More useful tips to make the most out of your Lotus 1-2-3

More useful tips to make the most out of your Lotus 1-2-3

By Zatni Arbi

JAKARTA (JP): It's no secret that many of you out there are using Lotus 1-2-3, and because I've been working with 1-2-3 Release 5.0 for Windows pretty much lately, I'd like to share some tips that you may find useful in your work.

First of all, let's see how to customize 1-2-3 it feels comfortable.

Customizing Startup

To customize 1-2-3, you'll have to use the User Setup command found under the Tools menu item. Click on this command, and you'll get a dialog box like the one you see in the accompanying illustration. You can now activate or deactivate any of the options here to set the display and behavior of 1-2-3 to your preference. Now let's take a look at some of these options.

Once the program has been installed for the first time, it will greet you with a welcome each time you launch it. From the options in the Welcome dialog box, you can then choose what you want to do. That is, whether you want to create a new worksheet, open an already saved one, or start the on-line tutorial.

Most of the time you will probably want to go straight to a new, blank worksheet to do a quick and dirty calculation. To bypass this unnecessary welcoming ritual, you'll have to tell 1-2-3 to stop displaying the dialog box. One way of doing this is to check the box next to Don't show this screen again on the bottom left corner of the box; another way is to press Alt-D when it is still open.

Doing this automatically selects the option Skip Welcome dialog box, in the User Setup dialog box, and the next time 1-2-3 is started up, a blank worksheet will be ready to work on. Every time this option is selected, 1-2-3 will do the same.

The second option in the dialog box should be deselected if you would like to use one of 1-2-3's SmartMasters, because, unless this option is deselected, you'll always get a blank sheet each time you click on File and New. Once it is deselected, we will get the list of SmartMasters each time we create a new file.

By the way, Release 5.0 comes with a number of great ready-for-use SmartMasters, such as the ones that allow you to analyze competing projects, to create a personal budget, and create an invoice. You should play around with them to get an idea of how sophisticated they are.

Drag and drop

The next item is for those who love dragging and dropping cells with their mouse. Lotus has been smart enough to add the option to disable this feature, since not everybody likes it. Remember that dragging can accidentally erase the existing contents of cells as well.

Automatic format really makes life easier. When this option is activated, 1-2-3 will detect the number format as date, time, comma, currency, percent, or scientific, depending on your input. So, for instance, if you enter 13/3/95, 1-2-3 will automatically format it to 13-Mar-95 or 13/03/95, depending on the default in the style sheet you're using.

Therefore, unless you have a compelling reason to have it displayed as you enter it, you should leave this option selected.

Safety net

We never know what can happen while at work. If the electricity goes out -- PLN is quite notorious for giving us surprises -- we may lose our work. I usually set the automatic saving feature to once every five minutes. Unfortunately, 1-2-3 takes rather long to save the file and it won't allow you to continue working while it is saving the file on the hard disk. If you don't like these obtrusive interruptions, you may increase the figure under Save files to every ... minutes. Your risk of losing your work will also increase, though. Using an Uninterruptible Power Supply is the best safety net.

I believe the rest of the options should be selected. Certainly we would like to be able to undo our mistakes, so this option should be selected. If we want to take advantage of the SmartMasters, it's also important to select the Run autoexecute macros so that the display will always be correct. Remember that you can zoom in and out in 1-2-3 for Windows.

Directory for data

I've repeatedly emphasized the need to create a dedicated subdirectory for all our data files, and I will keep doing this. First, we will have no difficulty finding our files if we need to find them. We will have problems if they're scattered in multiple subdirectories on our hard disk. Second, backing up all these files will be easy if they are all in one subdirectory. You can use the very simple command Copy C:DATA*.WK? B:, for instance.

The last option in this User Setup dialog box lets you specify a dedicated subdirectory for all your data files, including the *.WK3s. In the illustration, I specify C:DATA1, and 1-2-3 will always save new files in this subdirectory.

Keep in mind, however, that these new settings will take effect only after you close your current session of 1-2-3 and restart it again.

Selecting a word

I've just found out that double-clicking to select a single word is not the monopoly of word processors only. To highlight a single word in a cell in 1-2-3, double-clicking also works. First click once to select the cell containing the word. When the insertion point appears at the end of the string of text in the cell, double click on the particular word you want to select. Bingo! So, for instance, if you want to highlight the word Or in (Rail Or Bus) because you think the word Or should not have a capitalized O, you select the cell in which the entire text Other (Rail Or Bus) exists. Then you double-click on the word Or; it will be selected. All you have to do now is type in the word or.

Adding Notes

1-2-3 also has a nifty feature that allows you to add notes into your cell. It's very handy, so you will always know what the value in the cell is or what the formula in it does.

To add your note to the value or formula in a cell, type in a semicolon immediately after it. So, for instance, if you want to divide the value in Cell M24 by 30 and put the resulting value of daily average in Cell N24, you simply type in M24/30; in Cell N24. Then you can add Daily average. Cell N24 will display only a value, but when you look at the Contents Box, you'll see the explanation Daily average. Isn't that cool?

Series in tabs

Here's something else that I've just learned. When you have only one sheet on the screen, double-click on the tab and type in January. When you click on the New sheet button, a new one will be created and 1-2-3 will fill its tab with February. Click again and again, and you'll have sheets for March, April, etc.

Now, if you enter 1 in the first tab, 1-2-3 will add 2, 3, 4, etc., for the subsequent sheets.

That's all for now, and as I get more tips I'll share them with you. Stay tuned!