Hands on - Question time - Advice from our experts. If you've got a problem, our Hands on columnists can help you solve it.

Publication: Personal Computer World

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Spreadsheets

Flashing a red alert in Excel

Q: When the contents of a cell meets a certain condition, I would like it to flash. For example if cell A10 totals the values in A3:A9 it would flash if it exceeds 105. The sheet contains over 300 records and a flashing cell would draw my attention to a problem. I'm using Excel 2002 under Windows XP Pro.

Roy White

A: Excel has no built-in way of flashing or blinking a cell. At a push, you could write a VBA macro which does it using, Now + TimeValue("00:00:01"), but it would be much better to use Excel Conditional Formatting to just change the cell background colour to red when your conditions are met. Select A10 and choose Conditional Formatting on the Format menu. Make Condition 1, Cell Value Is. With the dropdown arrow choose 'greater than'. In the third box enter, 105. Click the Format button and under the Patterns tab choose, Red. Click OK twice and that will do it.

Digital imaging

Corruption corner

Q: I occasionally get jpeg images taken with my Sony Cybershot camera (the latest 7.2megapixel model) that won't fully display at normal size in any application I have tried so far, but do display fully as a thumbnail in Windows Explorer. What is likely to be behind this problem? Is there any way I can recover (or attempt to recover) the full images?

I have seen various software programs that claim to repair jpegs, but don't know if they are any good or worth paying for as I haven't found any freeware.

John Anderson

A: Try a product called Photo Rescue 2 - you can download a free 30-day trial from www.pcw.co.uk/2128774. Formatting memory cards after you've downloaded the images to your PC, rather than simply erasing the images after a download, can help avoid corruption. If the problem still occurs, and happens with different cards, it could be the camera that's at fault.

Spreadsheets

Blankety blank

Q: I have large Excel worksheets with 50,000 cells some of which are blank and others contain formulas. Is there any formula or quick way of calculating the number of cells containing data or, alternatively, those that are completely blank? Either will do.

David Boswell

A Enter =COUNTA(A1:Y2000) to count the number of cells that are not empty within that range. Conversely, the COUNTBLANK function will count the empty cells.

Word processing

Hunting for the non-breaking space

Q: Although I use Word at work, I use the excellent Ability Office at home, but have...

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