First of all, some information on the general uses of Word outlines. Word outlines involve allocating paragraphs to different levels. So a main heading might be level 1, the sub-heading level 2, sub-subheading level 3 and so on to level 9. Standard paragraphs of text would not have a level, but would be ‘body’ text. Once these levels are established, they can be used to quickly re-arrange a document or to automatically create a table of contents. In addition, and with particular relevance to our numbering issue, they can be used to automatically create and maintain numbering throughout an entire document.

Outlines and numbering

As shown by the animation, the levels are linked to specific numbering formats, so that a level one paragraph will be numbered 1., 2. etc, whilst level 2 will be 1.1,1.2 and level three 1.1.1, 1.1.2. We have achieved this by modifying the built in ‘Heading’ styles to incorporate outline numbering. Note that the top three levels of built in heading style each have a default keyboard shortcut:

The method of working with styles has changed slightly from Word XP onwards. In the most recent versions of Word, styles can be viewed in the ‘task pane’ and can also be selected for modification by clicking the drop-down button that appears to the right of the selected style when you hover over it in the task pane. The drop-down includes the ‘Modify’ option which opens the style dialog – press the ‘Format’ button to change the format of the style. In Word 2000 and before, you choose Format, Style from the menu to open the style dialog and then click the ‘Modify’ button, and then the ‘Format’ button to change your style. Here are the settings for our ‘Heading 1’ style in Word 2007:

Note that it is set to be ‘Outline numbered’ at level 1. To review or change the numbering in versions of Word prior to 2007, choose Format, and then ‘Numbering’ and for outline numbering choose the ‘Outline numbering’ tab then click on the ‘Customize’ button.

Word 2007 – Home-Paragraph, ‘Multilevel List’ button dropdown, then choose the list closest to what you want then click on ‘Define new Multilevel list…’)

Click on the ‘More/Less’ button to display the full details, the screens are organised slightly differently between the different versions, but you should find all the same elements are there.

You can allocate styles to each of the required levels. Click on the outline level in the ‘Preview’ or ‘Level’ box and then, in the ‘Link Level to style’ box, choose the appropriate heading style. You can set all the level/style links from the customize screen of the ‘Heading 1′ style.

Table of contents

One of the advantages of using outline numbering is the ease with which you can add a table of contents to your document. Just choose Insert-Reference-Index and Tables (Word 2007: References-Table of Contents-Insert Table of Contents…) then, from the ‘Table of Contents’ tab, choose how many levels to include in the table and how it should be formatted.

Once created, the table of contents can be updated by right-clicking anywhere within it and choosing ‘Update field’. Alternatively, you can set your print options so that all fields in a document are updated prior to it being printed. Choose Tools, Options then click on the Print tab (Word 2007: Word Options-Display-Printing Options) and check that ‘Update fields before printing’ is selected.

Cross references

Outline numbering also makes it easy to insert cross-references which can be updated automatically. Click where in the document you want to insert the cross-reference then go to Insert-Reference-Cross Reference (Word 2007: References-Cross-reference). Select the ‘Numbered item’ option from the ‘Reference type’ list, and ‘Paragraph number’ from the ‘Insert Reference to:’ list. You can then choose the item that you want to cross-refer to and click click the ‘Insert’ button. Word will insert a reference to the paragraph number that will be updated if the numbers change. Well sort of. Actually the number won’t be updated until you use the ‘update field’ command on the cross-reference field, or on a selection that includes the field. This isn’t necessarily as bad as it sounds. You can select the whole document (CTRL-A) and then use the update field shortcut key ‘F9’ to update all the fields in the document in one go or set the ‘Update fields before printing’ option as described above.

The logic of the lbw law

In the unlikely event that any reader is not fully conversant with the cricket LBW law, I’ll just set out the basics:

If the bowler bowls the ball so that it hits any part of the batsman’s body (usually the leg, but not necessarily) then the batsmen is out if the ball is going on to hit the stumps as long as: the ball has not touched any part of the bat before hitting the batsman – usually known as an ‘edge’; the ball has not pitched outside the line of the leg stump; and the ball has not hit the batsman outside the line of all the stumps when the batsman is playing a stroke. The BBC has an excellent description on their site:

Ways of getting out: leg before wicket

So the main ‘conditions’ we need to check for are:

Was the ball going to hit stumps? (Hitting)

Did the batsman get an edge? (Edge)

Did the ball pitch outside leg? (Outside leg)

Did the ball hit the batsman in line with the stumps? (Hit in line)

Was the batsman playing a stroke? (Playing stroke)

Here is the Excel spreadsheet with the appropriate conditions:

I have used True and False as the entries so we can use the various logical functions to evaluate the result directly. We will be using:

• IF() – evaluates a statement and returns one result if true or an alternative if false
• AND() – allows you to check multiple conditions – only if all are true will the result be TRUE
• OR() – allows you to check multiple conditions – if one or more is true the result will be TRUE
• NOT() – reverses the logic of a statement – i.e. turns a TRUE FALSE or a FALSE TRUE

If we try and express the logic of the LBW law in English we get something like:

If Not Hitting or Outside Leg, or Edge then ‘Not Out’

If Not Hit in line and Playing stroke then ‘Not Out’

Turning these two statements into logical functions we get four ways of not being out:

OR(NOT(Hitting),Outside Leg, Edge)

AND(NOT(Hit in Line), Playing Stroke)

Combining these gives us:

OR(NOT(Hitting),Outside Leg, Edge, AND(NOT(Hit in Line),Playing Stroke)

This is an OR() function with four arguments, the first three are relatively straightforward, with the fourth being an AND() function with two arguments – both of which must be TRUE for the batsman to be saved. We can now wrap this up in an IF() function which will return ‘NOT OUT’ if any of our four ORs are TRUE and ‘OUT’ if they are all FALSE:

IF(OR(NOT(Hitting),Outside Leg, Edge, AND(NOT(Hit in Line),Playing Stroke),”NOT OUT”,”OUT”)

Let’s see this in Excel using the cell references:

Setting up and applying range names

Not the easiest formula to understand! To make it more comprehensible, let’s set up range names for all the TRUE and FALSE cells. First click on cell C3 and then, in the Excel name box type in Hitting:

Remember to press the ‘Return’ key after entering the name. Repeat the procedure for the next four cells:

• C4 – Edge
• C5 – OutsideLeg
• C6 – HitInLine
• C7 – PlayingStroke

Had we created the names before entering our formula, they would have been used automatically when we clicked on the appropriate cells. However, we can Apply the names retrospectively. If we click on our ‘Verdict’ cell then select Insert, Name, Apply (Excel 2007 – Formulas ribbon, Define Name, Apply Names) we can select all of the relevant names, then click OK to change our formula to use the range names rather than the cell references:

Our formula now looks like this:

Check boxes

Finally let’s add some check boxes to make it easier for the umpire to choose the right options in the heat of a tense test match.

Display the forms toolbar by choosing View, Toolbars, Forms (Excel 2007 – Developer ribbon, Insert). Click on the Check Box form control and ‘draw’ it next to the ‘Hitting’ label. Delete the associated text, then right click on the control and choose ‘Format Control’. On the ‘Control’ tab, set the cell link to C3 (where the TRUE/FALSE text for ‘Hitting’ is):

Now click on cell B3 and use the fill handle to copy it down to B7. All the check boxes should be copied down. Right-click on each one and set the cell link to the appropriate cell.

See if your understanding of the LBW law agrees with mine!

If you have several sheets, each with information for a single department for example, you may want to set up a summary sheet. Rather than creating separate formulae to refer to each sheet, Indirect() can allow you to create a single set of formulae all of which use a reference to a sheet name held in a cell – hopefully an example will make this clearer.

To refer to cell A2 on a sheet named ‘Cuddly Toys’ we would use a formula like this:

=’Cuddly toys’!A2

However, sometimes it would be useful to be able to change a whole series of references to, for example, a different sheet.

We could type the sheet name into a cell on our main sheet, say A1. We could then write a formula to refer to cell A2 on the sheet typed into cell A1.

If we simply type:

=A1!A2

Excel, not unreasonably, looks for a sheet named A1 and fails to find it.

However, we can use the Indirect function instead. Here is the screen from the Paste Function dialog for Indirect:

“‘“ & $A$1 & “‘!A2“

Our Ref_text entry is a little confusing, so we have highlighted the pairs of speech marks in different colours. We have two items of text, and sandwiched in between them, an absolute reference to the contents of cell A1 – as you can see this correctly returns the contents of that cell – Cuddly toys. The ampersands are used to join the 3 elements of our Ref_Text together. The first text section simply holds a single apostrophe – this is necessary because, if our sheet name contains a space, it must be surrounded by apostrophes to be correctly identified. The second section contains an absolute reference to cell A1 – the cell where we type the name of our sheet. The third text section contains the closing apostrophe for the sheet name, together with the exclamation mark that separates sheet name from cell reference, and the cell reference itself – A2.

This works well to return the contents of cell A2 on our cuddly toys sheet, and if we were to type in ‘Boardgames’ for example, it would automatically return the contents of cell A2 on a sheet named ‘Boardgames’.

However we do have a problem left to solve. We need to refer to many cells on the price list sheets, but if we copy our Indirect cell, the reference to A2 doesn’t change, because it is just text. We can solve this by using a row/column style reference instead of A2:

“‘“ & $A$1 & “‘!RC“

Note that we have to set the ‘A1’ argument of the function to ‘False’ to use this reference. RC will return the current row and column – so a formula in cell A2 will refer to A2 on cuddly toys, A3 to A3 and so on. If we need to refer to a different cell we would add numbers in square brackets after R and C. So R[1]C[1] would look at the cell one row down and one column right for example.

Because neither the length of the text or the figure are necessarily consistent, we can’t use Left, Right or Mid. However, we can instead use the hyphen to work out where the description ends and the number begins. To do this we must first identify how many characters from the left there are before the hyphen.

To do this we use the ‘Search’ function. Here is the function screen for Search:

Note again that we can just type the hyphen into the ‘Find_text’ box and Excel will automatically add the speech marks. Note also that there is the option to specify the character position at which you want to start the search. This is useful if you need to locate more than one similar character – once you have found the first, you can start the next search from one character position higher. Our example is a simple one that doesn’t use the ‘Start_num’ argument and, as you can see, it returns the position of the hyphen as character 6.

=SEARCH(“-”,A13)

We can now ‘nest’ the Search function within the ‘Left’ function to retrieve the description:

=LEFT(A13,SEARCH(“-”,A13)-1)

In order to exclude the hyphen itself we have subtracted 1 from the result of search. If we copy this formula down our list we can see that it achieves the desired result:

Now to deal with the amount. Whilst we can use Search to find the starting position, we don’t yet know how long the amount is. We can work this out using the ‘Len’ function. ‘Len’ is a very simple function with just one argument – the text string, or cell containing the text string, that we wish to find the length of:

=LEN(A13)

This tells us how long the text is in total, and we have already used Search once to find the position of the hyphen. By combining Len and Search we can calculate how many characters follow the hyphen:

=LEN(A13)-(SEARCH(“-”,A13))

In the case of “Sales-10000” Len will return 11, the hyphen is at position 6, so 11-6 = 5, the number of characters in the amount.

We can use this with the ‘Right’ function to pick out the amount:

=RIGHT(A13,LEN(A13)-(SEARCH(“-”,A13)))

Again we can copy this formula down the list:

As you can see above, whilst we have indeed separated out the amount characters, Excel is still treating our text as text and if we used Sum to total column C we would get zero:

We need to convert the text ‘amounts’ into proper numbers. To do this we use the function Value. We will use the value function to convert the three items in our list to numbers. Here is the formula for cell D13:

=VALUE(C13)

We can now copy this down our list and use Sum again to total our new column:

As you can see, the text values are now treated as numbers and Sum works correctly.

These two functions can be used to remove unwanted characters from text. Sometimes, if you import text from other sources, you may end up with non-printing characters, such as carriage returns – Clean will remove these. Trim can be used to get rid of extraneous spaces:

In the following example we have part of an address that includes multiple spaces between ‘High’ and ‘Street’ and a carriage return character to separate the lines of the address.

In column B we have used Trim to get rid of the extra spaces:

=TRIM(A19)

and then in column C we have used Clean on the result to remove the carriage return:

=CLEAN(B19)

Note that the Trim function leaves a single space between High and Street, but that the Clean function removes the carriage return entirely.

A more standard question is how to include space for the headers and footers of preprinted letterhead stationery on page 1 only. This can be done by ensuring that in the Layout section of File, Page Setup, the ‘Different first page’ option is selected. This allows you to set up empty headers and footers on page one of the right size to allow for the letterhead but, because of the ‘Different first page’ option, they will not appear on subsequent pages.

The ‘continued…’ question is not so straightforward. The headers and footers for the letterhead are required on page one, whether there is one page or many pages, but as we have said, the ‘continued…’ should only be included when a second page is needed. After a fair amount of thought, the following solution came to mind. Set up the ‘Different first page’ option as before, and this time, in the appropriate position of the header or footer insert a Word ‘IF’ field. The IF should check whether the number of pages in the document is greater than 1 and if so, include ‘continued…’, and if not omit the word.

The Word field should look something like this:

Be very careful when entering the Word field – forgetting a space or getting the syntax wrong in any other way will probably stop it working properly.

If you are not very familiar with using Word fields, the best method of inserting an IF field is probably to use the Insert, Field option in two stages.

First use Insert, Field to insert the IF field. Don’t worry about calculating the number of pages at this stage, but instead just type in a placeholder – for example the word ‘pages’:

i.e.

IF pages > 1 “continued….” “”

The IF field compares two ‘expressions’ and then prints one item of text if the comparison is evaluated as ‘true’ or a different item of text if it is ‘false’.

In fact, in this case because we don’t need anything printed if the result is false we could omit the ‘FalseText’ altogether:

IF pages > 1 “continued….”

Then right click on the resulting field result, and choose Toggle Field Codes to show the underlying code. Double Click on the word ‘pages’ to select it, then go to Insert, Field again and this time use the field DocProperty, Pages:

Now select the entire field, right click, and choose Toggle Field Codes again to toggle back to displaying the result of the field.

Finally, to make sure the field result is recalculated every time the document is printed, set the ‘Update field’ option in the Tool, Options, Print screen:

What you see isn’t what you calculate – mostly!

The first thing to grasp is that the way Excel displays the contents of a cell generally has no effect on the actual contents of that cell as used in calculations. So a value of 100.05678 will remain as 100.05678 even if the format of the cell is set to display no decimals. There is one important exception to this. There is an option in the ‘Calculations’ tab of the Tools, Options screen that forces Excel to change the contents of the cell to match the ‘precision’ of the format. So if the cell is formatted to display no decimal places, the contents will be permanently rounded to no decimal places – our 100.05678 would become 100.00000:

Before turning on ‘Precision as displayed’

and after:

This is an option to be used with great care. It applies to the entire workbook and as soon as it is turned on potentially decreases the accuracy of any figure displayed to fewer decimal places than it actually contains.

Round function

A less drastic method of avoiding rounding errors is to use Excel’s ROUND() function. This allows you to round a number to a specific number of decimal places for use in calculations, without changing the original number. Round takes two arguments – the number to be rounded and the number of decimal places to round to. In this case we have used =ROUND(A2,0) to round to round pounds:

The ‘sum’ formula in cell C5 sums the rounded numbers in C2 to C4, so returns 99 rather than 100. If you need the total to be a particular figure, for example if the 100 was a profit share, then you could set the final rounded figure to be the total minus the sum of the other rounded figures. In this case we have entered a figure of 100 in cell E5, then rounded the calculation of the two shares in E2 andE3, with E4 being =E5-SUM(E2:E3)

More fun with rounding

As well as 0 for no decimal places or a positive number for that number of decimal places, you can also enter a negative number as the decimal place argument of the Round function. For example you could enter -3 to round to thousands:

To change the format to display numbers rounded to thousands you would use the following custom format:

#,###,

for 1,235k

#,###,k

for millions

#,###,,

for 1m

#,###,,”m”

The speech marks are necessary for the m, but not the k, because m is used in formatting to signify a month format.