Building a Wooden Gate

I recently needed to build a wooden gate. After reading many websites and watching scores of videos, I realized that many people use the technique of building the gate on a flat surface (i.e. concrete floor) and then lifting it into place.

However, I found the method described in this video yielded a precision, built-to-fit result with the least amount of effort.

Excel Pivot Tables

Years ago, a friend introduced me to Microsoft Excel pivot tables. This is one of the most powerful and easy-to-use features of Excel, yet the vast majority of employees that work with spreadsheets know nothing about it. I am convinced that training employees to make use of this one feature could revolutionize the way that an organization looks at data.

Some of the immediate benefits include:

• Quickly analyze spreadsheets and provide summarized, meaningful reports and graphs
• Quickly identify data trends
• Quickly identify data issues

Microsoft has a no cost, online course from which anyone can benefit:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/training/pivottable-i-what-s-so-great-about-pivottable-reports-RZ001013617.aspx

Excel Formulas for Finding Column Letters and Numbers

Formula to return the column letter for any cell.
=SUBSTITUTE(ADDRESS(1,COLUMN(E3),4),"1","")
This formula will produce the result: E

Formula to convert a column letter into the column number:
=COLUMN(INDIRECT(CONCATENATE("E","1")))
This formula will produce the result: 5