Software Africa Newsletter - February 2024

Main Article ~ Online Business Tip ~ Excel Tip ~ Training Tip

Rick's Editorial:

Welcome to February, the month of the commercialisation of Love.

Love your job?  Could you lose it to automation?  Read more below.

We'd love to tell you there was no Autodesk price increase, but that's only partly true.

In the latest Excel Tip, we hide and unhide a much-loved and important workbook.

It's a bit late to offer the Excel Macros or Excel for Engineers self-paced online courses as Valentine's Day presents. But you might try them as appeasement if you forgot.

Since they say that fools fall in love (and singing about it can make you rich), Computius has something on that subject..

Price Increase on Autodesk Annual Subscription Renewals

The promised Autodesk price increase has come to pass.  We expected it to affect most subscription renewals.  In that sense, it was bit of damp squib.  Or perhaps a "damp squid" if you're more interested in marine life than in fireworks.  Only three items changed price:

Unfortunately, the last two are our biggest sellers.

Because renewals have gone up, but new prices haven't, the gap between the two has narrowed. It is now cheaper to buy AutoCAD or AutoCAD LT new than to renew if the renewal is more than 41 days late.

Please email us at Software Africa if you need a revised quote on your renewal.

On-Line Business Tip #81 – Will You Lose Your Job to Artificial Intelligence?

We read a largely reassuring article from 2018 that hasn't aged much, "Will robots take my job?". In it, M. Mitchell Waldrop examines the likely impact of AI, robotics, and automation.  Did you know that Automatic Teller Machines didn't cause a long-term decrease in bank staff? You'd expect the ATMs would take the bank tellers' jobs, right? Instead, the banks opened more branches and gave a more personalized service (US bank data from the 1990s).  The former tellers were probably happier too: Counting money all day may be fun at first. But the fun likely won't last if it's not your money!

In many places, automation is not displacing humans, but rather helping them.  Taking over the heavy lifting, quite literally.  And putting an extra eye on the quality control process.

Like the bank tellers who were retained –and retrained– we must develop new skills to stay in the game.  CPD, Continuous Professional Development, will be increasingly relevant.  Which of course (pardon the pun) brings us to

The Excel for Engineers Online Self-Paced Course

Not for engineers alone, the Excel for Engineers course is available online as a self-paced course.  The same manual and examples as the live version.  The same trainer. 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 save with these Bonuses:

1. A Free Support Group to save your sanity.
2. The Report, "Are You Making These Microsoft Excel Mistakes?" that could save your company millions.
3. The Excel file "Excel Shortcut keys & My Macro Shortcuts" to save your macro shortcuts and save you from overwriting Excel's.

Take our self-paced online course on Thinkific 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.  News: We have copied this course to systeme.io and have added extra lessons and video for a richer learning experience. That will be ready soon.

Excel Tip #228 – I revealed (unhid) PERSONAL.XLSB. How do I Hide it Again?

If you have saved any macros for general use, you would have saved them in the PERSONAL.XLSB workbook.  This hidden file loads when Excel launches. That is why those macros are always available.  But, as with any hidden file, it is possible to unhide it.  For example, with the View ribbon > Window Group > Unhide and OK.  The worksheet part is blank, since the file only exists to store macros.

Now you will always see Personal.xlsb onscreen when you run Excel.  This may not be as much fun as you might have expected.  It may get in the way of other work.  Or you might use that tempting blank worksheet for data, with unexpected results.

Better hide it again!

The quickest way is to go to the View tab again, and use Hide. Now, Personal.xlsb will continue to open, but it'll be hidden from view. You'll still have the macros for use, but you won't see that pesky blank workbook anymore (thanks to this site for the idea).

Next time: Another new topic.

Fulfil your New Year's Resolution by Learning a Timesaving New Skill

Why not do the Excel Macros online course before the year is much older?  Learn to 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 online.  Take it now before the price goes up.

Computius Say:

Albert Einstein say, "Two things are infinite: The Universe, and human stupidity."

But Computius say we don't really know if Universe infinite, only that it darn big and probably extend beyond what we can see.

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.
• Selling world-class programs for Engineering: progeCAD, and Autodesk products like AutoCAD, AutoCAD LT, Revit LT Suite and Maya LT.
• We program, sell, and support dotPLOT, the de facto standard in sub-Saharan Africa for the Civil Engineering Geologist.

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

"Empowering African Business with standard and custom PC programs, databases, and templates using Microsoft technologies"

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

Disclosure:  Some links we share might be affiliate links we promote in return for a commission.  We only promote things we've actually tried and think could be great for you too.