Microsoft Office

Understanding Task Dependency Types in Microsoft Project

Dependency Types in Microsoft Project

When creating schedules in Microsoft Project the first thing that a Project Manager would typically do is to input the tasks involved in a project. These tasks then need to be linked to show the relationship between them. These links create task dependencies.

There are 4 different types of task dependency:

  • Finish-to-Start (FS): The finish date of one task drives the start date of another.
  • Start-to-Start (SS): The start date of one task drives the start date of another.
  • Finish-to-Finish (FF): The finish date of one task drives the finish date of another.
  • Start-to-Finish (SF): The start date of one task drives the finish date of another.

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Excel Pivot Tables Filter by Values

If you’ve ever used Pivot Tables in Excel, you no doubt have discovered the wonders of filtering.  The ability to filter row or column items can be extremely helpful when you don’t wish to analyze all of the items in the driving data set.

filter_pivottable_values_1

But what do you do if you wish to filter by the Value-based items?  In other words, the numbers in the “connect the dots” area where row and column choices intersect.  These, on first glance, don’t appear to have sorting and filtering controls available.

filter_pivottable_values_2

Rest assured, they do exist; you just have to dig a bit to find them.

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Excel Lookup with Dynamic Input

VLOOKUP is great for returning information from a database, but one of the limitations is that the return information is static.

What if the user wishes to look for certain data one day but different data another day?  This would require either two different sets of VLOOKUP functions or the functions would need to be reprogrammed.

In the database below, the user would wish to return address information in one scenario, but return financial information in another scenario.

Suppose there are times when the user requires a mixture of the two; that would require a third set of VLOOKUP functions. This could become an ever evolving set of work.

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Automatically Refresh Excel Pivot Tables

Excel PivotTables are one of the greatest tools in the spreadsheet user’s toolkit.

However, there is one tiny bit of functionality that appears to be missing: the ability of pivot tables to automatically update when information in the source data changes.

Most user’s see this as a glaring lack of functionality. There is, however a very good reason why pivot tables do not automatically update.

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Office 2013 – Recover Unsaved Documents

Admit it; you’ve done this more than once.  You open an Office application like Word or Excel and type out your next great novel or number-crunching masterpiece.  Then, in a state of haste, you start closing windows and accidentally close the one window you intended to leave open.  One second later you realize, this was the one windows you shouldn’t have closed.  All is lost… or is it?

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Rename Files Fast with the Tab Key

If you scan documents from a network scanner (like the giant printer down the hall) and have the scan sent to your email, you are probably less than thrilled with the name that the scanner gives the file.  The name is usually something generic and uninformative like “Scan0001.pdf” or a combination of the date and the time like “07182015-100855.pdf”.

Tab1

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Convert a PowerPoint Presentation to Video

This tutorial applies to PowerPoint 2013, but several earlier versions of PowerPoint possess the same abilities.  The exact steps and options will vary slightly from version to version.

Showing your PowerPoint masterpiece can be thrilling, but what if you want to reach a wider audience?  How can we take our presentation from the confines of the boardroom (or is that bored room?) and set it free so the world can bask in its glory?

Very easily; we convert it into a video.

In this tutorial, we discover a feature introduced in PowerPoint 2010 which allows you to take your slides and encode them to a video that can be loaded to your corporate network for on-demand viewing through an intranet portal, or posted to a more globally accessible site such as YouTube.

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Microsoft Excel – Understanding Excel Functions with Help

Admit it, you’ve used Excel functions without any idea how they work.  Someone said, “Click here for this.  Click here for that.” You’ve dutifully followed orders, blindly clicking on cells with no real clue as to why.

It’s time to lift the veil of mystery and understand why these functions are so demanding of such data.

Here is just one of many options for understanding function logic:

This first part has nothing to do with obtaining function information, but it’s a great time saving trick.  If you like to type your functions directly in the cell; press your EQUAL button [=] and start typing the first few letters of the function name.  As you type, Excel will begin to AutoComplete the function’s name.

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