KnowledgeWave/Log On to Learn Blog

The TRIM function is a great tool to help clean up your data. The function looks at your data and removes all excess spaces at the beginning, middle or end of your data.

 

Did you know that we regularly update our free video content on Log on to Learn? In addition to no-fee live webinars we offer several on-demand videos that are completely free.  We hope that you’ll find great value in our free offerings. This week’s update included content for Microsoft Excel 2010!

Exploring Excel can be a daunting task. It’s a flexible application that can do so many different things. If your intimidated looking for things in Excel, let us provide some tips. This week’s selection of videos will unlock some functions and features of Excel 2010. Our full Log On To Learn video library has a complete set of videos around all these features and much more.

Available Videos Include:

Excel 2010:
Data Analysis Revealed! Forecasting, Analyzing and Creating Informative Reports
Getting External Data from Access, The Web, Text and Other Sources
Calculate Specific Results Under Two Different Conditions with the IF Function
Wrapping Text

These videos are completely free. You can view them here: http://logontolearn.com/free_videos.php

Don’t for get to register for our live events on the 23rd. Topics for our live events include:

Access 2010:
Establishing a Primary Key and Indexing Fields
Creating Tables and Building Relationships

Excel 2010
Exploring Charts
Headers, Footers and Printing Options

Register Online for these free events: http://logontolearn.com/free_webinars.php

Watch as our Excel expert takes you into the function library and reveals the usefulness of the IF function.  Need specific results under two different conditions?  Learn how to apply true or false statements to your formula and generate results baised on your criteria.

 

6 Tips to Keep You Safe Online

Like it or not, the Internet is now part of our daily lives. While it is laden with wonderful informative things and a lifetime of educational readings, it also has its “bad neighborhoods” and underhanded computer and website hackers. With online dangers increasing every day, it is important to be careful when you’re online and learn safety tips that you and your family can follow to keep yourselves and your data safe. Following these tips can help keep you protected while online and steer clear of trouble.

1. Be Proactive In your Defense

The following list is a simple yet effective way to put a wall up between you and the not-so-friendly parts of the Internet. Taking these steps will provide a fundamental barrier to help keep your family and your data safe.

• Keep your computer updated with recommended security updates using update programs from your operating system vendor, such as Microsoft Update or a similar program.
• Make sure to install and properly configure legitimate antivirus and antispyware software. Remember to update the software on a frequent basis as viruses and malware are introduced on the Internet every day.
• Make sure that your Internet firewall is always on and functioning. Even when you are not using the computer, the firewall should be on.
• If you have a wireless network, make sure that you have a strong password and monitor your wireless router activity on a regular basis.
• Always confirm senders before opening emails, attachments, and/or instant messages. If possible, have your antivirus program scan all emails for viruses prior to opening them.
• If it looks suspicious, don’t click it!

2. Be Smart When Creating Passwords

A strong password is vital in protecting your electronic data, which can include important things like credit card numbers, social security numbers and bank account information. As a general guideline, your passwords should be at least eight or more characters, include letters, punctuation marks, symbols, and numbers. The greater variety of characters in your passwords, the better protected you are. Never use the word “password” as your password, or easily guessable phrases like “abc123”. Most computer hackers and identity thieves will try these simple passwords in their initial attack to break into your personal information.  An example of a good password would be KwiM#1rO (Knowledgewave is my #1 resource Online).

Change your passwords often and use a variety of passwords, when necessary. Create email reminders to change all of your passwords periodically and never use the same password for multiple purposes. Never use the same password for every single thing. Cybercriminals will steal your user data and passwords from websites that have inadequate security and then attempt to use these passwords on high security websites, such as your bank website.

3. Be Extremely Careful With Your Personal Information

It is imperative to be careful and conscious of where you share your personal information. Be aware of who may ask for your information. At times, you may be required by legitimate entities to divulge personal information such as your social security number to a state unemployment website, or your home address to your 401K management website. Be overly cautious whenever you give out this information and never give out personal information to anyone who approaches you asking for it.

Be aware of what you use in your email signatures. Avoid placing your company name, title, phone numbers, and email addresses in your signature file unless your company requires you to do so. If you must have a signature file, do not use the email account to participate in public forums or for other public websites.

Check what’s already out there! Search engines like Google and Yahoo! have the capability of searching the web for your name. If you place quotation marks around your name in the search engine and do a search, you will see any mentions of your name that the search engines have found online. You can visit these sites to find out what, if any, of your personal information is already out there. Make sure you check family members’ names as well.

Most importantly, use your common sense and don’t give your passwords out to anyone. Remember, no legitimate company will ever ask you for your password. There are rare cases when support people will ask you for your password, but make sure that it is only when you call them, you feel comfortable, and the password is absolutely required. Afterward, you should immediately change the password.

4. Be Aware of Your Children’s Online Behavior

Monitoring your children’s internet use is critical to keeping your data safe. No matter how much security software you have on your computer, nothing compares to personally monitoring your kids’ Internet activity. An involved, concerned parent is the best protection for children.

In today’s socially slanted Internet environment and social networks like Facebook and Twitter maintain their dominance, watching your children’s online behavior is more paramount than ever. All it takes is a single mistake and your personal information – phone number, address, place of employment – can spread across the Internet like wildfire. This brings about dangers that can become a parent’s worst nightmare. A parent can never be too concerned over their children, so do whatever you need to do to keep you and your family safe from online dangers, which can turn into offline dangers as well. Even if it means taking unsupervised Internet access away from your child, it’s better than many consequences of not doing it.

5. Be Cautious With Social Networks

Speaking of Facebook and Twitter, many cybercriminals use social networking sites to gather information about you in order to answer security questions to gain access to your online account. You should limit the information you share online and remember, never post anything you would not want on a roadside billboard. Be extremely cautious in posting pictures of yourself and your children online or allowing anyone else to. As sensitive as this may be, the fact is that there are predators lurking the Internet to find the perfect person and/or child to stalk. Avoid attracting trouble altogether and help keep this from happening to you and your family. Again, educating your children about these dangers is not only very important, it is eye-opening for many kids.

6. Inform Yourself of Current Online Scams

It seems as if every day we hear about a new online scam that is deceiving unwitting Internet users of their money. To stay as safe as possible, you need to be aware of the latest scams that are spreading across the Internet and avoid them at all costs. You can use Google to research the latest scams, but make sure any links you click on are from trusted sites. You may also wish to frequent websites like http://www.snopes.com that post the latest popular scams.

Stay Safe Online

Taking a few steps in online safety can protect you and your family from a world of trouble. Keep your family safe by being informed and getting everyone involved in online safety. Keeping up to date with the latest in internet protection will decrease your chances of being preyed on by hackers, predators and cybercriminals.

Erin Palmer is a writer and editor for Bisk Education. She works with Villanova University’s information assurance training program. Villanova also offers other cyber security training courses 100% online.  KnowledgeWave Training provides traditional classroom training and online on-demand training via Log on to Learn.

Microsoft Excel is a wellspring of useful features for so many different purposes. That’s why this month we’re having an Excel-ent lunch with our Lunch Bites series. Two of this month’s topics will focus on varying aspects of Excel. The first will look at Excel charts while the second will look at headers, footers and printing options. Let’s be honest, we’ve all been flustered by the printing appearance of our spreadsheets in Excel.
These free sessions are just 15 minutes of your time, but will reward you with great time-saving tips and tricks that will save you hours. Come for one, sign up for both, it’s up to you. Just don’t miss them!

Excel- Exploring Charts
Charts are a great way to display numerical data in a graphical way. Excel has many tools for creating charts of all kinds. This session will look at how to select the right data to create a chart that tells your story and uncover some of the tips and tricks to building eye-popping charts. We’ll also look at some of quick, easy formatting techniques to really make your chart stand out.

May 23, 2012, 2 PM
Duration: 15 minutes
Cost: FREE
Register Here

 
Excel- Headers, Footers and Printing Options
Once our data and formulas are in our spreadsheets, our work is still not complete. Just about everyone who’s worked in Excel has hit the print button only to realize their spreadsheet doesn’t look how they thought. Excel has tools for getting the results you want, but they’re spread out and, sometimes, not easy to find. In this tutorial we’ll look at how to add headers and footers to your spreadsheet as well as how to manipulate print settings to get the look you need when the paper rolls out of the printer.

May 23, 2012, 2 PM
Duration: 15 minutes
Cost: FREE
Register Here

Fridays just feel like a day for rewards.  It’s the end of the week, we’ve put in a good effort and we’re looking ahead to the weekend.  Well, we’d like to give you something else on Fridays.  That’s why we’re introducing, Function Fridays.  Every Friday we’re going to post a new video tip on an Excel function… for free.  These short tutorials get right at the heart of how to use the functions that can make your Excel life easier.  Now, that sounds perfect for a Friday.

Our first tutorial is a quick tip on how to put the most recent revision date and time into a spreadsheet.  Enjoy!

 

This month’s lunch bite sessions include two events for Microsoft Access and are being held on Wednesday, May 23, 2012.  Simply click the register link and regiser online. Both events are completly free!

Access- Establishing a primary key and indexing fields

Description: Understanding relational databases is crucial before we dive into creating any new database. The foundation of relationships is understanding and establishing a primary key. In addition, indexing fields on some criteria makes sorts and queries faster down the road. This tutorial provides a quick look at how to establish a field as a primary key in a table and how to create single and multiple indexes on non-primary key fields.

Date: May 23, 2012
Start Time: 12:00 PM EDT
Duration: 15 Minutes

Register Online by Clicking Here

Access- Creating tables and building relationships

Description: Once you have your primary and foreign keys established, it’s time to build relationships between fields in multiple tables. These relationships become the connections that link data from disparate tables. In this session we start at the beginning of the table creation process and go right up through building relationships between separate tables.

Date: May 23, 2012
Start Time: 1:00 PM EDT
Duration: 15 Minutes

Register Online by Clicking Here

Did you know that KnowledgeWave and Log on to Learn provides database design, support and reporting services for Microsoft Access and SQL? We bring decades of database experience to the table and have helped 100’s of individuals and companies across North America meet their need for data capture and custom reporting.

Our instructors are consultants, they provide great on-demand video and interactive sessions via our Log on to Learn content library, but they can also provide on-site, or live online consulting services to help you with your database needs.

We’ve helped hundreds of clients turn their assortment of spreadsheets, external mailing lists and other documents into a streamlined, organized database. The result is more time to work on the things their businesses need from them and less time creating reports. Let us know how we can help you!

Call 1-800-831-8449 for more information on our database services.

Date ranges are a very common filter that database users  want to implement in their queries. For example, let’s say your company sells office supplies and your databases tracks customer orders. You want to run a monthly query that summarizes total orders.

 

 

 

 

You can save your database users time and frustration by creating a friendly, interactive form that allows them to enter a beginning order date and an ending order date. Then, with a click of a button, they can run a query that displays the order information for their specified date range.

Follow these steps (in Access 2007 or Access 2010):  Or click the PDF Icon to Download these steps in PDF format.

 

 

 

1. On the Create tab, click Form Design in the Forms group.

 

 

 

2. In the Form Design window, the Form Design Tools Group is now active.

3. In the Controls group, click the Text Box to add a text box to the form.

 

 

4.  Add a second text box to the form.

5. Change the caption in the label to be more descriptive (for example, Begin Order Date). Modify the second label (for example, End Order Date).

 

 

 

 

 

 

6. Click the “Unbound” portion of the first text box.

7. Make sure the Property Sheet pane is displayed on the right side of screen. Click Property Sheet, if the Property Sheet pane is not displayed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

8. On the Property Sheet, click the All tab.

9. Change the Name property to be descriptive (for example, txtBeginOrderDate).

10. Change the Format property to Short Date.

11. Click on the second “unbound” text box and change its Name and Format properties.

12. Save the parameter form. You can keep the parameter form open, since we’ll add a command button to it as our last step.

Modify the Query to Receive the Date Range Values from the Parameter Form

1. Open your query in Design View, or create the query, then switch to Design View.

2. In the Criteria row of the appropriate date field, right-click and select Build…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. The Expression Builder is now displayed. In the upper area, we’ll build an expression that selects the orders between a begin date and end date that’s entered in the parameter form.

4. Type the word between (followed by a space).

5. In the lower half of the Expression Builder, click on the (+) sign to the left of the Database name to expand the list.

6. Click on the (+) sign to the left of Forms.

7. If your interactive form is still open, you can expand the Loaded Forms list. If you closed the interactive form, expand All Forms. Click on the parameter form name.

8. In the middle area (under Expression Categories), you’ll see both text box names that you created on the interactive form

9. Double-click on the Begin Date text box. In the top-half of the Expression Builder, your expression may look something like:

between Forms![ParameterForm]![txtBeginOrderDate]

10. After the Begin Date text box name, type the word and, then double-click on the End Date text box name.

11. Your final formula will look something like this:

between Forms![ParameterForm]![txtBeginOrderDate] and Forms![ParameterForm]![txtEndOrderDate]

12. Click OK to save and close the Expression Builder.

13. The expression you just created will now display in the Criteria row of your query.

14. Save your query and close it.

Final Step: Create a Command Button to Run the Query

1. Open your parameter form and switch to Design View, if needed.

2. On the Form Design Tools group, click the Design tab.

3. Click Button.

 

 

 

4. Click on the form to start the Command Button Wizard.

5. In the Categories list, click on Miscellaneous.

6. In the Actions list, click on Run Query.

7. Click Next.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

8. Select your query and click Next.

9. Choose whether you want text or a picture for your button. Click Next.

10. Type a descriptive name (without spaces). For example, cmdRunOrdersDateQuery.

11. Click Finish.

12. Save your parameter form and test it out.

 

Click the PDF Icon to Download these steps in PDF format.

 

 

 

 

KnowledgeWave provides Access and SQL consulting services both on site and remotely. We’ve helped hundreds of clients turn their assortment of spreadsheets, external mailing lists and other documents into a streamlined, organized database. The result is more time to work on the things their businesses need from them and less time creating reports. Let us know how we can help you! Call us at 1-800-831-8449.

Calculating the number of workdays between two distinct dates can be a pain to do, manually.  However, Excel has a great function that will help you accomplish this.  It involves using the NETWORKDAYS function.

Follow the steps below:

1. Click inside the cell where the formula will reside.
2. Type =networkdays(
3. Then type in the first date of the range encased in “”.  For example “4/6/2012″.
4. Then type a comma and the end date of the range encased in quotes.
5. Close your parenthis and hit enter.

Your formula should look like this.

If you’d like to add in holidays add them as a new condition in {}.  For example =NETWORKDAYS(“4/6/2012″,”12/31/2012″, {“7/4/2012″, “12/25/2012″).  Should you have a long list of holidays type them in a list somewhere in your spreadsheet and refer to that cell range in the formula. For example =NETWORKDAYS(“4/6/2012″,”12/31/2012″, J1:J12).