Jensen Harris and the Windows 8.1 Preview

I've often wondered what Jensen Harris looks like - he's the one behind the Office 2007 and later Ribbon and the Modern UI tiles in Microsoft Phone, Tablet and Windows 8. Here he is.

Fix: Powerpoint 2010 / 2013 doesn't like video embed code

Issue

Powerpoint 2010 or 2013 allow you to run a YouTube video from the web, embedded in your slide show presentation. This avoids the need to switch from Powerpoint to your web browser, play the video and switch back. There's a catch however. Recent changes in the embed code that YouTube provides are no longer digestible by the Insert > Video dialog offered by Powerpoint.

Workaround

1. Use the Old Embed Code from YouTube.
2. Remove the Version=3 portion of this code (occurs twice in the code) before pasting into the Insert > Video > Online Video textbox. You can edit the code in a text editor like Windows Notepad or Wordpad if you need an editor.

This information is derived from PPT Alchemy and a visual walkthrough is on this YouTube video:

Video by Ron Bosch

Chart This!

Thanks to +Mike Elgan for drawing attention to the Mother Jones Chart.

Generational Attitudes on Sushi and Gay Marriage Correlate Almost Perfectly

Some of the data is drawn from Public Policy Polling.

Now, that Public Policy Polling page: More Food Issues That Divide America contains simple stats that would thrill any Intro to Charting with Excel 101 class.

Excel's poorly documented Conditional Formatting

Nearly every class I lead, I say that one could write several chapters on conditional formatting (maybe +Contextures Inc. or +John Walkenbach or +Helen Bradley  might. Chapters that have detailed examples, screenshots and so on.

One thing that has been puzzling me is how to use the very pretty and eye catching effectiveness of conditional formatting with floating reference cells. - It's obvious how to conditionally colour a range against a fixed number (e.g. 50) or a fixed cell (e.g. $B$2) but it's more useful to compare say, 1990 figures against 2013 figures, row by row.

The user interface is not obvious for doing this and I just happened to see Susan Harkins's article on Techrepublic.

To further clarify the syntax, here's my screenshot:

Community Support Forums

Microsoft used to work with Usenet forums but some years ago, decided to go their own way. Here are the official Community peer-to-peer forums:

Excel IT Pro: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-us/excel/threads
Word IT Pro: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-us/word/threads
Outlook IT Pro: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-us/outlook/threads
Office 2013 IT Pro: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-us/officeitpro/threads
Office 2010 IT Pro: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-us/officeitproprevious/threads
Older than Office 2010 IT Pro: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-us/officeitprolegacy/threads

Unofficial Google Groups Forums (formerly Usenet)
Access: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/comp.databases.ms-access
Access: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/microsoft.public.access
Excel: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/microsoft.public.excel

Validation Rules for Fields and Controls in Microsoft Access

Often, we tend to use simple or no validation rules in Microsoft Access fields. I just wanted to block punctuation in content because I wanted to use the content as a a way of generating query column names (data driven architecture). Scrambled for the web and here's the official article with examples.

To allow digits and numbers but not punctuation, try:
Is Null OR Not Like "*[!((a-z) or (0-9))]*" 

Microsoft Office and the Subscription Model

It's no secret that the generation method of earning income from selling software does not generate constant income. So many major companies want us to go onto a subscription sales model - you rent software on a monthly basis and they get assured income.

Microsoft Office 365 is a subscription model and yet it is / can be,  local installed software (Microsoft's strength) not just feature poor webapps. Here's a video detailing this:



Fast forward to the 6th minute for a quick demo and then start the video from scratch. The transcript is here and you can participate in a trial evaluation.

Musings on Conditional Counts / Sums

The COUNTIFS() function allows you to use more than one criteria for the statistic. Often, we think of this as for example, counting the row entries where Country is “Australia” and State is “NSW”

e.g.

	A	B	C
1	Australia	NSW	10
2	Australia	VIC	20
3	Australia	NSW	30
4	USA	Alabama	40
5	USA	New York	50

So in this case, there are two rows of Australia, NSW

and the COUNTIF expression is

=COUNTIF(A1:A5,”Australia”,B1:B,”NSW”)

However, we can also use multiple AND criteria on one parameter e.g. Count how many entries are between 20 and 30

=COUNTIF("C1:C5”,">=20”,”C1:C5”,”<=30”)

In a related vein, for the visual Conditional Formatting, we can create more than one Rule on a Worksheet. Often, we may use a different Rules for different parts of the Worksheet. But, there’s nothing stopping you from using more than one Rule (as long as the Rules don’t overlap in scope) on the same cell block.

In case you want to look around:

Here’s a Microsoft produced video tutorial on SUMIF and COUNTIF functions:

and a downloadable Powerpoint Presentation on nested IFs

Why individual Front End Files

In a recent Microsoft Access class discussion, participants enquired behind the reasons behind splitting the database file and then having one pair of Front End and Back End files and then having individual Front End files for each user. Questions like this force one to re-inspect and itemise the reasons for this Best Practice.

You want individual Front End Files because:

1. If a single user crashes the system or hangs their machine, the risk of corruption is most at the Front End File - the Back End file is at a much lower risk.
2. Intense and Frequent file i/o speed as well as temporary data generated by processing data is at the Front End File, not the Back End file. If the Front End file grows big, it can be easily discarded and a new fresh one copied over.
3. Temporary tables can be set up to use the same name, you don't have to design a system where User A uses tblTempA and User B uses tblTempB - each user can simply be programmed to use tblTemp stored privately in each Front End. There are many approaches where temp tables are a useful technique in processing data.
4. Even without programming, you can touch a Form or Report such that settings are "dirtied" and need to be saved. For example if you move the widths of some columns in Datasheet View, that Form may need to be saved so that you can maintain that width the next time you open it.
   Table data are multi-user out-of-the-box in Microsoft Access. Forms and Reports are not.
5. If you mix Access 2010 and Access 2007 for example, after some time, you may notice that Access 2010 designs in Forms and Reports may render the .accdb un-openable in Access 2007.

Food for Thought.

Windows 8–The Whole Deal

It’s been an unexciting weekend. Windows 8 was launched. Windows 8RT was launched. Windows 8RT Tablets were launched. Modern, the Interface Formerly Known As Metro came. And went. Office 2013 was Released To Manufacturing to MSDN and Technet Subcribers. Yeah. Shrug. Yes. Shrug. Some mainstream news outlets picked up the goss and reported either the Beginning of Microsoft Dominance in Tablet Space or The End of Microsoft As We Know It. Then they got occupied with Mitt Romney (who’s he? I’m not American). The Storm called Sandy. Maybe even the violence that intruded into Eid.

So, What Is Windows 8?

It’s the next evolution of Microsoft Windows. The previous one was Windows 7. Heck, some organisations are just getting that deployed. So is there a deal? I mean should we make any hoo haa over Windows 8 Desktop (otherwise known as Windows 8 for Intel chips)? The story goes like this.

Windows 3.x evolved to Windows 95 to Windows 98. That was a good vintage, Then came Windows NT (which was a new redesigned Operating System). Windows NT eventually evolved to Windows XP. That gave way to Windows VISTA (yuck!) and then Windows 7 (that’s a good vintage). Windows 8 is Windows 7 with some nice icing on the cake. And a kludge to embrace The Touch Space.

So What’s The Touch Space?

It goes that Bill Gates was very keen on The Tablet. Except that he used a Stylus – because it was hard to point with a fat finger. Tech was sooo primitive then. But he still yearned to have the Padds that Star Trek Next Generation crew would toss at The Holographic Doctor. Even with massive pushing, the idea would not gain traction. Not enough units were sold. The displays were meh. The devices were heavy enough to give you forearm ache after 15 minutes. The Intel Pentium chips were not fast and batteries went flat after one and a half hours. Real meh. We did the stylus thing with Windows CE devices too. Those that looked like Windows but weren’t really Windows, they were wimps. And they didn’t run Microsoft Access. Or full versions of any Microsoft Office apps.

Close your eyes, go to sleep and do a Rip van Winkle. Open your eyes. Suddenly Nokia isn’t a brick anymore. In fact Nokia is nowhere anymore. It’s all iPhone, iPod, iPad. With Android devices rooting away. Even your 80 year old Gran knows how to touch Angry Birds and Facetime to you.

What to do? In true Microsoft fashion, provide “Real Soon Now” touch input devices – mice, touchpads, desktop screens. Touch Enable .net – Result? No traction, Dude! People now make Apple the bigger company in dollars. What The! And no one’s talking about desktop Windows. Nobody’s buying or more particularly lusting to buy new PCs even though Microsoft Partners call their new shiny silver things Ultrabooks, like in MacAir. Ok, push out some Atoms – they’re Intel chips but low powered enough to survive 4-6 hours of use. But performance is, sort of meh. So Intel makes portable versions of Core i3, i5, i7 to make the notebooks like go really fast. Battery life is like 2 hours though. Which causes people to keep buying and lusting over the danged Coretex ARM powered tablets and smart phones that cost less.

Like, what’s Ballmer gonna do? Bill’s gone to Pakistan to give away money and left him running the shop. Ray Ozzie had a fight over who owned Cloudspace with Sinovsky and just called it quits. Yeah. “I’m dying here guys”, I can hear Ballmer say. Sinovsky and Jensen Harris to the rescue.

They come up with a whooo! A New User Touch Interface. Like Tiles. Nothing near a Apple’s legal spitting distance of circular icons on a field of black.

Bing! A Brilliant Idea

How about this? Create a Universal User Interface running Platform Agnostic (well Microsoft Platforms anyway) over Intel chips (desktop), ARM chips (Tablet Space), Windows Phone. Well, that’s what Windows 8 is! Just Brilliant! Brings The Desktop To The Modern World. Microsoft will be Happy. Microsoft Hardware Partners will be Happy. Microsoft Software Partners will be Happy. I mean we could even wake up the old Microsoft Store so that these Partners can sell things. Because that’s what they do. Sell things.

Got it? Good!

But, you say, it doesn’t do that much more on the desktop on the desktop. I mean, a 16 year old could program a supplementary program for Windows 95 that does Trays and Drawers or Multiple Desktops. Yeah. Sucks right? It’s early days. More will come. Give it a chance.

Microsoft has always been Real Soon Now.

Get used to it. This is how it goes.

If you have a current Windows keyboard, mouse, non touch screen and are using Windows 7

Windows 8 and the new Metro Modern Tiles don’t bring Big Bang to the desktop. What is nice – the odd Metro app will make full screen casual browsing of news (ditch the paper newspapers and mags) pretty nice. The famous Start Menu / Orb is gone. Whenever you think Start Menu, think Modern Tiles – they appear whenever you touch the Windows Key like a Charm. You could press lots other keys too. Microsoft Office 2013 is really worth updating to though. Easy Skydrive Cloud Storage. OneNote 2013. Excel is ah, even more feature rich.

If you want to get a new PC

Don’t go and buy a discounted classic PC running Windows 7 because it is heavily discounted old stock. Get a new PC with a Windows 8 compatible Touch Screen. Really. Night and Day Difference. Get a transforming one though. Or something that does not feel that if you tilt the screen the whole PC will fall onto your face.

Microsoft and Software Partners will be working night and day to make XAML + HTML5 + .net apps that mash into various web services.

If you want to get a Tablet

iPad is The One. Lots of apps. There I said it. Get a Droid if you’re a Geek. A fair number of apps too. Microsoft Surface is available. It runs Windows RT for ARM chips. Windows RT is not desktop Intel chipped Windows classic. Microsoft Access, Project, Outlook isn’t on Windows RT. I have not seen whether the Word for Windows RT and Excel for Windows RT is blow for blow the same as Windows 8 Desktop Edition. There are already some tablets running Windows 8 desktop edition. They’re really cool. But they’re not el cheapo tablet priced. In fact Windows Surface tablets are not cheap either. Because they’re new hardware, just developed and sold direct by Microsoft with some standard of quality. Wait for Chinese or Taiwanese Windows RT Tablets to come on the scene if you want cheap.

If you want a Phone

iPhone 5, despite the jokes about getting lost in the mapping, is it. Or get a top Droid if you’re a geek. Get a Windows Phone if you think this is how to be extra cool to the corporate Microsoft Exchange Server. Or you want to keep Nokia from going under.