OVER 2 YOU, 149 (30/09/03)

SOCCER SITES

Now that the football season has started I wish to do the pools and want all of the information to be made available for calculation purposes. Can anyone recommend a web site where I can download up-to-date football league tables and/or stats? and is it possible to place them directly into Excel? 

Jesse Lyons, via email

The BBC website carries most (all?) football league tables and is kept up-to-date. Go to: www.bbc.co.uk, click on Sport > Football  > Tables. Select the required table (e.g. Premiership), highlight the information you need (NOT the entire web page), copy and paste this directly into Excel.
The only problem I have found is that the team names appear as hyperlinks.  You can remove these individually by right-clicking on the team name and then selecting Hyperlink > Remove Hyperlink.  A quick way to remove all the hyperlinks at once is to insert a new empty column to the right of the existing team names, select the column containing the team names, Edit > Copy then select the new column and Edit > Paste Special > Values.  Then you can delete the original column.  All the hyperlinks will have gone (although you will still need to remove the colour and underlining using Format > Cells).

Adam Knight

There are any number of websites that contain up-to-date facts and figures about the British football leagues, here at Littlewoods Pools we would always recommend the official Premiership and Football League sites to ensure the most accurate information. These can be found at www.premierleague.com and www.football-league.premiumtv.co.uk.

We also recommend www.11v11.co.uk as the site for statistics buffs, as this is the home of the Association of Football Statisticians. You do need to join this site but the information available is vast and varied. And if you want to put all of those stats to good use, you can look at our website www.littlewoodsgameon.co.uk for all of the latest Littlewoods Pools information and to access a choice of Football Games to test your knowledge and skill.
Suzanne Judge, Littlewoods Football Pools, Liverpool
 

Once Jesse finds the tables, there is a neat Excel function to help maintain
the data. Go to Data->Import External Data->New Web Query...  This will bring up a browser window from where you can navigate to the correct page. You can then select which table(s) you wish to import. It'll remember the site address and will refresh the data whenever you want.
Paul Lautman, Southsea

CHEQUE PRINTING

Does anyone know how I can program my computer and printer so that I can use it to print my cheques?
N. Burton, via email

My suggestion is to use a custom document template in Word. First set the paper size to match cheques, File >Page Setup >Paper Size (e.g. width 15.5cm, length 7.7cm).  Next set the margins so that the payee and amount in words start close to the left and about halfway down.  Now add two text boxes (icon on Drawing toolbar) near to the right side for the date and amount in figures.  Enter dummy data for payee etc and print on a cheque. Then by trial and error, reposition/resize the margins and the textboxes and choose a font and size (e.g. 12pt) to perfect your dummy cheque.  Once finalised, delete the dummy data and save the result as a Word template and make it read-only. A more sophisticated template could be devised which also prints the cheque stub and uses a field (Insert>Date and Time) to automatically include the current date.
R. L. Sunley

Cheque printing is relatively straightforward; once a template is created it’s just a matter of editing it each time. Using Excel, create the template as follows:

All rows = 12.75
Column A = 5
Column B = 50
Column C = 12

(To change a column width or row height, highlight the column or row by putting your cursor over the letter or number and left click; left click on Format in the toolbar and adjust as necessary) Complete the cheque using the following cells:
Date: C1
Payee: B3
Amount in words: B5
Amount in numerals: C5
Dotted line (if required):  B7

I created this template for my Internet bank cheques, but I have just checked against my wife’s Barclay cheques and they are the same. I have used a similar method for larger business cheques. Before printing off the first one, print on A4 to check that everything lines up

Ian Stewart, Canterbury

An excellent program "Money Manager 2000" (www.moneysoft.co.uk) has an easy to use facility for printing cheques. Unfortunately though, not all printers can cope with the paper size of cheques.
Roy Sedgwick, via e-mail

Could I be so bold as to suggest paying by one of the electronic methods? The accounts program for my farm has an option to pay all our customers by BACS. The program prints a list of people being paid and saves the file. My banking program imports the file and pays them. This only counts as one payment, keeping the cost of banking to a minimum. Banks are also happy for you to pay online from private accounts. We wish that more of our customers would use BACS as this would save us having to go into town to present the cheques. There are also savings in postage and less chance of "lost " cheques.

Peter Sheardown

SUPERCALC SUPPORT

I need to access some old SuperCalc .CAL files created under MS DOS 6.22 My present Windows XP doesn't seem to want to know. Ideally I would like to convert them to Microsoft Excel (I have Office 97) but it would be a help if I could display some important sections, which could be "Screen grabbed". MSDOS 6.22, Windows 95 & 98SE Operating systems are still in my archives

Norman Davey, via email

I can help because I use exactly the same conversions. Open the file in SuperCalc and then proceed to save it (using keystrokes "/s"). This will offer the option "Save C:\sc5\SuperCalc.CAL". Delete the "CAL" file extension and substitute with "wk1" This creates a Lotus 1-2-3 file, which can be opened directly with Excel 97.
Geoffrey F Miller, Milton Keynes

To convert SuperCalc files to Excel, export the file in CSV format (//E(xport)C(SV)<filename>A(ll) - only initial letters are to be typed; <filename> defaults to Supercalc filename but with CSV extension).  Run Excel and use [F]ile, [O]pen, [t]ype "All Files".  The CSV file will be shown (with an icon which is very similar to an XLS icon) and hit return.  The file will be imported. The only disadvantage of this is that it only imports values and not formulae, which need to be retyped.
Adrian V Stokes, Mill Hill

It is not clear whether Norman Davey still possesses the old, DOS-based SuperCalc utility program disks.  If so, he may be able to run SuperCalc in a Windows 98 DOS window - to open the *.CAL spreadsheets. He could then use the "Save As" command to convert the data into *.CSV format and use Microsoft Excel to open the resulting *.CSV files.  However, the *.CSV format preserves values only - not the underlying formulae.

The following manual process might be a better alternative, because it also preserves the cell content (including formulae).  However, Norman Davey will probably require the Windows version of CA-SuperCalc (v1.0a), to open
his *.CAL files in a Windows 95 or Windows 98 environment.  If he uses CA-SuperCalc for Windows to open the *.CAL spreadsheet file, it is very easy to copy and paste the content into an Excel spreadsheet.

1. Open the spreadsheet in CA-SuperCalc for Windows.
2. On the toolbar, click on Options, followed by Display.
3. Click on the Formulas mode.
4. Select the cells that contain the spreadsheet data.
5. Click on Edit / Copy.
6. Open a new Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and select cell A1.
7. Click on Edit / Paste.
8. All of the values and formulae will appear in the Excel spreadsheet
9. Select suitable cell formats and adjust the column widths
10. Save the spreadsheet as an Excel (*.xls file).
Bob Lucas, via email

QuickViewPlus (http://www.stellent.com ) claims to be able to look at SuperCalc 5 files. This is a brilliant bit of software, which is able to recognise and display (and of course put on the clipboard) a couple of hundred different formats (WP, Database, Spreadsheet, Graphic, Presentation).

David Redclift

CAN YOU HELP?

I am partially sighted and need a large print computer keyboard. Does anyone know if such things are available, or maybe suggest an alternative?

Murray Wren

I live in dread of being ‘flashed’ by speed cameras. I do not knowingly exceed the speed limit but I have only my car’s speedometer to rely upon. Reports that speeding tickets could be issued for breaking the speed limit by only a couple of miles an hours prompts me to ask if anyone can suggest a method of checking the accuracy of my car’s speedometer, possibly using my laptop PC and some sort of distance/speed measuring software?

Arthur Kennedy, via email

I would like to enter Japanese text in Word and Outlook on my Windows 98 PC. In particular I would like to able to enter the small kana characters called hurigana often typed above or beside kanji. I would also like to write top to bottom. I have installed the Japanese IME.

Paul Wickham, via email