Cost & Capital

tips & tricks to make life as a consultant easier

[costandcapital]

Travel Trick Of The Day: Getting a Rental Car

Often times, there are no rental cars available for your period of time. Here is a trick to get one nonetheless: Try renting a car for a week. Yes, rental car agencies usually have a contingency left for longer rentals. So use that to your advantage. Just book one for the week and then return it earlier. You will only be charged the amount for the actual rental.

Also, sign up for any preferred program your rental car agency of choice has to offer: free weekend rentals and upgrades are certainly nice perks.

[costandcapital]

Data Hack of the Day: Convert Images To Data

When doing research for a project we often stumble upon charts that would be great to use but we are unable to find the data behind them to use in Excel. We discovered a neat tool which take the pain of of the process and let's you quickly convert chart images into usable data: Plot Digitizer.

You can find a very good how-to manual here: How-To

[costandcapital]

Word Trick of the Day: Freely Move Images in Microsoft Word

Microsoft word can be a very painful experience. Especially when you have to deal with images. Somehow, they always seem to sick to the right or left borders of a document create a mess.

But there is a simple solution to this and here is how you do it:

Insert the image into your Word document

Click on the image so it is selected

On your tool ribbon, click on "Format"

Click on "Position" and then on "More Layout Options..."

Click on the "Text Wrapping" tab

Now, depending on how you want your image to interact with the text (surrounded, behind, in front), click on the desired text wrapping

Click on the "Position" tab

Uncheck the "Move object with text" box

Confirm with "OK"

Freely move your image around

Enjoy

[costandcapital]

Windows trick of the Day: Quickly switch between windows

[ALT] + [Tab] allows you to quickly switch between the most currently used window and the current one. This comes in very hand when you quickly want to copy from one window or program to another or simply need to look up something.

Keep holding [ALT] and you will see an overview of all active windows. With the help of the arrow buttons you can now quickly select your desired window.

[costandcapital]

Travel Trick of the Day: Opening Yoghurt on a Plane

If you open a yoghurt on an airplane, always point the tab away from you. Follow this or learn it the hard way. You are welcome.

[costandcapital]

Excel Trick of the Day: Quickly Switch Between Number Formats

There is a super fast way to change the formatting of a cell value:

[CTRL]+[SHIFT]+1: Number Format

[CTRL]+[SHIFT]+2: Time

[CTRL]+[SHIFT]+3: Date

[CTRL]+[SHIFT]+4: Currency

[CTRL]+[SHIFT]+5: Percentage

[CTRL]+[SHIFT]+6: Scientific

Try it out!

[costandcapital]

Excel Trick of the Day: Quickly Switch Between Worksheets

To switch quickly between worksheets, simply press:

[CTRL]+[PGDN] to change to the next worksheet to the right

[CTRL]+[PGUP] to change to the next worksheet to the left

[costandcapital]

Excel Trick of the Day: Quick Sum Shortcut

You can quickly sum a range of values by pressing [ALT] + "=" (equal sign) at the bottom of a column of data or at the right end of a row of data.

[costandcapital]

Excel Trick of the Day: Quickly select blank cells

There is an neat trick to quickly select all the blank cells on an Excel sheet:

Select the range that contains the blank cells you wan to select.

Press [CTRL]+G to bring up the "Go To" menu and click on "Special".

Select "Blanks" in the "Go To Special" menu and click on "Ok".

Voilà

[costandcapital]

Excel Hack of the Day: The XY Chart Labeler

Labeling XY chart data points can be very painful and time-consuming. But thankfully we found a free tool that will make labeling XY data points a breeze: The XY Chart Labeler

Check it out. It is a life saver.

[costandcapital]

Excel Trick of the Day: Speed-Entering Dollar Signs in Formulas

You can significantly speed up entering a formula and locking the values with dollar signs with the F4 key. After entering a cell reference, repeatedly hitting the F4 key switches between both dollar signs, just the row and just the column, no dollar sign.

[costandcapital]

Trick of the day: Ways to take a screenshot in Windows 7

Consultants often have to take screenshots to include in presentations. This was always a pain but there are a couple of ways to make this much easier:

Since Windows Vista, Microsoft includes the "Snipping Tool" to easily create screenshots. Simply search for "snipping tool" in your Start Menu. This tool lets you capture screenshots by simply click and drag your cursor over the screen.

A quick and dirty solution for copy & pasting is the "Print" button on your keyboard. CTRL + Print lets you capture the entire screen and ALT + Print captures only the active window. Now all you have to do is simply paste the screenshot into your presentation crop/edit to your liking.