2013 Holiday Gift Ideas for Excel Users

Looking for holiday gift ideas for Excel users? The holiday season is right around the corner and it’s never too soon to start thinking about what presents you are going to get your friends, family, or coworkers. To help you out, I’ve made a list of items I think would be very useful or exciting for Excel spreadsheet users. Some of these items I use on a daily basis and others are things that are on my own personal wish list. Enjoy and feel free to suggest items by leaving a comment below!

Excel Books

Excel 2010 Bible by John Walkenbach: This is by far the best Excel book I have ever found for anyone who uses Microsoft Excel spreadsheets on a daily basis.

Excel for Scientists and Engineers: Numerical Methods: With this text as your guide, you can significantly enhance Microsoft Excel's capabilities to execute the calculations needed to solve a variety of chemical, biochemical, physical, engineering, biological, and medicinal problems. If only Excel could solve world peace too!

Microsoft Excel 2010 In Depth by Bill Jelen. Known as Mr. Excel, Bill Jelen is a Microsoft Excel MVP. This book literally covers everything you’d want to know about Excel 2010.

101 Secrets Of AMicrosoft Excel Addict - Discover little-known Excel secrets that have been hiding right under your nose that will help boost your Excel skills and productivity far ahead of everyone around you.

VBA and Other Books
Microsoft Visual Basic 2010 Step by Step by Michael Halvorson: A lot of hands-on work-by-examples will further the development of your Visual Basic programming skills.

　

Best Excel Apps

Kingsoft Android Spreadsheets: A powerful spreadsheet application for quickly calculating data, view graphs and filter data, and also a great tool for editing Excel files and save them to xls, xlsx, csv, pdf and etc.

Simple Spreadsheet: Great little program for putting together some quick calculations on the go. Much easier to use than Google Docs spreadsheets.


Best Tablet for Excel Spreadsheets

Microsoft Surface 2: For my needs, Surface 2 is perfect. This device comes preinstalled with a "touch enabled" Microsoft Office which includes Outlook. Basically, all I was looking for was a tablet to check my email, do some word processing, edit spreadsheets, browse the web, and pay bills online.

Excel Software

Microsoft Office Home & Student 2010: Includes the latest and greatest version of Microsoft Excel, among others.

Other Tech, Gadgets, and Toys

Google ChromeCast HDMI Streaming Media Player. Stream my Excel YouTube videos right to your TV using your smartphone, tablet, or laptop!

R/C Helicopter. This Brand New 3 Channel mini rc helicopter is the world's newest, most durable and stable helicopter. The item comes with the latest gyro system for precision control. The metal frame has proven to withstand dozens of crashes.

HDMI Pocket Projector. Projects up to 1080p HD images up to 60" diagonal. Rechargeable and portable. Connects via HDMI to most smartphones, tablets, computers, video players, cameras and more.

Breaking Bad: Complete Series. All seasons plus tons of amazing extras for the greatest show on television. The episode titled "Ozymandias" is my favorite episode of any TV show I've ever seen.

Amazon Prime

I highly recommend joining Amazon Prime. If you order something off of Amazon on average once per month then it pays for itself, or if you're ordering a bunch of gifts this holiday season it probably will too. The FREE two day shipping is awesome and everything I've ordered really has come in two days or less. You can also stream movies, TV shows, and get a Kindle book every month. Great alternative for Netflix or Hulu and well worth the investment in my opinion. Cheers!


What gifts are you getting your fellow percussionist for the holidays? Please let me know by commenting below!

　

Visit me at Excel Spreadsheets Help and leave a comment. Would love to see you there!

2013 MLB Playoff Bracket

October is here which means it’s time for the 2013 MLB playoffs to begin! The major league baseball regular season concludes on Sunday, Sept. 29 unless there are any necessary regular-season tie breaker games (Rays versus Rangers). The MLB playoffs are set to begin on Tuesday, October 1st. The Division Series returns to a 2-2-1 format this fall. Game 1 of the World Series is scheduled to be played on Wednesday, Oct. 23, in the ballpark of the American League champions.

 

My 2013 MLB playoff bracket includes the schedule and TV coverage lineup. As an Ohio guy I'll be rooting for the Reds and Indians, though I am happy for Pirates fans to see their tea finally make it to the playoffs. Who do you have winning your 2013 MLB playoff bracket?

2013 MLB Playoff Bracket.xls

Visit me at Excel Spreadsheets Help and leave a comment. Would love to see you there!

Download a Wordpress Website Creation Checklist Spreadsheet

In the past two years I’ve created eight websites for various hobbies and niches I am interested in and that I felt were underserved in the online world. I use Wordpress as my content management system because it allows you to quickly create a website with no HTML or other coding experience. The steps to setup a new website are pretty much the same so I put together a Wordpress website creation checklist to help me remember to do everything. I’ve made this checklist into an Excel template which you can download for free by clicking the link below.

 

 

Two skills I encourage everyone to learn that I’ve found invaluable in my career is how to program VBA macros and how to build a simple website. In fact, in one of my most recent projects these skills were used hand-in-hand. I built the majority of the Observation Wheel database with an Excel spreadsheet and a few custom macros. Every row in my sheet contained all the information for a single observation wheel. I then had the macro export the data to Microsoft Word in the HTML format I needed for the site. I then simply copied and pasted that text into Wordpress and published it. I created pages for over eighty dfferent observation wheels almost instantly!

 

There are countless positive benefits for learning how to make a website. I’ve included a link to all the resources I use within the template and I've tried to include as many tips as I could think of. I begin with registering a domain name and take you all the way through setting up an email list. Download my Wordpress website creation checklist below and please feel free to ask me any questions you may have!

 

Wordpress Website Creation Checklist.xls download

Visit me at Excel Spreadsheets Help and leave a comment. Would love to see you there!