David Moss tackles Vista queries, as well as dealing with floating bars and annoying pop-up reminders.
Pasting column data in Excel
Q I need to import a large amount of historical weather data so I can work on it for a school project. The data is coming from a website and is neatly laid out on a web page in columns, but when I copy and paste it into Excel, it all ends up in the first column. How can I get it laid out in Excel with each column of data on the web page in a separate column in the worksheet?
E Mackell
A Excel 2003 can help you out here with a rather handy function called Text to Columns. To get it to work, first copy the data from the website and then paste it into your worksheet as you’ve been doing, say from cell A1 onwards for the purposes of this example.
Next, select the cells that contain data in column A. If the worksheet data I selected is anything to go by, you’ll end up selecting A1 to A574 or so. Make sure you don’t include any other columns. Now head to the Data menu and select the Text to Columns menu option.
The Text to Columns wizard will now spring into life. Step 1 offers you the choice of Delimited or Fixed Width text.
In this case, select Fixed Width if it isn’t already selected (I found it produced better results than Delimited), and click Next.
You should now be able to set the field widths by dragging a line that has appeared between each column of data. I’d noticed that a few letters were in the wrong cell headings and realised I hadn’t evenly selected the data from the website. When I checked, I realised I hadn’t selected right from the margin of the web page. If you don’t get right to the edge, it skews the column headings when you paste the data into Excel.
You now get to choose the data format for each column. Do this by highlighting each column in turn in the Data Preview frame and choosing the format. The first column is already selected for you and will be set to General format. Click Finish when you’re done. I left everything in General format.
I also tried this out in Microsoft Excel 2007. The procedure is identical in both versions, although in the case of the latter, you click on the Data tab and then on the Text to Columns button near the centre of the Ribbon.
Reminder pop-ups a distraction
Q I use Outlook Web Access (OWA) for corporate email, and whenever a reminder occurs and the window steals focus, it drives me crazy. This is mainly because I’m in the middle of typing something important in an email, or other application, and I can end up dismissing the reminder, which could be important. I don’t want to use a non-IE browser, as OWA loses functionality. I’ve tried using PowerToys to stop applications stealing focus, but it doesn’t seem to work. I use IE6 on XP Professional SP2.
T Evans
A As far as I know, the only way to prevent reminders popping up is to tell OWA not to display them. To do this, click on the Options button at the bottom of the folder pane in Outlook Web Access.
Scroll down and you’ll see that there are two checkboxes, one labelled ‘Enable reminders for Calendar items’, and the other labelled ‘Enable reminders for Task items’.
If you uncheck those boxes, you shouldn’t get any more reminders popping up, but OWA will still play a sound when the reminder is due.
To do the same job in Outlook, head to the Tools menu, select Options and then click on the ‘Other’ tab. Next, click on the Advanced Options button and when the Advanced Options dialog opens, click on the Reminder Options button.
Uncheck the box labelled ‘Display the reminder’ and you shouldn’t get any more interruptions from message boxes, but you’ll still hear the sound played when the reminder is due.