Delft Blue
Oct. 12th, 2011 12:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
todayiamadaisyDo you know how much of my life I have wasted changing the colour of every second row of an Excel spreadsheet to make it easier to look at when printed? Minutes. Minutes of it, that's how much. Probably nearly an hour by now.
Yesterday in my advanced Excel course, I learnt how to do it automatically. It was just tossed out there as a thing we might find useful. Useful? I'll say. And if it's any use to anyone else, here's how to do it (in Excel 2007, but the formula will be the same in other versions):
Select the area you want to apply this to, then go Home > Conditional Formatting > New Rule
Choose Use a formula to determine which cells to format
In the Format values where this is true box, type =mod(row(),2)=1 to format odd-numbered rows or =mod(row(),2)=0 to format even-numbered rows
Click Format, choose how you want every second row to look, then OK and OK to close.
And there you go, job done. If you insert rows in the middle of the spreadsheet, it re-does the colouring automatically. Minutes of your life back. Don't waste them.
The change to daylight saving hours has really knocked me out this year. Over a week now and I still haven't adjusted. I keep thinking it's too early to go to bed at night and then it's too early to wake up in the morning. And I keep writing the month as 11, not 10. So I'm all over the place. All out of time.
What else? Oh, I've finally unsubscribed from the Note from the Universe. I'd imagined that the final straw would be something preposterous, but in the end, it hasn't been preposterous enough. Just twee. It was yet another 'you are awesomeness personified, Alicia' message that got me in the end. I read something about that over the weekend, how positive affirmations don't work for some people. And by some people, I mean me. It's all very well saying that I'm awesome, but if I don't believe it, it's just words. Or worse, sarcasm. So yes, give me absurdities, Universe, but don't patronise me.
Yesterday in my advanced Excel course, I learnt how to do it automatically. It was just tossed out there as a thing we might find useful. Useful? I'll say. And if it's any use to anyone else, here's how to do it (in Excel 2007, but the formula will be the same in other versions):
Select the area you want to apply this to, then go Home > Conditional Formatting > New Rule
Choose Use a formula to determine which cells to format
In the Format values where this is true box, type =mod(row(),2)=1 to format odd-numbered rows or =mod(row(),2)=0 to format even-numbered rows
Click Format, choose how you want every second row to look, then OK and OK to close.
And there you go, job done. If you insert rows in the middle of the spreadsheet, it re-does the colouring automatically. Minutes of your life back. Don't waste them.
The change to daylight saving hours has really knocked me out this year. Over a week now and I still haven't adjusted. I keep thinking it's too early to go to bed at night and then it's too early to wake up in the morning. And I keep writing the month as 11, not 10. So I'm all over the place. All out of time.
What else? Oh, I've finally unsubscribed from the Note from the Universe. I'd imagined that the final straw would be something preposterous, but in the end, it hasn't been preposterous enough. Just twee. It was yet another 'you are awesomeness personified, Alicia' message that got me in the end. I read something about that over the weekend, how positive affirmations don't work for some people. And by some people, I mean me. It's all very well saying that I'm awesome, but if I don't believe it, it's just words. Or worse, sarcasm. So yes, give me absurdities, Universe, but don't patronise me.