Last week I said that this week I was going to talk about how to parse variable-format numbers into numbers. Basically, the problem with variable format numbers is that there are important things you don’t know. This is actually true… Read moreText functions: finding length

Last week I talked about ways to use automatic formatting to convert text to numbers. To do that, you need to have the data coming from outside, somehow – either being typed in, or imported, or pasted in from a… Read moreChanging fixed-format text to numbers

Back when I was first talking about how to do text formatting, I said you could do it all from a single menu/window.  That’s still true of number formatting, but unlike any other kind of formatting, number formatting can be… Read moreChanging text to numbers automatically

Changing text to numbers Sometimes numbers in a spreadsheet aren’t actually numbers. They might look like numbers to you, but to the spreadsheet they’re just a bunch of characters that happen to be numerical digits. This is relevant because you… Read moreChanging text to numbers, and numbers to text (about)

In case you’re not already familiar with the term, Boolean values are true and false. They can also be represented as yes/no, on/off, or 1/0. There’s also Boolean searching, which is based on Boolean logic, but that’s a post all… Read moreBoolean values

Last week I introduced you to the basic concepts involved in formatting numbers, and which programs have which pre-set options. This week I’m going to explain what these options are (and aren’t), and discuss the quirks in how they behave.

Back when I was talking about formatting I mentioned that there are ways to format numbers, but I didn’t go into what they were or follow up the way I meant to. Essentially, number formatting allows you to enter a… Read moreFormatting numbers (About)

Swiss Army Spreadhseets has now been up for two years, so it’s time for another index! While this index includes links to all of the Year 1 posts, it doesn’t necessarily group or label them the way they were before…. Read moreAnnual Index: Year Two

Tying up my series of posts on printing, I’d like to talk about a couple of nifty tricks using the printing options I’ve just discussed. Trick #1: Repeating headers that aren’t next to each other. Remember when I said that… Read morePrinting: Nifty tricks

Sometimes you not only want to make the printout look like a spreadsheet, you also want to see the formulas underlying the results. There are a number of different reasons you might want to “show your work” this way.