Of Zen and Computing » office

Mark Points on an Excel Chart with a Vertical Line

Of Zen and Computing — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 20:41:58 +0000

“How To Add a Vertical Line to an Excel XY Chart” by The Closet Entrepeneur provides instructions for marking points of interest on an Excel chart with vertical lines.

This tutorial may be particularly interesting to anyone who plots a series of data points over time with Excel. Using these instructions, one can mark “points of interest” along the X axis of an Excel chart in order to give context to the data. The author illustrates this by plotting his RSS subscribers over time, and the inserting a vertical line that shows the point at which is site was featured on a popular blog. The line can help to explain fluctuations in your data, and can be especially helpful when you are putting together a report that will be read by other people.

Quickly Generate Lorem Ipsum Text in a Microsoft Word Document

Of Zen and Computing — Thu, 14 May 2009 01:22:11 +0000

Microsoft Word 2007 has a simple shortcut that lets you generate Lorem Ipsum filler text with just a few keystrokes. You can enter the =lorem() function to generate a block of filler text, or provide arguments to the function to customize its output.

The complete function for adding a custom block of Lorem Ipsum filler text to your Word document is as follows:

=lorem(Number of paragraphs, Number of lines)

Just enter this function (starting with the equals sign) and hit Enter to generate your filler text. The parameters are optional, but allow you to specify how many paragraphs and lines of text should be generated. If this function does not work, click the Office Button, click “Word Options”, click “Proofing”, click “AutoCorrect Options”, and make sure “Replace text as you type” is checked off.

For more information about generating random text in your office documents, see the Microsoft Office KnowledgeBase article “How to insert sample text in Microsoft Office Word 2007”. It contains more information about the =lorem() function as well as instructions for inserting random text in older versions of Microsoft Word.

You can also generate Lorem Ipsum text using one of many online generators such as the Lipsum generator.

Tip via “Use Microsoft Word to Generate Lorem Ipsum Text”.

How to Open .xlsx Files

Of Zen and Computing — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 16:06:27 +0000

A friend sent me a .xlsx file. What is it, and how do I open it?

An XLSX file is an Excel spreadsheet that was created with Microsoft Office 2007. Office 2007 includes a new XML-based file format — files saved in this new format have an “x” appended to the file extension in order to differentiate them from the traditional MS Office file types — Word Documents are now .docx files, Excel spreadsheets are now .xlsx files, and PowerPoint files are now .pptx files.

If you do not own Microsoft Office, you can use the Excel Viewer from Microsoft to look at the .xlsx file. The latest version of the Excel Viewer software is compatible with the latest file formats from Microsoft Office 2007.

If you have Microsoft Office XP or Office 2003, you can open .xlsx files by installing the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack.