Learning Daily

How to create a .ics file?

Posted on 24. Mar, 2012 by Krishnan.

Whether you use calendars in your Apple products or Microsoft Products or web based systems like Google or Yahoo, the connecting thread is the .ics file. You import/export calendar information using the .ics files.

Traditionally you paid for the software that permitted you to create .ics files. Programs like MS Outlook or iOS. If you didn’t pay for the software, you had to pay for the connectivity to generate an .ics file from a web based calendar service.

I discovered, just today, that Sunbird 1.0 beta1, a standalone free calendar program by Mozilla foundation now lets you work offline and create .ics files. I just want to put in the good word. Does Sunbird handle time zone differences and daylight savings well? Well, I don’t know for sure but I think we have program that fills a sweet spot.

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How to : Program a MS Excel Form

Posted on 24. Mar, 2012 by Krishnan.

If you are trying to make an excel form, chances are you lost at the many objects lying around on your form and are baffled as to how all the pieces fit together.

They key thing in writing a form is understanding how many objects are used and what minimum code must support each object and action. If you are lost and dont know what piece of code to write next, here are some simple guidelines I follow myself in programming my forms for performing engineering calculations.

1. Throw all objects you want on a form. Inputs and Outputs.

2. For an engineering calculation, if any input parameter changes, all outputs must vanish. Otherwise your form risks the possibility of displaying the incorrect value from a previous calculation before the current calculation is performed.

3. Initialize the form using built in “UserForm_Initialize()” function.

4. Initialisation of the form can be performed by a separate macro which pouplates the initial values to be displayed.

5. Use the most common three buttons as set in 6, 7 and 8

6. “Close” button unloads the form

7. “Clear” button can be used to invoke the initialization macro or clear the all input and output fields by making them blank.

8. “Calculate” button begins the calculation sequences.

9. When starting a calculation, first step is to check the inputs.

10. Check the inputs one by one. If inputs are not correct dont perform the calculation. If inputs are correct, read and interpret the inputs alongside.

11. Perform calculations. Use UDFs as necessary.

12. Estimate results. Diplay results as Label Captions.

Have Fun!

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How to : Edit Background Graphics in Powerpoint?

Posted on 13. Mar, 2011 by Krishnan.

Problem:
You have an PPT file from an older version of MS Office that opens in Office 2007. There are images on the master slide that seem to be not  editable. But you can hide them by selecting on “Hide Background graphics”. How do you edit whatever graphics that are controlled by the Background Graphics button?

Solution:
Go to view, slide master then make sure you select the first slide in the list on the left. When you are on that first slide you can select and edit these types of background items.

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