Eureka: Thank you Homer

Hitchhiker's Guide to...

Bear with me here:


I have to edit 1,300,000 lines of excel data at the moment. Essentially i need to delete lines in this data at irregular intervals, in order for it to be tidy and make sense.

It was doing my head in, as it requires pressing both the CTRL button and using the mouse to select lines at the same time. It was actually causing major pain because of the akward positioning of both hands.

As i was doing it my mind was (unsurprisingly) wandering. Thought of the Simpsons episode where Homer is working from home because he is too fat and 'increases his productivity' by getting a bobbing duck to press the 'Y' key on his keyboard (and thus do his job for him).

Bingo!

Got the garlic crusher from the utensils drawer and rested it on the CTRL button, now i can just concentrate on selecting lines with the mouse. Am working about twice as fast, and have probably shaved a week off the needed amount of work.

Three things:

1. Yippee! This garlic crusher and the Simpsons have made me the happiest researcher in the country.

2. Anyone know any other good shortcuts on excel for editing large amounts of data?

3. Anyone else get eureka moments like this in their study / research?


In case i haven't already mentioned it: THANK YOU HOMER J. SIMPSON and your cunning little schemes!!!***

***am ignoring the fact that in the particular Simpsons episode mentioned, the shortcut with the keyboard lead to a nuclear plant nearly erupting - surely their couldn't be any parallels...

Hitchhiker's Guide to...

well! obviously this was only of interest to me!

Pet

*tumbleweed*


Heh, it's exam time though so it's not exactly busy here. Good job I say, although I can't imagine why someone would have 1.3 million lines of excel data..

John

Would the "sort" functions not work?

Hitchhiker's Guide to...

unfortunately not - each line is different and in a pattern, so sorting with fcuk up the sub-patterns

was trying to learn macros but they seem a bit crazy

cuckoo

When you've finally finished it all you'll prob be so sick of the sight of your computer that you won't go near it for a few days. Then, when you do sit down to use it again you'll be wondering "why does the keyboard smell like garlic?".

Nietzschean

...you'd think that, but i put in unreal comp hours and then go back to it straight away...

Agent Smith

i remember the Day i learnt how to copy and Paste....



oh god that was among the happiest day in my life....

Thirdfox

Using the search function in microsoft word - find all the key points without having to read 100+ pages