Spreadsheet Answer Service On The Up!

My Solutions service is going from strength to strength. Most answers are currently sent within half an hour during work hours or within 12 hours at the weekend. Just to recap the service, email your problem to solutions@spreadsheetsdirect.com, await a reply, pay the £1.50/$3/€1.90 charge and await a file with your answer and description of what it is doing.

British Open Golf Royal Birkdale Sweepstake Kit

It's only a few days to go to the start of the British Open Golf Championships at Royal Birkdale and my home town of Southport has been gearing up for it for months now. Rumours are rife that George Clooney will be in town amongst other celebs. Tiger Woods might not be coming but there are 156 golfers attempting to win the honours. It won't be easy as, having cycled down past the course the other day, I can vouch that there will be some strong winds to take into account even if it is the sunniest day of the year. For anyone wanting to run a sweepstake in their clubhouse or office then you'll be pleased to know that I've put one together for you. It can be found at http://www.spreadsheetsdirect.com/examples_open_golf_sweepstake.html

Due to the number of participants I've set it up for 39 people, each getting 4 golfers for their money. Full instructions are on my site. Good Luck!

If anyone is planning on visiting Southport for the Open and after some details about something, drop me a mail and I'll see if I can help.

Spreadsheet Help & Answers To Your Inbox

If you've ever found yourself pulling your hair out trying to get a formula to work or been trying to get conditional formatting to work with no success then my new Spreadsheet Solutions Service will be just for you. Send in your queries and for a cost of £1.50 (approx $3, €1.90) the answer will be sent directly to your inbox! Check out the Spreadsheet Solutions Service page on my site for more details.

Vista Black Screen Of Nothingness

Just spent most of the morning/afternoon trying to get on to my laptop after Vista decided to show a black screen with just the mouse arrow instead of the login screen. Looking round the net it appears to be a common problem with Vista but none of the fixes worked for me.

Eventually I found that the following fixed the problem:
On bootup press F8
Select the Repair option (already highlighted. I missed it to start with thinking it was the heading).
On the program that loads choose the option to restore.
On the list of restore points choose one from a few days earlier when you computer was last working. My last restore point had been created the day before the problem and was created due to a Windows update so assume this must have caused the problem.
Once the restore has finished you should be able to login as normal.

Wimbledon 2008 tennis championships match tracker

It's Wimbledon fortnight from Monday 23rd June to Sunday 6th July so I've added a results tracker to help you keep track of how Federer, Nadal, Murray, Ivanovic, the Williams sisters et al are doing. Due to the number of players in both the Gentleman's & Ladies championships I've split them up into two files. The files contain three sheets, the first 3 rounds for the top and bottom half of the draw are split over two sheets with rounds 4 to the final on the third. All you need to do is add the game scores and the rest will work it's self out. The file can be found at http://www.spreadsheetsdirect.com/examples_wimbledon_2008.html

Euro 2008 update 2

There was a slight problem with some ranges which was giving the wrong results, should now be fixed.

Euro 2008 update

I've added a sweepstake sheet for anyone wanting to run one in their office. Like the Grand National one you just need to print the tickets off, get your entrants to pick their teams, enter their name and team number on the SWEEPSTAKE sheet and the rest will sort itself out. The entry cost and percentage split can be changed as desired.

http://www.spreadsheetsdirect.com/examples_euro_2008.html