How to recover a MS Word File when everything else fails using Google Desktop

Use Google Desktop to recover the contents of a lost or damaged word file.
Català - Castellano - Deutsch
I was today working on a report in word for several hours and at the time I was done and wnated to close the file and save it, Word Crashed. I don't know how, I had not done a manual save for a very long time. Second on my list of evening crisis was the fact that for some reason when i reopened MS Word, it didn't prompt to to the File recovery wizards. I got crazy scared. 3 hours of work lost? There must be a way I can find some of my info in some part of my computer.


All the advice about finding and recovering the Autosave files that is out there on the web didn't do any good to me. I did find what was supposed to be my Autosave recovery file with the extension .asd (see the image above). Unfortunately, this file was corrupted and could not be opened neither recover using the Open and Repair option in Word. What else could I do?

Well, luckily I always install Google Desktop on the computers I use. I do not find it very useful as a search tool but it is very useful to quickly access programs. I did go to GDesktop and search for my file name.


Miracle! Found 3 instances of it (I had tried to copy the file to different locations without success recovering it). One of this instances of my file, was good, and somehow, Google Desktop had stored it in its cache with several versions for me to choose.


Accessing the file itself was no good because it brought me to the unsaved version, but accessing the Cache of the latest version of the file allowed me to at least copy and paste the text (not the formatting) of the file into a new word document. Just had to do some minor tweaks to the formatting and had my 3 hours of work back with me in 10 minutes...

Show me more...

MS Office: Collaborate using Google Docs

Use Google Docs collaboration features from your MS Office desktop interface.
Català - Castellano - Deutsch
Collaboration is one of the key words in my opinion to improve efficiency. It might be collaboration between team members in the same office, collaboration between members of the same company sitting in different locations or collaboration between consultants to produce common documents.

Collaboration is not only important when we talk about producing drawings or models or BIM. It is also very important when producing documents where more than one stakeholder has to contribute in their production. I am talking about spreadsheets with area calculations or word documents containing technical specifications and so on.

Google Docs is a collaboration tool by Google that allows this sort of multi-party edit and sharing of documents. It can handle spreadsheets, word documents and presentations. In the business environment though, MS Office is the leader in creating this sort of documents, so many might not want to use Google Docs to share their docs because they are used to the better functionality and editing features of the Microsoft proprietary software package. But soon this might change.

There is a new tool to use the best of both platforms. It is called OffiSync and it is intended to allow you to use MS Office desktop programs to create and edit your documents and to use Google Doc sharing and collaboration features to share them and edit them together with your collaborators. See the intro video below.


OffiSync can be downloaded here. There is a free version and a Premium one with different level of features. Try it. Better collaboration is the future.

via Geeks.cat


Show me more...

Excel: Turn numbers exported from ACAD into European Format

There is a quick way to turn numbers in Excel into European format and to remove apostrophes.
Català - Castellano - Deutsch
European Number Format, uses a coma as a decimal separator instead the period of the English format. When exporting data from AutoCAD to Excel using the DATAEXTRACTION command, the numbers exported are in English format, so to transform them to the European Format we need to replace the points for comas. This can very done very easy by using the find and replace function in Excel. Type CTRL + F or click the Replace button on the Editing area of the Home Tab (Excel 2007). Find Points and replace them by comas, and select Replace All.


There is an extra step needed if we want to be able to use the data from AutoCAD in Excel as numbers. All the Cells exported from CAD start with an apostrophe ('). See below.


This makes the numbers not usable as such. Luckily there is a trick to batch remove this sign. If you have a column with numbers, insert a new column to its right. On the cell next to the first number in the row enter the follwing fórmula.


Where D2 is the Cell with the numbers with the apostrophe you need to eliminate. Then copy the cell next to all numbers you want to transform. You will see now the result of the formula as the number you want to use. Something like this:


The left cell is the one still containing the apostrophes, and that is why the numbers are aligned to the left. The one on the right is the result of the formula we have applied.

A final step I would recommend is to copy all these new cells and paste them in a new column using Paste Special. Paste Special can be accessed after copying some cells by right clicking on a cell. Then On the Paste Special Window Select "Values".


That's it, now you can delete the other columns (the one with the apostrophes and the one with the formulas, and you have just the new column with plain numbers. The explanations is long, but the process takes lest than a minute.


Show me more...

AutoCAD: Extracting Data to Excel

Do you need to extract the object properties to an excel sheet? Easy, don't do it manually.
Català - Castellano - Deutsch
Sometimes we might need to get information of some of the objects exported to an Excel Sheet to do some further calculations there. A good way to automate this process if we have a lot of objects is to use the DATAEXTRACTION wizard.
To access it simply type DATAEXTRACTION and follow the instructions. You'll be able to select which objects you want to export data from (or alternatively all the objects on a drawing or several drawings, see below)


You can always select which properties of the objects you want exported (length, object type, layer, color, etc) making it simple to later differentiate the objects in Excel.



By default, Object Name and Count will also be exported. Object Count means that if you have 2 objects with their properties being identical (those that you are exporting), the exported excel sheet will only show 1 row, and a count of 2. Name, is basically the type of object. See the image with 5 lines, and the excel sheet obtained after exporting only the layer and length of the objects.



As you can see the lines with equal length and layer show only once in the table, with a count of 2. If we had included other properties in the export settings (like start X or start Y) the lines would not have been grouped because the data extracted would be different.

Show me more...

AutoCAD: Using an Excel Sheet as if it was an XREF

You can insert an Excel sheet in AutoCAD and keep it linked so when the sheet is updated, it shows the updates in AutoCAD
Català - Castellano - Deutsch
Many times, we use MS Excel (or similar)to show area charts, parking counts, unit types, etc. For a long time I had been printing the Excell Sheets to PDF format, turning them nto JPEGs and then inserting them as images in AutoCAD. BEsides being a 3 step process, it has the disadvantage that whenever the worksheet was updated, the process needed to be done again and again.
I just discovered recently that there is no need to Print as PDF and insert an Excel Sheet. It can be inserted in a way that it will remain linked and it will update. And it is much simpler than you think.
Simply select the part of the sheet you want to insert in Excel, press Ctrl + C (or Edit --> Copy). Then, go to the AutoCAD drawing you want to insert it in an go to Edit --> Paste Special. You should see a dialog like the one below.

On the left side, select "Paste Link", and from the options offered on the right side, select "Microsoft Office Excel Worksheet". That's it, almost as simple as Copy and Paste with just a few extra tweaks, and it will save you lots of time. ANytime you save the Excel Sheet it will automatically update in AutoCAD.

Show me more...