excel

Overly simple budget tool

If you don't have Microsoft Excel, you can skip Family Home Budget 2008, which is merely a workbook formatted to handle financial information and calculations. It offers a very generous 90-day trial period, but the trial restrictions render that extra time useless.

The spreadsheets in the workbook are well-organized, but the design is nothing to write home about. Everything is divided into columns and rows, with different budgets being represented in the tabs at the bottom of the screen. Users can manage their monthly budgets, long-term budgets, credit cards, and other information in this program. Presumably, users can manually … Read more

View and edit Word documents on your iPhone with Documents To Go

It's been a long time coming, but DataViz's Documents To Go has finally arrived in the App Store.

The software allows you to view, edit, and create Microsoft Word documents, while a companion desktop app (for Windows and Mac) enables two-way synchronization.

Needless to say, this should have business users dancing in the aisles (or at least doing a little Where the Hell is Matt-style jig).

Drawing on years of experience with Palm and Windows Mobile versions of Documents To Go, DataViz crammed in a laundry list of features. For starters, the company's InTact technology guarantees … Read more

Microsoft issues patches, including one for IE exploit

Updated at 2:20 p.m. PDT with Adobe update released; at 12:25 p.m. PDT with Microsoft saying this is a record number of vulnerabilities addressed in Patch Tuesday; and at 11:45 a.m. PDT with comment.

Microsoft has released 10 security updates fixing a record number of Patch Tuesday holes, including one for a critical hole in Internet Explorer 8 that was exploited as part of a hacking contest at CanSecWest in March.

The bulletin addresses 31 vulnerabilities. "It's the most since Microsoft started releasing updates on a regular schedule of the second Tuesday … Read more

Excel template for investors

Investors who want to determine the possible returns of their funding, plus figure the impact of amortized goodwill and other factors, will certainly want to check out this preformatted Excel spreadsheet.

The Investment and Business Valuation tool is a preformatted spreadsheet with four tabs: Assumptions, Before (investment), After (assumptions regarding value of investment), and Results (Return on Investment). The initial tab, Assumptions, lets you choose either New or Existing investment and to enter a number of key factors: taxation and amortization, capital, and cost of capital--including risk-free rate, market risk premium, and weighted cost of capital. The interface is well-designed … Read more

Simple Excel calendar

There are so many complex digital calendar systems that help you track everything from business contacts to dog-grooming appointments, it is actually difficult to find a simple, printable, old-fashioned calendar. This simple Excel Calendar Template offers one solution, although.

This free template was designed using Microsoft Excel. However, its interface is nothing like a spreadsheet. After choosing the year you would like to view, a large, easy-to-read calendar is displayed. Each month is available for viewing by clicking on the tabs at the bottom, as well as an overview of the year. Each day has ample space to write a … Read more

Very little clean-up

Though they required minor editing, this file converter quickly and easily converted our PDFs to Word, Excel, and other file formats. We were, however, disappointed by its double-whammy of a trial limitation.

Able2Extract PDF Converter has a sleek and professional-looking user interface. Intuitive commands and navigational buttons reside at the top of the window. Novice users will especially appreciate the tips and the step-by-step guide it employs to walk you through the conversion process. The process was extremely easy and fast. Once we located our PDF, it was simply a matter of selecting the text we wanted to convert, and … Read more

UEFA Champions League final: What brands can learn from 'Barca'

I’m nervous, seriously nervous. In a few hours, in the Olympic stadium in Rome, FC Barcelona (or “Barca,” as its supporters call it) will face Manchester United, the other soccer superpower, in the game of all games, the final of the UEFA Champions League, the most important club competition in Europe (and the world, for that matter). Both teams have already won two trophies this season (their national leagues and national cups, respectively), and a victory in Rome would see either one clinch the “treble.” For Barca, it would be a historic accomplishment–no other Spanish soccer team has … Read more

Quick amortization information

Choosing your major financial purchase can be dreamy (stucco or stone? sun roof or tinted windows?) but the dream can quickly morph into a nightmare when trying to determine just how much money your loan will actually cost over time. The Amortization Schedule for Excel gives you the basic information you need so you can see just how much your dream will actually cost over time.

This freeware tool is very easy to use. Just plug in your numbers (loan amount, loan term, and interest rate) and voila, an amortization schedule quickly appears. You can easily change the variables, too. … Read more

Microsoft under fire for ODF glitch in Excel

Microsoft has come under fire for spreadsheet interoperability issues in its recent release of Office 2007 Service Pack 2, but the company says it is an issue inherent in OpenDocument Format 1.1.

The software giant released last week the second service pack for Office 2007, which provides support for documents saved in the ODF 1.1 format.

However, Rob Weir, chief ODF architect at IBM, posted a report on his blog saying SP2 had problems reading some ODF spreadsheets saved by OpenOffice.org and lost data by "silently stripping out formulas" from cells. The resulting spreadsheet displays &… Read more

Microsoft fills Excel, Windows, Word holes

Updated 12:30 p.m. PDT with ZoneAlarm discount offer and 11:50 a.m. PDT with comment from security vendors.

Microsoft on Tuesday closed security holes in Excel, Windows, and Word that had been exploited in the wild as well as other holes for which exploit code or details exist, all as part of its monthly patch update cycle.

The critical Excel hole could allow an attacker to take complete control of an unpatched system if a user opens a specially crafted Excel file. Security firm Symantec said in February that it had discovered malicious files in the wild … Read more