Friday, March 27th, 2015

Help! Excel Shows Columns as Numbers not Letters

 

What to do when Excel shows Column 1 not Column A

My Excel has been behaving stupidly lately. Instead of Column letters – A, B & C etc, the columns are numbered 1, 2, 3 and so on.

While I haven’t solved the fundamental problem I do have a short term solution. It all has to do with the Excel options. To change the column numbers back to letters chose File (the Office Button in Excel 2007) and choose Options > Formulas and disable the checkbox for R1C1 Reference Style.

On the Mac click Excel > Preferences > General and deselect the Use R1C1 Reference Style checkbox.

This setting kicks Excel back into the correct mode – much more to my taste!

Of course, if you prefer seeing numbers and not letters all you need to do is to click the checkbox and you are good to go!

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Categories:office, Windows

posted by Helen Bradley @ 6:59 amNo Comments links to this post

Thursday, March 26th, 2015

Quickly Open an Image in Photoshop

Did you know you don’t actually have to choose File > Open to open a document?

Yup! It is so!

To avoid having to choose File > Open anytime you want to open a new image in Photoshop just double click on the workspace and the Open dialog opens automatically for you.

Simple and quick. What’s not to like about techniques like this?

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Categories:Uncategorized

posted by Helen Bradley @ 6:49 amNo Comments links to this post

Friday, March 20th, 2015

Crop the Artboard to the size of an Object in Illustrator

How to resize your artboard to match the size of your Illustrator image

You’ve probably experienced the problem where you draw something in Illustrator and, when you are done, the artboard is way too big for the image. For convenience you need to scale down the artboard so it matches the size of your image.

Now you could go and grab the Artboard tool and start adjusting its size but there is an easier way. Start by selecting the objects on the artboard and then click the Artboard tool in the Tools panel twice. This opens up the Artboard Options Panel. From the Preset dropdown list choose Fit to Selected Art. The artboard will be instantly resized to fit the art on the artboard.

resize artboard to the size of your art in Illustrator

Click another tool such as the Selection tool to deselect the Artboard and you are good to go – you’ve cropped the excess artboard away from your artwork.

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Categories:Illustrator

posted by Helen Bradley @ 6:25 am2 Comments links to this post