Computer Info – April 2, 2003

 

This Week’s Meeting

            Let’s take a look at the puzzle to solve and see if we can solve it.  Next look at hiding rows and columns in Excel.  Finally, we will start an introduction to Quicken Basic 2002 – and this will be an introduction since I am just learning it.  We will be following the guidelines given in Video Professor’s teaching of it.

            I’m sure we will have time for some questions.  

            April’s meetings will be on the 2nd and the 23rd.

 
A Puzzle To Solve
               Try to figure out how they do this?
http://mr-31238.mr.valuehost.co.uk/assets/Flash/psychic.swf
 
Excel – Hiding Rows and Columns

            You can hide the empty or unused columns and rows in your Excel worksheet by

            1)  Select a row from which you want to start hiding and then use  SHIFT + PgDOWN until you get to the end – which is row 65,000.  Then when you have this area selected, choose FORMAT – ROWS – HIDE.

            2)   Select a column from which you want to start hiding and then use  SHIFT + RIGHT ARROW until you get to the end – which, I believe, is column IV.  Then when you have this area selected, choose FORMAT – COLUMNS – HIDE.

 

            To view them again – select all cells (you do this by clicking in the little square in the top lefthand corner of your spreadsheet – above the row numbers and to the left of the column heading A).  Now choose FORMAT – ROWS – UNHIDE and then FORMAT – COLUMNS – UNHIDE.

 

Quicken Basic 2002

            Open the program.  If it is your first time to use the program, you will be ask to create a Data File.

Open the FILE menu, and choose NEW.   The window that opens will ask if you wish a NEW QUICKEN FILE or a NEW QUICKEN ACCOUNT.  Choose the NEW QUICKEN FILE.  Choose where you would like to store your Quicken files (ex. Under MY DOCUMENTS and then a folder entitled QUICKEN).  Give your file a name (ex. Your last name – your business name – etc.).  Click OK.  This takes you to the Welcome to Quicken screen where you click NEXT.   Answer the questions about “Are you married?”, “Do you have children?”, “Do you own a house”, “Will you be tracking a business in Quicken?” – the answers to this questions will add certain folders and categories to your account.  Click DONE and you are back at the MY FINANCES page. 

            Now it is time to set up an account.  You have three types here – BANKING (Checking, Savings, Credit Card, Money Market, Cash) – INVESTING (Brokerage, IRA or Keogh, 401k, Single Mutual Fund, Dividend Reinvestment Plan, Other Investments) – PROPERTY AND LOAN .

            To set up a Checking account, click on the CREATE NEW ACCOUNT under SETUP BANKING ACCOUNTS.  ** DO NOT PRESS THE ENTER KEY WHILE FILLING OUT THE INFORMATION.  THE ENTER KEY WORKS JUST LIKE THE OK BUTTON – IT WILL CLOSE YOUR WINDOW.  – INSTEAD, USE THE TAB KEY TO MOVE BETWEEN VARIOUS FIELDS THAT YOU ARE ENTERING.  Put in the name of the account (ex. PERSONAL) and the name of the financial institution (ex. BANK OF AMERICA).  On the next screen, enter the ending date on your checking account statement and the ending balance – then click DONE.

            This will now show us our new banking account.  To open it, double click on it.  This opens our checking register.  At the top of the screen, you may find a window that has hyperlinks in it (ex. Apply for a PIN, Enable your Quicken Bill Pay, etc) – click on the X to close this window.

            To add some additional information to our account, click on EDIT ACCOUNT   at the top of the register.  Here you can change the name of the account, enter a description of the account, place the account number here, and also – interest rate, phone numbers and who to contact.  Click on the X in the upper right corner of this window – this will bring up a dialog box asking you if you wish to save the changes you made. 

            F1 – will give you HELP about the current window that you are in.  You can also obtain this information from HELP – CURRENT WINDOW.  Under the HELP menu, you will find ABOUT QUICKEN.  This will tell you which version of Quicken you are running.

            When you click CUSTOM on the toolbar, it will open the Customize Toolbar window.  Here you can add or remove items from the toolbar so that it will contain the most used items by you. 

            Clicking on BANKING CENTER on the Quicken tab will show you what activities you can perform in this center.  Other centers include INVESTING and PROPERTY AND LOAN.  PLANING CENTER help you set goals for college, purchasing a home, reducing your debt, saving more money, etc.  Clicking on REPORTS AND GRAPHS will allow you to create various reports or graphs by date or account – and view them on the screen or print them.

            There are two tabs when you are in your checking register.  They are REGISTER and OVERVIEW.  The X just below and to the right of these tabs will close the active window (which in this case is our checking register.  You will notice that the name of your checking account no longer appears below the BANKING CENTER on your Quicken Quick Tab – therefore, to re-open this account, you must choose FINANCE from the top menu, and then ACCOUNT LIST.  Double click on the account to open. 

            Notice the menu choice on the register – entitled HOW DO I.  This is your help for accomplishing a task here.  The OPTIONS menu includes a choice of REGISTER OPTIONS. 

Check Register

            The first line of the check register is filled out automatically from when you were ask to enter the opening balance.  The opening balance is described or entered as a Deposit.

            When entering a check or deposit, you start with the date field.  The date field will automatically contain the current date.  You can accept this date, enter a new date or click on the CALENDAR icon to the right of the field.  When entering more than one transaction, you will notice that the date field automatically enters the date of the last transaction.

            The next column is entitled NUM and contains a drop down menu with choices such as (Next Check Num, ATM, Deposit, Transfer, etc). 

            The next column is entitled PAYEE/CATEGORY/MEMO.  Here you enter the person or company that the check was made out to.

            Next you enter either a payment or a deposit.  If you enter a Payment, then you are automatically taken back to the PAYEE/CATEGORY/MEMO column so that you can enter the category.  In the category field, you choose an income or expense account for your entry.  Categories keep like transactions together so you can run reports to see where your money came from and what you spent it on.  You can type in the name of the expense, but the best reason to use the drop-down list whenever possible is that the list is always consistent.  You do not end up with categories like Grocery, Groceries and Food.  Pressing The TAB key from here, moves you to the Memo field.  The Memo field is optional --- this is for your information to help identify something specific about this transaction (such as Bill’s birthday party). 

            Next you must record the transaction.  Notice the three buttons to the right of the Memo field – they are entitled ENTER – EDIT – SPLIT.  A transaction is saved automatically to disk each time you complete it and press the ENTER key.  Whenever you complete a transaction, a new balance is calculated and entered.

            We use the ENTER key to Save completed transactions and the TAB key to move between fields of the transaction.   

 

Editing the Category List

            From the main menu, choose FINANCE -  CATEGORY AND TRANSFER LIST.  Here you can delete categories that you will not be using – add others.  Editing this list only affects the categories in this specific data file --  It doesn’t affect Quicken’s default list, or categories created in other data files.