Using Your Candle Business Tracker: How-To Do This-and-That!

Candle Business Training.com

Roy Juers & Stephanie Sterling,
Senior Director
Inc
"Flame and Fortune"
Team Founders

Thanks for all your patience, enthusiasm, suggestions, donations, and testimonials!

It means so much!

Candle Business Tracker

How-To Section... Doing Things in Excel

So many of you have asked whether you can fix an older version of your spreadsheet, rather than re-enter all your data into an updated version, and posed various other questions related to working with Excel.

I will address each of your concerns as best I can. Remember, if I release an updated version of the spreadsheet, the changes in it may be just aesthetic in nature, or there could be a real issue with calculations, which could mean inaccurate totals. So be sure to check the Updates page to see what the reason is behind the latest update.

Jump to the sections that cover the following topics:
Formatting to Print
Unlocking Cells
Sorting by Name or Date

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How to Format the Tracker to Print

First, there are 4 things that dictate your printing:
Orientation- Either portrait (vertical page) or landscape (horizontal page)
Scaling- What size percentage of the original your print is
Paper Size- Usually Letter or Legal
Margins- The amount of border that shows around the edges of each page

To set up each tab for printing, go into each tab one-by-one, then use the File menu's Page Setup screen, to select the following settings for Orientation, Scaling, and Paper Size. That's a great start.

These are each tab's settings used in the Page Setup screen, to print 1-page wide. These are all set up, so you should have to do anything... but in case your Print Preview doesn't look like it'll fit one-page-wide, here are the settings:
* INSTR:
   Orientation: Portrait, Scaling: 100%, Paper Size: Letter
* SUMMARY:
   Orientation: Landscape, Scaling: 65%, Paper Size: Letter
* INCOME & EXPENSES:
   Orientation: Landscape, Scaling: 57%, Paper Size: Legal
* Form8829:
   Orientation: Landscape, Scaling: 90%, Paper Size: Letter
* JAN-DEC:
   Orientation: Landscape, Scaling: 65%, Paper Size: Legal
* MILEAGE:
   Orientation: Portrait, Scaling: 100%, Paper Size: Letter
* SCENTS:
   Orientation: Portrait, Scaling: 100%, Paper Size: Letter
* CUSTOMER-BASE:
   Orientation: Landscape, Scaling: 70%, Paper Size: Legal
* DISC:
   Orientation: Landscape, Scaling: 70%, Paper Size: Legal
* ADJ:
   Orientation: Landscape, Scaling: 87%, Paper Size: Legal

* Select File, Print Screen. A Print dialog box appears.
* Click Preview. If you don't see the whole page from left-to-right after doing the above, look for the horizontal and vertical lines that represent the margins (they go up & down and side-to-side at the edges). If they're not visible, clicking the Margins button at the top of the Preview window should make them appear.
* Use your mouse to drag the margin lines toward the far edges of the page, until the page fits from left-to-right.

Your print won't be one page from top-to-bottom obviously (since it's such a big sheet), but it should now be be able to print one page from left-to-right...

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How to: Fix Cells That Are Locked, But Shouldn't Be

There should never be a need to unlock cells, because enough time has gone by since the Tracker's first release, that most issues related to locked cells have been resolved.

I've decided to remove the instructions for unlocking the Tracker, because there are many steps, and margin for error is high. If cells are locked accidentally, they could be hard to find, and if cells are unlocked accidentally, critical formulas for calculating things could be lost.

So if you ever feel the Tracker needs to be unlocked for any reason, feel free to call me, or shoot me an email at RoyJuers@mac.com, and I'll be happy to help!

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How to: Sort Rows to Appear
In Alphabetical or Numerical Order

You can sort rows in Excel so they appear in the order you want them. However, there are only so many places you can really do this. One location is in the INCOME & EXPENSES tab, where sorting is helpful to get the expenses you entered into chronological order. This is ideal because you then don't have to worry about when or in what order to enter the information. You can simply go through one receipt at a time, and then sort the whole thing later.

The other location is the RETIRED tab, where each user will add their own discontinued scents to the list we already have, and sorting will allow them to appear in alphabetical order.

With respect to the RETIRED tab, allowing sorting required that I leave the Ending Inventory columns un-protected. Excel wouldn't allow sorting with the cells protected, so it was the only way I could get it to work. And since this tab will probably be the one people would most likely want to sort on, I decided to un-protect those columns. So here is what you have to do:

When you're in the RETIRED tab, go to the upper left corner of the Excel window, where the Cell Name Box window is shown
(a white box to the left of the Formula (fx) Bar). This box tells you where your active cell is (or "cursor" for lack of a better term).
Click your mouse inside that Cell Name Box and type the following: B7:BF66
This means you're selecting cells from Column B-Row 7, through Column
BF-Row 66. When you hit enter, you'll see all of those cells highlighted.
Go into the "Data" drop-down menu, and select the "Sort" subcommand.
When the Sort window pops-up, for the Sort By: field choose Column B, and for Order: choose Ascending.
Click OK. You should see that the scents you added are now integrated into the existing list, and they all are now in alphabetical order. That's it!

Caution: Since the columns I mentioned are not protected, it is possible to erase or corrupt the formulas. It is critical that you not modify the Ending Inventory columns, which are all highlighted in gray.

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