So does this make me more or less of a geek that I took my guest list out of Microsoft Word, where it was in a table (I love making tables in Word), changed each “L” and “D” to “1” to signify the number attending the lunch or dinner, and then, of course, totaled the columns. So now I don’t have to count anymore. All I have to do is add a 0 or 1 to the spreadsheet, and it tells me how many people need to be fed. I’m going to equivocate Friday night with Saturday lunch in numbers. I think I won’t go wrong there.
And by the way, if anyone out there has an odd hour throughout the day that they’re not doing anything, and they know haftarah, I’d love to have even more people out there to bounce my practices off.
I should have started a month before I did. It’s crunch time. I’m getting better with the trope, but I’m not there yet. And there’s still the Torah to learn, which my rabbi probably doesn’t think I can do, though he hid it well today.
Sorry, but failure is not an option.
I used Excel to track both my kids’ b’nai mitzvot – who and how many were attending the service & the Open House, what table to seat them at, and later what gifts they gave. I even imported the original names & addresses from Excel into Word to print out the envelopes for the invitations. So there! I’m a bigger geek than you! Woo hoo!
Meryl,
You don’t need to change the letter to a number. In Excel the COUNTA() formula works just like the COUNT() formula but counts alphabetical entries.
Use ’em the same as you’d use SUM().
=COUNTA(B1:B37) for example.
Best wishes!
Kevin, I use Excel when I have to, but not very often. Thanks for the tip. Search and replace worked wonders, though.
Hey Meryl now that you’re a ubergeek I have a question.
Which symbol do I use to indicate more Geek?
‘+G’
Sounds all geek to me.
Mr Bagel
I’m available later today (say, after 4 or 5 Israel local time) if you’d like to bounce your haftarah off me.
You can also total columns in Word tables, although it doesn’t calculate on the fly. You’d have to do a refresh the data for a new total. (F9, I believe.)