Excel tutorial?

[lux_nunchucks]

Anyone know of any easy to understand online resources for using Excel and formatting a spreadsheet (I want to avoid using the fucking stupid paperclip-man helper within Excel)

Specifically what I need to accomplish is concatenation - combining the contents of two columns into one column, with a comma between the two words (ie: column A is City, column B is State - need to create one column that is City, State)

I will be formatting the spreadsheet and then bringing it into InDesign for final layout.

Any links or info will help - thanks.

[ddbray]

Ok here you go

Hilight the cell you wish to have your results in (For example If A1 is City and B1 is State the hilight C1)

Now choose the Auto sum drop down menu from the tool bar and select "More Function" go to "Text" and choose "CONCATENATE". In text1 enter "A1" and test 2 enter "B1" In the Formula bar betwween "A1" and "B1" type ", " your formula bar should look like this "=CONCATENATE(A1,", ", B1)" (you just type this in but now you know where it is located) Now just hilight C1 down to the end of your spreadsheet and under EDIT select "Fill Down".


Hope this helped.

man.... talk about good help! great post dd.
vee

[lux_nunchucks]

ddbray - it worked! Thanks. I don't dabble much in Excel. This is another beastly project I've been shuffling to the bottom of my stack for the past 12 days.

Originally Posted by lux_nunchucks

ddbray - it worked! Thanks. I don't dabble much in Excel. This is another beastly project I've been shuffling to the bottom of my stack for the past 12 days.

eeewwwww...... those are my favorite jobs 8O 8O
a true disaster, supplied via 3.5" floppy :P :P

[ddbray]

you are welcome.

I had to learn a little about excel when I did Variable data work.

[lux_nunchucks]

ddbray...or anyone?

I'm still working with this beastly database in Excel and I'm actually having great success with minimal cursing. I have been fine-tuning the database in Excel, including concatenating (combining) selected columns of data into one column. (see my example in OP)

HOWEVER, I now have a column of text which has been formatted in boldface and in a different font, but when I include that column in a concatenation formula, the formatting is not applying. The text that is resulting from the formula is all the same font, size, etc.

I'm Googling this right now - does anyone have any knowledge of this?

Thanks.

[ddbray]

Well now that is a new problem.

I have never worried about the text formatting in an excel worksheet. Usually when I bring the data into a Variable Data program I format the text then.

To the best of my Knowledge there is no way to apply differnet text formatting to different elements in the same cell. When I try to do this the font list is grayed out. It is only active when I select the entire cell.


What is the final purpose of the excel data when you are done with it?

[lux_nunchucks]

Forgot to mention that...

I'll be bringing the Excel file into InDesign for final formatting and page layout.

Obviously I can format text in IND, but it's just one line of text within the cell that is bold, and the rest is regular. Going through and highlighting single lines one by one, over 500 times, sounds really lame.

I'll have to ponder this further.

[fast-tl]

I have become much more effective in Excel since I found asap utlities at
www.asap-utilties.com

It can handle the concatenation and text formatting also, if I recall correctly. As was recommended earlier, I would format the text block or text lines in my variable app, not in Excel.