Tuesday 30 March 2010

Rescued Corrupt xls, Highly Visual, Prof. Brian Cox & iphone Points Counting

WEDDING.xlsx

There have been a good few tears shed since Sunday. I was firing up the macbook to show the wedding budget to my parents when I discovered that the whole file had become corrupt. This is the spreadsheets to beat all spreadsheets, it trumps my Money.xls which has become my lifeline, and rains on my Body.xls which tells me when I should be menstruating and how my weight is doing.

This spreadsheet has been the main focus of my spare time since, well the day following the proposal. I am talking guest list, names, addresses, email, invite status, are they parking, camping, coming for the full day or evening, are they an adult or child? Another page contains all the suppliers, and a comprehensive budget, costs, monies paid, monies due and deadlines. There are pivot tables that show me the totals at a click of a button. So when the little error message blipped on my screen, my 4 month organising spectacular came crashing to a big fat stop, I was quite inconsolable.

We tried allsorts, bought file recovery software, I accidentally wiped Rob's Microsoft Office, all with no result. So there were a few more tears, then I felt quite ridiculous, while my friend is worrying about her ill father, and our sister-in-law is sick while expecting twins, I am sobbing my heart out over a spreadsheet.

So what if it cannot be recovered, I can start from scratch. I have decided that it was a well needed wake up call. Being such a control freak, I was convinced that I could do all this wedding planning on my own, and in truth, I am struggling, and I'm tired and this damn chest infection just will not shift. So I am calling in the cavalry, I am giving lists of jobs to Rob. Good Friday I will spend the whole day with Mum, sharing all the info to date.

I emailed the spreadsheet to James in IT at work, just on the off chance. He has only bloody fixed it!!! The pivot tables no longer work, but the vital bits are there, all the addresses are back, I can once again see who has RSVPd with a parking request. James is my hero and everyone should know it!

Highly Visual

Check out the movie trailer on you tube I must have seen it 15 times and it still makes me laugh. I cannot wait for the next installment. Watch this space for updates.


So I'm very excited about all the applications that are available to the iphone, one for my periods, a countdown to the wedding and one to track my running. So in that I am back counting points with Weight Watchers, I was searching for a points app, a quick calculator or quick tracker. There is nothing available on the apps list, and the Tracker cannot be viewed through Safari on the iphone. After an email enquiry to Weightwatchers, I have received a reply. The tracker is created in Flash, therefore will not function on many of these remote devices, but they are looking at developing technologies to work with them, unfortunately there is no timeframe set for this. In the meantime I am tracking my weight (as well as on eSource)on the iphone free app Target Weight, a clean looking easy to use weight tracker with graph, BMI calculator and target date. The only complaint you may have with this, would be if you wanted to see your weight in stones, this only does kilos or lbs, but it really is not hard to convert your stones into pounds, either that or drop into 2010 and start using kilos.

Final thought

As I type this, I am watching Prof. Brian Cox on BBC2's Wonders of the Solar System. Just had to hit record on the Sky+ as this requires my full attention, so I will rewind a re-watch later on this evening. I know I am coming into this series rather late, and yes Chris Evans has been banging on about how fantastic he is for weeks, but not only does this look terribly interesting, but Brian is rather easy going on the eyes. I could have done with him for a science teacher when I was at school, rather than Dobber Donnelly, I may well have paid more attention in class!

xxx

3 comments:

  1. Great news about the spreadsheet! I can't believe you've found someone more technical than me and Ajay! ;o)

    Make sure you save lots of backups! (And maybe upload it to Google Docs as well to be sure!)

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  2. And this is why we just got married in Stockport registry office on a Thurs afternoon... no spreadsheets needed for that!
    Well done James!

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  3. GH - 100 back ups!!!! :)
    EW - not even one little one? x

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