Contextures Blog

At YourFonts.com you can create a font based on a sample of your handwriting, then use it in Excel, Word, or other programs.

My handwriting is terrible, much to my mother’s dismay, so I thought this might give documents a personal touch, with a bit more legibility. I could use my best writing to create a sample of each letter, then use the personalized font in my documents.

How It Works

The process is quite simple. You download a blank template, and fill in the blanks with a sample of your handwriting.

You can also include your signature, which will be mapped to the caret (^) character.

Then, scan and upload the template.

A few minutes later, you can preview, then download and install your font.

Use Your Font

Once the font is installed, it should appear in the font dropdown list in Excel, Word, and other programs.

Here’s my font in Excel. Trust me, this looks better than my regular handwriting. I’m sure yours is much nicer!

What I’d Do Next Time

I’ll probably create another font from a sample of my printing, instead of cursive letters. The letters are a bit far apart, and the tails don’t connect to the next letter.

If you’re going to use this font in Excel, you might want to use the caret as a caret, instead of storing your signature in that character. Otherwise, you’ll have to change to a different font to use the exponentiation operator.
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Excel is always my first choice in spreadsheets! Recently though , I’ve been using Google Spreadsheets, to help plan a family event.

I created a file and shared it with a few people, and it’s a quick and easy way for us to keep track of who’s doing what.

We Need a Backup

Then it dawned on me that we’re storing all this information online, with no backup. What happens if we can’t get to that file, a few days before the event? Too horrible to even think about!

So, I copied everything from the Google Spreadsheet, and pasted it into Excel. Not too efficient, but at least I had an offline copy.

Export a Copy to Excel

After I had created the emergency backup file, I looked around to see what other options there are for making the backups.

The first thing I found was that I could export to Excel, when I had a Google Spreadsheet open.

Click the File menu, then click Export, and click the .xls option.

In the dialog box that appears, to can click the Save option, then name the file and select a folder to store it in.

Save One Selected File as Excel

When you’re looking at the list of your Google Documents, you can add a check mark to select one Google Spreadsheet.

Then, click More actions, and click Save as Excel. (If more than one file is selected, the list won’t show the Save options.)

Download Selected Files

If you have lots of Google Documents, you might want to download and save more thane one file at a time.

To do this in Firefox, I installed GreaseMonkey, Google Docs Download script, and the DownThemAll add-on. That took a couple of minutes, and went very smoothly.

The script add a new menu, Download Your Documents, to the Google Documents menu bar.

Select all the files that you want to download, then click Download Your Documents, and click as Microsoft Office files.

A new web page appears, with a list of your selected files.

In the Firefox menu bar, click Tools, then click DownThemAll! Tools, and click DownThemAll!…

In the DownThemAll dialog box, click All files, or select specific files to download.

Click Start! to start the download.

What’s Your Backup Plan?

Do you use Google Documents? If so, how do you create backup files? Maybe you’ve found an easier way to accomplish this.
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When you’re inserting a shape in Excel 2007 (or using a drawing tool in earlier versions), sometimes you want to use the shape a few times, not just once.

For example, if you’re creating a simple flow chart or organization chart, there might be several rectangles and connector lines.

Make Quick Shapes

Yes, I know there are better tools for this kind of thing, but sometimes it’s easier and quicker to do it in Excel or Word.

Instead of going back to the Ribbon, to create each shape, you can select the shape once, and use it several times.

Reuse Shape in Excel 2007

1. Click on the Ribbon’s Insert tab, and click Shapes.
2. In the list of shapes, right-click on the shape that you want to use
3. Click Lock Drawing Mode

Now you can click on the worksheet to add that shape in its default size, or drag on the worksheet to create a shape in a specific size.

Tip: Press the Shift key while you drag, to constrain the shape.

Reuse a Shape in Excel 2003

1. On the Drawing toolbar, double-click the shape that you want to use

If the shape is not in the Drawing toolbar:

• On the Drawing toolbar, click AutoShapes
• Click a category, to view its shapes
• Point to the bar at the top of the shapes list
• When the pointer is a 4-headed arrow, drag the shapes palette onto the worksheet.

• In the shapes palette, double-click the shape that you want to use

Turn Off the Locked Shape

When you’re finished using the shape:

• press the Esc key on the keyboard, OR
• click that shape on the Ribbon’s Format tab (or toolbar in earlier versions), to deselect it.

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Several times every day, I drag something from one part of a worksheet to another. If there’s already something in that destination cell, Excel shows a message that asks me if I’m sure I want to do this.

Continue reading “Turn Off Excel Overwriting Cell Warning”