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Office Suites October
by By John Heenan, Jcheenan@csi.com - December 02, 2000 at 23:26:24:
As a normal routine, the agenda for each meeting will now include a review of last month’s topics and questions. Generally, I find something new to add to the topic while writing this report. Sometimes that addition is the result of a question that I could have answered more effectively.This month’s review started with the data entry in Access. Previously, we looked at how to create a query of cities from the customer table, in order to make it easier to enter data by simply selecting a city name previously entered into the database. In the City Name field of the customer form, the user can search for the appropriate city from the pull down list or begin typing the city name since Access does a fuzzy search.
A question from last month regarding this search asked if it was possible to key the Postal Code and automatically insert the city name. Although this may be the choice of methods of City Name and Postal Code data entry, I decided to show a second query of the customer table that was dependent on data that was previously entered into the form. This Postal code query included a criteria that tested the value of the City name that had been entered into the form. Using this second query also meant that the Data and Format properties of the Postal Codes combo box would differ from the City Name combo box properties. These properties are Column Count, Column Width, List Width, and Bound Column.
The second review item was the creation of pull-down list or combo box in Excel. Last month, I could not find the Validation command under the Data menu. It seems that the worksheet is tagged as shared when it is copied to a Briefcase folder. Once the check mark in the Share Workbook dialog, found under the Tools menu, is removed the Data|Validation command becomes visible. Lastly, we reviewed the text functions LEFT, MID, FIND and the MID and FIND functions in combination.
The main topic for the month was the Report Manager in Excel. In this demonstration, we looked at how to use the Report Manager by first creating two custom views. The first view contained a simple list of phone numbers, addresses, and area codes. The second view contained a count of the area codes and its graph. To add the first View, select the three columns, choose Custom Views under the View menu, and complete the dialog.
If we are working on another part of the worksheet and wish to sort or list the view, return to Custom View, highlight the view name, and select the Show button. Before printing the list, go to the File menu, select Print Area|Set Print Area. To refine the look of our list, select Page Setup in the File menu. On the Page tab, generally the only changes are to Orientation and Scaling. The “Fit to” option is handy when the width of all the columns in the list will not fit to one page. Remember to adjust the “tall” by the original number of pages in the list. On the Margins tab, check Horizontally. On the Header/Footer tab, standard headers and footers can be selected from the respective pull-down lists and then customized. On the Sheet menu, we noticed that the Print area has been predetermined by the Custom View and the Set Print Area command. If column heading are desired for each page of the listing, fill in the range of cells in “Rows to repeat at the top”. This View should be ready for printing.
Once the second view was created to include a Count Summary of area codes and its graph, we then went to Report Manager under View. If it does not appear. then load the Report Manager add-in in Microsoft Excel. Click the Add button, and as the Add Report dialog opens, give the report a name. In the Section to Add, choose the source sheet that contains the first view of the report. From the View pull down list, find the Phone List and click the Add button. The Phone list appears in the Sections in this Report list. Again, from the View pull down list, find the Count Summary and chart view, and click the Add button. We now show the two views in the Section in this Report. Close the Dialog and we see the Report manager dialog. By clicking on the Print button, we see two entries in the Print Manager for each of the two Views in the report. Anytime we want this report, we can go to View|Report Manager, select the report and click the Print Button.
November’s topic is Word 97 vs. Word 2000, a side-by-side view of their respective menu commands.
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