May 22, 2013
In this article, I'm going to show you how to import any data that might be stored in a table on any website on the Internet, into your Google Spreadsheet. Think about the enormous volume of data that's available on the Internet today in the form of HTML tables. Wikipedia alone has data in tables for topics like global warming. In my example, I'm starting out with a database on the National UFO Reporting Center
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May 10, 2013
Did you know that one of the greatest tools of all to conduct data analysis is actually Google Spreadsheet? The reason for this isn’t only because it can do nearly everything you might want to do with Microsoft Excel (although you can), but it’s actually because of a few very cool reporting tools that comes standard in Google Spreadsheet.
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May 9, 2013
I am ashamed to admit that I've only recently decided to start experimenting with Google Spreadsheets, and what I've discovered is that whatever allure or power Excel had over me due to the amazing things you could do with VBA scripting, is completely overshadowed by the awesomeness of the sorts of things you can do inside of Google Spreadsheets.
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September 20, 2012
Spreading some cheer for spreadsheet users, Google has made the process of editing data easier and quicker. Now you can totally bypass the chart editor and edit more directly by clicking on the part of the chart you want to format like the colors, legend, and labels. Google Spreadsheets also gets a Move and Resize mode for better visibility and chart design.
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September 17, 2012
Mobile phones are getting smarter by the day, but for some reason unbeknownst to man, they still tend to struggle with some of the most popular file types. It's a strange thought. For all its memory and processing power, your smart phone spits back a simple spreadsheet, as if it were the strangest thing to ever come across its plate. Playing memory-intensive video games on the other hand goes smoothly.
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February 17, 2012
One of the most frustrating parts of working with VBA inside specific applications, is that it’s not always easy to get two applications to “talk” to each other. You can try for very quick transactions of information between applications is passing data to the clipboard, and then reading that information from the other application.
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February 10, 2012
Whether or not you are a fan of Microsoft, one good thing that can be said about MS Office products, at least, is how easy it is to integrate each of them with one another. Just think of the power that comes from having incoming emails automatically generating new tasks or new calendar appointments, or having a completed task automatically email your boss with the updated status report from the task description.
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March 5, 2011
Google Spreadsheets has always been one of my favorite tools. I was an early adopter (I quickly switched to the tool shortly after Google discontinued Google Notebook) and since then I’ve been happy to see all the hard work and hundreds of improvements the Google Docs team have been introducing. Despite the fact that there [...]
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April 3, 2010
Queries are the basis of power in a database. They give you the ability to ask questions, record the questions for later, and to take actions on the answers. As a follow-up to my introductory summary post on the product, and a more recent post on tables, this Microsoft Access tutorial is the ideal next [...]
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March 13, 2010
Last time, you might have been fortunate enough to stumble over my introductory post for Microsoft Access 2007, and then get frustrated because it doesn’t actually show you how to do anything. This is the place to get the cure. I’m going to provide a Microsoft Access tutorial on how to create and use tables. [...]
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February 23, 2010
There are conflicting ideas about how hard it is to make use of Microsoft Access. One school of thought suggests that it’s difficult, complex, and beyond normal folk. The other is that it’s just as easy to use as Excel. I’m here to tell you the truth. And it sits somewhere between the two. Access [...]
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January 12, 2010
The other week on MakeUseOf, we showed you how to ungoogle your life – if you so desire. I’ve decided to do the opposite. Since I’m a self-avowed Google fan, and am in this deep, I may as well give my entire life over to them, including managing my budget and expenses. I’ve tried out a [...]
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November 8, 2009
I am not much of an Excel hand; spending most of my time either in Microsoft Word or PowerPoint. My most regular use of Excel is as a tool to keep track of my schedule and to list what I am putting out on the web as a writer. So I can safely say that [...]
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August 14, 2009
I recently started working with a company that does HUGE mailing lists. I deal with a lot of records everyday but this really is a lot of data. They have an opt-in mailing list that they blast to once or twice a month. When I say huge I am talking about between 7 and 8 [...]
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August 1, 2009
About 10 years ago, my wife and I were straddled with so much debt that we thought it would take the rest of our lives, or at least the next sixty years, to pay it all off. The combination of school loans, car loans and credit card debt was enough to make a grown man [...]
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