Excel Paste Special

The following comes from a newsletter issued by Exceljet.net:

Do you use Paste Special every day?

If not, you could be wasting a lot of time in Excel.

Paste Special sounds boring, but it's a gateway to many hidden and powerful features:
 

A treasure trove of powerful features lies here!

With paste special, you can easily:

• Convert formulas to static values
• Paste data without borders
• Paste formulas without cell formatting
• Paste values without any formatting at all
• Copy column widths (bizarre, but useful!)
• Extend formatting down a large table
• Copy and paste comments
• Copy and paste data validation
• Clone a pivot table (without source data or controls)

Not only that, you can use Paste Special to change values without formulas. This lets you do things like:

• Add 30 days to column of dates
• Subtract a penny from a sheet of prices
• Increase sales projections by 10%

All without formulas.

If all that's not enough, Paste Special lets you transpose vertical data to horizontal, and vice versa!

The bottom line: Paste Special is a killer feature you should use every day in Excel.

Some ways to protect yourself online

Cyber-crime is a huge problem in today's world. Ransomware continues to grow. Here are a few things you can do to protect yourself:

Fight fraud: Scams, identity theft, ransomware attacks

Free Windows 10 Upgrade — Not Over Yet

If you missed getting the free upgrade to Windows 10 and if you are now desperate to get the latest version of Windows (despite all its many problems), you may want to read the latest How-to Geek report on upgrading to Windows 10 simply using your existing Windows 7 or Windows 8/8.1 activation key.

Windows 10: Is it any wonder?

The more I read and hear about Window 10, the more I dislike what Microsoft is doing.

Am I surprised? No, it is not a surprise at all. Microsoft has been a bully for decades.

Am I disappointed? Frankly, no I am not disappointed. This may be one more reason for people to look for an alternative. Some of my friends have gone the Apple Mac way, some the Linux way.

Am I converting? No, no, no! Very soon I will test an alternative approach. If all goes well, I will do completely without Windows on my home system. if necessary, I will install CodeWeavers' CrossOver (they are having a 40% off special on their site) to run a few Windows apps that I may still need for work-related projects. Otherwise, I will be done with the whole Windows mess. I will report here on my progress.

If you want more details, feel free to read the comprehensive analysis that How-to Geeks has published of Windows 10 after a year of complaints.

Check your router for malware

Our connection to the Internet is vital, and every part of that connection is vulnerable to problems, including security issues. Here is a nice article on checking your router to make sure it is secured: How to Check Your Router for Malware

Who is right? Who is wrong?

In a normal day many of us tend to make judgments as to right or wrong. It seems that around election time the right or wrong dichotomy becomes even more visible. The media and the political parties push us to select one side or the other, and most of them want us to ignore the middle.

Shortly after joining my first job out of college, one of the senior engineers, Dan Sinto,  told me something that stuck with me to this date. Life is not about black or white, but about all the greys in between.

The best way to make progress is for all of us to find the grey areas between the extremes, the middle of the road.

You can read more about this in a great blog post by Leo Babauta: http://zenhabits.net/true-way/.

We also make progress when we become aware of our judgement of others or of ourselves. This awareness is growth in itself.

Is a NUC PC in your future?

It is a well-known fact that PCs have been becoming smaller over the years. And small PCs are not new; we have seen brick-size PCs in the past. However, these workstations were, generally, somewhat slow and limited.

But a new generation of very small computers is gaining popularity and their features are rather impressive.

Here is nice article about the new NUC PCs:

http://www.howtogeek.com/231978/htg-explains-what-is-a-nuc-pc-and-should-you-get-one/

Enjoy!

Windows 10 users banned from some websites

It appears some websites are banning Windows 10 users out of concern for how users of the new OS are being tracked: http://ind.pn/1h8fQVZ

In the small write up I received via email, it ends with this:

While most of these fears are a little ridiculous, we’ve already pointed out that there are at least 30 places that Windows is sending information back to Microsoft. We’re definitely in a different era — at this point you need to assume that everything you use is sending data back to somebody, and that includes your operating system. 

If you’re really worried about privacy, it’s probably time to switch to Linux.

Indeed, it is time for LINUX!

Personally, my system will soon go back to dual-booting. Linux will again be my main OS.

More Windows 10 articles

Here are four more good Windows 10 articles:

• How to Configure and Customize the Taskbar in Windows 10
• The Windows 10 FAQ: Everything You Need to Know
• How to Disable OneDrive and Remove It From File Explorer on Windows 10
• How to Personalize Windows 10’s Appearance

Windows 10 Tips & Tricks

Here are a few useful Windows 10 techniques that you may want to reference (all courtesy of How-to Geek):

• How to Uninstall Windows 10’s Built-in Apps (and How to Reinstall Them)
• How to Set Timers, Alarms, and Stopwatches in Windows 10
• How to Monitor Your Network Usage in Windows 10

Enjoy!

How to Legally Download Windows Install Media

I just came across a great article on How-To Geek that explains how to download and install various versions of Windows. This is very useful information in case you need to re-install or upgrade Windows.

Gmail and Yahoo Mail Conversations

One of the features of Google's GMail that I have disliked the most is the "conversation" display. It makes it hard to keep up with many email threads, especially if someone responds to an email changing the topic of the thread without changing the subject of the message.

Recently, Yahoo instituted the "conversation" schema in the Yahoo! Mail service.

Fortunately, you can disable the "conversation" mode for both. Here is how to do it.

Gmail

1. Click the settings icon on the right-top corner and then select "Settings"
   
2. Look down the page a little and find the"Conversation View" setting.
3. Click on the "Conversation view off" radio button
   
4. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the "Save Changes" button
   

Yahoo

1. Click the settings icon on the right-top corner and then select "Settings"
   
2. On the left, select "Viewing email"
   
3. The top choice will be "When viewing message lists" and to the right there will be a checkbox labeled "Enable conversations"; make sure that checkbox is not checked on.
   
4. Click the "Save" button at the bottom of the panel.
   

Gizmo's Freeware: The best repository for free stuff

Gizmo's Freeware | Find the best freeware fast

At this community website you'll find the very best freeware programs each selected by our independent editors because of their quality and performance. Many of these programs are as good as or better than their commercial counterparts so why pay for what you can get for free?

One of the most interesting finds there is Open Culture, which was a recent site of the week. Open Culture is a great repository of free education, including hundreds of courses in a wide range of subjects.

Enjoy!

Free books!

For quite sometime now I have been receiving free (and very inexpensive) e-books from BookBub

BookBub: Free and Bargain Kindle Books, Nook Books, and more

I can read them anywhere on my SmartPhone or any computer. Love it!

Pricing Considerations

Nice article on how to price goods and services: Why Margin Matters

PDFEscape

Sometimes one just gets lucky. I was looking for a quick and easy way to fill-in a few fields in a PDF form. Adobe Reader could not handle the form properly (go figure!). A quick search resulted in this great find:

PDFescape - Free PDF Editor & Free PDF Form Filler - Your Free Online PDF Reader, Editor, Form Filler, Form Designer, Solution

It was easy to use yet powerful and free. Can't go wrong with that combination. I had the form filled in and saved back to my hard drive in seconds. Give them a try!

Quitting Your Day-time Job

Here is a good article about someone that transitioned into running his own business:

How I (Finally) Quit My Day Job To Run My Computer Business

5+ Great Ways to Re-Purpose Old PCs

5 Great Ways to Re-Purpose Old PCs for Customers

In addition to the items listed in this article, our Linux Users Group has installed a version of GNU/Linux on older machines and then donated them to several organizations, such as SisterCare and various community recreational centers that otherwise would not have access to computers. Donations from members and the community have provided dozens of good computers that needed only a free OS.

Another idea worth considering is to advertise any unwanted equipment at freecycle.org. People will gladly come and get these computers from you if given a chance.

Cisco's "Cloud" Move is a bad idea

Cisco locks customers out of their own routers, only lets them back in if they agree to being spied upon and monetized - Boing Boing

Since when did it become acceptable for corporations to hijack equipment and force things down a customer's throat? Oh, wait … ever since Microsoft forced Windows down the throats of OEM manufacturers and made itself the defacto operating system for desktop computers; that's about the right time when this whole thing got started. Many others have followed (Apple is one example) and have gotten away with it for far too long.

But Cisco's latest move is pure terrorism on its clients. Many of us will not stand for it. Routers are not all that expensive (in the $50-$80 range) and there are several manufacturers to choose from, companies that hopefully will not follow Cisco's example and try to kidnap customers into agreements that are damaging to the Internet as a whole.

On this Fourth of July, we should follow William Wallace's (form the movie Braveheart) and shout at the top of of our lungs: FREEDOM!!!

Another computer visionary lost

Dennis Ritchie, 1941-2011: Computer scientist, Unix co-creator, C programming language designer – Boing Boing

Computer scientist Dennis Ritchie is reported to have died at his home this past weekend, after a long battle against an unspecified illness. No further details are available at the time of this blog post.