No Grandma!

I saw this photo today and it cracked me up - how many of you can identify with it?

Excel Arrays - Published by Texas CPA Society

We were really excited that the Texas CPA Society published our article "Incorporating Excel Arrays into Your Audit Plan". Click here to access a copy the Array article.

If it is of interest we have a more detailed version of that course for which you can earn CPE credit -
Using Arrays to become a Power Excel user.

We offer a lot of different Excel CPE courses. so if you are a CPA check them out when you get a chance.


Here is a link to other articles that we have written over the last few years.



Best wishes to you all and your families. I hope that you have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Surviving the File Restore Virus

My Survival of the File Restore Virus

Well yesterday I was sitting around and getting ready to update this blog but first I made a serious error and went to YouTube. Out of nowhere, a virus called File Restore appeared with dialog box after dialog box telling me I had critical hard disk errors! Essentially it tells you that you have all these critical problems and low and behold just click the Buy Button and for $85 they will fix the problems. (There really are no problems except what they created. The Virus locks down your system and hides all your files.) Nice huh?

Looks really official - doesn't it? Just trying to instill fear !  

But hey, no problem, right - this wasn't the first virus I have experienced. After all,  I had a spyware program installed on my computer. Ha Ha. No, it is never that easy. I couldn't access the program since all the files were hidden. So, first thing I did was try to download Malwarebytes Anti-Malaware which always works. Not this time! Access Denied every time I tried to install it. Then I tried pulling it in off a flash drive - No! Access Denied again. Aha, you are all thinking hey go into Safe Mode and restore your system to a prior date.  Well, if not, that is what I thought - as I said I have been through this before.
(To get into safe mode you can just press and hold the F8 key as you restart your computer. You can also press the Window key and R to access Run and then type msconfig)

Again, I was blocked - it would not restore it to a prior date. Luckily I  realized that I had a backup CD of Spyware Doctor. I always pay for the CD as a preventative measure and boy did it pay off this time.(Maybe now my husband won't laugh at me for being so cautious.) After about 3 tries, in safe mode I was able to get Spyware Doctor to identify and remove a couple of the threats. Notice I said couple! Once those threats had been removed I was able to get back into the system. I could tell I still had problems but luckily File Restore does not shut off access to the internet and I found this handy dandy thread of how to remove the File Restore Virus and I wanted to share it with you.
http://malwaretips.com/Thread-How-to-remove-File-Restore-virus.

This thread walked me through all the steps including downloading Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware (which I was able to finally download and install ) and downloading links to two of my new favorite products HitmanPro, which removed File Restore's  Rootkit, and  RogueKiller which restored my shortcuts in the temporary internet folder and removed some malicious  registry keys (don't you love the names of these programs.)
Now, at that point, everything was supposed to be fine but I re-ran Malwarebytes and it found another high-level threat. After I removed that I re-ran Spyware Doctor which found another high-level threat.
So, definitely double-check. I will be running both of these and possibly a third again - just to make sure everything is as it should be.

Malawarebytes, Rogue Killer and HitmanPro were all free. HitmanPro gives you a one time free trial, Malawarebytes offers a free and an upgrade version and RogueKiller appears to be written by an individual who asks you to donate if you wish.

So, lessons to be learned.
Have active spyware on your system to prevent a virus from getting in. I thought mine was on but apparently I was incorrect so check it periodically and remember Malwarebytes and Spydoctor in case you ever need them.  I personally plan to upgrade to the pro version of Malwareebytes and I need to donate to the RogueKiller cause.  Without these my 3 or 4 hours of frustration would have increased tenfold and possibly ended with me reformatting the drive.
Oh yes... last lesson to be learned... BACKUP your files periodically. Backing up is one thing I try to do religiously and which is what allowed me to remain relatively calm as I removed the virus!

It's Friday - Have a great day and wonderful weekend. I just had 3 deer and  big buck walking through my backyard. It's time to move away from the computer and go and enjoy the beautiful day.

Day of the Week

Day of the Week and Weekday()

I was working with dates and had to remind myself on how to display a date as a day of the week so I thought perhaps some of you might be interested in it too.

I was double-checking items and I wanted to verify that nothing was occurring on the weekend so the easiest way to do that would be for Excel to tell what day of the week that date was. 

In Cell A4 I had my date so all I needed to do was enter =Text(A4,"ddd") and it displayed Thu for November 1st.  If I had entered =Text(A4,"dddd") it would display Thursday.
Pretty easy - eh?

If you wanted to incorporate this into an IF or some other formula then you might prefer to have the actual number of the day as opposed to the text. In that case, you can use the Weekday function. The resulting answer for November 1,2012 is 5 which is Thursday.