Posts by Walter Jackson48

Nathan Johnson4 said:it's me again...

Look, if none of those suggestions actually work for you—and let's be honest, sometimes software just refuses to cooperate—try this little workaround. It’s a bit of a hack, I know, but bear with me. Select everything on the page where you want that border to show up, then head over to Borders, select Box, and hit OK. Now, here is the catch: if your page isn't totally full of text, the program is going to be stubborn and only wrap the border around the specific paragraph you selected. It won't hug the edges of the paper. So, you have to play around with it a bit. Go to the very top and the very bottom of the page and just type a single character—any random letter will do—just to "fill" the space. Once you've done that, highlight those extra characters and change the font color to white. That way, they stay there to force the border to expand to the edges, but they become invisible to the eye. It's a hybrid approach, a bit messy, but it might just get the job done.

Nathan Johnson4 said:It’s me again... look, is there actually an option in Word to put a Page Border on just one single side? Every time I try, the damn thing applies it to every single page, or if I try to delete it, it vanishes from everywhere. I even tried being clever and making a separate document with just the border to copy over, but nope—the whole thing just forces the frame onto every page again.

Try adjusting the settings in the "Apply to:" dropdown menu within the Borders and Shading menu.

Nicholas King said:😕

The way he’s doing it, that "non-empty" cell A1—if there's just a zero sitting in there—won't actually overwrite anything in B1. It's a logic trap.

=IF(A1<>"";A1;"")

I’m with you on that. I honestly thought he meant A1 would only pull in values that weren't zero. At the end of the day, I just hope the user picks whichever formula actually fits their specific needs. And frankly, I hope they take a second to let us know which one worked for them. It’d be nice to know if we actually helped anyone out here instead of just shouting into the void.

cosmicbison19 said:I could really use a little hand with this specific situation...

So, say I want cell B1 to just pull whatever value is sitting in cell A1, but—and here’s the kicker—if A1 is totally empty, I don't want anything showing up in B1 at all.
The problem is, if I just type =A1 into cell B1, the software insists on putting a zero there whenever A1 is blank, and frankly, that zero is causing me nothing but grief.

thanks

Just pop this formula into cell B1: =IF(A1<>"";A1;"")

Benjamin Wilson7 said:Walter Jackson48, we're basically riding on someone else's coattails here; the least we can do is give credit where credit is due.

Look, I just finished reading your post, and frankly, I have no idea whose "coattails" I’m even riding if all I did was point someone toward the right arrow... But while we're on the subject, let me tell you something: true knowledge isn't about memorizing every little detail until you can recite it from memory; real knowledge is knowing exactly where to find the answer when you need it. And being helpful? That means offering up that solution to someone else. We shouldn't be obsessing over who originally came up with an idea, because this forum isn't some high-stakes competition—it's a place for people to help one another out. At least, that’s how I see it. Anyway, if I stepped in the wrong on this one, I’m more than willing to admit it.

nimblenomad said:I finally tracked one down, though it doesn't quite look like an actual arrow—it's missing that specific pointed tip—but I suppose it'll get the job done somehow...

I honestly can't bring myself to mess around with 🤣 right now, and frankly, I have no idea what my long-term plan is for this whole thing
.
Thanks a million, everyone

Just click that gray box to select it, then grab the corner and drag it down and to the right. That should give you the proper arrow shape you're looking for.

nimblenomad said:Look, I’m absolutely hopeless when it comes to managing my time, so I wasn't exactly planning on starting a whole thread about this... but here we are. I've been scouring the internet and various forums looking for tutorials on how to handle formulas in Word... basically, I'm working on my senior thesis and I know how to type a vector like "a" with that little arrow sitting over it... but how on earth do you write a vector like "ab" where the arrow is centered perfectly between the 'a' and the 'b'? I hope you guys get what I'm driving at, because if I don't figure this out soon, I am actually going to lose my mind... THANKS SO MUCH!

Check out this

If you're feeling up for a little workaround: just pop "ab" into a text box, then go into the Drawing tool, grab an arrow, and float it right over the "ab" inside that same box—after that, you can just hide the box borders by setting the fill/line color to white.

Lisa Reyes2 said:Please help me out here.
Can someone walk me through how I can take, say, 20 pages and put them into one document, but have the numbering actually start on the fourth page, beginning with 1, 2, 3...
thanks so much! 😍

There are a million different ways people suggest doing this, but honestly, just check this link

cosmicbison19 said:Does anyone happen to know a formula to sum up all the cells in a column that are colored—say, red? I mean the cell background color, not the font color itself.

thanks

Take a look at this; it might be what you're looking for.
Also, check out this link.

Nicholas Newman66 said:I’ve got a question here. I'm working with PowerPoint 2003. I need to build a template for a presentation where the first slide shows the title, but then every single subsequent slide needs to have the exact same image—doesn't matter if there are five slides or fifty. How do I pull that off? I've been staring at this screen for ages and I'm just stuck. 😢

Take a look here.

slyskipper95 said:So, I'm stuck using Microsoft Word 2007. I'm working on this term paper and I need the page numbering to actually start at page 1 from the third page—basically where the intro begins.
How do I fix this mess? Thanks!

Check this out here:

It’s probably pretty much the same deal in 2007.
Or maybe try this:

Nicholas King said:I honestly have no clue what this formula is even attempting to accomplish.

Once again, I find myself asking: do you just need basic rounding? Because if that's the case, there is a perfectly functional ROUND function sitting right there in Excel waiting for you to use it.

Looking at this specific formula through the lens of standard rounding rules, it’s actually bumping that fifth decimal place up. If your goal is to force the number down instead of using ROUNDUP, then you should be using ROUNDDOWN. In my own sheet, when I plugged in the value from the prompt (0.123456), the formula rounded it up to 0.12346)

p.s. Just to be crystal clear—if you want to round down rather than up, go with ROUNDDOWN.

Dana Diaz8 said:Hey, I've run into a bit of a snag with Excel and was hoping someone could point me in the right direction!!!! The TRUNC function basically just "chops off" decimals, right? Like, if I have a number with 10 decimal places, I can tell it to just leave me with 6, which works fine. But—and here is the kicker—if I want that sixth decimal place to actually round up or down to the nearest value instead of just being cut off, how on earth do I do that???? Thanks!

P.S. Just to make this less of a headache, let me give you a quick example:
0.123456789 => using TRUNC to keep five decimal places => 0.12345, but I actually want that last digit to be a 6 because it really ought to be rounded up 🙂)

Look, if your starting value is sitting in cell B166, try playing around with this formula:

=IF(MOD(B166*100,100)=75,TRUNC(B166)+0.5,ROUNDUP(B166/0.5,5)*0.5)

Jack Martinez27 said:I really need some help with two common, essential features in Word 2007

1) Is there a way to automatically generate numbers
from 1 to 100 (or maybe 1 to 50) instead of just typing them all out by hand?

2) How do I fix the line spacing in my Word documents? The gap between lines is huge, and I'm stuck manually trying to pull the bottom line closer to the top one.

For that first question, just check out my response from back on the previous page (dated Feb 28, 2011). Instead of using the alphabet (A, B, C), just select the numbering option for 1, 2, 3... As for the second issue, looks like you already found an answer elsewhere. I'm still working in Word 2003 myself, but honestly, I don't think the logic changes much between versions.

Taylor Bailey said:Man, back in 2010, things were just different...

Does anyone know how to actually sort entries alphabetically within a table in Word?

First, you just highlight the specific column you want sorted. Then, head over to Format, click on Bullets and Numbering, select Numbered, pick the ABC style, and hit OK. That should do it.

ironpuma62 said:Hi there
I’m working on a production control report
In column "A," inspectors log the inspection date. Column "B" is the shift worked. Column "C" lists the quantity of defective products. I can't seem to get a Formula to work that sums up how many non-conforming items were recorded on a specific date during First Shift. The problem is, the same date shows up multiple times because different inspectors are logging their own entries independently
Thanks in advance

Give this a shot: Put your dates in column A (say, from A4 to A30) and put the number of defective units in B4 through B30 specifically for First Shift. Set up a separate little table off to the side—put the months in H4 through H15, then in the column next to it (I), specifically from I4 to I15, you'll write the formulas that will give you the total defect count for each month.
-for Jan, type in I4: =SUMIF(A4:A30;" -for Feb, type in I5: =SUMIF(A4:A30;" -for March, in I6, type: =SUMIF(A4:A30;" -for April, in I7, type: =SUMIF(A4:A30;" .................................................. ...............................................,
-for Dec in I15, type: =SUMIF(A4:A30;" The dates in column A don't even need to be in order; the formula will find them regardless. I'm sure some geniuses around here might have found an even simpler way to do it, though.
Just replicate this process for all three shifts🙏you'd just be adding two extra columns to each respective table.

wearydriver50 said:Thanks, but I’m honestly lost. Can you break this down a bit more? I’m trying my best here, but it’s just not clicking.

If I’m following your train of thought correctly, what you’re actually looking for is a curly bracket that you can manually resize—something that can stretch to cover four lines of text. If that's the case, try this: open up your Word document, head over to the Insert tab, select Object, and then pick Microsoft Equation 3.0. A new toolbar should pop up, and at the exact spot where your cursor was sitting, an equation box will appear. On that new toolbar, find the curly bracket icon, click it once, and it’ll drop right into the equation area. Once you've done that, click somewhere outside that box. You’ll notice the area containing the bracket turns gray. Right-click on it, go to Format Object, hit Layout, choose Tight, and click OK. You should see little circles appearing around the bracket now; you can grab those handles and pull them wherever you want to stretch it out as much as you need. (I'm using Word 2003, by the way.)

Hannah Gomez5 said:👍

I assume "margin" was just a slip of the tongue here—you probably meant the discount,
because if we’re actually talking about the margin, we'd be looking at a plus

You're right, I definitely meant the discount.

Bradley Rivera5 said:Hey everyone!
I’d be super grateful if someone could lend me a hand here. I’m struggling to find an Excel formula that takes a number and, in the very next cell to the right, applies a 15% discount while simultaneously adding sales tax.
So, basically: I have the base price + discount + sales tax (for example, if the number is 10... I need to end up with 10.46)

Thanks a million!

Look, if your base price is sitting in cell A1, and you're dealing with a 10% margin and 15% sales tax, just pop this into cell B1: =(A1-(A1*0.10))*1.15

Benjamin Wilson7 said:I’ve been losing my mind over this one little glitch for two days straight:
So, I have a specific cell where I've restricted input so that only numbers can be entered. But here's the kicker—when I actually type something into that cell, the content completely vanishes from view. It's like it's invisible. The only way I can even see what I just typed is by looking up at the formula bar.

The Sheet is locked down, except for those specific cells where I've allowed data entry.

And then there's a second issue, though it's not quite as much of a headache:
When I click a cell that has a drop-down menu, the list starts scrolling from the bottom instead of starting right at the top. I haven't even had the energy to tackle that yet because the first thing is driving me absolutely insane.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Cheers.

I honestly can't believe this is happening to you, but is it possible you accidentally set the font color ( White to white and formatted the cells that way?