Wrastling with HEX-sell®

(Note for camerabanger: Look in the comments for “Happy New Year.”)

Last night (Saturday, January 5th, 2013) I took on what used to be one of the most frightening and exasperating computer-challenges of the year, generation of two Excel spreadsheets for my income-tax: -a) itemized deductions, and -b) income.
My wife, when she was still alive — she died April 17th of last year — used to wonder why I still did these.
They’ve become no longer necessary.
It used to pay us to itemize deductions, although the only deductions we had were -1) charity-giving, and -2) property-taxes.
We never had mortgage-interest, since we owned our house free-and-clear.
But now we get an additional exemption as oldsters.
Charity-giving no longer makes sense; that is, it was better for charity to get it than the guvamint.
My tally of income has also become useless, since it doesn’t agree with my 1099s.
Actually, the pension 1099s agree, but Social-Security never does, and Social-Security’s 1099 is what the IRS goes by.
My tally only came close.
So my income-spreadsheet was never a tax-entry; it was only a comparison.
Itemized-deductions were a tax-entry, but I no longer need it, since my old-age exemption is larger.
So my wife had a point. Why do I even bother doing these spreadsheets, when they involve so much hair-pulling and acrimony — yet I no longer need them.
I continue doing them to remain proficient with Excel, and partly because I can, but mainly to remain proficient.
Generating new spreadsheets has become easier.
I’ve done it so many times.
Yet I’m only doing it once a year.
Okay, fire up this computer, and fire up Excel.
Open my “Itemized-Deductions 2012” spreadsheet, and copy the first row only, the one with all my column-headings.
Paste onto new Excel spreadsheet.
Uh-ohhh; my column-widths ain’t the variables of my 2012. They’re the default Excel width, some too narrow.
And I can’t vary the width, or so it seems.
So how do I get around this?
Apply guile-and-cunning.
Delete all the entries from my 2012 spreadsheet except that first row, then save that as my 2013 spreadsheet. It has the variable column-widths I previously had.
But I notice the rows are numbered wrong. It goes from “Row 1” right to “Row 14;” no 2 to 13.
Okay, expand my outline. Rows 2 to 13 were compressed into a Row 14 sub-total. Outline expanded, I can delete Rows 2 to the end.
Now I’m in business. (Save that!)
This gets into my unknowledge of Microsoft’s most recent Excel application, which saves as .xlsx.
I can’t drive it, but I can drive Excel’s older .xls application.
Microsoft allows me to save as .xls, the older application.
So I save my new spreadsheets as .xls.
Now to get these two spreadsheets where they’re easily accessed.
I saved the new spreadsheets to my desktop, but I also have a desktop spreadsheet folder. It has sub-folders in it that go back to 2008.
So generate new sub-folder in this spreadsheets folder, a sub-folder for 2013.
Open my hard-drive twice, and move my 2013 spreadsheets from my desktop-folder to my 2013 sub-folder.
Now I can update my 2013 spreadsheets just like I did my 2012 spreadsheets — slam-dunk easy.
The whole process, generating my 2013 spreadsheets, and making them easy to access, took about an hour.
Last year it probably took two hours. and I don’t remember how I did it. Although I think I did it differently, although maybe not.
Go back farther, and there’d be frenzied hair-pulling, and using maybe four hours or more.

• My taxes are now done by a professional.