I’ll post some of the questions here, and please add your suggestions for solving the problems.

How Do I Remove Characters?

Here’s a question from Joanne:

• What formula do I use if I want to remove * in front of figures on a spreadsheet where the number of digits vary?
• i.e. ***2.00 – ***20000.00

Suggested Solution

I’d use the SUBSTITUTE function. For example if the first number is in cell A2, put this formula in cell B2:

=--SUBSTITUTE(A2,"*","")

The SUBSTITUTE function replaces the asterisks with nothing, and the two minus signs after the equal sign change the number from text to a real number.

Your Solution

How would you solve the problem? If you have a different solution, please add a comment, to help Joanne.

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The people who visited the newsgroups on a regular basis might have noticed the announcements about the impending shutdown. But most people probably visited the newsgroups only a few times a year, when they needed help. They didn’t see the shutdown coming!

It’s not like going to your favourite store, and finding a "We’ve Moved" sign, with helpful directions to the new location. No, it’s like going to that store, and finding out that the building has magically disappeared overnight. There’s no clue as to what happened, or where to find them.

Where Do You Go Now?

Since the newsgroups disappeared, several people have emailed me, to find out where they went, and where to get Excel help now.

Microsoft Forums

One option is to use the web-based forums that Microsoft has set up:

• Answers — http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/default.aspx#tab=4
• Technet — http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/excel/threads
• MSDN (Excel Developers) — http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/exceldev/threads

To post a question or answer in the Microsoft forums, you’ll need to register, and sign in, using a Microsoft Windows Live ID. After you’ve registered, and set up a profile, you can follow Ron de Bruin’s step-by-step instructions for setting up and using the Community Forums NNTP Bridge. The bridge lets you connect to the forums with a newsreader, like Outlook Express or Thunderbird, which I prefer over the web interface.

Public New Servers

If you don’t like web-based forums, you can use a public news server, like http://www.aioe.org/ to access the Excel newsgroups. Even though Microsoft pulled the plug at its end, other servers carry the newsgroups, so there will still be some traffic, although much less than previously.

Google Groups Search

If your search skills are good, you can use Google to find an answer to your Excel questions, with either a general search, or a newsgroup search. If nothing turns up there, the Microsoft Knowledgebase is another good place to search for Excel solutions.

Cry for Help in Twitter

As Twitter becomes more popular, people even post their Excel questions and comments there. There are examples every weekday in my Excel Twitter posts.

Get Good Results

If you’re posting a questions in one of the forums or newsgroups here are a few suggestions for getting the best results:

• search the forum first,  to see if your question has already been answered
• some forums have multiple sections for questions — read the overviews, and select the best venue for your question
• in your question, provide context, such as what version of Excel and operating system, any error messages, etc., and show some sample data, if possible
• explain what you’ve tried so far, and other suggested solutions that didn’t solve the problem (include links to those suggestions, if possible)
• check back frequently, to read any replies and answer any follow up questions
• even if you’re frustrated, stay calm and polite, and remember to thank the people who helped, or tried to help you

Your Recommendations

When I posted about finding Excel help last summer, commenters recommended Stackoverflow.com as a good place to get Excel help. There are other Excel forums too, like the Excel User Group, which is run by Excel MVP Nick Hodge.

Where are you finding or providing Excel help these days, now that the Microsoft newsgroup servers have been shut down? Please share your suggestions in the comments.

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• Just made a chart in Excel for the 1st time since who knows when, line graph, resisted going 3D…. I don’t think it’s telling me much
• FYI… Claiming work can be done quicker in excel than in Silverlight in no way makes me want to work harder or faster to complete a task.
• Ummm love that some 40 year old guy just walked up to kelly rose & I in the lib & paid us $60 to make an excel spreadsheet for him.
• wow… I need to be more proficient with excel… lol making a poker spreadsheet for places and points, and i’m gettin my butt kicked…
• Not sure I can face looking at excel spreadsheets all day today. 4274 rows is just tooo big to work with.
• I want to offer a giant THANK YOU to all the Excel nerds who post things online. Trolling sites by MVPs just helped me solve a big problem.
• I hate excel like Lindsey Lohan hates eTrade right now.
• Back to Excel and Powerpoint… maybe I should have stayed at work to get this done. Productivity levels at home are considerably lower.
• Thank you all for the sympathy. 14 straight hrs of financial databases and excel spreadsheets is pretty damn painful. Tmw will be better.
• blindly offered to help with a spreadsheet. its 46,608 rows of data that looks like it was barfed into an excel file. [sigh]
• finished with excel for the day and my brain is still in one piece
• Managed to waste an hour fiddling around with the functions on Excel instead of doing work. Oh how I love to procrastinate
• sick of number rounding problems. java and ms excel are enemies. i’m the negotiator.
• Just used an excel spreadsheet to calculate wether or not I can afford everything I want on Topshop.com. It came to 1285.00. So that’s a no.
• Good hair day, sunshine abounds, listening to music while I try to dominate this excel speadsheet… 3 out of 4 is pretty great!
• Redoing knitting charts in excel. More fun than it sounds. Or maybe I’m just THAT bored
• I’ve pretty much been useless at work tonight. Can’t seem to fix anyones problems. Then again they all seem to be centered around Excel.
• My ME coworker is baffled by MS Excel. Hes been instructed to use a quote mark for direct entry; he’s unclear: "is that like an apostrophe?"
• Just doubled my mouse pointer speed. Excel isn’t gonna know what’s hit it.
• Off the station – Another day another Dollar. On that exchange rate, an Excel spreadsheet is worth about 5 cents!

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Related Links:

• Excel Data Entry Tips
• Excel Charts
• Contextures Excel Tips and Tutorials

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Merry Christmas!

Excel Games

• For those interested, MS Excel 95 had a code embedded in it that brought up a "Doom" styled game. ‘Twas called "The Hall of Tormented Souls"
• you can always be overly-indie and experimental and start making games in excel.
• There was just a question on The Weakest Link about Excel spreadsheets. I got it right.

Holiday Cheer

• WHO doesn’t know how to sort in Excel?!? my CAT can SORT in Excel. Dear Santa, forget the toy – bring me a bottle of Cabo Wabo. Blue.
• How did people organise Christmas dinner before the internet, excel speadsheets and cut and paste?
• Doing accounts with Excel…feel like a 21st century Bob Cratchit
• i am getting paid $15 an hour to talk about christmas, write names on file folders, and teach people how to use excel. god i love temp work!
• LOL…they should run a special Excel class just to help ppl w/ their Xmas card lists! Every year it’s such a headache….

The Shopping Is Done

• Is it just me? I feel like I need an excel spreadsheet or something to keep track of gifts purchased, shipping dates, arrival dates, etc.!!!
• Big Family, 100+Gifts Color Coded Excel Spreadsheet 4 Christmas Gifts! Givers & Receivers, Bought, Wrapped, Ordered, Shipped, Almost Done!
• I organized all our X-mas shopping into a multi-sheet spreadsheet in Excel. My wife claims this is "nerdy".
• Enhanced the pivot table macro by updating embedded .exe to facilitate even speedier Xmas packing? Check. Laundry started? Hells no!

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P.S. If you or your cat need help with those lists, see the Contextures page on Excel sorting.

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Higher Education

• Another successful Excel Tips training today. I love hearing, "that’s cool!" particularly when it really is.
• 1st period: sit & do nothing 2nd period: movie 3rd period: bake cookies 4th period: work on excel 5th: talk 6th: nothing. (I learn so much)
• I’m reminded why I wasn’t good at math in CÉGEP (maybe it was the pot). The numbers on my excel sheet don’t add up!
• I passed my stupid class, "Applications of Discrete Methods in Technology" IDK why they just didnt call it "Bullshit with Excel"

Excel: Discuss

• Discussion about good, bad and ugly about Excel spreadsheets. Waiting for someone to say we need a better "paperclip"
• Had a great discussion about Excel this weekend. Think that’s boring? If so then you obviously don’t love Excel.

Excel’s Greatest Hits

• Things I (re)discovered today Formula Drag in MS Excel and Judas Priest’s Greatest hits album
• Listening to house music while crunching this excel work is making me a lil #wired
• Listening to Puccini. Drinking Rooibos. Hoping one or the other will stop me swearing at Excel.
• Listening to Rick James while making pivot tables and charts on Excel of my monthly spending. What a way to spend a Saturday.

Excel Proficiency

• hint: on a scale of 1-10, take what you think your level of ms excel proficiency is at – then subtract 3. that’s your true level.

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P.S. For lots of cool Excel tips, see  Contextures Excel Tips and Tutorials
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Fun

• An hour and a half of fun with Excel to correct a simple sort mistake. Good learning experience, though.
• I have a tendency to make Excel charts for things that do not need Excel charts. It is fun!

And Games

• Haha. We’ve banned so many game sites that kids now email each other Excel files with the flash/shockwave games embedded in them.
• It’s official people, i’m going to program an epic game entirely in microsoft excel. Why? Because I’ll be famous of course
• Should I be concerned that my boyfriend has made an elaborate Excel spreadsheet about Farmville crops?
• trying to code a tictactoe solver in excel… apparently the game is still too complicated
• Why doesn’t Microsoft sponsor people who use their product? I’m pretty sure I could place in an excel X-games

And Excel Humour

• I love my finance friends. They know what it is to Excel. Get it? First finance joke I’ve made!
• I had a list, hello, the daily Excel file. There were just too many Davids. =))
• Man I love Microsoft excel, nothing better than Microsoft excelling till 6 o’clock everyday, and excelling at it………… it’s excellent
• I wonder if Microsoft has a cafe (not cafeteria) or bistro called Pivot Table. Wouldn’t surprise me #msgeekery

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P.S. Don’t let a simple sort mistake ruin your day! Follow the guidelines for sorting data in Excel.

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Santa might add those Excel haters to his naughty list, if they’re not careful. Don’t let that happen to you!

Ignore the Haters

• I HATE EXCEL ….or Excel hates me. Either way, we’ll have to work it out since we are spending all day together at work.
• I hate you #Excel. You’re for accountants and swim team managers, not English majors.
• I hate excel. So many things it could and should do and it just does math and is ugly.
• converted hate into love. For excel. And hell froze over.
• oh excel, you are so awesome. don’t listen to the haters. they just don’t understand how to use you…

Float Your Boat

• I love finding keyboard shortcuts that save me prob dozens of minutes a week. Newest is F2 to edit current cell in Excel
• I’m more of an Excel girl. I just love populating those cells! Whatever floats your anal retentive boat, I say.
• I LOVE excel! Sometimes I put stuff in it even when I don’t need to.
• Wasted a bit of time tracking down that Excel problem, but it’s a beautiful thing when you find a work-around to an issue like that.
• Excel is awfully smart.

Naughty or Nice?

• I wonder if Santa’s naughty list is on an Excel spreadsheet. No, not so I can filter by sex (F), age (18-XX) & location. Definitely not.

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P.S. If you want to save dozens of minutes a week too, there’s a list of Excel keyboard shortcuts on my Contextures website.

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Out of Sorts

• I patiently explain to him that excel allows you to order stuff and guide him through it. Asks lots of obvious questions.
• I sort one column and the rest of the data stays in one place instead of going with the same row. I can’t explain. Excel sucks.
• I don’t understand why sorting in Excel always messes things up.
• Resorted an Excel file a while back and it has sorted wrong, so all the work we’ve been doing is wrong.

Major Problems

• If ur an engineer, and ur not a big fan of usin microsoft excel, change majors…now
• It’s times like these when I wish my liberal arts education included a class in Excel.
• One more exam. Excel spreadsheets. What does this have to do with broadcast journalism you ask? F’d if I know.
• Excel class should never be at 8:30am

Blue Monday

• Excel dropping leading zero’s without any notice costs us an extra day of work or 1000 records of contacts data. )-:
• I was just told that my excel spreadsheet looks psychedelic. Haha!
• Now i’m gonna run out of colours, lol. >_> I don’t think Excel has that many shades of blue. =/

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P.S. For help with sorting, see Excel Sorting Data Basics.

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