Often when working with data especially data that is unformatted, such as the information I export from the MLS, I will receive a large number of blank rows interspersed with the information I am interested in. One solution would be to just sort the data and the blanks will be at the bottom or top of the list depending on the sort order. Now suppose the order of the data is as important as the data within the list well the technique below will allow you to delete the blank rows while preserving the order of the list.

Before you begin please make sure you save your workbook.

1. Step one select the range of cells you want to remove blanks from
2. Press F5 on your keyboard or click Edit and Goto
3. Click the Special button
4. Click the Blanks option and click OK.
5. If you are using Excel 2007 choose click the arrow under delete on the ribbon and choose Delete Sheet Rows. If you are using Excel 2003 or Excel XP right click click delete and select entire row.

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

Step 4

Final Product

- Mark Flavin

Microsoft Office products are among the best tools in any professional’s toolkit and with every release Microsoft improves on the functionality and ease with which you can create, distribute and save information. With 2007 once you get past the foreign ribbon layout I believe you will find a really robust system that fixes a lot of the gripes and complaints that users have had over the years.

Well my favorite fix is that you can now save your documents as PDF files without shilling out a lot of money for Adobe Acrobat or messing freeware offerings such as cutepdf or primopdf. Instead of setting up a print driver you can actually save directly to the pdf file format which is awesome if you have ever had to go through the pain printing 30 pages individually and binding them all into a single pdf file because adobe ran out of memory while printing.

Setting it up could not be easier:

1. First Download and install the 2007 Microsoft Office Add-in: Microsoft Save as PDF or XPS.
2. From any Office program (Word 2007, Excel 2007, PowerPoint 2007 etc.) click the Office button in the top left corner.
3. Select Save As.
4. Choose PDF.
5. Select either Standard (publishing online and printing) or Minimum size (publishing online).
6. Click Publish and you’re done.

If your using Office 2003 or below I would suggest you check out either cutepdf or primopdf.

- Mark Flavin

Between monitoring servers, checking email, and just surfing the internet I find that I quickly run out of screen real estate so for me multiple monitors are a must have. However multiple monitors have their drawbacks for instance one monitor has the taskbar and the other monitor has only whatever windows you drag onto it.  

Enter UltraMon, frankly after only a couple days of using UltraMon I can’t imagine running multiple monitors without it.  There are ton of features to UltraMon and to be honest I am still exploring the program but some of the best ones I will describe below.

First, I love being able to easily stretch a single wallpaper across the monitors.

The next thing I love about UltraMon is a feature called smart taskbar which essentially extends your taskbar across both monitors and clearly identifies which program belongs to which monitor. This makes it much easier to switch back and forth between programs without hunting for the window which you minimized.

Another really cool feature is Mirroring, Ultramon will allow you to show the exact same screen to two or monitors. This could be really useful for presentations or if you are sharing a document with a client who is across from you or if you would like to show your desktop on a TV mounted behind you (a broker asked me to help him set this up).

The last feature I really like about UltraMon is that it lets you quickly move programs between monitors by right clicking on the window title. UltraMon will also allow you to maximize any window across all monitors which can be really helpful when working with large images.

  

As I said there are a many more features to this program but if you are using or plan on using multiple monitors I would definitely recommend that you give UltraMon a try. 

-Mark Flavin 

Microsoft released Office 2007 early this year. Many of our Real Estate customers have asked “Should I upgrade?”

My answer depends on a few variables.

The first variable is whether you are buying a new computer that has Vista on it and whether you are a serious Office user. Also I will ask you what version of Office you are currently using.

For the standard user who isn’t making fancy graphs or needs interoperability between other Microsoft programs I would most likely tell you not to upgrade since you probably wouldn’t use all the new features in the new version.

If you buying a new computer and you have a copy of Office 2003 then I would just install the copy of Office 2003 on your new computer.

Now if you have a Windows XP computer and everything is running fine and you still are not an Office power user then I would say stick with what works. Why spend more money on a new version if you are not going to use it much.

Overall I usually say don’t upgrade to almost anyone unless there is a specific feature that you really need. Even if you are using Office 2000 I usually won’t recommend upgrading unless there is a specific reason for it. Why spend the money if you don’t have to.

What if you are buying a new computer and need a copy of Office. You actually have a few choices on what to do at this point.

1. You  can buy Office 2007 Home & Student – $150.00 and Outlook 2007 – $100.00 This is a better deal than buying Office 2007 standard.
2. You can buy Office 2007 Home & Student – $150.00 and then get a free copy of Outlook 2007 from a Hosted Exchange provider.
3. Download for FREE Open Office and then if you want Outlook then get a free copy from a Hosted Exchange provider.

What is Open Office?

Open Office is FREE program that is just as good for any standard and probably power users of MS Office products. The two best things about this suite of programs is that it open/save-as all Microsoft documents and it’s FREE .

The one thing I cannot live with out is Microsoft Outlook. In my opinion it is the best email program because of it’s ability to sync with Microsoft Exchange. Nothing compares to this program.

One thing to point out about buying a retail copy of Office (any package) is that you can actually install it on up to 3 computers so your actual cost per computer is 1/3 the purchase price if you actually install it on 3 computers. Office isn’t really that expensive when you look at it that way.

For a more in depth comparison of Open Office and Microsoft Office read this article here  Open Office vs. Office 2007

For some reasons that may be good for some power users here is an article by Chad Johnson at My Tech Opinion

Of the 10 reasons Chad explains the only cool feature for me was the Save as PDF without having to buy Acrobat Standard or Pro .

Loren Nason
Future of Real Estate Technology

I know lots of might be saying “Sweet, I’ll buy it”

Here’s the catch -it’s only for college students.

Many of you might have a kid in college student and wouldn’t you want them to not steal the software and instead be upstanding citizens and buy a legitimate copy?

Well starting in the next few hours you can buy Office Ultimate 2007 if you are a student. How do they confirm you are a student? As I understand all you need to do is have an email address that ends in .edu .

Now some might think of an possibly evil trick is find a teacher at a school that you know and doesn’t need office and ask them to use their .edu email address to buy a copy for you.  I wonder if MS will keep the purchase to one copy per email address.

Get the info at -> The Ultimate Steal

Loren Nason
Future of Real Estate Technology
Training REALTORS on the efficient use of Technology

Microsoft is giving a free copy of Vista Business or Office 2007 Pro FOR FREE!

If you’re interested in getting a copy of Windows Vista Business Edition or Office 2007 for free (naturally there is a catch), you might want to check this out. If you register with the Power Together Campaign and participate in at least 3 qualifying webcasts (for each product). Here are some of the details:

* The Power Together Campaign consists of two (2) offers, the Windows Vista Business Offer and the Microsoft Office Professional 2007 Offer, and is open only to legal residents of the 50 United States (includes District of Columbia) 18 years of age or older. You are not eligible to receive these offers if you or your employer is a participant in the Microsoft Partner Program or the Microsoft Developer Network. To be eligible to receive Windows Vista Business, you must register at www.powertogether.com and participate in at least three (3) qualifying web casts and/or virtual lab sessions within 30 days of registration. To be eligible to receive Microsoft Office Professional 2007, you must register at www.powertogether.com and participate in at least three (3) qualifying web casts and/or virtual lab sessions within 30 days of registration. 

Google Apps for Your Domain

This is a Tutorial of how to enable Google apps to work on your domain name. What I will be covering is how to ONLY setup EMAIL and NOT WEBHOSTING. Why NOT hosting? Because almost all of you have a descent site now and will not benefit from moving your website.

Why would you benefit from moving your email to Google?
Because most of you are using a free email service for AOL, Hotmail, Yahoo, RoadRunner, etc… and this does not portray a professional image. See the post Are You Judged By Your Skills?

Step 1:
GoTo www.google.com/a and sign up for an account
If you already have a Gmail email you can use this account as the primary account to setup all the settings, or you can sign up for a new Gmail account
Step 2:
Setup Domain Details.
Your Name, Your Organization, how many users, etc…

Step 3:
Setup the Primary Master account

Step 4:
Setup What applications you want
For most of you your just going to want to setup Email and Calendar

Step 5:
The most difficult part is the Changes to DNS you will have to make.
These next steps below are copied directly from Google. They maybe a little different depending on what domain host you use.

If you need any more help with this Contact Us and we will help you set it up.

Loren Nason
Your Local Tech

I’ve been telling you that it is important to have your email be a professional address such as john@john4homes.com . But you also want to keep you costs as low as possible.

For as long as it has been available I have been the Choir Boy of Hosted Exchange and singing its praises. I STILL am a firm believer in a Hosted Exchange solution for all small business. BUT for the real estate agent or the small business who needs to save money and is willing to embrace bleeding edge tech here is the ultimate solution.

Google Apps for Your Domain

You can choose any combination of these Google services

Gmail – Offer email to your members with 2 gigabytes of storage per account, search tools to help them find information fast, and instant messaging built right into the browser.

What does this mean?

You can get Gmail for you domain plus others.

So if you like the Gmail interface you can now have it for your domain.

The next article will discuss how to set it up for any domain.

Loren
Your Local Tech

Last week I showed you google’s new app that gives access to your gmail account from any PDA type phone or smart phone. Link – Gmail on Phone

Now this new app in beta brings synchroization of your Gmail Calendar to your Palm or Windows based phone. With both of these products the world is on the verge of making a Hosted Exchange account un-necessary.

GooSync

GooSync is a free application to synch up your Google Calendar with your mobile device calendar? It’s actually a free service that acts like an Exchange Server for you calendar data only. You simply register for the GooSync service; once you’re all set up, your device will connect to the GooSync server and shoot your Google Calendar information right to your handheld’s calendar.

GooSync also supports phones from Nokia, SonyEricsson, Audiovox, Motorola and more.

Why is this something to pay attention to?

I recommend to all agents who want the ultimate email solution is to use a Hosted Exchange Solution. I will be covering this technology in the next few months.

BUT, with all the tools/apps for Gmail my suggestions could change. This is because you can actually get Gmail to manage the email for your domain. What do I mean? You can get google to host your email for you for free. Then once you have that you can check your email from your phone and sync your calendar. Soon I hope you will be able to sync your contacts. Once this happens you can get the same experience from a Hosted Exchange account but use google and save money.

We will cover more email solutions in the coming weeks.

Loren Nason
Your Local Tech

(via: jkOnTheRun)

What is OGA?

OGA = Office Genuine Advantage

Do you hate the Validation checks for anything you download from Microsoft? Well get ready for more because today Microsoft rolled out the first part of OGA to validate Office 2007. Starting today, any Office Online templates downloaded from within the Office 2007 Microsoft Office System applications will require validation of legitimacy.

Similarly, starting in January, users of Office Update will have to validate the legitimacy of their Office software before they can use the service. This will include Office 2003.

Microsoft said in a press statement that the validation process will be “quick and simple” for users. The OGA program, currently in the testing phase, is now available in 26 languages worldwide.

Why should you know about this?

Two reasons

1. If you have a pirated version you will not be able to update your Office Suite.
2. If you are one that updates your Office Suite be ready for more annoying Validation Checks.

What should you do?

Well the RIGHT thing to do is to go and buy your own copy of Office.

What should you really do?

Most likely nothing since 95% of the people out there I have met have Never updated their Office software, nor have they downloaded any free templates from the Office site. So for now just keep on your merry way and when you want to get Office 2007 go and buy it.

Loren Nason
Your Local Tech

Source = PCWorld