I wouldn’t tell this to just anyone, but I love working in excel. It is such a powerful tool that is too often underutilized. In the design industry it can improve your business no matter what purchase order management program you use. If you are struggling to make your spreadsheets look just right look, then look no further but here for three easy excel formatting tips.
Double-click to autofit columns and rows
After you enter or paste text and numbers into Excel, the cells don’t expand to fit their contents. The fast way to autofit columns and rows is to hover your mouse over the header border between the column and its neighbor to the right, or between two rows at the far left of the worksheet. When the resize icon appears, double-click.
Paste formatting with one keystroke
If you’d like to see several disconnected cells to share a format such as bold text and background color, it can be a hassle to select each cell one at a time, open its cell-format dialog box, and make the changes you want. Instead, reformat one of the cells, and then select off of the others by pressing Ctrl, and clicking them one by one. Once they they’re all highlighted, press F4 to apply the formatting to all of them at once.
Auto sum shortcut
When you’d like to do a simple sum on a column or row of figures you can simply put your cursor in the cell where you’d like to see the summed value. Once in this cell hold down the “Alt” and “+/=” keys at the same time and this will auto sum your desired figures.
If you are an interior designer, you’ve probably been asked this question. Or you’ve at least had to correct someone who thinks that your job consists of picking out fabric and paint colors (solely). If you are not an interior designer, you might actually wonder what it is that these creative interior designers do?
The good people at Beasley and Henley Interior Design wrote a great post on their blog about the day in the life of an interior designer. I found it helpful to hone my message, and I actually know what designers do.
Interior designers- how do you educate your clients on what a designer does? If you’re not an interior designer- what misconceptions do you think there are about interior designers?
Those of you on Twitter will understand the prolific Fail Whale that tells us that Twitter is overloaded. For those of you not on Twitter, get to it and sign up here! Drink this martini while you’re setting up your profile. You may be much more charming and intelligent.
This martini is featured in our February e-newsletter, The Gibson. If you don’t receive The Gibson, click here to sign up!
Ingredients:
1.5 ounce vodka (top shelf)
1.5 ounce Cointreau
1.5 ounce Blue Curacao
Lime slice
Preparation:
Chill martini glass.
In a large cocktail shaker, combine the ingredients with ice. Shake until mixed and chilled.
Strain the cocktail into the chilled glass and garnish with the lime.
We will be working with Ondine on spreading her great design and personality even further through the beauties of social media and online PR.
As part of the 20 Young Designers feature from Traditional Home, the magazine is holding a Reader’s Choice contest. Please support Ondine and support us by voting for her!
Note: Make sure that you click on the “Vote!” button and not just the “Like” button to vote!
Also, by voting you are automatically entered to win a complete room design and $5,000 in fabric to outfit the room so there’s some extra incentive…besides your undying love for us.
If you are in the Mid-Atlantic region you know what I speak of when I refer to the weekend’s blizzard as Snowpocalypse (or Snowmageddon). It was major snowfall, even for this Idaho girl. We ventured out briefly to trot around the city and take pictures of the sites in the snow, but most of the time was spent inside, catching up on some much neglected business book reading.
A view from the back of the very white White House
Snow maiden sculpted near the Capital
The view up 11th Street NW
Heavy snow means tree casualties
Washington Monument through the fog
There’s no better time to catch up on some past due business reading than when you’re snowed in. If you’re like me, you probably have several books in the rotation, plus a couple that are on your desk or nightstand that are in queue. My most recent conquest:
Success comes in many sizes and forms, sometimes when you least expect it; and those successes are particularly sweet. Recently, I was explaining the benefits of project sourcing to a potential client, a very talented, well known and respected designer, how we could assist by pulling fabrics or supplying tear sheets within the parameters that she would specify for us, staying true to her design vision. She didn’t feel she would ever use that service, as she wanted to make those design decisions, she loved that process, and didn’t want to let that go.
To my delighted surprise, I was given the opportunity to pull supporting fabrics for one of her projects! She had a presentation in several days, and could not fit the 5 hour round trip to the design center into her schedule. She supplied me with the vendor and pattern numbers for the driving fabrics, and a few details about durability needs and budget. The design center is 15 minutes from my office, and within 90 minutes, I had pulled approximately 60 fabrics from numerous vendors and showrooms, stopped at the FedEx store, and sent them off to be delivered to her doorstep the next day.
For those of you who think that you just need to have a Facebook page, tweet, and do some blogging, think again. You actually need to use them as tools to get results. Ramon DeLeon, owner of 7 Domino’s Pizzas, is the king of monitoring what people are saying about his brand. He doesn’t just listen though, he answers and he makes things right if they’re not already, often in very memorable ways.
I wouldn’t tell this to just anyone, but I love working in excel. It is such a powerful tool that is too often underutilized. In the design industry it can improve your business no matter what purchase order management program you use. If you are struggling to make your spreadsheets look just right look, then look no further but here for three easy excel formatting tips.
If you are an interior designer, you’ve probably been asked this question. Or you’ve at least had to correct someone who thinks that your job 
Success comes in many sizes and forms, sometimes when you least expect it; and those successes are particularly sweet. Recently, I was explaining the benefits of 
