You just wrote an Excel formula and it isn’t producing the result you expected?  Have no fear – this article will introduce you to the Evaluate Formula’ tool which you can use to discover why your formula isn’t working. The Evaluate Formula tool achieves this by showing you the steps Excel takes to calculate your formula.  This is very useful when you need to find a problem with a formula, or to understand the calculation process.

Finding the wrong value

Let’s look how the Evaluate formula’ tool can be used to trace a problem, by looking at the following sample:

You can see that something is amiss with the formula in cell C3. The formula adds 1+2+3 (cells A2, A3 and A4) and then divides the result by 3 (cell B3); this should evaluate to 2 (6 divided by 3). But we got 2.4. By opening the Evaluate Formula tool (from the Formula Auditing area of the Formula ribbon), we can work the calculation of this value step by step (click the Evaluate button in the Evaluate Formula dialog to advance):

Listed are the evaluation steps for the formula above:

• (A2+A3+A4)/B3
• (1+A3+A4)/B3
• (1+2+A4)/B3
• (3+A4)/B3
• (3+3)/B3
• (6)/B3
• 6/B3
• 6/2.5
• 2.4

First we’ll examine the mechanics of the display. The underlined part of the formula in each step is the part that will be evaluated in the next step. The italic part of the formula in each step is the part that was evaluated in the previous step.

In this case, the one-but-last step seems off: we expected B3 to contain 3, but it seems to contain 2.5. The problem is probably that the cell’s display is set to show zero decimal places:
And there you have it – we’ve found the problem. Changing the cell’s formatting to show decimal places will show that cell B3 contains 2.5.

Summary

This article provides a little taste of how the Formula Evaluation tool can be used to help us fix problems in our formulas. It’s also a great tool for helping us write formulas, but that discussion can wait for another time.  Can you think of ways this tool can serve you? Please share with us in the comments…

==== About the Author ====

Joseph Reese is the founder of Excel-Formulas.com an Excel consulting firm. Head over to his website if you want to improve your performance with Excel.

How many times have you gotten stuck while sending an ebook to your friend’s email, just because the file size is bigger than what is allowed ? There are other cases when you need to split some important documents for saving in different places to ensure privacy.

Split Files 1.6 is a nice tool to split files that are big(filesize) and can’t be sent by email. All you have to do is to locate the file you want to split, locate the directory(on your PC) you want to put the split files and configure splitting options( i.e number of split files or size of a single split file). When you are ready, just press the Split button and you are done.

You can also combine split files using the tool. Just go to the Combine tab and set it up.

[Download Split Files 1.6]

Techie Buzz Verdict

Well we can’t deny the fact that, most of the times, file splitting is used in cases of piracy, like creating .torrent files for copyrighted work. We are not encouraging piracy, but in other cases, like splitting a college presentation, an audio track you’ve made or just an ebook,   this free application works wonders for easy sharing. There are no major reported bugs yet.

Techie-Buzz Rating : 4/5 (Good)

Most of the times when we copy a URL, we want to open it in a web browser. When we copy an email address, we want to send a email to someone. When we copy a explorer path, we want to open and browse the folder.

As you can see, some actions are done to perform another one. Wouldn’t it be awesome, if we had a intelligent software that could sense what we want to do, and automatically allows us perform those tasks, based on what we copy? You guessed right, we found something that will do that for you.

Clip Monitor is a awesome software, which will automatically detect what you are copying and offer you to perform the default actions based on the text that has been copied. For example, if you copy a URL, it will offer you an option to open a web browser that points to that URL. If you copy a email address, it will offer to open the default email client and open a compose email window. If you copy a explorer location, it will offer to open the explorer window and browse to that location.

In addition to that, if you copy images to clipboard, it will offer you to open your default image editor. If you want to exit the software, just copy the text exitand the software will automatically close itself.

Techie Buzz Verdict

ClipMon is a awesome software and could turn you into a productive powerhouse, if it comes with more customization and options.

Even in its current state it is a really useful software, however, greedy as we are, it would be good if the software allowed users to define custom actions based on clipboard text. For example, say I want to open Microsoft word, i just copy word, and it gives me an option to open Microsoft Word. Having an option to predefine actions and keywords would be something that we want the developer to add to this software.

Rest assured, this is a recommended software, without doubt. Go ahead and make yourself more productive.

Techie Buzz Rating: 5/5 (Awesome)

Download ClipMon

Like an excited little kid on his birthday, I practically squealed when I synced my mobile phone’s email client with my Gmail account and saw that a certain correspondent whose email ID was wave-noreply@google.comhad sent me an email with the subject line Your invitation to preview Google Wave. I jumped out of bed, turned on my laptop and accepted the invite and started Wave-ing. It’s been a couple of hours since I woke up and I took a break only to brush my teeth and wash my face. I have been Wave-ing since seven in the morning (here).

Here, I present a visual journey through Wave, captured with screenshots. Since I have no contacts associated in Wave, I cannot tell you how it works as a collaboration platform. It does, however, look very interesting. So without further ado, here are the screenshots with explanations. Click through each picture to see a larger version.

The extreme left side is divided into two bars, Navigation and Contacts and reminds one of Gmail’s extreme left sidebar. The center is the message view with each message having the picture of the contact who is participating in the wave, while the extreme right bar is the Wave view. Doctor Wave is shown as a contact, while an embedded video of him introducing us to Google Wave is in the Wave bar. Notice the previewsubtitle to Google Wave on the top left.

Clicking on new wave takes us to a composer that feels similar to Gmail’s rich text formatter. The screenshot gives an example of some of the features. The first line is the subject line of the Wave. Add participants to the wave by clicking the +’ button, or dragging contacts from the Contacts panel. Add tags and files at the bottom of the Wave for organizing and sharing information, respectively.

You can reply to a message by simply clicking the lower border of that message (known as a blip). The same formatting options are given, while a built-in spell checker allows you to correct your errors (more on this in a following screenie).

Copy paste a YouTube URL and voila, you get an option to embed the video! Some more multimedia can be embedded, methinks. For the sake of this post, I have stopped at just one.

The final embedded video (of Monty Python, no less!) along with the spell checker (called Spelly) that manifests itself as a small blue button with a downward pointing arrow when your cursor hovers next to the wrongly spelled word.

Final Word:

Though it seems novel, it is not as much fun without contacts. I will be sending a few invites in due course of time and collaborate information with people to see how well Wave does as a collaboration platform. Check in again for a post detailing the collaborative prowess of Wave!

UPDATE:

For the Developer Preview, check this earlier post by Unitechy.

NolaPro is a free, web-based Business Management and Accounting Suite. It includes all standard accounting modules as well as order entry, inventory tracking, full payroll services, and plug-ins such as point-of-sale, a business-to-business web portal, and an ecommerce shopping cart.

It provides a very flexible interface with user-customizable options for colors, icon sets, and menu displays. The software also allows multiple sets of books for different companies, unlimited simultaneous users and no data restrictions.

It comes with high level of security for regulating user permissions (read, write, setup) by particular module area.  There is also no cost unless you choose optional value-added services. It also includes international features such as VAT support, built-in language translator, and currency symbol/decimal options.

[ Download NolaPro Free Web Accounting ]

Every day we perform a lot of tasks on our computers. Some of   these tasks are repetitive and can consume   your precious time. Here is a useful windows freeware that organizes the frequently used windows tasks under one interface so that you   can get them done easily and in less time.

Here are some of the important windows commands that can be executed using   commands in demand. ( You might also be interested in windows command prompt tools or a Portable command prompt)

1.Desktop tasks

Common desktop tasks are included under the tab Desktops. You can turn off the monitor or hide your desktop icons by a single click. You can also capture a screenshot and start the default screensaver with the touch of a button. It would have been great if the app featured a Wallpaper changer   so that we could switch wallpapers easily.Otherwise common desktop tasks have been included   and the app does a great job here.

2.Application errors and windows

The application errors and application windows tab comprises of a set of useful commands that you will love using.You can start the task manager,Kill a running process or a non responding application instantly. Just hit the button kill a processand the app opens up a list which looks like the following :

Select the process that you want to kill and hit Kill process. The process will be killed   and you will also get to know the path of the running program.This feature is not available in windows task manager.

Other tasks in this tab includes : Minimizing all application windows, restoring all the minimized windows and centering the active window. All with just one click.

3.Devices ,Files and folders

Using this tab you can perform common   tasks with devices,files and folders.Some of them include the following :

• Safely remove your USB drive
• Eject your CD/ DVD drive
• Open up the Device manager ( includes hidden devices )
• Open system folders and users folder
• Open the command prompt

This solves the hassle of opening the control panel or My computer every other time when you need to   eject your cd/dvd drive or looking for the usb drive icon in your System tray.This saves a lot of time and keeps common tasks under one single interface.

4.Internet Tasks

Do you use desktop shortcuts for visiting your favorite blogs or websites ? If yes then this tool   will come in   handy. It lets you create desktop shortcuts to any web address.Just paste the URL and click Paste shortcut on Desktop. You need not reload the page in your browser and do a manual desktop shortcut anymore.

Furthermore it also allows you to create an email message with your default email program . You can also execute a particular web query using two search engines simultaneously.

5.Useful shortcuts to Windows applications

This one makes this app a must use tool. You get all the frequently used windows application compiled under one shed. This includes :

• Windows default Calculator, Ms-paint,notepad and Sound Recorder
• Control panel, recycle bin and windows shutdown panel
• System tools including : Disk defragmenter,Disk clean up,System restore and Task scheduler
• Registry editor,Direct x diagnosis,System monitor etc

Download ‘Commands in Demand’ application

The freeware is a must have tool for anyone using Windows as it brings all the frequently used operations under one roof. Do you know of any software that   does a similar job or rather a better one? Do share with us in the comments.

Usually when you come across an article, you might find several links in them, some of which you might want to click and read.

However the default behavior many of us follow is to open the link in a background tab or window and read it later, this works fine if you have a few links to open and read, however most of the times we pile up several background tabs which we need to read.

Now there are two problems with this that tend to make you lose productivity.

1. At times, you tend to forget why you opened a tab in the first place while reading it.
2. At a later point of time while reading something you might not find that information relevant or useful at all, wasting both time and energy.

As a good practice, whenever you come across links try to open them in the foreground window or tab and read the information right away, this will help as you know what and why you are reading the information.

It is always better to devour information while you are thinking about it and get done with it, rather than put it on the backburner, of course at times if you find something very interesting, you can create a temporary bookmarks folder and read it at a later time.

This is how I tend to deal with content and information, it works out pretty well for me, however it might not work out well for many others, so it would be good to hear how you deal with devouring information?

Do let us know about the methods you use to stay productivity while reading content.

If you are an average computer user, chances are you have multiple windows open at any given time. Switching back and forth between these windows become a hassle and decreases productivity. What if you could arrange all your open windows in whatever way you want and look at all of them simultaneously? Now you can do this with a freeware called WinSplit-Revolution.

WinSplit-Revolution allows you full control over how to display your windows. You can have 2 small windows on the left and 1 on the right, you can have 6 equally sized windows, a mosaic of 5 screens of different sizes or any other scheme that suits you well. You can re-size the windows for each position by choosing one of the many pre-defined sizes.

Another excellent feature WinSplit has is the Hotkeys. For example, just press Ctrl +Alt + Left to move a window to the left or Ctrl + Alt +Right to move it to the right. Pressing Ctrl +Alt + M would bring up a mosaic of all the windows open and Ctrl + Alt +C would close all windows. However, hotkeys are not the only option to move windows around. You can also just drag and move them. You can also configure the hotkeys according to your requirements.

WinSplit-revolution is only available for Windows right now. You can download it here.

Via [Killer Startups]

The default Windows keyboard is full of keys which people seldom use, previously we had told users how to use Windows key to make you productive, it’s time to give you some hints on using the Alt, Shift and Ctrl key more often, believe us that using shortcut keys can make you more productive, that is why we always stress on shortcut keys in our posts.

Application Switcher

By far the most common use for the Alt Key is the use of Alt + Tab key combination, this shortcut allows you to switch between open applications with ease.

Menu Shortcut Key

So you are in a application and want to access the menu item, just press the Alt key and you can use another keyboard key to open up the menu item, the second keyboard key will be highlighted with a underline.

It will take you some time to adjust to using this feature, but once you start using it, you will be using shortcut keys without even thinking about them.

Some applications like Internet Explorer hide their menu from users by default, however you can still launch the menu by using a Alt + charactershortcut key, see hints for more info.

Hint: Alt + F will open the File menu in most of the applications, Alt + E will open the Edit menu. Follow the above tips and you will save yourself a lot of time for sure with more Alt shortcuts, it’s easy to master isn’t it ;-)

Select Entire Words, Sentences, Paragraphs or Documents

A problem many users see while selecting content in text or document editors while using the keyboard, is the ability to select a large set of data, that’s the reason a mouse is more efficient, however a little know secret is that you can put the Alt, Ctrl and Shift key to good use while copying entire words, sentences or paragraphs. How? Look below.

Selecting a Word

You can use the Shift + Alt shortcut to copy a full word.

Selecting A Sentence

Use the Ctrl + End key to select the entire sentence, if you are at end of the sentence, use Ctrl + Home to do it. Are you in between a sentence? Use the Home key to go to the start or use End key to go to the end, and then use the other shortcut keys to copy the entire sentence.

Selecting a Paragraph

You wrote a paragraph and want to delete it, what would you do use the mouse as usual? Well hold on there are some shortcut keys that will help you here.

If you want to copy a entire paragraph, place your cursor at the top of the paragraph and use the Ctrl + Shift + Down arrow key on your keyboard.

If you are at end of the paragraph, no problem use the Ctrl + Shift + Up Arrow Key to select the paragraph above you.

Selecting the Entire Document

To select the entire document, file or browser window, you can use the shortcut key Ctrl + A, this works in almost everything you come across.

Go To The End Or Start Of The Screen In A Text/Document Editor or Webpage

If you want to go to the start or the end of a document or text file you can easily do it without having to scroll the page, just use Ctrl + End to go to the end of the document or Ctrl + Home to go to the top of the document.

This is also applicable while browsing webpages using a Internet browser.

Capitalizing Characters Without the Caps Lock Key

There are many times when you need to capitalize only certain characters, turning the Caps lock key on and off can waste a lot of time, if you just want to capitalize only certain characters, press and hold the Shift key and type the character you want to capitalize.

Opening Windows Task Manager

If you want to open the Windows Task Manager, you can easily do that by using the shortcut key Ctrl + Shift + Esc.

Closing Windows and Tabs

In many text editors the Ctrl + W keys will allow you to close individual tabs, if you are looking to close the entire application window you can use Alt + F4 shortcut key.

Permanently Deleting Files / Skipping Recycle Bin

If you want to permanently delete files without sending them to the recycle bin, hold the Shift key and press delete, this will delete the file permanently.

Selecting Files In Sequence or Selectively

If you want to select files in a sequence, you can hold the Shift key and use the up or down arrow keys to select files, using the right and left arrow keys will select files in the adjacent or previous rows when you are in list mode.

To selectively select files, press and hold the Ctrl key, use the up and down arrow key to move around, whenever you want to select a file just click on the spacebar button to select it.

A solution for Missing or Broken Keyboard keys

If any keys are not working on your keyboard you can still output them by using the Alt key, there are several character you can type out using the Alt key, for more details and reference visit our earlier post, useful shortcuts when your keyboard stop working.

Common Functions: Copy, Cut, Paste, Undo

The most common use of Ctrl key is to copy, cut and paste text and files. Use Ctrl + C to copy text, Ctrl + X to cut text, Ctrl + P to paste files and Ctrl + Z to undo things.

Navigating History in Your Browser [Previous/Next Page]

Every browser provides users with the previous and next page button to navigate the history, you can also do it with the keyboard, using the Alt + <- (left arrow key) to go the previous page and Alt + > (right arrow key) to go to the next page.

Refreshing Webpages from the Server

Pressing the F5 key usually does not refresh the webpage from the server, to force a server reload of the webpage, you can use the Ctrl + F5 shortcut key.

View Source Code In Browsers

If you want to view source code in browsers, the Ctrl + U shortcut key can be used in Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera and Safari for Internet Explorer use Alt + V + C

Are there any other uses of these keys we missed? Drop a comment to let us know and we will include it here, also don’t forget to give us your feedback.

I recently received a email from my manager which contained several word documents as attachments, my task was to convert those word documents into HTML files and upload it to our servers.

Though the task may sound as simple as it is, I had quite a few options on how to go about doing the tasks, which included.

• Manually converting each and every document to HTML files, tediously writing proper HTML code to preserve all the formatting.
• Convert each of the individual files to HTML using the internal conversion provided by Word.
• Use a online file converters to convert each of the word documents to HTML files.
• Use a Freeware utility to batch convert Word Documents to HTML files.

The first option was out of question, since it would take me few days to convert 70 word documents to properly formatted HTML documents. The second option was not feasible too, since the internal conversion would create the most dirtiest HTML code you can every come across.

The third option was feasible, however converting individual files would take a lot of time, and my search for Freeware tools to batch convert Word documents to HTML files only returned trial ware or shareware softwares which I did not want to use.

But the good news is that I was able to Batch convert the Word Documents to HTML files, making use of Free services, this post will detail how you can batch convert Word Documents to HTML Files.

How To Batch Convert Word Documents To HTML Files for Free

For batch converting the Documents we will be using couple of   free tools and services, the free tool is Google Docs Uploader and the free service we will be using is Google Docs. The entire process can be completed in 5-10 minutes in three easy steps.

Step 1: Open the Google Docs Uploader software and upload all the Word Documents to your account.

Step 2: Login to your Google Docs account and navigate to the folder where your uploaded documents are stored and select all the documents you want to convert to HTML files.

Step 3: In the navigation menu on the top, select the More Actions and click on the Save as HTML (zipped) option, this will initiate a download dialog box, where you can now save all the documents that have been batch converted to HTML files.

That’s it, in three simple steps you have batch converted several word documents to HTML and all of that for free, and the process would take less than 5-10 minutes depending on your internet speed.

Do you think this tip is really useful? Do you think there is any better way to batch convert word documents? Do let us know through your comments, we would be more than happy to know your opinions.