Software Africa Newsletter - December 2022

Online Business Tip ~ Autodesk eShop ~ Excel Tip ~ Training Tip

Rick's Editorial

Welcome. We wish you all the very best for the Season –and safe travelling, if you are travelling. A very big thank you for your support during the year!  You have been loyal customers and friends.

We wish you and your loved ones a happy, safe, and festive season. And a prosperous 2023!

Our offices will be closed on all the upcoming public holidays. We will also officially be closed for the week between the Christmas and New Year's Day holidays, but you will be able to find us if you have an emergency.

For the Festive Season, we have –somewhere in the newsletter– valuable free gifts you can download.

Our eShop has good deals for you on new AutoCAD and LT subscriptions. We have (gasp!) a price drop on Autodesk products.

Our Excel for Engineers self-paced course is still available.

In the latest Excel Tip, we continue looking at the tricky business of working with dates.

We end with arcane mathematical wisdom (?) from resident sage Computius.

Hold onto your Hat!  Autodesk Prices Have Gone Down!

It's unusual.  It's amazing.  But it's true.  Due to the recovery of the Rand against the dollar, we are happy to announce a 4.7% price decrease on our range of Autodesk products: AutoCAD including specialized toolsets, AutoCAD LT, AutoCAD Revit LT Suite, and Maya LT. This apples to  subscription renewals and new subscriptions.

You can get new subscriptions at a discount from our Online Shop.

For renewals, contact us now!

We cannot predict what the Rand will do, but the long-term trend has been a decline against the dollar, pushing our prices up.  Might this be a good time to buy or renew before prices go up again? 

Please email Software Africa if you need help.

On-Line Business Tip #68 – Bring Back that Browser Tab You Accidentally Closed

If you close a web browser tab by mistake, don’t worry, you can bring it back.  Just press Ctrl+Shift+T and get back to what you were doing. You can press Cmd+Shift+T to bring back a closed tab if you’re on Mac.

You can use this repeatedly to get previous tabs.  It works on Google Chrome, Firefox, and even on the slow and clunky Microsoft Edge.

Thanks to this site for this tip.

Excel for Engineers Online Self-Paced Course

Do you want to improve your skills during the slack period?

The Excel for Engineers live course is available on-line as a self-paced course.  The same manual and examples.  The same trainer. No live support, however.  But done at your own pace at times that suit you.  Take half an hour a day and complete it in a month.  Spend an hour a day and finish it in two weeks.  Or dedicate two days –a weekend, perhaps?– and crack the whole course.

Sign up now and get these Bonuses:

1. Report, "Are You Making These Microsoft Excel Mistakes?"
2. A Free Support Group
3. Our Excel file "Excel Shortcut keys & My Macro Shortcuts" (you'll want this once you start building macros).

Take our self-paced online course in your own time and venue.  All the value at a quarter of the price of the live course.  Backed by a 30-day money-back guarantee.

2023 Excel for Engineers Online Live courses through BEST Training

This year we ran several Excel for Engineers courses online for Built Environment Skills and Training (BEST -- clever acronym).  We averaged about one every two months. You get a wealth of useful knowledge, a detailed manual with worked examples, live help, and CPD points.  More are scheduled for next year: email Software Africaa for details.

Excel Tip #217 -- Working with Dates, Part II: Formatting Dates with the Home Ribbon

To quickly format a cell or range as a date, on the Home ribbon, in the “Number” group, pull down the list at the top.  Choose “Short Date” or “Long Date”.

This is also useful as a quick check of whether Excel accepted a date you entered, or treated it as text.  In the next example, look at the red-circled formats of Number, Currency, and Accounting.  All show the same formatting preview for text in cell A3 that my Excel does not interpret as a date:

On the other hand, in cell A4 I typed something that Excel saw as a date and then formatted in the dd-mmm-yy format and right-aligned as a number.

More about Excel dates next time. Read more here on our Excel for Engineers blog.

Start 2023 with a Timesaving New Skill!

Why not do the Excel Macros online course?  Do repetitive work in a flash, instead of repeating the same boring stuff by hand.  Save hours not working late, and spend more time with your family...  The Software Africa Quick 'n Easy Turbo-Start Excel Macros course is now online.  Take it now and avoid the inevitable price rises in the New Year.

Festive Presents for you: Automated Spreadsheets:

Our website has free spreadsheets for you:

• ALV(9) South African Vehicle Licence Renewal Form.  Print and take it to the Post Office.  It saves your details for next year.
• Toastmasters Online Speech Contest Certificate PDF Exporter
• Toastmasters In-Person Speech Contest Certificate Printer
• Bank Account Reconciliation,
• Vehicle Fuel Consumption,
• Rainfall, Water and Electricity Meter Readings,
• a Mattress Turning Schedule, mind you!
• a Quotation System (with Bill of Materials), and
• John Demartini Fast Savings Calculator. 

Enjoy your presents!  Want automated spreadsheets like those?  We can write them for you.

Computius Say:

International unit of female beauty is milliHelen. It take one milliHelen to launch one ship.

Remember:  We can make your business run better by:

• Training your company live online, or live in-house, or via a self-paced online course.  We train on Excel, Word, Access, and Windows (all levels from beginners to Programming).
• Automating your in-house processes with Excel macros, a custom program or database.
• Promoting your corporate image with a set of templates on Microsoft Word or Excel, linked to your address list.
• Speeding up your processes by linking to your database or spreadsheet.
• Solving your QuickBooks, Microsoft Access, Excel, Word, Visual Basic, and PowerPoint problems.
• Supplying software: We re-sell and support various accounting, timesheet, scheduling, and productivity programs.
• Providing world-class programs for the Engineer and Civil Engineering Geologist.  We sell dotPLOT, progeCAD, ZWCAD, and Autodesk products like AutoCAD, Revit LT Suite and Maya LT.

All the Best from
Communication in Action cc trading as Software Africa

Reg.  2009/007863/23 ~ VAT No 4500104387 ~ 126 Kelvin Drive, Morningside Manor, Sandton, 2191 South Africa.