Information management and technology assurance

Q: In your April 2013 JofA article titled “Microsoft Office 2013,” page 32, you mentioned that Excel 2013 offers the ability to “compare two spreadsheets to display changes (similar to Word’s Compare tool),” but I can’t find this functionality. Can you please tell me where to find this tool? A:

Holding down the Alt key and clicking on any cell triggers a Bing search based on the contents of that cell. The results are displayed automatically in a pop-up Research side panel. Give it a try. (Note: For this to function properly, you may need to first adjust the Research

Q: I produce large reports in Word 2013 with brief summary information displayed in the margins about every two or three pages to add interest to the report. Because these text box summaries are simply repeating information already contained in the report, I don’t like to include them as part

In the aftermath of so many revelations about computer privacy this year, I thought it might be interesting to put your own privacy to the test. Earlier this year I found myself shopping for camping tents on Amazon.com, but I did not make a purchase. Shortly thereafter, I noticed that

Q: I recently purchased a new computer and proceeded to download various utility programs. To my dismay, I found numerous download websites offering the utilities I wanted, but I couldn’t tell which ones were trustworthy. As a result, twice I ended up unintentionally downloading malware along with the intended utility

Q: For three decades I’ve watched new technologies emerge, but I’ve never invested early enough to catch those investments on the rise. What do you think the next great emerging technologies will be? A: Asking me for investment tips is like asking a dog to guard your hamburger—in either case

Q: Our company sells more than 4,000 sporting good items, and to help analyze these items, we export a list from our accounting system into Excel. The list includes size, weight, reorder point, reorder quantity, cost markup percentage, pricing, and images. To make individual items easier to work with, my

Q: When I purchase merchandise on the web, I often see an option to enter a discount code on the checkout page, but I never seem to have one. I’ve tried searching the web for discount codes that I might use, but I never seem to find codes related to

Q: I have my Outlook junk rules set to Low, but Outlook keeps sending important email messages to my junk folder anyway. Short of disabling my junk rules completely, what can I do to prevent this from happening? A: I, too, find Outlook’s junk rules a bit ambitious, even at

In the August 2013 JofA, I challenged readers to solve an Excel problem in which a preformatted report fetched an ever-changing last row of data. We received well over 200 solutions from a group of Excel-savvy CPAs. Though each solution was different, all of them worked properly and employed a

Q: I am in the process of updating a Word 2003 document containing videos that were inserted as embedded objects. Previously, these videos appeared in a video window and when double-clicked played in place within Word 2003. However, in subsequent editions of Word, these embedded videos appear as a file

Q: I see many new Windows 8 tablet PCs and touchscreen ultrabooks hitting the market, but most of them are fairly small. I am currently shopping for a larger Windows 8 touchscreen ultrabook (with a fast solid-state drive) that is big enough to easily read, and with a keyboard large