Information management and technology assurance

Q: What is the easiest way to send a single Excel worksheet to a staff member without sending him or her the entire workbook? A: You can send a single worksheet (that is, not the entire workbook) from within Excel using the integrated Outlook Send this Sheet applet, as follows:

Q: We maintain a large amount of data for more than 100 restaurants for which we analyze sales and expenses daily, weekly and monthly by location, city, state and territory, and even by type of restaurant. Overnight, the results of operations for the previous day feed into a database, and

Q: How can I force Excel to display a two-digit year (instead of a four-digit year) by default?   A: Many of the default settings in Excel, including the date format, are governed by the default settings in the Windows operating system, as pictured in the screen below.   These

Q: I’ve heard that you can create a stock portfolio in Excel that can be updated automatically via the Internet. Can you please tell me if this true, and, if so, how this is accomplished? A: You’ve heard correctly. Excel provides a built-in query tool that can link your worksheet

Q: Our company recently created a detailed product catalog in Word 2010 containing pictures, descriptions and prices for the 175 items we sell. Unfortunately, the resulting document’s file size is 95 megabytes, which makes it impractical for e-mailing or downloading from the Web (which was our intended purpose). Do you

Q: If someone has sent you an e-mail and it was also sent to a blind cc, and you then hit Reply to All, does it also go to the blind cc or only to the individuals revealed on the e-mail? A: Your concern is understandable, but no, replying to

Q: I’ve had two employees lose their cell phones. Each time they lost valuable client contact information. I don’t want this to happen again. What is the best way to back up contact data on a cell phone? A: Backing up your cell phone data is a good idea because

Q: I find charts helpful, but I’ve heard that they can be used to skew data or distort actual results. Is this true, and if so, how? A: You are correct that charts are useful tools for visualizing and analyzing data. However, what you have heard is also correct—charts can

Q: Our CPA firm has more than 400,000 data files on the file server, and we constantly struggle to locate the right file. For example, recently an audit staffer retrieved an Excel file that contained fixed-asset depreciation calculations and used this in the audit. Unfortunately, the version of the file

1. Sticky format painter. Double-clicking on the Format Painter icon will cause it to stick, so that you can continue to apply the desired format to multiple cells, ranges, columns or worksheets. To turn off this effect, either press the Esc key or click the Format Painter icon.   2.

Q: Sometimes when I misspell a word, Word automatically corrects the spelling for me, but other times it doesn’t. Does this indicate a problem with my spell checker settings? A: Office 2003, 2007 and 2010 include a feature called AutoCorrect that is useful in two ways, as follows: As you

Christopher Breslin, a CPA in Louisville, Ky., spotted an important caveat that we neglected to mention in a recent “Better Idea” item (“Technology Q&A,” JofA, Nov. 2010, page 70), which suggested ways of averaging noncontiguous cells in Excel that contain some zero values. The two methods suggested would average all