Tildemark blogs

Merging Adjacent Cells in Excel

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 16:48:59 +0800

The merge and Center button in Excel only centers the top left text and deletes the rest. What if the two columns of First names and last names are to be merged into the format: Last name, First name it would then become a problem.

Using the Ampersand ( & ) operator, it allows us to merge cells in an excel worksheet. you can create a formula to merge cells in excel or just insert it right away on the cell formula bar.

Problem:
And you wish to merge the two cells at A1 and A2 to the cell at A3

Given:
Cell A1 has the text "Lastname"
Cell A2 has the text "Firstname"

Solution:
* First position your active cell on A3.
* On the formula bar input the following: =A1&A2 [ENTER]

It should display LastnameFirstname on cell A3

To add a space and a comma, use the following:
=A1&", "&A2
it will output: Lastname, Firstname

alternatively you can also use the concatenate function, like this:
=CONCATENATE(A1,", ",A2)

Removing Duplicates in an Excel Column

Mon, 17 Dec 2007 16:06:40 +0800

Usually when doing some 'copy' 'and paste' stuff would end with so many duplicates. It would be very tedious in manually editing them. when collecting sites for link exchanges, we will get lots of duplicate domains especially from google and wikipedia which most of the links.

Normally, we use advanced filter but something is wrong with it, its not filtering the character 'a'. I got two of them and the result still has two of them. Here is how i did it with advanced filter.

1. Click On an empty cell column
2. On the menu choose: Data -> Filter -> Advanced Filter
3. In the dialog box, type in the range of cells to filter at the List Range text box. e.g. type in $A$2:$A$1319 for cell A2 to cell A1319
4. On the Copy to text box type in the cell location of the output (filtered list)
5. Click on the Unique records only check box
6. Press OK

With the tool duplicate remover, we could remove repeating domain names in an instant. But if we are just simply collecting words and similar list that we become another story. Usually we collect word or phrases and paste them in an excel worksheet. but the question is how to filter the list and remove the duplicates? well i run unto the same problems and luckily i found a macro on the internet, so it saved me the time in creating one.

1. Open Excel.
2. Alt + F11 to open the Visual Basic Editor (VBE).
3. Insert-Module.
4. Paste the code below.
5. Close the VBE (Alt + Q or the X in the top-right corner).

Excel Macro

Option Explicit 
 
Sub DeleteDups() 
     
   Dim x               As Long 
   Dim LastRow         As Long 
     
   LastRow = Range("A65536").End(xlUp).Row 
   For x = LastRow To 1 Step -1 
       If Application.WorksheetFunction.CountIf(Range("A1:A" & x), Range("A" & x).Text) > 1 Then 
           Range("A" & x).EntireRow.Delete 
       End If 
   Next x 
     
End Sub

Test the Code
1. In Column A add any data.
2. Tools-Macro-Macros
3. Select DeleteDups and press Run.

source: remove duplicates

Adding Dynamic Hyperlinks in Excel

Sat, 14 Oct 2006 10:32:33 +0800

Creating a hyperlink in excel is simple. Notice that after typing any uri in excel the text automatically turned into a hyperlink. You can add any link as you like in excel as long as there is a prepended http:// phrase before the text entered.

Now, what if we are going to add a dynamic URL? It would be best explained by example, so here it goes.

For example: We are asked to check multiple sites for the following internet standards; W3C HTML Validator and WDG HTML Validator.

We have a reference cell A1 have the text http://tildemark.com. We all know the URL for the respective standards as:

W3C - http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://www.tildemark.com
WDG - http://www.htmlhelp.com/cgi-bin/validate.cgi?url=http://www.tildemark.com&warnings=yes

Now, all we need to create an entry such that each time we change the domain names the entry on each validator also changes.

Do the following on Excel:

Cell A1 - http://www.tildemark.com

	A	B
1	http://www.tildemark.com
2
3
4
5
...
9	=HYPERLINK ("http://validator.w3.org/check?uri="&A1,"Check W3C HTML Validator")
10	=HYPERLINK ("http://www.htmlhelp.com/cgi-bin/validate.cgi?url="&A9&"&warnings=yes", "Page passed WDG validator")

More info at Office Website.

Removing multiple hyperlinks in Excel

Wed, 11 Oct 2006 11:24:17 +0800

Removing a bunch of hyperlinks can be tedious. imagine the time you have to right-click on each of those links and selecting 'remove hyperlink' on the context menu. Of course it would just take two clicks, but what if you are to remove a hundred of them or perhaps 1000 of them? I'm sure that would scrape out the paint of your right-mouse button. :)

I have some simple techniques you can use in order to remove multiple hyperlinks on a page:

Removing just one hyperlink
1. Right-Click on the cell and select Remove Hyperlink on the context menu.

Removing the cell format
1. Select the cells having hyperlinks. You can use CTRL+LEFT CLICK to randomly select a cell.
2. On the menu click on Edit. Hover your mouse to the option Clear and select Fomats. Please note that the cell is still clickable to remove the hyperlink completely you have to select Clear->All.

Remove hyperlink on selected cells the better way
1. Type in any text or number in a blank cell
2. Right-click and select Copy on the context menu.
3. While pressing CTRL, select each hyperlink you wish to be removed
4. On the Edit menu, select Paste Special.
5. Under Operation, click Multiply and then click OK.

Removing using a macro
Assuming you know excel programming you could create a macro to automatically remove the hyperlinks.
1. Start Visual Basic Editor. Alternatively you can press ALT-F11 to start the editor.
2. Double click the workbook you are using on the Project Explorer.
3. Type the following text:

Sub RemoveHyperlinks()
ActiveSheet.Hyperlinks.Delete
End Sub

4. Save your work.
5. Run your macro by pressing ALT-F8 or using the menu by Tools->Macro->Macros
6. Select the macro you have made, it should have the name 'RemoveHyperlinks'.