Category: How To

  • Verify what RSAT features are installed

    Before summer, I showed you how to install ADUC using PowerShell. ADUC, however, is not the only tool in the RSAT toolbox. Here, then, is how you can get an overview of all of them, as well as whether or not they are installed on the computer:

  • Installing ADUC from PowerShell

    With some frequency, I have users contacting me to have ADUC (Active Directory Users and Computers) installed on their computers. While you can simply install RSAT from Apps & Features, doing so would be overkill and a half. Much better, then, to simply install ADUC and be done with it. This is easily done using…

  • Excel: Defining parametric names for cells

    It should come as no surprise to anyone who has read my blog for a while that I use Excel on a relatively regular basis. Wherever possible, I like using parameters, rather than addressing something directly. There are a few reasons for this. It makes a formula shorter, more user friendly, and quicker to write.…

  • Excel: Looking up data continued

    Last week, I showed you the simplest form of the XLOOKUP function. Though highly useful, it’s only really useful if you find exact matches. If you’re looking at an array of data – e.g. pay averages for age groups instead of specific ages – you need to help it a little. To this end, the…

  • Excel: Looking up data

    This time, I show you how I look up data in a table using the XLOOKUP function.

  • Mac: Lock your computer

    There are a number of security best practices out there. The most basic include password-protecting your devices and limiting administrative privileges. Password protection is only effective when your device is locked. While I’ve mostly been a Windows user at work, at home I tend to prefer a Mac. I recently reworked my home office so…

  • Excel: Calculating days, months, and years

    One thing I find myself needing to do on a relatively regular basis, is calculate the number of days, months, or years between two given dates. Like with so many other things, Excel has a function for this, too. It’s intuitively named DATEDIF, and here’s how you use it. The syntax is =DATEDIF(startdate,enddate,UNIT). The units…

  • PowerShell: Looking up specific user properties

    Many of my customers use specific properties for various things. Most users do not have ADUC installed, and some of our customers even disallow installation of ADUC on end user computers. I recently had a user ask about looking up the contents of a specific attribute (extensionAttribute6, in case you were wondering). Luckily, this –…

  • Excel: Find average based on multiple criteria

    Last week, I showed you how to find an average based on a single criterion. That works well enough, but what if you want to find an average based on multiple criteria? In that case, the AVERAGEIF-function will fall short. In its place, you must use the AVERAGEIFS-function. This time, we want to find the…

  • Excel: Finding averages based on a specified criterion

    One of the many things I do in my capacity as a union representative is to assemble my own statistics based on raw numbers I get from my employer. One of the stats I calculate is the average pay in each section. As you might remember, last week I assembled a list of forty seven…

  • Excel: Finding unique values

    In complex datasets, finding the unique values can sometimes be a bit of a challenge. While you can often simply remove duplicates, if you intend to create a lookup-table, that isn’t an option, and you need to do it differently. Enter the UNIQUE-function. For this example, assume that you want all unique entries in column…