If there is one thing that Darwin’s theory of evolution cannot explain, it would be “why humans evolved to schedule meetings?” I am no qualified biologist. Heck I don’t even know a mulberry from blue-berry. But I have spent exactly 3.1415 hours yesterday alone scheduling exactly 1 meeting. This my dear reader, qualifies me to comment on an all important activity that takes up 33% of all managers in the world, namely: scheduling meetings. Of the remaining 33% is spent in meetings and another 33% is spent sharing meeting notes leaving an incredible 14% of time to actually work. But I digress, so going back to the scheduling meetings..
According to someone on the internet the top 3 unsolvable problems in computer science are:
- Scheduling a meeting with “n” parties by finding any free time (t1) such that
- at t1 all the parties are free
- t1 is less than future time (t2) before which the meeting must happen
- and the total time taken to schedule the meeting (tx) is such that now() + tx is less than t1
- Finding out exactly how to use lotus notes before it kills you
- Proving that number of lines of code in windows xp is less than number of times it crashes
So it is no surprise I alt+tabbed 39203920 times between invitee’s calendar windows before finding out that they all are simultaneously free on 31st April at 11:30 AM. I could find out real square root of imaginary numbers before the meeting happens. But then, I ask, “why scheduling meetings is such difficult task?”
How software like lotus notes lets us schedule meetings:
How software should have scheduled meetings:
Instead of solving this seemingly simple problem of finding available time slots for having a meeting the office productivity software development teams across the world are solving imaginary problems like “display meaningless images while typing passwords to distract password stealers” or “finding annoying stationary formats and making them default mail formats” and such like.
Ok, I must stop my ranting now as I need to rush for another meeting. God bless!
11 Responses
Ciao Hui,
Collecting Excel tricks under the title “Notable Excel Websites (Non-MVP) Edition” is a brilliant idea…
Thank you in the name of all The FrankensTeam.
On our site there is a box with a picture and text highlighting:
This is a no-MVP site
we think ourselves “bad boys” a bit 🙂
For those who would like to know why our site is a no-MVP site, enough to click on the link:
http://goo.gl/lxDszY
Thank you again!
Thanks a lot
I really enjoyed this (newsletter). I must admit that I rarely read an Excel newsletter (and I subscribe to quite a few) all the way though, but this grabbed my attention and before I realized it, I was engrossed in it. I must also admit that most of this I don’t understand, yet. But, it excites me when I do learn something new in Excel. I can’t wait to see how much of this I can implement into my (constantly-evolving) ‘House Budget’ & ‘Family Medical’ worksheets that I have developed over the past few years! I sure hope to see more of these type of newsletters in the future! Thanks!
Thanks for doing this Hui! I appreciate being included.
I like Tom’s tip a lot. I posted about a tool I wrote to automate this at http://yoursumbuddy.com/tables-edit-query-dialog/
EXCELLENT !
Hui, This post is Superb! More over I have always been a fan of Roberto’s work and have learnt a lot from him.
Here are some of my recent contributions
1. Customising markers in a chart – http://www.goodly.co.in/customize-markers-in-a-chart/
2. Charting Hacks to work faster – http://www.goodly.co.in/5-charting-hacks-to-help-you-work-faster/
3. 7 Date formulas to make life easy – http://www.goodly.co.in/date-formulas-in-excel/
4. Customised scrollbar using VBA – http://www.goodly.co.in/customized-scroll-bar-in-excel/
5. Adding Direct Legends – http://www.goodly.co.in/customized-scroll-bar-in-excel/
Hope everyone enjoys!
I like the Excel Ninja Menus.
1. Select a cell or range then move till the 4-way cross appears. Right-Click and drag the selection to another place in the worksheet then, like a ninja, a menu full of skills and throwing stars pops up allowing me to do all kinds of awesomeness.
2. When you click the fill box on a Date and right click and drag it down, a lot of amazing Date options pop up.
I also brand my Excel to remind myself that I’m awesome. In my personal macro workbook I place the following code.
Private Sub Workbook_Open()
Application.Caption = “SuperKrishna’s Awesomeness”
End Sub
My favorite tip goes along with #17. If you try to copy subtotaled data (and in earlier Excel versions filtered data),when you paste it all the data displays instead of just the summarized data.
To get around this, select your summarized data, click on Find and Select tab and then select Go to Special. Click Visible cells Only and click OK. Now paste and you will see that only the summarized data has been copied.
You can also go CTRL+G and then click the Special icon at the bottom of the dialog box.
What a great idea, Chandoo! I’d love to be included in your next edition:) Perhaps a VBA exclusive version?
@Ryan
I will review this concept about 6 months out from the original post and be sure to keep your site in mind
Hui…
That sounds great, Hui:) I just realized I gave credit to Chandoo for the idea and I should have attributed it to you.
Sorry about that!