Excel
Last night (Monday, July 31), amazingly, totaling out my two Excel spreadsheets went without incident.
I keep two Excel spreadsheets in my ‘pyooter for income-taxes: income and deductible expenses. Income is aimed at 1040, and I probably don’t need it, since I’m sure I’ll get statements (pension income, Social Security, etc).
Expenses is aimed at Schedule A, itemized deductions. In fact, what it renders is the line-items on Schedule A. Schedule A is the main reason I defer from using Turbo-Tax. Turbo-Tax wants gifts broken up by each charity. Schedule A doesn’t.
I’ve had Excel for years. Appleworks has a spreadsheet function too, but why bother when I can use Excel?
My Excel came as a download, so no manual; part of “Office.” My Word was a download too; also part of “Office.” (Word is 98; Excel is 98 too.)
Excel is groovy — the grooviest thing for me was making cells sum up other cells.
Apparently it will do lots of other tricks I know nothing about: glitzy pie-charts and bar-graphs. They’re nothing to me, so I don’t know anything about them.
What I like is that it can add up cells, or some other function if you want.
I remember doing all this manually on a huge spreadsheet in the note-department at the Penfield Office (tanked) of Lincoln-Rochester bank. The contents of a cell would be a total transferred from an adding-machine.
Excel can do the adding in the background.
So totaling out at the end of the month is doing “sub-totals as of 7/31/06,” and making that cell be the sum of those above. The formula is ∑=D23:D30 (for example; :=through). Command-R from that cell extends the formula to all the other cells in the row; so that I end up with the July sub-totals for e.g. loan interest, charitable gifts, Doctor-charges, prescriptions, whatever.
I then do a grand-total for the year-to-date: e.g. “July Sub-Totals.” Here the cell sums up all the previous-month sub-totals. The formula is ∑=D8,D14,D24,D32, etc., etc. Again, Command-R extends the formula across the row.
Excel will compress the months, so the spreadsheet isn’t 89-bazilyun items long. “Select-All,” then “outline.” Modifying the outline makes the previous month compressible.
That’s all we know about Excel — it’s all we need. We figured it out by trial-and-error. No manual.
What happened most times when I tried to total out at the end-of-the-month, was it would lob some luscious hairball. What was supposed to take a half-hour took three.
I learned that you couldn’t copy/paste a formula; that Excel was doing something entirely different — we never have been able to figure out what.
But when things are done correctly (like last night), it doesn’t lob hairballs.
I keep two Excel spreadsheets in my ‘pyooter for income-taxes: income and deductible expenses. Income is aimed at 1040, and I probably don’t need it, since I’m sure I’ll get statements (pension income, Social Security, etc).
Expenses is aimed at Schedule A, itemized deductions. In fact, what it renders is the line-items on Schedule A. Schedule A is the main reason I defer from using Turbo-Tax. Turbo-Tax wants gifts broken up by each charity. Schedule A doesn’t.
I’ve had Excel for years. Appleworks has a spreadsheet function too, but why bother when I can use Excel?
My Excel came as a download, so no manual; part of “Office.” My Word was a download too; also part of “Office.” (Word is 98; Excel is 98 too.)
Excel is groovy — the grooviest thing for me was making cells sum up other cells.
Apparently it will do lots of other tricks I know nothing about: glitzy pie-charts and bar-graphs. They’re nothing to me, so I don’t know anything about them.
What I like is that it can add up cells, or some other function if you want.
I remember doing all this manually on a huge spreadsheet in the note-department at the Penfield Office (tanked) of Lincoln-Rochester bank. The contents of a cell would be a total transferred from an adding-machine.
Excel can do the adding in the background.
So totaling out at the end of the month is doing “sub-totals as of 7/31/06,” and making that cell be the sum of those above. The formula is ∑=D23:D30 (for example; :=through). Command-R from that cell extends the formula to all the other cells in the row; so that I end up with the July sub-totals for e.g. loan interest, charitable gifts, Doctor-charges, prescriptions, whatever.
I then do a grand-total for the year-to-date: e.g. “July Sub-Totals.” Here the cell sums up all the previous-month sub-totals. The formula is ∑=D8,D14,D24,D32, etc., etc. Again, Command-R extends the formula across the row.
Excel will compress the months, so the spreadsheet isn’t 89-bazilyun items long. “Select-All,” then “outline.” Modifying the outline makes the previous month compressible.
That’s all we know about Excel — it’s all we need. We figured it out by trial-and-error. No manual.
What happened most times when I tried to total out at the end-of-the-month, was it would lob some luscious hairball. What was supposed to take a half-hour took three.
I learned that you couldn’t copy/paste a formula; that Excel was doing something entirely different — we never have been able to figure out what.
But when things are done correctly (like last night), it doesn’t lob hairballs.
posted by BobbaLew at 6:15 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home