I enjoy and thank you for your articles. You treat your correspondents' lack of knowledge with respect, and with the minimum of computerese jargon. Please assist me if you can with the following problems; perhaps, at the same time, you will help some of your other readers.
Quicken 4 has always performed properly under Windows 3.11. In Windows 95 there are a few problems which I hope you may be able to solve.
[Problems 1, 2 and 3 include illegal operation errors when changing the date in Reports areas and opening the Find window].
I have spoken to the very helpful and courteous Intuit Technical Support Staff who were unable to solve the problems by telephone and, after inspecting my program and data floppies, reported that they could not reproduce the faults. What could be wrong with my system to interfere with resetting of the dates?
4. I have compiled a simple World Time chart in Excel 5. I would like to have the times automatically updated. The Data--Refresh Data option on the Excel menu is blanked out. Why? The only way to update times that I know is to exit the file and than reopen. Is there a simple way to synchronise the chart with the system clock?
5. I would also like to have the 6PM to 6AM cells patterned in colour to separate the night--day hours. There is, no doubt, a formula saying: IF TIME > 6PM And < 6AM- Then Format-Cells Patterns-Color etc. But I cannot make this work. Help!
6. What about changing dates automatically between Samoa and Anchorage? You may well suggest to download or purchase someone else's brains -- fine, but I suspect that a mature and robust program such as Excel is able to do it on its own . . . with your assistance of course.
7. The Microsoft Flight Simulator 5.0a is a pain in my posterior. I start it in DOS from a System Startup Disc, as advised by the courteous, knowledgeable but often frustratingly unreachable Microsoft Support staff ("Your call is important to us", but please listen to elevator muzak for the next 20 minutes), and after running Memmaker to provide the needed Expanded Memory. It crashes regularly. The error is EMM386 DMA buffer is too small. Add D = 64 parameter and reboot. What is DMA and where do I find it?
8. How to delete icons from the desktop if they are not shortcuts but refer to programs such as Inbox, Recycle bin and Network Neighborhood.
- Ruker Wines
For questions 1, 2 and 3: Intuit has just released Quicken 5. If you are a registered user you should have received a letter offering you an upgrade at a very good price. This new version has been written with Windows 95 in mind, so I'd recommend you try it. If the problem persists then there may possibly be something wrong with your system clock, but it seems unlikely.
4. Press <Shift>+F9 to recalculate the current spreadsheet without needing to exit and re-load.
5. You are right -- there is a formula which will do it, and you are on the right track. You didn't tell me what formula you had already tried, but you need to use the conditional IF statement: If ({CONDITION}, DO-IF-TRUE, DO-IF-FALSE). So if you write a couple of macros and test them, that should produce the right colour effect on your cells when you run them. You only need to add the "condition" test and say something like: If (NIGHT, Colour_it_Dark, Colour_it_Bright). You need to make the macro NIGHT test for the times you want to apply.
6. Have you considered using software that is already programmed to provide a world clock for you? ID Logic's World Time Clock offers a fully dynamic and customisable map of the world's time zones, and is shareware which can be downloaded from www.prs.net/wt.html on the Web.
7. Direct Memory Access (DMA) is a process that allows Input/Output (I/O) devices in a computer to exchange data directly with the computer's memory without passing the data through the microprocessor. What your computer is complaining about is not having enough buffer area to keep this process flowing smoothly. You need to edit config.sys after making a backup copy, and find the line with emm386.exe and add DMA=64 to the end of that line. This will increase the buffer to 64 kilobytes from the default 16 kilobytes.
8. You can download Microsoft Powertoys from our Web site at www.idg.com.au/pc.world. It adds a TweakUI module to Control Panel to remove the items. Note: If you want to remove TweakUI, be careful to use the Control Panel Add/Remove Programs tool, or you may have problems. You can also delete those items by getting into dangerous waters playing with the registry and policy editors -- definitely not for the faint-hearted.
However, if you just want them to be out of sight rather than really deleted, here's a trick that will get the results. Right-click on a blank part of the desktop. Select Arrange Icons. Uncheck Auto Arrange if it's selected. Now drag the Network Neighborhood icon to the lower edge of the screen. Drag any other icon and park it above the Network Neighborhood icon. Press the left mouse button and drag a selection rectangle around both icons. Both icons will be highlighted. Release the left button. Click on the upper icon and drag it -- the lower icon will move too -- downward until the lower icon disappears below the screen edge. Now click on the desktop to cancel the selection. Drag the upper icon to its rightful place. If you decide you want them back again, check Auto Arrange and they will return.
- Ian Yates and Neale Morison
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Category: Spreadsheet, Win95, Accounting
Issue: Oct 1996
Pages: 174-176
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Quicken, Excel and desktop drags