Replies

NCH – adds items to start menu, adds links to downloads which install by a single click and can’t easily be uninstalled.

I bought Express Accounts and had a job to uninstall the express invoice software, the disk encryption software etc, etc. Shame because the accounts program is superb. Still won’t buy anything else off them because of the problems caused by trying to stop them taking over the pc with junk.

I am using Excel 2007 in Windows 7 Ultimate

I have a sheet that was created in Excel 97, or maybe earlier. The sheet tracks buy and sell transactions. Recently I noticed a discrepency and upon investigating I found taht there is a problem with the dates.

It has always been the norm to enter dates in teh short form 06/30/10 for June 30,2010. I noticed that the dates in the formula bar are now displayed as 30/06/2010 and in most cases they display in the spreadsheet correctly. However, in the case of the transaction I was tracing from April 1, 2010 the formula bar dispays the entry as 04/01/2010 and displays it as 01/04/10 in the spreadsheet.

The date column was formatted as custum mm/dd/yy. I tried changing the formatting but it always reads the data from the formula bar as dd/mm/yyyy and translates it that way unless the day is greater than 12.

I am working in English (Canada) setting in Control panel.

Does anyone have a suggestion to get back to the way things were? Or is it time to teach this old dog to think in a different format? ( I remember pencil and paper)

Larry

Alternatively, format an entirely different cell with the appropriate date format, and reinsert the formula in the new cell by hand.
then copy the content of the new cell over the old one, and erase the data. It may be the case that excel has a buggy conversion utility for date, so rewriting the cell with a new reference address may do the trick.

Again HTH

Paul

I am using Excel 2007 in Windows 7 Ultimate

I have a sheet that was created in Excel 97, or maybe earlier. The sheet tracks buy and sell transactions. Recently I noticed a discrepency and upon investigating I found taht there is a problem with the dates.

It has always been the norm to enter dates in teh short form 06/30/10 for June 30,2010. I noticed that the dates in the formula bar are now displayed as 30/06/2010 and in most cases they display in the spreadsheet correctly. However, in the case of the transaction I was tracing from April 1, 2010 the formula bar dispays the entry as 04/01/2010 and displays it as 01/04/10 in the spreadsheet.

The date column was formatted as custum mm/dd/yy. I tried changing the formatting but it always reads the data from the formula bar as dd/mm/yyyy and translates it that way unless the day is greater than 12.

I am working in English (Canada) setting in Control panel.

Does anyone have a suggestion to get back to the way things were? Or is it time to teach this old dog to think in a different format? ( I remember pencil and paper)

Larry

I would open excel blank.
Set your default to mm/dd/yy

open the 97 spreadsheet and then save as a new sheet in current excel format
change default to dd/mm/yy
re-save.
Celebrate with a short trip around the room.

HTH (errors and over-flippancy mine).

Paul

Windows used to have a basic photo editing program built in (XP?) that permitted some delightful effects: watercolour, charcoal, pen & ink, etc. FYI, NOT Paint. Several years ago i searched the ms database and found instructions on how to reload the mini program, and have since lost the instructions as well as the the editing program’s name. Neither of the current photo editing apps installed provide these effects [MS Digital Image Suite 2006, HP Photosmart Essential 3.5] as well as that mini application.

Do you recall what the mini program was called, any idea if i can still obtain it?

Thank you kindly!

You can do all this with GIMP, the free graphics program, which is a photoshop alternative. It is quite deep, but comprehensive, and you have a number of effects.

HTH.

Huck

Ted,

Thank you for your comprehensive reply.

I was unable to do a re-install ( I tried) but on my small SSD 60Gb (30Gb C: partition) it didn’t have quite enough room.

So I have tried again on the 1T HDD and have managed to get a new Win 7 system going and then the old restored using the Spotmau backup.

I like your idea of an Acronis of the previously newly installed Win 7 on the 1T – 69 updates done then a backup – so that’s now a starter for restore to the SSD – I am currently doing an Acronis again as I have more things going.

I don’t know how secure to feel, however I have rebooted 20 times in the last 3 hours and I still have the exe working.

Thanks once again. I still don’t know why the problem occurred but I will really ‘clean’ the SSD before I try to restore.

Bryan

Hi,

It sounds like a disk error. One way to solve this is to use a secure delete prog, which has the capability of moving files, erasing their physical presence, and any underlying data, then reinserting them. Evidence-eliminator does this.

Alternatively, a registry repair prog may have helped, such as CCleaner, as the registry may have been misreading the requirement to “execute” the .exe files.

HTH.

Paul

Hi Paul,
It isn’t the only way forward, but adding the attachments to read only space still doesn’t prevent the links to that space being deleted from the document (which has the same end-user result as deleting the objects themselves) and is unlikely to work once you send the file to someone (eg an external client) who doesn’t have access to the intranet on which the linked files are stored.

Agreed. Thank you.

Hi Macropod,

On the first point, agreed, my bad.

Re; the second, I was thinking (though not clearly explaining) that I had in mind a self extracting Zip, not with a fixed location, but extracting the whole file to one location, so that relative links would be workable. However, I acknowledge the point about inability to prevent changes to the document. The idea was a read only zip. Agreed not an elegant solution.

The third solution works, I agree. However, if read only is the way forward, why not add the attachments to read only space?

Another way might be to have it as a read only template, but then when opened it can be amended without affecting the template? There is then no issue with deletion/amendment.

One more thing one this….
I understand that the REF fields will change when you tab away, or when you exit the document.
I would like the REF fields to change upon pressing a submit button, and I would want the
document to to remain unchanged when I close it.

Is this possible?
Thanks again.

Would it work if you set the document up as a template and saved the templated document?

Alternatively you could use fillin fields, though you would have to set these up to fill in on open. the text would then be inserted, but you would have a kind of database entry system rather than a drop down list within the document.

Thanks for checking this out. The problem appears to be the clipboard itself, and I have posted about that separately.

I don’t know about the clipboard problem, but I did code something similar, to create a table, and I forgot to put the cursor at the beginning of the line after each carriage return. I don’t know the code but usually use the “record macro” command to provide the code and doctor it from there.

HTH.

Paul

Why not add a macro button to the template that saves the embedded items to the user’s profile (say userMy Documents). Tell the user to click the button, then the embedded items will be external to the document and linked to by a relative link in the document. There should then be no issue with opening the items.

Alternatively put the whole bundle into a zipfile and extract that to a fixed location, same issue but this time the document can’t be amended.

If the access is via server (as it seems) why not put the word document (and the embedded items) into read only with user privileges restricted? If amendments are prohibited, it seems appropriate to have the entire document propagated to a read-only server space. It’s difficult to know what is intended from what you have said.