Microsoft Office 365

Microsoft Office 365 drops its BETA tag today.

Microsoft published release notes and unveiled tiered pricing plans that start at $6/month per user for small businesses and ranges between $10 and $27/month per user for large enterprises depending on the features needed.

Office 365 combines Office Web Apps with additional collaboration services for businesses, including Outlook through Exchange Online, document sharing with Sharepoint Online, and corporate instant messaging and presence with Lync Server.

Enhancing your vlookup function

Here's another tip to help enhancing the way how you use your vlookup function by removing the "#N/A" when the unique key isn't available.

We can remedy this by judicious use of Excel’s IF() and ISBLANK() functions. We change our formula from this…

=VLOOKUP(A11,’Product Database’!A2:D7,2,FALSE)

…to this…

=IF(ISBLANK(A11),”",VLOOKUP(A11,’Product Database’!A2:D7,2,FALSE))

Lock the Table_array in vlookup function

A lot of time, we use vlookup function to help us to retrieve information from another table and we will like to lock the Table_array range. By default, Excel doesn't fix the range and keep shifting it when you copy and paste the vlookup function.

Here's the quick fix.

After you create the 1st vlookup function, it will like this:

VLOOKUP(A11,’Product Database’!A2:D7,2,FALSE)

To lock the table range before you copy and paste the function, add the $ to fix the cell reference, as below:

VLOOKUP(A11,’Product Database’!A$2:D$7,2,FALSE)

This fix the row 2 to row 7. Of course, you can also fix the column A to column D at the same time:

VLOOKUP(A11,’Product Database’!$A$2:$D$7,2,FALSE)

Using VLOOKUP in Excel

This is a short description on how to use "vlookup" function in Excel.

Vlookup function is one of the the most powerful Excel tips that I learn. It works like a database tables, where it can retrieve information from another database table by supplying it an unique identifier. For instance, you can use vlookup function to retrieve the product description (from another sheet) by supplying it the product code.

From the menu Formulas, Insert functions, search the function called vlookup. You need to supply 3 mandatory parameters and 1 optional parameter:

• Lookup_value: [ the unique key]
• Table_array: [ the table range ]
• Col_index_num: [ the column of the retrieved information in the table range]
• Range_lookup (optional): [ sorted or unsorted 1st column in the table range ]

Quickly Remove Blank Row in Excel

Here's a handy way to help you to remove any blank row in a long list.

1. Remove any blank column manually.
2. Select the 1st blank cell in the 1st column.
3. Hit F5 (Edit, Goto).
4. Click Special.
5. Select the Blank option and click OK. This will select all the blank row for you.
6. Now, choose Edit, Delete, select the Entire Row option and click OK.

Replace OpenOffice with LibreOffice

The development on OpenOffice has been slowing down since the acquisition by Oracle. It is time to look for a replacement.

Today, I found this, called LibreOffice. It is available for Linux (x86 and 64 bit), Mac OS X, and Windows. Most importantly, it supports docx format natively.

Forensic on Microsoft Office Document Metadata

This is a post about performing metadata forensics on office documents using some tools: wmd.pl, SSView, BIFFView.

As a forensic practitioner, you shouldn't have miss the Deeply Embedded Metadata at CmdLab.

Microsoft Office 2007 Add-in: Microsoft Save as PDF or XPS

This download allows you to export and save to the PDF and XPS formats in eight 2007 Microsoft Office programs. It also allows you to send as e-mail attachment in the PDF and XPS formats in a subset of these programs.

This download is available to customers freely at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=4D951911-3E7E-4AE6-B059-A2E79ED87041&displaylang=en