recalculated.

8

1978 In 1978, at MIT, a graduate student named Dan Bricklin had a vision. What if you combined a fighter-pilot heads-up display and put a trackball on the bottom of a calculator? You would be able to roll the calculator backward to any previous entry, change the number, and all future calculations would change. It was a practical invention; Bricklin was constantly doing case study analyses using only a calculator.

B

ricklin teamed up with Bob Frankston. Working in a Cambridge attic during 1978 and 1979, Frankston brought Bricklin's invention to life.

Dan Bricklin today

9

Bob Frankston today

T

he heads-up display was replaced with an Apple ][ monitor. The trackball on the calculator was replaced by the two arrow keys on the Apple ][ keyboard.

It was quite a challenge for Frankston to fit the software into the 24K available on the Apple ][.

Two Arrow Keys?? The first Apple computers only had left and right arrow keys. To change these arrows to move up or down, you had to press the spacebar to toggle the arrow keys to move vertically or horizontally.

10

Also

in 1978, Peter Jennings of Microchess fame met Dan Fylstra of Personal Bob Frankston & Dan Bricklin Software. Fylstra was a programmer, Harvard MBA student, and a writer for Byte Magazine. They joined forces, and Microchess became the signature product for the young company. Fylstra had heard of Bricklin's software and realized that adding the new software to the Personal Software product line would be important. Fylstra negotiated with Bricklin and Frankston to add the spreadsheet product to the Personal Software product line. Personal Software used profits from MicroChess to help offset the $4,000 monthly cost of the timeshare computer being used for development.

11

1979 I

n early 1979, the spreadsheet product was working well enough for Bricklin to use it in a case study to calculate numerous what-if scenarios. At least two people-Frankston and Beta Tester Peter Jenning from Personal Software-used the product to calculate their tax return before April 15, 1979. It was that first tax return that caused Frankston to add the Lookup() function-for tax rates! During the spring of 1979, Bricklin and Frankston had dubbed their visible calculator with the name VisiCalc. They had a booth at the May 1979 West Coast Computer Fair in San Francisco. They demonstrated VisiCalc to big names like Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, Adam Osborne, and others.

Morgan Stanley securities analyst Ben Rosen saw the product and immediately realized the implications. In 1979, he wrote that VisiCalc might be the software tail that wagged the computer industry dog. Rosen was right.

12

Visicalc debuted October 17, 1979. For a $99.00 list price, buyers received a brown leatherette folder with a 5¼” diskette, a glossy manual, and a quick reference card. Businesses everywhere jumped on board.

Visicalc sold 1,293 units in the the month of October and 4,258 total units in 1979. All told, over 400,000 copies of VisiCalc were shipped through 1982. Remember, for every sale of a $99 copy of Visicalc, someone was likely spending $2,000 on a personal computer. As Rosen predicted, the invention of VisiCalc did spur the entire personal computer industry. So, the next time you sit down at your PC, give a tip o' the cap to Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston for starting it all.

VisiCalc offered 255 rows and 63 columns. For more info:www.DanBricklin.com, where you can download a working copy of VisiCalc.

13

1982 Microsoft Multiplan In 1982, the first IBM PCs shipped. Microsoft had developed much of the software, including the operating system and application software. In a 1982 interview with PC Magazine, Bill Gates touted the benefits of his soon-to-be-released second-generation software product.

G

ates touted the fact that you could have named ranges and didn't have to think in terms of “A10”, “B9” and “C14”. He also was proud of the first ability to link spreadsheets. Numbers from the Sales spreadsheet and Cost spreadsheet could now be carried forward to the Summary spreadsheet. Of course, these were still sheets in different files, using external link formulas.

14

Lotus 1-2-3 M

itch Kapor was an MBA student at MIT. Bricklin introduced him to Dan Fylstra, who coaxed Kapor to move to the west coast to become project manager for VisiCalc. Kapor developed the VisiPlot and VisiTrend add-ins for VisiCalc. Personal Software was renamed as VisiCorp. Although VisiCorp bought VisiPlot and VisiTrend from Mitch Kapor for millions of dollars, Kapor did not like the culture at VisiCorp. He left the company in 1981 and headed back to the east coast.

Mitch Kapor

Mitch Kapor realized there was more opportunity for the spreadsheet. He formed Micro Finance Systems in 1982 in his basement and hired a few programmers. Funded with money from the sale of VisiPlot to VisiCorp, Kapor's team began working on a better spreadsheet. One of the programmers was Jonathan Sachs. Working for almost a year in Assembler, Sachs programmed a spreadsheet designed for the new IBM PC. Sachs remembers that Lotus 1-2-3 was tuned to use almost all of the features of the IBM platform. This was certainly a key decision that helped ensure the success of both Lotus and the IBM PC platform.

15

I

t took ten months to develop Lotus 1-2-3. At every stage, Kapor would add more features, making Lotus 1-2-3 run circles around every other spreadsheet, including VisiCalc. The name “1-2-3” indicated that there were three main features to Lotus-a spreadsheet, business graphics, and a database. At the November 1982 Comdex in Las Vegas, they demonstrated a pre-release version of Lotus 1-2-3. Already riding the buzz of an article in the Wall Street Journal, the pair booked $3 million of orders for Lotus 1-2-3 during Comdex. Lotus 1-2-3 was released on January 26, 1983 and shipped 60,000 units in the first month of availability.

Lotus 1-2-3 offered 2048 rows and 255 columns. Just as VisiCalc had driven the market for Apple ][ computers, Lotus 1-2-3 drove the market for the IBM PC.

16

Spreadsheets for Everything Unlike

the budget models described by Mattessich in 1964, electronic spreadsheets like VisiCalc and Lotus allowed for nonprogrammers to build models to track budgets plus hundreds of other uses. The applications were limited only by imagination. In the early 1980s TAB Books published a best-selling volume by Ted Lewis called “32 VisiCalc Spreadsheets”. Ted spelled out plans for using VisiCalc around the home and the office. His examples included a Tic-Tac-Toe game, a bowling scorekeeper, and more.

On the next page are Ted's recollections of the book.

17

On the Origins of the Species I

was fortunate to be around when Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston were inventing Visicalc the first spreadsheet. It was in the late 1970s and the Apple II was all the rage. VisiCalc was the first “killer app” for personal computers, because it sold Apple II computers and made Apple the king of “mind appliances” a name that Apple once thought it would give its secret weapon the Macintosh. When the IBM PC launched in 1981, it had to have software or it wouldn't be able to compete with the Apple II. Mitch Kapor, who jumped on the opportunity with Lotus 1-2-3, exploited this obvious business opportunity. Lotus 1-2-3 was a second-generation spreadsheet program that propelled the IBM PC to dominance. Once again, a spreadsheet is what sold personal computers and fueled the industry. This pattern has repeated itself several times. Microsoft entered the spreadsheet business with Excel in 1984 to sell Macintoshes! And when Windows finally appeared on the IBM-compatible PC, Excel became the primary reason people bought the PC. Excel advanced spreadsheet technology by incorporating graphical user interface technology-primarily borrowed from the Macintosh-into spreadsheets. Now everyone could use one. Like everyone else back in the 'good old days', I wanted to sell information that PC users found useful and intriguing. So one week in the summer of 1983 I compiled a list of spreadsheets that I thought were novel, useful, or just plain clever, and dilithium Press bound them into a book, “32 Visicalc Spreadsheets”. It was

18

perhaps the first published collection of spreadsheets for PCs. Looking back today, some of my 32 spreadsheets were rather ambitious. One called ECON was a macroeconomic model of the national economy! But most were trivial by today's standards: how to count calories, keep tenant records for an apartment house, and a checkbook balancer. Spreadsheet number 2 was Tic-TacToe, which has been brought back to life in this book. I used my IBM PC and Apple II to develop them, but I had also seen a preview of the Macintosh. Since I wanted them to run on everything-IBM PC, Apple II, and the fancy new Macintosh, I thought the best way to publish them was to include a diskette containing the spreadsheets in the DIF format. This way, they would be transportable across all platforms-or so I thought. Today, nobody uses DIF! But millions of people still use a spreadsheet program of some sort. Visicalc-in its many modern forms-still lives!

Ted G. Lewis 2004

19

Here is Ted's version of Tic-Tac-Toe, circa 1983. B

elow is the image of a modern-day Excel tic-tac-toe. VBA is used to model a 4-dimensional tic-tac-toe board and the computer plays a pretty mean game. This workbook, programmed by Timmy Chan is available at http://www.mrexcel.com/pc10.php. 3D Tic Tac Toe Depth

View

Standard Layer View

o

o

x

Reset Scores

o

o x x

x x x o

o

x

New Game

x o

Games Played

o

Player (1) Wins

o x

o o

x

x

x

o o

o

o

x

x

x

o x

o

1 0

Computer Plays First? Two Human Players?

x x

Harder Game Warn on Computer Threat Move List (2,3,2) (2,2,2) (1,3,4) (4,2,3) (4,2,4) (3,3,4)

Its too easy.

(2,3,1) (2,4,2) (2,2,3) (3,3,2) (3,3,1) (1,3,1)

Save move list to results spreadsheet

Rules

20

1

Games Drawn

o

x

1

Computer Wins

The Dominance of Lotus 1-2-3 W

hen Lotus 1-2-3 was released in January 1983, it had a $495 list price, nearly double that of VisiCalc. By October 1983, PC World was reporting that sales of Lotus were outpacing VisiCalc. This would begin Lotus's ten-year dominance of the spreadsheet industry. By 1985, things were falling apart at VisiCorp. A lawsuit and counterlawsuit were filed between VisiCorp and Bricklin. The company was eventually sold to Lotus in that year. Any remaining owners of Visicalc were offered a reduced- price upgrade to Lotus 1-2-3.

O

ver the years, there were competitors to Lotus 1-2-3, but none were able to overcome Lotus's domination of the industry. You might have worked with products such as Supercalc, As Easy As, SynCalc, EasyPlanner, PFS Plan, The Twin, Javelin or Appleworks.

21

Excel for the Macintosh M

icrosoft debuted a new spreadsheet for the Macintosh in 1985 and called it Excel. For two years, Microsoft sold Excel at $495 and continued to sell Multiplan for DOS for $195. Excel gave Microsoft the expertise in designing a graphical-based spreadsheet. The Macintosh was not popular outside of academia and designer circles, so this “upstart” Excel product did not seem to be much of a threat to Lotus.

22

F

rom 1984 through 1987, Lotus enjoyed absolute dominance in the market. I was convinced that Lotus 1-2-3 would control the spreadsheet market forever and always. There was nothing that anyone could do to upset that dominance. In 1987, Borland released their spreadsheet called Quattro Pro. This would be one of the players to challenge Lotus 1-2-3. Also in 1987, Microsoft produced an Excel verion 2.0 for the Windows operating system and discontinued Multiplan. Now-in 1987, no one actually owned Windows. The earliest versions of this package shipped with a version of Windows 1.0. In order to switch from Word Processing to Spreadsheets, you would have to load up Windows, start Excel, then later shutdown Windows to go back to your DOS word processor.

23

1983: January 26, Mitch Kapor releases Lotus 1-2-3 1985: Excel for the Macintosh is released 1964: Richard Mattessich proposes a computerized rows/columns system which doesn't catch on because of needed mainframe and Fortran programming

1850: Augustus DeMorgan describes an accounting system using rows and columns

1987: Quattro Pro is released for the PC, Excel 2.0 for Windows is released

1989-1993: Excel, Quattro and Lotus are in a heated 3way race for dominance

1997: Microsoft Excel now supports 65,536 rows

1991: Lotus Improv for Windows 1993: Lotus and Quattro release viable Windows versions too late to compte with Excel 5.0 - Excel ships more units than Lotus for the first time

1989: Pito Salas invents first pivot table as Improv for NeXt computers

1995: Lotus slips to 20% share Excel has 70% share

2004: Excel holds 90% market share, but upstarts such as StarOffice 7 offer similar functionality at a fraction of the price

N

one of the other companies had experience with graphic-based spreadsheets. In magazine reviews, on all issues except speed, Excel for Windows was highly reviewed. The hardware of the day made the software too sluggish to compete with the speed of Lotus or Quattro. This was quite a gamble for Microsoft. Neither Lotus nor Quattro would release a spreadsheet for Windows until after Windows 3.0 was released in 1990. This basically gave Microsoft a five-year head start on graphical spreadsheets.

26

MENU

Format

In 1989, an add-in for Lotus 1-2-3 called Allways debuted and allowed you to nicely format your printed worksheets. It was a great example of WYSIWYG (what you see if what you get) long before Windows was generally available and stable.

25,400.00

NUM CAPS SCROLL

27

Lotus Improv In 1986, Pito Salas joined the Advanced Technology Group at Lotus to think about a totally Pito Salas

new kind of spreadsheet. Pito invented a multi-dimensional spreadsheet product with natural language formulas and dynamic views. Originally called Modeler, then BackBay, the product was released for the NeXT brand computers in 1989 as Improv.

Improv was unlike any other spreadsheet. You could do lightning-fast summary analyses simply by dragging field labels around the spreadsheet. It was amazing! Lotus chose NOT to include this functionality in their flagship Lotus 1-2-3 product. Instead, Lotus Improv for Windows came out in 1991. If you were a heavy-duty data junkie, you likely ran out to buy Improv for $99 the moment that you saw it. Regular spreadsheet users, though, never got it.

28

Three-Way Race From about 1989 up until 1993, the three leading spreadsheets were Lotus, Quattro, and Excel. Any one of the three could be expected to win on best features in the press. Quattro Pro Release 1 in 1989 was generally considered better than Lotus 1-2-3 Release 3, yet Lotus was able to retain its marketshare. Lotus and Quattro were slow to produce Windows spreadsheets. Lotus for Windows 1.0 in 1991 looked like a DOS program running in a window and was disappointing. Quattro for Windows didn't debut until 1992. Finally, in 1993, Lotus Release 4 for Windows and Quattro Pro Release 5 were viable Windows versions. However, by this time, Microsoft had released their Excel version 5 for Windows.

29

L

otus had been losing to Excel in the reviewer's eyes since 1989, but yet remained the dominant spreadsheet. One reviewer suggested that anyone new to spreadsheets should start with Excel. The main obstacle for the Lotus competitors was the learning curve to learn a new spreadsheet. When Lotus was introduced in 1983, they were able to catch the wave of new spreadsheet users. By 1989, the uphill battle was convincing current Lotus users to give up their now well-known interface and learn something new.

30

Excel Pulls Ahead 1993

finally became the tipping point. In 1993, Excel shipped more units than Lotus. In 1993, Excel had about a 45% share of new spreadsheets shipped, Lotus had 35% and Quattro had about 20%. Lotus has never regained ground. Lotus release 5 in 1994 was answered with Excel 95 in 1995. Lotus slipped to a 20% share and Excel grew to a 70% share. During these years, Excel added tremendous new features to their product. Excel 5 offered multiple worksheets in a workbook. This feature had been available in Lotus since 1989. Both Lotus 4 and Excel 5 added the ability to edit directly in the cells instead of in the formula bar. The killer, though? Excel 5 bundled all of the cool functionality of Lotus Improv in a feature that they called Pivot Tables. Today, Pivot Tables remain Excel's most powerful feature. The VBA programming language also debuted in this version.

31

S

ales teams from Microsoft called on medium- to large-size companies to demo the amazing features in Excel. They promised complete portability. Excel offered a Lotus transition mode to allow hard-core Lotus users to easily use their old Lotus style menus. The Excel transition wizard would either demo the equivalent command in Excel or simply carry out the command.

E

xcel 95 added AutoComplete, AutoCorrect, and One-Click Sorting. They added the incredibly powerful Automatic Subtotals feature to replace a very mundane task. The VBA became more robust.

32

E

xcel 97 increased the number of rows from 16,384 to 65,536. They added colored range finders that highlighted ranges when you edited a cell. Pivot Tables now allowed for calculated fields. Bubble Charts were added. Data Validation was added. Merged cells were added. VBA now offered Userforms. This version of Excel would still run Lotus command-line macros. It included the DataMap components. Many, many companies converted to and stayed with Excel 97 even until today.

33

The New Millenium I

n 2000, I was convinced that Microsoft Excel would control the spreadsheet market forever and always. There was nothing that anyone could do to upset that dominance.

F

rankly, once Excel had no real competitors, the amazing new features slowed down. Excel 2000 offered modeless user forms, a nice feature for VBA programmers. It also made the color of selected cells transparent so that you could see what was being selected easier. Excel 2002 offered disaster recovery that can often repair a corrupt workbook. Excel 2003 offers XML support. Lately, Open Office or StarOffice are starting to make inroads in Microsoft's territory. Star Office may be only 80% as good as Excel, but since most Excel users don't make use of all its features, it is “good enough” for many people. Excel still has a competitive advantage of having the VBA language available in every copy. Microsoft is trying to get away from VBA, but they have not made it clear how Visual Studio Tools for Office would become accessible to every average Joe who doesn't own Visual Basic.Net.

34

Rows and Columns A

fter 25 years, the basic guts of the spreadsheet remain unchanged. We still use the A1 notation chosen by Bricklin and Frankston. Many of the functions and calculation operators are identical to those in VisiCalc. Granted, Mitch Kapor added amazing graphing, and Excel added even better graphing, but the core of the spreadsheet is still the same. On the pages that follow, you can read about the 25 Wonders of the Spreadsheet World-some of the basic fundamentals, plus newer bells and whistles that make spreadsheets a powerful tool.

A

s you read through the 25 Wonders section, if you would like to learn more about any topic, visit http://MrExcel.com/coolapps/ for a complete tutorial on each feature.

35

CHAPTER - 2

W ORLD

25 WONDERS OF THE 1. Calculation

=2+2 That's right ----- Spreadsheets can calculate. It was just 1975 when the Texas Instruments TI10 calculator became readily affordable at $50.00. They weren't that widespread in 1979, so the simple fact that VisiCalc can add, subtract, multiply, divide, and do exponents is amazing in itself. Details: Use parentheses to control the order of calculation. Most people know the +, -, * , / operators, but lesser known is the carat operator to raise a number to an exponent. =2^10 is the number 2 raised to the tenth power or 2*2*2*2*2*2*2*2*2*2. To calculate a square root, raise a number to a fractional power: =25^(1/2) provides the square root of 25, or 5. Example of use: It is 305 miles from Chicago to Cleveland and it is 439 miles from Cleveland to Charlotte. To find the distance from Chicago to Charlotte, Pythagoras showed that A2+B2=C2, so calculate the distance directly from Chicago to Charlotte using =(305^2 + 439^2)^0.5.

37

2.Replication E

nter a formula once and copy it down 50,000 rows. This was available in the original version of VisiCalc and remains the core element of spreadsheets today.

Microsoft Excel - 00002.xls F ile

Enter this formula in C2:=A2+B2

Edit View Inser t For mat Tools Data Window

Help A Z

ABC

Ariel

10

G32

When you examine the formula in row 25, Excel was smart enough to change 2 occurrences of “2” in the formula to “25”.

38

O OO

Z A

100%

OO O

A

fx

A

Double click the file handle to replicate the formula down to all rows in the data set.

$% ,

B I U

1 Quantity 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 17 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

B

Price 4.99 5.99 14.99 8.99 4.99 5.99 14.99 8.99 14.99 8.99 12.99 12.99 5.99 2.99 14.99 5.99 4.99 4.99 6.99 5.99 12.99 5.99 8.99 4.99

C

D

Extended Price 9.99 11.98 44.97 8.99 9.98 11.98 44.97 8.99 44.97 8.99 220.83 38.97 53.91 56.18 74.95 23.96 9.98 34.93 83.88 71.88 38.97 53.91 8.99 9.99

E

F

G

H

I

Microsoft Excel - 00008.xls F ile

Edit View Inser t For mat Tools Data Window

Help

ABC

Ariel

1 2

B I U

10

C2 A

fx

A

A2*B2

B

C

Price

Quantity 2

Extended Price 4.99

9.98

Double-click the fill handle (as shown above) to copy down a formula.

10

B I U

f x =A25*B25

C

D

3. Recalculation C

hange one number and all of the other formulas in the workbook instantly recalculate. Based on Dan Bricklin's writings about the history of VisiCalc, this was the core idea in his invention. He imagined a calculator where you could scroll back, change any previous entry, and have all future operations recalculated. fx =(TIMES(17,0,0)-MOD(NOWO,1))*24((E3/((MOD(NOW0,1)-TIME(9,0,0))*24))+E3 A 1

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

Widget Completion Log

2 3 Serial # Time Done 104123 9:02 AM 4 5 104124 9:07 AM 6 104125 9:11 AM 104126 9:15 AM 7 104127 9:19 AM 8 9:24 AM 9 104128 9:28 AM 10 104129 104130 9:32 AM 11 12 104131 9:36 AM 9:41 AM 13 104132

A

Widgets Complete: On Track for:

E

xample of use: Your goal is to make 100 widgets by 5:00 p.m. Use the formulas shown to calculate if you are on track or not. Since the NOW function is not continuously updated, hitting F9 recalculates your progress.

80 96.20

39

B3 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

B3

fx =A3*D2

B

A

C

Amount Increase 400 500 600

D

E

4%

R-OH = > HOH =>

95.7 1.81 104.5

x O Ha Hb z x y R-HH R-OH

pm [a.u]

y

0.0000 0.0000 1.4299 0.0000 0.0000 -1.4299 0.000 0.000 1.000 1.000 1.000 0.000 2.859875 1.808469

z 0.0000 -1.1072 -1.1072 1.000 0.000 0.000

Direction cosines

z

x

y

-0.6122 -0.6122

0.0000 0.0000

0.7907 -0.7907

Electronic Structure of Water Molecule Martin Quinn used Solver to design this spreadsheet to calculate the electronic structure of the water molecule. This model allows you to solve on your desktop a quantum chemistry model that would have required a mainframe in the early 1970's.

83

Engineering Design with Excel T

his clock is one of the more unique clocks that I've seen. This started as a perfectly normal round clock in a CAD program. The CAD program exported the data to a CSV file, which was imported to Excel.

In Excel, a SIN() wave was used to bend and shape the clock. The file was exported back to the CSV file and back to the CAD program. Finally, a computer controlled cutting machine from PlasmaCam.com was used to cut the clock out of 14 gauge steel.

Photo Courtesy of PlasmaCam.com

84

Pinewood Derby Pairings E

xcel is popping up everywhere. I recently went to a cub scout pinewood derby race. Projected on the wall was a bracket showing the standings of all racers in the double-elimination tournament. The results were tracked in Excel using a spreadsheet designed by Jim Clevenger. A

1 2 3 4 5 6

103

Match#

5

Current Weight

130

Cornell.M.; (McKinley)

_E

Erb.J.;(Lake)

_T_T

C

D

McKinley

Vs.

Period Length (Sec)

Period 1

TD

E

F

G

H

Lake

Period: 2 130

120

Period 2

Period 3

OTI

OT2

Score

I

McKinley

12

Lake

58

Wrestling Scoring

Result Team Score

1 _N2

Rev

6

Esc

Period

Match#

TD

Rev

N21

N3

N4

Result

Undo

N2

N3

N4

Penalty

Stalling

Caution

Reset

Save

Penalty

Stalling

Caution

01:44 1 Button 68

Stop Clock

Reset Clock

Reset Timers

Blood

Injury

Blood

Injury

04:51

01:30

05:00

01:30

6

of wrestling scores. The worksheet uses the VBA timer event to track the time. The scorer merely has to click buttons for points by the red or green wrestler.

Lake

Main Clock Start Clock

Coach Dave Erb from Lake High School built a wrestling scoreboard to keep track

Esc

McKinley

7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

B

2/8/2005 Starting Weight

85

Fly an Airplane with Excel T

here was a classic Dilbert strip a few years ago. The evil secretary had booked the pointy haired boss on an airplane trip. She advised him to keep his laptop on. In the final panel, the pointy haired boss is trying to save the crashing airplane with Excel.

DILBERT reprinted by permission of United Features Syndicate, Inc.

86

Well

Todd Edwards at RedTriangle.com really does use Excel to teach people how to fly. In his Ground School, students use an Excel worksheet with a picture of the cockpit. As they move the mouse over various instruments, a cell comment pops up to identify the gauge.

INSTRUCTIONS:

!!

!!

!!

EXCEL VIEWER BACKUP ACCESS ! ! ! ! !

INSTRUCTIONS:

UPPER OVERHEAD LEFT OVERHEAD CENTER OVERHEAD RIGHT OVERHEAD LOWER OVERHEAD

! GLARESHIELD ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

PRIMARY FLIGHT DISPLAYS FORWARD INSTRUMENT NAVIGATION DISPLAYS MAIN LANDING GEAR STANDBY INSTRUMENTS

! ! !

EXCEL VIEWER ECAM ACTIONS3 WILL HAVE AN PROGRESSION BUTTON LIKE THIS:

SCHEMATICS

! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

{

LOW

ELECTRICAL ENERGY WING FLIGHT CONTROLS GRAPH HORIZONTAL STABILIZER RUDDER FUEL HYDRAULIC RAM AIR TURBINE AVIONICS VENTILATION PNEUMATICS AIR CONDITIONING SAFETY PRESSURIZATION SYSTEM CARGO SMOKE SYSTEM EFIS ARCHITECTURE TAKE NOTES HERE

..\..\Red Triangle A320 Aircraft Notes.doc

process: 1. RIGHT click 2. Select HYPERLINK 3. Select OPEN IN NEW WINDOW NEXT IF THIS FAILS, 1. Make sure you have previously saved a document called (also REACTIVE and PREDICTIVE WINDSHEAR Graphs) Red Triangle A320 Aircraft Notes PEDESTAL in Word under C:My Documents RUDDER SYSTEM 2. Manually go there and Open it. BRAKES / GEAR SYSTEMS The Excel Viewer and some Excel programs may NOT be able to make this hyperlink function. OPEN it manually.

! ALL PFD MODES ! NAV SYMBOLOGY ! MCDU MESSAGE LIST !

ECAM DEPICTIONS

! ELECTRICAL ! FUEL ! WHEEL ! HYDRAULIC ! AIR CONDITIONING ! CRUISE CEAM ! FLIGHT CONTROL ! CABIN PRESSURE ! BLEED AIR COND ! BLEED ENG APU ! ENGINE ! APU ! DOOR OXY (EAM ACTION INCLUDED)

87

Produce a TV show with Excel I have the honor of making a couple appearances each month on the Call for Help TV show aired on TechTV in Canada and in Australia.

I

am thrilled to report that producer Steve Antall and his crew make plenty of use of Excel in the control room. Here, Katya's computer shows the rundown for today's show.

88

You might be an Excel guru if: l

The only Bible you know is by some guy named "Walkenbach"

l

Microsoft starts sending you clients

l

You do more "nesting" than your pregnant wife

l

You don't send invitations anymore, you Declare Functions.

l

You company's IT Help Desk has your number on Speed Dial

l

You are a member of VBA (Visual Basic's Anonymous)

l

You refer to tying shoelaces as concatenating strings

l

You're T-shirt says so!

l

When your girlfriend writes... Private Function Satisfaction(byval SweetSpot as Variant) as Long ...on her body to get your attention, then you might be an Excel guru.

Thanks to Tommy Gun, Corticus, AJ, and Lenze

89

CHAPTER - 4

25 COOL THINGS YOU CAN DO WITH EXCEL

COOL DOWNLOADS T

he Mr.Excel team MVP's and other contributors have put together a collection of cool spreadsheets that you can download and use right now. Sort of along the lines of Ted Lewis's 32 Visicalc Spreadsheets, this section of the book is meant to serve as an indicator of the cool things you can do with Excel. To find out more about the developers, you can read a short biography on each at the end of the book. The files can be downloaded from http://www.MrExcel.com/coolapps/

25 Cool Things You Can Do With Excel

91

1-Read Minds A great demonstration of Excel's programmability, this file shows how Excel can perform operations based on logic. Simply pick a number, tell Excel the tables in which the number appears, and it guesses the number you chose. Provided by Mark Clulow.

Macro>Visual Basic Editor

GO TO GRID

Search for:

Mr Excel

Dreamboat

Google

Microsoft

OzGrid

AltaVista

Yahoo

Search NOW Search for any terms or use query as entered Search for All terms Search for Author Hint: You'll get better results if you key on certain posters eg Aladin, Juan Pablo Gonzalez, etc.

Use Key posters

Min/Max CTRLS

6-Search Addin

Minimize

Transparency OFF

This Addin allows you to search the web from Excel. Enter a keyword and search the major search engines, MrExcel.com, MrExel MVP sites, and sites in your favorites folder. The Addin, once installed is easily accessible from your toolbar, and is provided by Ivan F. Moala.

97

7-Image to XL Ivan F. Moala provides this fun utility. Specify any image. Microsoft Excel - Book1 F ile

Edit View Inser t For mat Tools Data Window

Help A Z

ABC

Arial A1

The utility will analyze the image and build a new Excel worksheet. When you look at the worksheet, it just appears to be random blocks of color. Here is a section around CQ428 of the worksheet.

98

10

fx

B I U

$% ,

O OO

OO O

Z A

Microsoft Excel - Book1 F ile

Edit View Inser t For mat Tools Data Window

Help A Z

ABC

Arial A1

However , if you z This image tak

oom wa y out, you will see that those r andom color squares actually reproduce y es up 392,445 cells in an Ex cel worksheet.

Microsoft Excel - Book1 F ile

Edit View Inser t For mat Tools Data Window

Help A Z

ABC

Arial A1

10

B I U

$% ,

O OO

Z A

100%

OO O

A

fx

X

XcelFiles - Image to XL Reset Clip Stretch Zoom

Negative Keep Open Image to Edit C:\Documents and Setting\Anne Troy\Desktop\newBill.gif

Bmp Info XL Image

Sign

Brightness Contrast Color 0

GrayScale

Keep

Restore to Original

0

Screen options

ReSample

Undo

Scrn updating Convert Image to XL

Load Image

Conversion status: (converts bmp, dib,jpg, jpeg, wmf, emf)

ON

OFF

Full Screen Toggle 10

Window Zoom

99

10

B I U

$% ,

O OO

OO O

Z A

100%

A

fx

our image in Exce

l!

8-Photo Album Maker Creates an “album” of graphic files that reside in a directory you designate. Makes quick work of a task such as creating a PDF file of photographs. Provided by Juan Pablo González.

X

Photo Album Create album from... Folder containing the images

Browse...

C:\Documents and Settings Include subfolders

St Louis 18-20040118 001.jpg Comments

St Louis 18-20040118 002.jpg Comments

St Louis 18-20040118 003.jpg Comments

St Louis 18-20040118 004.jpg Comments

Llegando a St Louis, desde aqui ya se veia el arco, pero no se donde quedo la foto !!

Lo mismo

Lo mismo

Lo mismo

St Louis 18-20040118 007.jpg Comments

St Louis 18-20040118 008.jpg Comments

A punto de pasar sobre el mississippi. Se ve el arco un poco mejor ya

Sobre el Mississippi

Options... Create new sheet for each folder (and subfolder) Include all pictures in one sheet only Create link to web page St Louis 18-20040118 005.jpg omments

Include comment Color Image size

Sample text

Aqui ya se alcanza a ver, en toda la mitad, aunque la foto esta borrosa, la siguiente esta mejor

Change

Small (3 columns) Create Album !

Cancel

100

St Louis 18-20040118 006.jpg Comments

9-Excellon II A bit like Asteroids, but much more fun when you know Excel is powering it! And no one will know you're not crunching numbers! This cool little game is provided by Kouichi Tani. ExcellonII

The controls are as Arrow Z keys Del key

To control the launcher To fire Quits the game

The Power-ups that are More manneuyrable Allows continuous fire Give you an additional guns Makes your ship narrower

101

10-Solver Wow, wow, wow! Yet another perfect example of custom application programming with Excel and VBA. While this demonstrates a fairly specific need, anyone can see that if Excel can make your shipping plans this efficient, it can surely turn your arduous task into a few mouseclicks! Provided by Gerard Verschuuren.

A Transportation Problem Minimize the costs of shipping goods from production plants to ware houses near metropolitan demand centers while not exceeding the supply available from each plant and meeting the demand from each area.

Plants:

S. Carolina Tennessee Arizona

Total

Number to ship from plant x to warehouse y [at intersection]: San Fran Denver Chicago Dallas New York

5 5 5

1 1

1 1

1 1

1 1

1 1

1

1

1

1

1

Totals:

3

Demands by whse-> Plants: Supply S. Carolina Tennessee Arizona

180

3 80

3

3

3

200

160

220

Color Coding Target Cell Changing cells Constraints 123

Formulas

Shipping costs from plant x to warehouse y (at intersection):

310 260 280

10 6 3

8 5 4

6 4 5

5 3 5

4 6 9

Solution ; $3200 Shipping:

$83

$19

$17

$15

$13

$19

The problem presented in this model involves the shipment of goods from three plants to five regional warehouses. Goods can be shipped from any plant to any warehouse, but it obviously costs more to ship goods over long distances than over short distances. The problem is to determine the amounts to ship form each plant to each warehouse at minimum shipping cost in order to meet the regional demand, while not exceeding the plant supplies. Problem Specifications

102

Target Cell

B20

Goal is to minimize total shipping cost

Changing cells

C8:G10

Amount to ship from each plant to each

11-Blog Reader If you like to read blogs and you always play with Excel, please give this add-in a try! You can read/check blogs using Microsoft Excel. When the install has completed, click on the new menu bar that appears. You need Excel 2000 or a later version to use this add-in provided by Colo (Masaru Kaji). z

X L Ea y RSS reader RSS

XML

X

Select a RSS from the

J-Walk Blog - Stuff that may or may not interest you - Thu, 10 Feb 2005 14:53:00 GMT

Andrew's Excel Tips Colo's VBA Tips Daily Does of Excel GIZUMODO In the News Real jan's didly Chicago japaneses 365 days J-Walk lolog Must See video Off on A Tangent spiderwebw Slect a RSS from here then Double Click The Adventures of Bloggard

J-Walk Photos from the files of the Chicago-sun Times: Real Chicago. It took about four seconds to take all of the images in this book. But it took dozens of people working seven days a week for more than 60 years to make them. They are precious, The image shown here was shot by Joe Kordick, in 1950. It a accompanied an article about people who work at night.

Check RSS Control Panel A Z

Z A

Become A Bloqqer

X

A long web page

Change Font Verdana

Ninja Mode

Ready

8

Change

(via scrubbles.net) At Kuro5hin: How to Start Your Very Own Gloq In Fifty-One Easy Steps! A few of the steps are not really necessary, but by and large it's a very good beginner's guide. If they had a competition for the longest single Web page, I think we'd have a winner: Richard S. Tolley's Opera, Playable Symphonic Music, & Physics paper. I'm not sure, but I think it's some type of religious site. I did a print preview, and learned that it would take 1,179 pages to print the entire document.

! http:// -walkbloq.com/bloq/rss.xml

103

12-World Cup Soccer Forecaster Yes, you can have lots of fun by combining Excel with sports. Fantasy Football leagues, tournament tracking, and this World Cup Soccer forecaster presented by Julio Ahumada are just a few of the ways to do it! Fecha 1 Res Pts Francia Senegal Uruguay Dinamarca

Grupo A Fecha 2 Res Pts Francia Uruguay Dinamarca Senegal

Fecha 3 Res Pts Dinamarca Francia Senegal Uruguay

Fecha 1 Res Pts Paraguay Sudafrica Espana Dslovenia

Grupo B Fecha 2 Res Pts Espana Paraguay Sudafrica Eslovenia

Fecha 3 Res Pts Sudafrica Espana Eslovenia Paraguay

Fecha 1 Res Pts Brasil Turquia China Costa Rica

Grupo C Fecha 2 Res Pts Brasil China Costa Rica Turquia

Fecha 3 Res Pts Costa Rica Brasil Turquia China

Fecha 1 Res Pts Corea Polonia USA Portugal

Grupo D Fecha 2 Res Pts Corea USA Portugal Polonia

Fecha 3 Res Pts Portugal Corea Polonia USA

Fecha 1

Res Pts

Irlanda Camerun Alemania Arabia Saudita

Grupo E Fecha 2 Res Pts Fecha 3 Alemania Irlanda Camerun Arabia Saudita

Reset

Res Pts

Camerun Alemania Arabia Saudita Irlanda

What's your favorite sport?

104

13-Favorites Menu Do you have files you regularly use? Well, just like with your browser, you can now create an Excel “Favorites” menu! What a cool way to easily retrieve files you regularly use. Provided by Mark Rowlinson. Microsoft Excel - Book1 F ile

Edit View Inser t For mat Tools Data Window

Help A Z

ABC

Ariel

10

B I U

$% ,

O OO

OO O

fx 1

Fa v o u r i t e

1 Certification

H

2 3 4

Setup About

5

105

Z A

14-TOC Maker This addin creates a Table of Contents from your workbook. Very sweet, especially if you have lots of worksheets with names that often change. The capability is added to the Tools menu. Presented by Mark Rowlinson.

Contents Sheet 1 Sheet 2 Sheet 3

106

1 2 3

15-Windows Utility Pack Window Utilities is an advanced programming utility to aid in windows API programming. It allows you to easily discover window handles, class names and structures, as well as allowing you to adjust the properties of any window to see the effect! It also allows you to view the system messages sent to Excel. A very cool tool for Excel programmers provided by Mark Rowlinson.

A 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

Handle Class 1050188 Office Tooltips 65660 tooltips _ class32 65922 tooltips _ class32 Windows Utility Pack 66 Windows Utility Demonstrati 656 2622728 tooltips _ class32 1245912 Auto-Suggest Dropdown

1901454 65664 196692 196690 131118 65666 196686 196688 196708

sysFader tooltips_class32 tooltips_class32 WorkerW tooltips_class32 tooltips_class32 tooltips_class32 tooltips_class32 Shell_TrayWnd

1966908 Auto-Suggest Dropdown

2425616 Sys Fader 1311856 Tooltips_class32 3016244 DUlPopupMenu 1377750 DUlPopupMenu 1181044 DUlPopupMenu 1114904 Tooltips_class32 10945522 Base Bar 2753480 Base Bar

Caption

x

X ader

Window Properties Handle: Caption: Class:

Enumerate Windows N/A N/A File name or Web address (http://) N/A N/A N/A N/A

1574026 Microsoft Excel - Bllk2 XLMAIN

Available properties: WS_OVERLAPPED WS_POPUP WS_CHILD WS_DISABLED WS_CLIPCHILDRE WS_VSCROLL WS_HSCROLL Set

Current properties: WS_VISIBLE WS_CLIPSIBLINGS WS_MAXIMIZE WS_BORDER WS_DLGFRAME WS_SYSMENU WS_THICKFRAME WS_MINIMIZEBOX Close

Sys Fader N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A

107

2005

20 0 5

2004

20 03 20 0 4

2002

2003

20 0 1 20 0 2

2000

2000

2001

16-Manual Bar Chart

This little app uses filling of cells to create the look of a bar chart. It's not intended to use instead of a chart; it simply demonstrates that Excel is capable of its own graphics-like interface. Presented by Zack Barresse.

Names Zack Barresse Suat Ozgur Jake Hilderbrand Bill Jelen Tracy Syrstad Juan Gonzalez Skye Barresse

Needed 10 10 10 10 10 10 10

Completed

Complete

4 2 3 7 5 7 4

QuickGlance Bar Chart c :by VBAExpress.com

108

Precent 40% 20% 30% 70% 50% 70% 40%

About...

Microsoft Excel - Book1 F ile

Edit View Inser t For mat Tools Data Window Calender Help Generate Calender

ABC

B I U

fx

Options

$% ,

O OO

About

17-Calendar Finally! The ultimate Excel calendar. Many have tried and failed, but this is one of the best I've seen. Provided by Jacob Hilderbrand. Pick the calendar from the special menu.

February 2005 Sunday

6

Monday

7

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Sadurday

1

2

3

4

5

8

9

10

11

12

13

14 Valentine's Day

15

16

17

18

19

20

21 President's Day

22

23

24

25

26

27

Create a monthly calendar!

28

109

18-Metal Charts Brian Mulder demonstrates how to use Excel as an investment tool for those who like buying gold. Just run the setup on sheet1 to grab the data, then run the charts on sheet2. Very cool!

Month 5-Feb 5-Apr 5-Jun 5-Aug 5-Oct 5-Dec 6-Feb 6-Apr 6-Jun 6-Dec 7-Jun 7-Dec 8-Jun 8-Dec

Session Open High 419.5 418.8 421.2 423.8 425.9 429 -

-

Low 417.6 417.7 420 422.8 425.9 428.6 464 -

419.5 420.8 423.2 424.8 425.9 430.6

Time Sett Last UP 418 9:52 UC 420 10:23 UC 422 10:23 UP 424 10:00 DN 425 8:56 DN 43 Metal charts UP 43 419.70 419.70 UP 43 UP 43 419.50 419.50 UP 44 DN 45 419.30 419.30 UP 46 UP 47 419.10 419.10 Up 48

Chg 1.3 1.5 1.5 0.8

Pr. Day Sett 417.2 418.7 421 423.4

Show Golden Chart

X

418.90 418.90

418.70 418.70

418.50 418.50

21/11/2005 21/11/2005

Open Open

High High Low Low Close Close

Daily Daily

Close

110

Duane's Dirty Dozen The

remaining applications were provided by Duane Aubin specifically for MrExcel as a special tribute to the 25th Anniversary of the Spreadsheet. Duane believes in working AND playing with Excel!

111

A

Rummy 42 A Clear Names

Enter player names

Select game type

Clear Options

Player 1

Anne

Game type

Number of hands

Player 2

Bill

Hands Per game?

10

Game Score

Game Count

Post Score

Anne

Bill

Margin

530

505

25

Anne

0

Bill

0

Game Score History

Hand Score Margin

Hand 1

25

30

5

2

30

25

5

3

25

125

100

4

450

325

125

Game

Clear

Margin

Winner

5 6 7

19-Rummy42

8 9 10

During my first appearance on TechTV's Call for Help TV show, Leo LaPorte joked that the last time he used Excel was to keep track of a Rummy scores with his daughter. This worksheet will help Leo (or you) keep track of a 2player rummy game in style!

LoanCalc Com pare

up t o fou ro la ns

Loan 1

20-LoanCalc A loan calculator to assist in figuring payments.

Loan Amo unt #Mo nths Annu alInte rest Paymen t

Amo rtzia

to in

Loan 4

$2,0 00.0 0 18 7.0%

$2,0 00.0 0 24 6.4%

$173 .24

$340 .76

$117 .37

$89. 00

Seel ct Lo an# $2,0 00.0 0 12 7% $173 .24

t

Inte rest 1 2 3 4 5 6

112

Loan3

$2,0 00.0 0 6 7.6%

Tabel

Loan Amo unt #Mo nths Annu alInte rest Paymen t Paymen

Lo an2

$2,0 00.0 0 12 7.29%

12.0 0 11.0 3 10.0 6 9.08 8.10 7.10

Pn ri 161. 162. 163. 164.1 165. 166.

24 21 18 6 14 13

Baalnc 2,00 1,83 1,67 1,51 1,34 1,18 1,01

0.00 8.76 6.56 3.38 9.22 4.00 7.94

e

Loan 1

1

Zach

21-Bowling Scorekeeper Take your laptop to the lanes next time you go. Then keep the

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

2 3 x x x / x 3 2 / 3 1 8 1 9 / 4 5 x 2 3 5 35 65 80 93 111 120 134 143 158

158

Josh

0

Elgan

0

Emrald

0

scores on file! No more papers to carry around!

Tire Size

22-Tire Size

Understanding tire measurements

175 / 70 R 13 175 70

R

13

tire width, in mm, wider, larger "contact patch", more "rolling resistance"/ friction means more gas Consumption, More traction when dry, LESS traction on water/snow/ice. height of the sidewall or "profile" of the tire, expressed as a percentage of the width; in our example the height of the rubber is 70% of 175 mm, or 122.5 mm. The lower the profile, the less rubber there is (which you'd see on fast cars). Speed rating. The presentation of this information has changed since 1991, but, in our example, R means the tire is good up to 180 Kph, plenty for driving in North America (speed rating came to the forefront because of Europe's Auto-bahn, renowned and wistfully dreamed about by claustrophic trafficjammed North America commuters because in many parts of it there are no speed limits and people regularly travel upwards of 160 Kph). Ask your mechanic if you need more info on tire speed ratings.

T

his is an application and learning tool, all in one. An application like this is particularly helpful when you want to provide a calculation tool along with information you need to provide.

diameter of the wheel rim, in inches. Why some measurements are in metric mm while others are in imperial inches is beyond me, but that's what it is. A bigger tire rolls less per kilometre, but is abused more with faster starts/stops and cornering since a 17" wheel will be found cars built for more aqqressive driving.

Compare two tires

mm measurement width

Tire1 185 65 R14 185

Tire2 165 65 R13 165

Difference

%Difference

20 mm thinner

-11%

113

Gluco Track Weekly readings 9-Jul 10-Jul 11-Jul 12-Jul 13-Jul 14-Jul 15-Jul

daily hi

daily low

daily last

daily avg

range hi

range low

13.4 13.2 11.4 8.0 8.1 8.2 9.3

7.7 8.3 7.2 6.4 6.7 7.4 3.6

8.6 9.1 9.0 6.6 6.8 7.9 4.8

10.6 10.8 9.3 7.2 7.4 7.8 6.5

10.0 10.0 10.3 10.0 10.0 10.0 10.0

4.0 4.0 4.0 4.0 4.0 4.0 4.0 daily avg range hi range low

Daily Average Readings, Selected Week

12.0 10.0

Readings

8.0 6.0 4.0 2.0

23-GlucoTrack

Jul 15

Jul 14

Jul 13

Jul 12

Jul 11

Jul 9

Jul 10

0.0

daily hi daily low

Date

That's right. Use Excel for tracking health issues, including dieting and glucose readings!

Family Jan

24-Family Budgeter

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

Jul

Aug

Sep

Oct

Nov

Summary Income Expenses Net (Loss)

$7,200 $7,200

$7,200 $7,200

$7,200 $7,200

$7,200 $7,200

$7,200 $7,200

$7,200 $7,200

$7,200 $7,200

$7,200 $7,200

$7,200 $7,200

$0

$0

$0

$0

$0

$0

$0

$0

$0

$7,200 $7,200 $0

$7,200 $7,200 $0

$3,750 $3,450

$3,750 $3,450 $0 $0 $7,200

$3,750 $3,450 $0 $0 $7,200

$3,750 $3,450 $0 $0 $7,200

$3,750 $3,450 $0 $0 $7,200

$3,750 $3,450 $0 $0 $7,200

$3,750 $3,450 $0 $0 $7,200

$3,750 $3,450 $0 $0 $7,200

$3,750 $3,450 $0 $0 $7,200

$3,750 $3,450 $0 $0 $7,200

$3,750 $3,450 $0 $0 $7,200

$200 $70 $500 $0

$200 $70 $500 $0

$200 $70 $500 $0

$200 $70 $500 $0

$200 $70 $500 $0

$200 $70 $500 $0

$200 $70 $500 $0

$200 $70 $500 $0

$200 $70 $500 $0

$200 $70 $500 $0

$200 $80 $70 $500 $0 $80

$40 $864 $150 $175 $500 $0 $80

$40 $864 $150 $175 $500 $0 $80

$40 $864 $150 $175 $500 $0 $80

$40 $864 $150 $175 $500 $0 $80

$40 $864 $150 $175 $500 $0 $80

$40 $864 $150 $175 $500 $0 $80

$40 $864 $150 $175 $500 $0 $80

$40 $864 $150 $175 $500 $0 $80

$40 $864 $150 $175 $500 $0 $80

$40 $864 $150 $175 $500 $0 $80

$40 $864 $150 $80 $175 $500 $80 $0

$ $

Monthly Particulars

I don't care who you are, you can use one of these! It always surprises me how few people make use of Excel for personal tasks such as a budget or a music or video tracking database. It's perfect for such tasks.

114

Income Wages (takehome) - partner 1 Wages (takehome) - partner 2 Interest and dividends miscellaneous Total Income

Expenses Auto expense Auto insurance Auto payment Beauty shop and barber Cable TV Charity Child care Clothing Credit card payment Dues and subcriptions Electricity

$7,200

$ $

$

My Checkbook

Enter Current Bank Account Balance Total Deposits

Reconciliation Status Unbalanced - Your bank account has $ 22.35 more than your book. Date

Chk # Particulars

July 5, 2004

Balance Forward

July 6, 2004

POS Exxon for gas

July 7, 2004

115

July 12, 2004

25-My Checkbook

Total Withdrawals

July 15, 2004

116

charitable donation

July 18, 2004

114

gym fee

July 26, 2004

Deposit check

July 28, 2004

ATM Withdrawl, spending cash at football game

679.95

Book Balance

1,202.97

Difference

22.35

Deposit withdrawal

Balance 385.00

58.00

brake Job Deposit check

1,225.32 1,497.92

300.00

327.00 27.00 775.00

748.96 150.00 21.95

625.96 604.01 1,352.97

748.96 150.00

1,202.97

Another

boring and time-consuming task is boiled down to entering a bit of data. Note how it even helps you balance the checkbook to your bank!

11 12 1 2 10 9 3 8 4 7 6 5

Punch Clock Date

In

Out

Lunch

Ttl Hrs

July 2, 2004

8.50

17.00

1.00

7.50

Tue

July 3, 2004

8.50

17.00

1.00

7.50

Wed

July 4, 2004

8.50

17.00

1.00

7.50

Thu

July 5, 2004

8.50

17.00

1.00

7.50

Fri

July 6, 2004

8.50

17.00

1.00

7.50

Sat

July 7, 2004 Total hours

37.50

Sun

July 1, 2004

Mon

26-PunchClock An

electronic timesheet, particularly useful for those who work for themselves.

115

Little Leaguc Scoreboard 1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

Hits

Errors

Visitor

0

0

0

0

0

0

2

1

2

1

1

12 13 -

-

14 Runs -

7

17

0

Home

0

0

0

0

1

1

1

0

2

1

0

-

-

-

6

14

1

27-Little League Scoreboard C

oach, next time you go to the ballfield, take your laptop along! You can track those scores during the game, and save the data for later.

28-Lottery Ticket Checker E

nter the lottery numbers you picked, and enter the number that was drawn. Find out how many of your numbers matched!

116

Currency Converter Currency you are "selling"

USD 100.00

Amount you are selling Currency you are "buying" Exchange Rate Amount you can buy

CAD 1.3132 131.32

29-Currency Converter If you often sell on eBay or have other dealings where you constantly need to convert currency, an application like this is the answer for you.

Are a C ode F in der If y ouk nowt hec ode, andw ant to k nowt hea re a, ente r th ec odeb elo w. . Area Code

Location

203

CT Connectic ut (sw Connectic ut in cl, Fa ir fie ld and New Hven Countie s)

30-Area Code Finder This little application finds the area covered by the area code you

If you kn ow th ec od e, an dw an t ok no w the ar ea ,e nte rt he co de be o l w.. Area Code

State / City

216 330 419 440 513 614 740 937

OH Oh OH Oh OH Oh OH Oh OH Oh OH Oh OH Oh OH Oh

o i o i o i o i o i o i o i o i

(Cl eve aln da nd ne Oh ai) (ne Oh o i exc ep tC elve aln d) (T oel do an dn w Oh o i) (ne Oh o i exc u ld n i g Cl eve aln d) (Ci nci nn ati ar ea )< est > (Co u l m bu sa nd su rro un dn i ga rea )< est > (se Oh o i exc u ld n i g Co u l m bu s) (sw Oh o i exc u ld n i g Ci nci nn ati )< est >

State Abbrev OH OH OH OH OH OH OH OH

State

Time Zone

Oh oi Ohoi Ohio Oh oi Oh oi Oh oi Oh oi Oh oi







enter. Keep it open when you're by the phone!

117

CHAPTER - 5

VISIONARY! CREATIVE! REALLY SMART!

CONTRIBUTORS

Ravi Singh

Bibliography/ Contributors

is located in India. He is a Structural Engineer and has a great passion for all things Excel. An alumnus of IT-BHU, he has been working with the various versions of Excel for over 10 years. Ravi likes to automate. His love for automated solutions has led him to develop amazing engineering and general applications with Excel. He has worked extensively with the Excel 4 macro language in the earlier days and does his thing with VBA now. He has a special knack for interfacing Excel with other applications that support VBA, such as creating complete drawings in AutoCad using variable data in Excel. Ravi's motto: “Dare to imagine.”

119

Ivan Moala

is the owner and administrator of the XcelFiles at http://www.xcelfiles.com/Index.html His site is predominantly Microsoft Excel related and is more inclined towards doing the things that you may have thought improbable or impossible with Microsoft Excel, hence The X in The XcelFiles.

P.K. Hari Hara Subramanian is a full-fledged finance professional currently working as Group Financial Controller for a corporation based in Dubai, UAE. He loves answering Excel questions online, particularly at www.Experts-Exchange.com.

120

Masaru Kaji

(better known as “Colo”) is a computer system manager for an equipment manufacturer in Kobe Japan. He develops custom applications using Excel VBA or VB. In January 2004, he received the Microsoft Excel MVP award. He posts mainly at www.MrExcel.com, but can also be found posting on the newsgroups. To share information about Excel, he runs a website named Colo's Excel Junk Room available at http://www.puremis.net/excel/ in both English and Japanese.

Dr. Gerard M. Verschuuren

is a Microsoft Certified Professional specialized in VB, VBA, and VB.NET. He is the author of many textbooks and has more than 20 years of experience in teaching at colleges and universities. He offers a line of graphical self-paced training CD's at www.Holy Macrobooks .com

121

Julio Ahumada was determined to learn English so he went to college and began to learn. He took computer classes that he did not understand, but continued to work on the assignments in spite of the difficulty. He loves Excel because you can “build in any way that you want or like it”. After working in Excel a few years, he came up with World Cup Soccer Forecast.

Mark Rowlinson has been working as an Actuary at a UK Pensions Consultancy for 3 years. During this time, he has been programming projects inside and outside of work. In October 2004 he began setting up his own IT consultancy business, and working on a Windows API programming book aimed at VBA programmers. Outside of work he is a big football (soccer) fan and plays regularly for a local side. Mark owns www.thecodenet.com.

122

Zack Barresse

is a self-proclaimed Excel addict. Though he's been using Excel for less than 2 years, he's already co-owner of www.VBAExpress.com, a website dedicated to VBA programming, and learning more and more every day. Zack is selfless in his Excel knowledge and gives it away every day at VBA Express, MrExcel, and TheOfficeExperts forums. He lives in Oregon with his wife, Skye, and their 3 children.

Jacob Hilderbrand

is currently obtaining his goal of getting a Masters degree in Mathematics. As co-owner of www.VBAExpress.com, Jake developed the very first Excel VBA Training and Certification program, which is designed to provide official recognition of an individual's VBA knowledge. Jake often posts in the forums at VBAExpress and MrExcel.

123

Juan Pablo González

is a native of Bogotá, Colombia, where he graduated as an industrial engineer. Has worked with spreadsheets in different industries and now specializes in the development of Office-based applications to different clients around the world, and as the CIO of a software company that creates products for the automobile industry in the United States. Juan Pablo is a Microsoft Excel MVP!

Brian Mulder uses Excel for prototyping, visualizing, communicating and analyzing ideas or processes. He lives in sunny Amsterdam with a girlfriend and daughter who cured him of his computer addiction. Still he finds time to build things like an Excel workbook for a virtual greyhound betting website, downloading 200,000 records in 14 hours and analyzing them in his favorite tool. Brian can be found on www.rentacoder.com as a freelance coder.

124

Duane Aubin

lives in Toronto with his wife Angeline and two kids, Elgan and Emerald. He amazes clients with his ability to create terrific user interfaces for applications with and without the use of VBA.

Kouichi Tani

of Wakayama Prefecture, Japan does research and development for a chemical company. In 2002, Kouichi began to build games with Excel. Kouichi has a very close relationship with his cat, as the photo and the name of his website portray. http://www.geocities.co.jp/SiliconValley-Cupertino/5678/.

125

Mike Absher

is the principal at Dealerware, authors of the F&I Menu Wizard program. For more information, visit. http://www.fimenuwizard.com

Melissa d'Arabian earned a BA from the University of Vermont and an MBA from Georgetown University. In her twelve years of entertainment experience, Melissa worked for five years in planning and finance for The Walt Disney Company in both Burbank and Paris. A seasoned corporate speaker, she has addressed both French and American audiences on topics such as entertainment and finance, budgeting, methodology and business strategy.

126

AFTERWORD - WHERE ARE THEY NOW? Dan Bricklin, co-inventor of VisiCalc went on to develop a tool used for rapid software prototype development. He is currently principle of Software Garden outside of Boston. He maintains an excellent history of VisiCalc at www.DanBricklin.com Bob Frankston, co-inventor of VisiCalc, went on to work at Lotus Development Corp where he developed Lotus Express. At the Slate Corporation, he focused on pen-based and mobile computers. In the late 1990s he worked for Microsoft, focusing on home-based wireless networking. He currently maintains an excellent website with writings on technology issues at http://www.frankston.com/.

Mitch Kapor grew Lotus Development Corporation from a start-up to a company with $156 Million in revenue in 1984. He left Lotus executive management in 1985. He later co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation and recently formed the Open Source Applications Foundation. He is an investor in start-ups, social activist, and philanthropist. Check out his writings at http://www.kapor.com/.

Ben Rosen, the Morgan securities analyst who in 1979 predicted that VisiCalc would be the software tail to wag the computer industry dog, later went on to be CEO of Compaq Computer. Peter Jennings, author of MicroChess and co-owner of VisiCorp has a great history at www.benlo.com Dan Fylstra, co-founder of VisiCorp later went on to write the Solver tool used in all spreadsheets at FrontLine Systems. He later was a candidate for Vice President of the United States on the Libertarian Party ticket.

Pito Salas, inventor of the Pivot Table concept and Lotus Improv, has a software consultancy outside of Boston. He maintains an interesting weblog at www.Salas.com 127

PhotoCredits: Bill Jelen is a spreadsheet fan and the principal behind MrExcel.com.

The community at MrExcel.com provides free help and answers to over 30,000 Excel questions each year. MrExcel Consulting is available to implement automated VBA solutions to clients around the world. To learn more about using spreadsheets efficiently, read Learn Excel from Mr Excel, written by Bill Jelen and published by Holy Macro! Books.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this project. Thanks to Jerry Kohl at Brighton for the original concept of a book celebrating the evolution of spreadsheets.

Allen Johnson 103a. Andrea V olpicelli 108a. Andrey Kr asnov 73a. Benoit Beauregard 96a. Benson T rent 77a. Bill Jelen 82b , 85a. Cecilia S veda 128a. ciba.com 48a. Clay Blackburn 74a. Comstock Images 8b , 39a, 50a, 38a. Dallas W allace 6b , 13a, 13b , 14b , 17b , 21b , 22a, 28b , 33a. Dan Fletcher 71a. Dan R ose 27b. Darcy Cloutier-F ernald 1a, 2a, 3a, 24a, 25a. Don Heckerman 81 a. EdHidden82a.Galina68a.GlenCullis12b , 78b. Hemer a T echnologies 7a, 8a, 14a, 15b , 16a, 29a, 31a, 32b , 35a, 42b , 52a, 57a, 58a, 72a, 78a, 87a, 92a, 93a, 106a, 17a, 20a, 21a, 23a, 26a, 27a, 42a, 97a. Hollingsworth Studios 2 32a. HooR oo Gr aphics 102a. Jim K ennedy 78c. Jock Gill 10a. Leegin 80a. Mark Ev ans 110a. Matt R amos 111a. Media Bank 75a. MediaGr aphics 7b , 86a. MediaGr aphics 30a. Mehmet G. Emin 34a, 67a, 97a, 101a, 105a. Mitch K apor 15a. nicholas belton 100a. Pito Salas 28a. Pixoi Ltd 9b , 12a, 84a, 107a, 34b.PlasmaCam.com 84b. QUE 62a, 63a. Scott Pierson 27a, 35a, 76a. Shawn O'Brien 104a. Software Arts, Inc. 11a. Stev e Antall 88a. T ed Lewis 18a.T omMarvin 109a.T omislavStajduhar 94a. Universit y of British Columbia 6a. Webb Chappell 9a. Z edcor , Inc. 11b , 46a, 51a, 59a, 70a, 98a, 8b, 11c, 95a.