[oak perl] Fwd: Excel Annoyances Needed for New Book

George Woolley george at metaart.org
Fri Feb 6 18:58:46 CST 2004


OK. I'll play straight man.
What would you be willing to pay for a Linux version?

On Friday 06 February 2004 4:35 pm, David Fetter wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 06, 2004 at 03:39:51PM -0800, George Woolley wrote:
>
> Top Excel Annoyance:  I can't buy a Linux version :)
>
> Cheers,
> D
>
> > ----------  Forwarded Message  ----------
> >
> > Subject: Excel Annoyances Needed for New Book
> > Date: Friday 06 February 2004 1:18 pm
> > From: Marsee Henon <marsee at oreilly.com>
> > To: george at metaart.org
> >
> > Hey User Group Leader,
> >
> > O'Reilly is pulling together a new book called "Excel Annoyances" and
> > we'd like your help! As you might guess from the title, this book aims
> > to identify the problems, snarls, quirks, bugs, and just dumb things
> > about Excel that drive users nuts. Oh yeah--it also aims to solve these
> > annoyances, too.
> >
> > If any members of your group use Excel--be they newbies or Excel
> > masters--and they have annoyances they'd like to see solved, have them
> > email me (marsee at oreilly.com) with "Excel Annoyance" in the subject
> > line. Just have them note what version of Excel and Windows (or Mac
> > OS) they're using.
> >
> > Thanks for sharing. We'll make sure to get copies of "Excel
> > Annoyances" sent to your group shortly after publication.
> >
> >
> > --Marsee
> >
> >
> > ***
> > An example:
> >
> > LET ME COUNT THE DAYS
> >
> > THE ANNOYANCE: I know you can do date calculations in Excel, whether it's
> > to find how many days late I am on a car payment or to see how long it's
> > been since my last haircut. It's pretty easy to determine the number of
> > days between two dates; just subtract one from the other. But when I do
> > that, the result is another date! Huh?
> >
> > THE FIX: In a blank worksheet, try this little exercise, which should
> > show your age in days:
> >
> > 1. In cell A1, enter your birth date in MM/DD/YYYY format.
> >
> > 2. In cell B1, enter the formula =today() to display the current date.
> >
> > 3. In cell C1, enter the formula =b1-a1.
> >
> > You'll notice that the result of the formula in C1 is some other date,
> > which appears to have no correlation to either of the first dates. How
> > come? When you enter a formula, Excel matches the formatting of the
> > formula's inputs. This works well when you're doing calculations on
> > dollar amounts or percentages; the result comes out formatted just
> > the way you'd want. But in our example, Excel formatted the formula
> > result--a number of days--as a date.
> >
> > ***
> >
> > -------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Oakland mailing list
> > Oakland at mail.pm.org
> > http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/oakland




More information about the Oakland mailing list