Some Better Ways

SOME BETTER WAYS

In the March issue (page 77), I showed how to adjust the Line Spacing button in the toolbar so it contains the option of 1.5 spaces—a compromise between reading ease (two spaces) and space saving (one space). Barbara Coffey, CPA, controller/
secretary-treasurer at Independent Boat Builders Inc., Benton, Ill., suggested a faster way: Press on Ctrl+5. Ctrl+2 creates double spacing, Ctrl+0 inserts a 1-line space above the insertion point, and Ctrl+1 returns to single space.

Also in the March issue (page 76), I showed a way to determine the day of the week of a future date. Roy Harrill, a retired CPA from Charlottesville, Va., suggests another way: Use Excel’s WEEKDAY formula, which returns a number for the weekday (Sun=1, Mon=2, etc.). It can be nested within the CHOOSE function to display a text representation of the day. Thus, if cell A1 contains 3/1/07, cell B1 or any other cell could contain the following formula:

=CHOOSE(WEEKDAY(A1),”Sun”,”Mon”,”Tue”,”Wed”,”Thu”,”Fri”,”Sat”)

This would display Thu in B1.

And a JofA colleague suggested this way to save yourself from typing all the days of the week: Use the TEXT function to convert the date value into the day. For example, =TEXT(A1,”ddd”) also yields “Thu” for this example, whereas =TEXT(A1,”dddd”) yields “Thursday.”

Stanley Zarowin is a contributing editor to the JofA. His e-mail address is stanley.joatech@gmail.com.

Do you have technology questions for this column? Or, after reading an answer, do you have a better solution? Send them to me via e-mail at stanley.joatech@gmail.com or via regular mail at the Journal of Accountancy, 220 Leigh Farm Road, Durham, NC 27707-8110. Because of the volume of mail, I regret I cannot individually answer submitted questions. However, if a reader’s question has broad interest, I will answer it in a forthcoming Technology Q&A column. Advertisement On occasion you may find you cannot implement a function I describe in this column. More often than not it’s because not all functions work in every Windows operating system or application. I try to test everything in the 2000 and XP editions of Windows and Office. It’s virtually impossible for me to test them in the earlier editions and it’s equally difficult to find out which editions are incompatible with a function. I apologize for the inconvenience.