Merging 2 Cells without losing content of either.

Another trick I learned but then forgot about.

Merging two cells in excel without losing content is pretty easy, but you have to follow a few steps to get it nice and clean if you’re using the final result for a feed into a database or something. I have two cells I am trying to merge the html contents of both into one.

To Combine the Contents:

Column A has content

Column B has content

In column C type the following:  =a1&” “&b1

you can then highlight and entire column if you want and paste this and it will combine the contents of column A with Column B and leave a space in between. If you don’t want the space, enter =a1&”"&b1 instead with no space between the quotes.

Adding or appending text to contents of cells.

Ok, another help article more for myself, but maybe somone else will benefit from this one.

I have a row of data in an excel worksheet. I want to add a file name extention to the contents like .jpg or .gif. Every name is unique so I can’t do a find and replace so how do I add an extension to all of these file names. I figured out a fairly simple solution thanks to a google search so I am recording it here so I can find it again the next time I need to do this.

If you select the entire column, then right click and go to “Format Cells” Select custom at the bottom of the list and then in the text field above the list of custom formating options you can type in @”.jpg” where .jpg is the extention you want to add.

One catch: you can’t insert some pieces of code like “> closing tag instead of the file name. It just doesn’t work for some reason. For this I thought I might add a unique extension like 10005 to the end of every cell and then do a find and replace, but Excel’s find and replace won’t do that for some reason. I’m still looking for the solution to this. I’ve done it before I just can’t remember what I did.

Using Find and Replace in Microsoft Excel

I recently download several hundred products from my shopping cart system and was looking for a quick way to update a whole bunch of url paths for images that were in html fields on the website. So what I had was a .csv file with a slew of cells filled with html. The find and replace feature on excel works wonderfully, but apparently it has a limit to the number of characters in a cell it will search. No matter how i changed formatting or “Find” perameters I kept getting this error that excel could not find the text. I have used the find an replace feature quite a bit before so I was baffled as to why it would not work. After an hour or so struggling with it I found the solution.

First i copied and pasted the column I needed to change and put it in a new workbook (just so i didn;t mess up the original). Then I saved the new workbook as an XML file. Opened the xml file in dreamweaver (i’m sure another html editor would work). Once in dreamweaver I was easily able to do the find and replace of the URL i needed. Then I saved the document (again as an xml file) opened it in Microsoft Excel and copied the column and put it back into the original document. This seemed to do the trick and all my URLS are now how working wonderfully. Too bad it took me 2 hrs to figure out a porcess that only took minutes. And so here it is in blog form so I can find the solution next time I need it.

bank deposit slips

whats the point? The teller has to double check you anyway. 99% of the time I have just one check to deposit and they require me to put my account number on the check. Then i have to put my name, check amount and account number on the deposit slip - all of that information is already on the check! I can see it for a business that is depositing multiple checks, but I just think its a waste of paper for every single transaction since everything is computerized once its entered anyway.

I stopped by the bank today with one check. Waited in line in the drive up and when I got there they are out of deposit slips. So i send in my check with all the pertinent information. When the teller finally responds she asks where I want it – I say, in the account number written on my check. She says “I’ll need you to fill out a deposit slip and send it back.” Then I have to wait for them to cycle through the other three cars before they can get to mine again that now has the same information on two papers. Saved both of us a bunch of time huh? Now she has to double check my slip and my check and enter it into the computer when she could have just entered the info off the check. I’m easily irritated I guess. I don’t have a problem filling out the slip if they have them, but geez I’m giving them my money to hold and make interest off of while they give me a few cents kickback in a low interest checking account. Seems like they could do me a favor and fill out a slip real quick so I don’t have to keep waiting in line til they can get back around to me.

Maybe i just don’t get it. Maybe they need the slip really bad. I don’t know, but even still isn’t that the tellers job to double check every deposit? I’m probably the only one that gets irritated with this. I’m sure all the tellers out there will hate me for it, but going to the bank shouldn’t be like going to the DMV.

there’s my rant for the day, i’m outta here.

allergies blow

i get them every fall. i’m really getting tired of it. I can’t sleep at night, i feel lousy during the day and I seem to quickly become immune the the effects of over the counter drugs. I need to see a professional about those allergy shots I hear about where they narrow down your allergic reactions and do something about it. Of course it doesn’t help that there is a hay field behind our house that they just cut, and the fall is my favorite time to run up to the mountains for a little 4 wheeling – the dust always triggers the allergies. I’ve been sleeping most of the day today and still feel lousy. It’s getting old.

view

Today Spence and I took some ATVs up Millville canyon to the top of the mountain. We have taken this route several times which passed a fork in the road. We always wondered where it went, but we had another destination planned so we skipped it. Today we decided to explore a little more so we took the fork and followed it to the end. We wound up at the very tip of a cliff. Turns out the fork in the road just leads up to a scenic overlook, but it was a spectacular one. We sat there on the edge of a huge rock wall looking down over a really steep and very deep canyon with layers of mountains as far as we could see in the distance. The scenery was incredible. It’s amazing that we have this just 45 minutes up a canyon from our backyard and I’ll bet most of my neighbors don’t even know that its there. So we sat there on the ledge and drank a cold gatorade and discussed various things – mostly ideas to pursue with his ATV Accessory Business -  as we took in the view. We decided we need to get in the mountains more often than we do. We see too many busy streets and not enough of nature.

Labor day is not always for labor

Labor day weekend is one of those weekends that everyone looks forward to so they can get out of town and vacation a bit. Not me, I opted to labor in my yard all weekend. Actually it wasn’t the entire weekend. I spent all day saturday rebuilding a retaining wall structure that I am building for garden boxes. It was a hot day, but i managed to get nearly all of it done, though by the end of the day i was really tired and my feet were throbbing from all the pouncing on the shovel. I don’t love digging holes. The heat was not as bad as it could have been, but the sun wears you out. I pushed hard to get as much done as I could on Saturday so that Monday I could just do whatever i wanted. Monday came around and it was pouring rain for most of the day.

We couldn’t really go anywhere because of the rain, so I decided to take my little boy four wheeling in the FJ beacuse that is always adventurous in the rain. The stormy weather made the trails pretty muddy so I chose a real rocky course up Millville canyon. We had fun and made it quite far up the mountain, but finally got to a point that I had to turn around. Well, I didn’t have to but when you decide to do something spur of the moment, have no warmer clothing, not recovery gear and an 8 month old in the car you tend to be cautious about the predicaments you get yourself into. We came to a steep section where the road was at an incline side to side and a huge rut on the right. Because of the recent rain, as soon as I started up the hill I slid right into the rut. I think I could have kept going but without a winch or another adult to help I decided to come back another day. I don’t know why I like to crawl up rough roads in a vehicle, but I do. Probably because my parents used to take us as kids, and as teenagers my brothers and I got ourselves into all kinds of interesting situations that made for good memories. Its fun going to less traveled places and seeing the scenery that comes with it whether you’re on a mt bike, hiking or 4wheeling. I should probably be mt biking more than 4wheeling, but it’s easier to take my little son in the vehicle. He loves the trailer behind my bike and the fj wheeling. He’s always smiling in either situation - he even took a nap throught the roughest part yesterday. I wish I could sleep like that.

getting soft

office jobs are lame, but I like it. It’s just a double edged sword. I mean i wouldn’t want to be digging trenches or whatever in the heat of the summer of the cold of the winter. I’m a wimp I guess but the nice, warm [or cool] office is a pretty good way to work. The problem is that i sit at my chair too much and my body is going soft. In addition to that I have spent a lot of time this year at the hospital with my daughter and there is not much you can do there. You just sit and wait for test results or until she gets well enough to go home. As a result I think I am in worse shape now than I have ever been. Not because I have gained a ton of weight, but because my muscles do not get enough excercise. I really need to do something about it. I have been biking several times this year and my neighbors are kicking my butt on easy rides that i shouldn’t have a problem with at all. I just don’t have the legs these days and its really starting to bug me. I think i’m going to buy one of those reclined stationary bikes so i can pedal beneath my desk while I work.  Or maybe I’ll build a stairclimber desk where the stairclimber provides the power for my computer so I can’t stop climbing if I want to earn a living.

Or, maybe I should just set some time away each day to get some physical activity so I can prolong my life on earth.

Everyday vs. Every Day

Grammer is not my forte and I’m the first to admit it. I’ll just as readily admit that I make mistakes because we all do – some just admit it more than others. I make a lot so I have to admit it because it’s pretty obvious most of the time. So when I was deciding on the right tag line for my door hardware business I really thought about it to make sure I used the right words. The slogan we came up with is “opening new doors everyday” I debated for some time between using the word everyday, or every day. Both are correct, but have slightly different meanings. I of course meant opening new doors on a daily basis so I should have used every day – two words. Instead i used the one word version because it just seemed more simple. However, one word means ordinary or common place. While we do sell some door knobs that are ordinary or commonplace, that wasn’t quite the meaning I was looking for. I didn’t realize this mistake until a customer emailed and told us about it. It’s pretty embarrassing yes; and now I will have to replace the lettering on our business vehicle and anything that has the logo on it. And I have a lot of pens that we had made with the grammatical error. Oh well, I could have made worse mistakes. The only thing I am wondering is why my two neighbors that are teachers never said anything to me as I drove past in the slogan embelished vehicle – maybe they just thought I was striving to be ordinary. I am fairly mediocre.

This is a lesson to all of you business owners out there. Do more research before deciding on a slogan or preparing any other kind of marketing materials.

Wyoming

So I’m up in the north west of WY for the night. I love coming up here. Not just because my parents live here, but because the scenery is incredible, traffic is minimal and its so peaceful and quiet. I just put my kids to bed and as I stood there looking at their cute little faces on their pillows I could hear the faint sound of irrigation sprinklers. The window was open a crack with a cool breeze of clean air and the smell of wet alfalfa fields outside drifted in. What a peaceful way to fall asleep.

I’ve considered moving to Wyoming. I’m weird perhaps but the small town slower paced life sounds appealing to me. The clean air and beautiful scenery is a bonus. Here people know you by name. You stop by the grocery or hardware store and the owners and employees know you. Everyone waves whether they know you or not because they just assume they know you - if they don’t they know your parents. We live in a great neighborhood now though, and it would be hard to leave the good neighbors and friends next door.

Another Bonus: no state income tax and license plates with a bronco on them.