Sometimes you want to have text in one cell that is spilt into multiple lines. To do this you need to use the ALT + ENTER keyboard shortcut. What you end up with is something like this:

This is very similar to putting a soft return into a Word document except that, in Word, you use SHIFT + ENTER.

Formatting Cells

What you may not realise is that adding a line break automatically turns on text wrapping for this cell. If you check the cell formatting you will see that the Wrap Text option is ticked:

(A quick way of getting into the formatting options for a cell is to use CTRL + 1)

If you turn off text wrapping, then the two lines will move together:

As you can see, this causes the test to either be truncated, or to spill out into the next cell if that cell is empty.

You can try using the Shrink to fit option in the cell format pop-up, but this can cause the text to become too small to read:

Removing or Replacing Line Breaks

To remove a single line break just put your cursor next to it and use either the delete key or the backspace key to remove it, then replace it with a space or other character.

To remove a whole load of line breaks from within a worksheet you can use the Find a Replace tool. You’ll find this on the home tab, or you can use the CTRL + H keyboard shortcut. In the Find box type ALT + 010. You must use the number pad, not the row of numbers along the top of the keyboard (on a laptop you may need to turn on the number pad overlay). Then in the replace box type in a space, or whatever character you wish to use. The hit Replace, or Replace All if you are feeling brave!

Written by Ian Balboa, Happy Trainer

If you have any Excel questions or hints and tips you would like shared get in touch, use this link!

If you would like any further information on the Excel course we train, go to our dedicated Excel page on our website. If you are unsure of your Excel level, take our handy Excel survey.

Remember – If you’ve been on a Happy Computers course you get 2 years free helpline access.  Call the helpline on 020 7375 7373.

LVSC working in partnership with Happy aim to deliver a full and varied programme of training events.  The programme has been designed to provide the highest quality training at the lowest prices. The aim is to keep it affordable, especially to help small voluntary sector organisations.

Did you achieve your training goals last year?  Have you identified any skill gaps within your organisation?  Take a look at the courses we are running from mid June to the end of July.  You can see a full list below  – or for the full upcoming programme visit our LVSC page.

In-House Training

If you have a group you want to train with one of our off-the-shelf courses or something tailor made, this can often work out cheaper than booking individual places on our courses.  You get to choose the date and venue as well to enable you to keep staff travel costs and disruption to a minimum.

For more information or to find out prices for the courses in June & July – simply click on the course name below.

*Prices denote the lowest rate (for charities with 15 staff or under). For larger charities please visit the website for a correct rate

LVSC courses are delivered by Happy People – the personal development division of Happy Ltd. For more information LVSC on the Happy Website

To make any bookings, you can call us on 020 7375 7300, or simply reply to this email with your details.

Note: there is no VAT charged on LVSC courses.

** Please note payment will be required before the course either by credit card or by bringing a cheque on the day. **

Best wishes

Our Children Need You!

The most memorable event in my career was a time when a young trainee told me “you’re the first person to tell me I’m smart”.  The impact of that was incredible as I imagined my own children going through life without any positive encouragement or praise.

That trainee went on to achieve his first qualification, to turn his life around and is now employed full time; he has a position of responsibility, manages new staff and is a role model for other young people.

That trainee inspired me to be more than a trainer, to be someone that wants to make a difference.  I’m looking to start a project to help local young people get into work.  My ambition is to offer more than just skills to do a job; I want to support young people to develop skills for life and skills for work.  I want to see them become emotionally intelligent, well balanced, reliable, accomplished workers.  I have the resources to do this, but need companies to that are willing to take on a young person as an apprentice.

Do you or do you know anyone that cares and wants to help a young person get their foot on the ladder to employment?  Do you or do you know anyone who needs an extra pair of hands, but can’t afford to hire new staff?

If the answer is yes, then we can help. Apprenticeships are work-based training programmes designed around the needs of employers, which lead to nationally recognised qualifications. There is now such a variety of Apprenticeship qualifications that there’s bound to be one that suits your business needs. We plan to provide the following Apprenticeship courses:

• Business Admin
• IT Application Specialist
• Social Media & Digital Marketing
• Social Media -Technical Pathway (Web coding)
• IT Professional
• Customer Service

Please contact us to find out more about any of these courses or if there is any other area of work you would like an Apprentice to help you with.

Apprenticeships deliver for businesses and help them grow by:

• Reducing training and recruitment costs
• Increasing productivity and your bottom line
• Developing a skilled, motivated and qualified workforce
• Improving customer service results
• Providing financial return on investment.

More than 100,000 employers, in over 160,000 workplaces, currently use Apprenticeships to attract new talent, re-skill existing staff and tackle skill shortages. Apprenticeships are available to businesses of all sizes and from all sectors in England.

Apprenticeship Grant for Employers of 16 to 24 year olds (AGE 16 to 24)

AGE 16 to 24 has already helped thousands of employers to grow their business by employing an apprentice. The grant has been extended to 31 December 2013 so it can support even more. Could it help you too?

Are you an Employer who is interested in employing a young apprentice but are not in a position to do so due to current financial constraints, or need some financial help in taking on an apprentice?

AGE 16 to 24 is aimed at supporting businesses to grow by employing young people through the Apprenticeship programme. AGE provides grants to employers to support them to do this.

Here’s how it works

Employer

• You give us a job description and let us know how many apprentices you want to employ

Happy

• We will advertise your vacancy, interview and recruit potential apprenticesWe run a 2 week pre-apprenticeship programme, 1 week for employability skills, 1 week for practical skills
• We nominate 2 or 3 suitable apprentices for each vacancy

Employer

• You can run a 2 week work placement, providing the apprenticeship candidates with jobs and tasks to determine their suitability, competency and potential (optional)
• Interview nominated apprentices and offer an apprenticeship

Happy

• Enrol apprentices and develop a learning plan
• Run classroom training programme over a minimum of a 12 month course at Happy’s training centre

Together

• Complete an application for the Apprenticeship Grant for Employers, where applicable

Employer

• Employ an apprentice under an Apprenticeship Agreement for a minimum of 30 hours per week
• Allow the apprentice time off the job to attend training and for the apprentice to study and complete course assignments, minimum 18 hours per month
• Provide meaningful work to develop the skills the apprentice is learning
• Provide a buddy, from among your staff, for support
• Pay the minimum wage for apprentices of £2.65 an hour (Although we hope you will consider paying more)

Happy

• Support the apprentice with a nominated assessor/mentor
• Visit the apprentice in the workplace to assess their work against the qualification standards, 1-2 hours per month

Together

• Meet together to discuss the apprentice’s progress and identify any work they need to complete to meet the qualification standards

Employer

• Have a job available at the end, if they do well enough

It’s easy!  You get a very cost effective, extra pair of hands to help you, whatever your needs, with our support for at least the first year.

Not convinced yet?  Here are some facts

To shock you*

• 1 in 4 young people are unemployed (25%)*
• 1 in 3.6 young men are unemployed (27%) versus 22% of women
• Nearly 1 in 2 black and Pakistani young adults are jobless (44%)
• 120,000 young people unemployed in total
• Ten times – the number by which the unemployed of all ages exceeds Jobcentre vacancies (377,000 people competing for 36,543 jobs)
• 49,455 claim Job Seeker’s Allowance
• £145m is annual cost to the taxpayer for JSA
• 24,000 unemployed for over 12 months
• 240% – the rise in long term young unemployed countrywide
• 100% increase in JSA claimants (over six months) since general election
• Olympic boroughs have highest JSA claimants, namely Tower Hamlets ranked first (2,855 claimants) and Newham ranked third (2,560). Lowest ranked are Richmond-upon-Thames (315) and Kingston-upon-Thames (435)

To encourage you**

• Over 80% of those employers who employ apprentices agree they make their workplace more productive.
• 81% of consumers favour using a company which takes on apprentices.
• The National Minimum Wage for apprentices is £2.65 per hour. Many employers prefer to pay more however, and research shows that the average salary is approx £170 per week.
• Employers who take on a 16-18 year old apprentice only pay their salary. The Government will fund their training.
• There are more than 250 different types of Apprenticeships available offering over 1,400 job roles.
• 92% of employers who employ apprentices believe that Apprenticeships lead to a more motivated and satisfied workforce.
• 83% of employers who employ apprentices rely on their Apprenticeships programme to provide the skilled workers that they need for the future.
• One in five employers are hiring more apprentices to help them through the tough economic climate.

Could your organisation offer a place to an apprentice?

Find out how Apprenticeships can deliver a real difference for your business, or if you are ready to recruit an apprentice please call us on 020 7375 7300 or contact us by email at ITQ@happy.co.uk.

Best wishes, Sheena

We have a great last minute offer for you this week on our Managing for the First Time course here at Happy.  With a fantastic 25% discount, this course is ideal for new managers and supervisors.

About the course

This 2 day course is an introduction to the main aspects of management. It will look at different management styles and how to manage yourself, your organisation and staff.  It will include recruitment, motivation and dealing with difficult issues.

• What is management?
• Styles of management.
• The elements of management – overview.
• The elements of management – self.
• The elements of management – staff.
• The elements of management – organisation.
• Dealing with difficult issues as a manager.
• Management action plan.

To book call us on 020 7375 7300 or book on-line here.

LVSC courses are delivered by Happy People – the personal development division of Happy Ltd.  For more information go to LVSC on the Happy Website

Note: there is no VAT charged on LVSC courses.  Payment will be required before the course commences.

*Prices denote the lowest rate (for charities with 15 staff or under). For larger charities please visit the website for a correct rate

Best wishes,

Natalie

Connect with Happy on social media

Transformational Learning

Friday was such a joy for me, it was the final day of our TPMA Train the Trainer course which culminates in an assessment to be accredited by the Learning and Performance Institute.  Do I like watching my learners fret and worry with nerves?  No, but I absolutely love it when they put in an amazing performance.  Selfishly it is vindication for me to see all the skills and techniques I have taught being put into practice.  But the real buzz is seeing how delighted they are with what they have achieved in a short space of time.  “I just feel so confident, I could REALLY see that they were learning” said one of them afterwards with a huge grin on her face.

So many of the final training sessions are excellent but the ones that truly make my heart soar are the ones which are completely transformed from the first sessions I see.  So many experienced trainers are basically delivering presentations, telling and showing.  These trainers need new skills, but more fundamental is discovering their passion to help others develop; being open to changing the way they do things; and putting their learners at the heart of everything they do.  At Happy we call this Learner Focused Training.

Under Pressure

Demonstrating new skills under pressure takes a lot of nerve and a positive state of mind.  To help the group prepare for their assessment we discussed the state triangle.  Of course as a facilitator you can also use this to think about creating the right state in your learners.  There are three key factors affecting your state.

As a facilitator your FOCUS must be on the learners and what’s in it for them.  LANGUAGE is not only about the words you use out loud but also the voice in your head. Positive self-talk can build your resilience in any situation, our group thought about words or short phrases that made them feel good.  Finally, PHYSIOLOGY is all about what your body language tells your mind.  If you haven’t already watched it, check out Amy Cuddy’s brilliant TED talk ‘Your Body Language shapes who you are’ to find out about quick power poses that can give you a welcome performance boost.

Before their training sessions I noticed each of my delegates nip to the loo to do their power pose and positive self-talk and when they came back they were firing on all cylinders!  Not only did they all pass but 75% with Merit!

Whether you are a facilitator, learner or simply someone that needs to be on top form, take a moment to think about your Focus, Language and Physiology.  I’d love to hear your tips for using this to give yourself a head start, my contact details are below.

By Nicky Stone, Happy People Facilitator.

To find out more about delivering Learner Focused Training, why not come along to one of our Train the Trainer , TPMA or TPMA Refresh and Renewal course?  You can find more information on our website, by emailing Nicky or calling our office on 0207 375 7300.

Has it been a few years since you achieved your TPMA certification?.  If so I hope your training skills have continued to develop and you are still getting the buzz from helping other people reach their potential.

A few things have changed over the last few years, we all seem to be busier at work and the way we learn is changing too.  Did you know that TPMA has also changed?  It looks for the same high quality training delivery but has new streamlined criteria enabling you to focus on meeting the learner and business needs.

If your original accreditation expires soon and if you want to reaccredit and update your skills, its time to think about being re-assessed.  We have developed a 2 day workshop with this in mind – full details below.

You may also be interested in getting some help in applying the TPMA ethos to new approaches such as live online learning or webinars.  We have developed programmes for other clients in Mastering WebEx and Introduction to the virtual classroom so please get in touch with Nicky if you’d like to discuss it further.

Course details

This 2 day course is designed for anyone who has previously passed TPMA and would like to reaccredit and refresh their skills.

Day 1 – Skills refresher

Day 2 – Assessment

General requirements

Participants should be previously accredited TPMA Trainers.

Benefits

The business world is becoming increasingly pressured so it is important that your training is as efficient and effective as possible. This course will help you recognise and understand how to tailor your training to meet both learner and business needs. The course will ensure that you are using best practice in line with the new TPMA criteria.

What the course will cover

Identify your default communication style and learn how to maximise your approachability and credibility to get the best out of your learners

Day 1 – Skills Refresher

• Design a training session to boost people’s long term recall of what they have learnt
• Ensure your Socratic questions are in line with the new TPMA criteria and understand the power of deeper-thinking questions
• Tailor the course objectives to meet individual and business needs
• Design learning that ensures value for money and recognises time pressures on the business
• Understand the new TPMA criteria and changes to the scoring methodology

Day 2 – Assessment

• Deliver you own 30 minute session, and receive immediate feedback and coaching
• Find out your grade on the day and receive a report with detailed action plan following the event
• I do hope you can come and join us one of the workshops, the next available dates are:

• 16-17 July
• 11-12 Sep
• 5-6 Nov

Cost

£595 +VAT / £495 +VAT for charities

If you would like to book this course or would like more information on Happy People please go to our website, email us or call on 0207 375 7300.

Best wishes

Nicky Stone

With a few clicks of the mouse little dropdowns appear letting you filter your data in a myriad different ways.

But what if you want to find out the total or average of your filtered data?  Unfortunately the SUM, AVERAGE, COUNT, COUNTA etc functions seem to let us down here.

Here’s my unfiltered data and the SUM function in action:

And here’s my filtered data:

Notice anything different? No? Exactly!  We may want the SUM function to only sum the visible data but, as it was designed to do, it will sum ALL of the data, even the hidden rows.

So what’s the answer?  The SUBTOTAL function!

The subtotal function can, if we ask it nicely, ignore any values hidden by the autofilter.  It looks like this:

=SUBTOTAL(function_num,ref1,[ref2], . . . . ])

The function_num argument tells the subtotal function what sort of calculation you want it to do:

So here’s the same example as above using the subtotal function:

Written by Darren Andrews, Happy Trainer

If you have any Excel questions or hints and tips you would like shared get in touch, use this link!

If you would like any further information on the Excel course we train, go to our dedicated Excel page on our website. If you are unsure of your Excel level, take our handy Excel survey.

Remember – If you’ve been on a Happy Computers course you get 2 years free helpline access.  Call the helpline on 020 7375 7373.

Listen Again: Choose Your Manager

I’ve had lots of response. This has included tales of very bad managers, and promises from people to circulate the link to their own managers. But so far I have not had one person tell me they disagree or that it is a silly idea. Perhaps its an idea whose time has come? The full text is here:

Full transcript: Choose Your Manager

For me, this is part of a wider campaign to create happy workplaces, where people are valued and motivated and can work to their full potential. Find out about the movement for happy workplaces, about my book The Happy Manifesto and commit your organisation to seeking to be a happy workplace at The Happy Manifesto web site.

And do let me know if you get the chance to try it out. Here’s one example of a company that tried it, to good effect.

Would you like to create a culture where people are motivated and eager to come to work, where your people are engaged through their heart as well as their head?

Become the sort of inspirational manager that people would choose if they had the chance on our Course of the Month for June.  At £150 this course offers excellent value for money as it would normally cost £395* on our course programme, so grab a limited place now!

Our latest Course Programme for May – Oct 2013 is now published.  You can download your copy here.

*Price for a commercial organisation

What you will learn

Each session will be structured around lots of group discussion and practical exercises.  You will work with the other members of your group throughout, enabling you to learn from your own experience as well as each other:

• Recognise what empowers people to work at their best.
• Identify the benefits of 1 to 1 and team meetings and the key things you should discuss there.
• Understand how a framework of job ownership enables people to achieve their full potential.
• Identify where accountability should be assigned and why.
• Learn the 8 key steps to delegating successfully.
• Identify the key ways to provide the support your people want and demonstrate you value them.
• Learn and practice the 5 key elements of active listening.
• Recognise what stops you listening and identify solutions to deal with this.
• Understand how to use questions to get the best out of your relationships.
• Identify what stops you giving feedback and the impact this can have on others.
• Discover how to create an environment that challenges your people and pushes them to reach their full potential.
• Learn the key steps to providing constructive and positive feedback clearly and within appropriate timescales.
• Identify how to foster a positive and creative culture within your team.

How to Book

If you’re interested in grabbing one of the limited places contact us through this website or you can call the main office on 020 7375 7300.

Please note payment will be required before the course.

The Easy Way

You’d think that there would be an AGE function that worked out how many years since the anniversary by passing in a date.

However, life is not that easy… Fortunately there is a function called DATEDIF that does something similar. The bad news is that for some reason Microsoft no longer supports this function in Excel. You can still use it, but you don’t get any help with it. For example, you have to remember the order of the arguments that go into the function, there’s no handy pop-up box to give you a hint. So, if you’re like me, you will probably end up typing it in multiple times with the arguments in different orders until it works!

Here’s the structure of the function:

=DATEDIF (Earliest Date, Later Date, Time Interval)

The Earliest Date will be the date you are working with, for example the Date of Birth. The Later Date will be today’s date, which you can get with the TODAY function. The Time Interval is how you want to express the difference between the two dates. If you are working out age, then you will need to specify the interval as years by using the code “y”. If your Date of Birth is in cell A1, then the completed formula will look like this:

=DATEDIF(A1,TODAY(),”y”)

The DATEDIF function automatically takes into account if the person’s birthday has already occurred this year. If not, it will subtract one from the resulting age.

The Hard Way

If you don’t want to use the unsupported DATEDIF function, then you can still work out an age from a Date of Birth, but it requires a little fancier Excel Kung Fu. There is a useful function called YEAR that will take a date and return the year bit of that date. For example, if you have the date 01/Dec/1970 in cell A1 then =YEAR(A1) will return 1970. (This date is very important as it’s my birthday!)

You can combine two YEAR functions to work out the difference in years between two dates:

=YEAR(TODAY())-YEAR(A1)

At the time of writing the date is April 2013, so the above formula would give 2013-1970, which equals 43. Sounds good so far, yes? Except, of course, I haven’t had my birthday yet, so I am actually only 42. (The extra year is increasingly important when you get to my age…)

So, to make this work, we need to somehow decide whether or not the anniversary of the date has passed. If it hasn’t, then we need to subtract one from the resulting age. This is the fancy bit!

In fact there are several ways to do this; what follows is, I think, a relatively straightforward method. We are going to work out the day of the year for each date. By this I mean: which day, out of 365, have we reached within the year in question? We can then compare the two numbers, and if the day-of-the-year number for our date of birth is less than the day-of-the-year number for today’s date, then we haven’t had our birthday yet.

Let’s break this down into parts. The first part will be to work out the day-of-the-year-number for our date of birth. We can do this by taking the date of birth and subtracting the 1^st of January of that year from it. When you subtract one date from another, you get the difference between those dates in days. To create the 1^st of January for year X we use the YEAR function, which we have already seen, and the DATE function. The DATE function creates a date from the three parts we supply: the year, month and day. If the original date is 01/Dec/1970, which is in cell A1, then the formula is:

=A1-DATE(YEAR(A1)),1,1)

This gives us the difference is days between the date in A1 and the 1^st of January 1970. (Don’t worry; it takes leap years into account!)

If we do the same for today’s date, using the TODAY function, then we get something like this:

The next step is to compare these two values using an IF function and return either 1, if the birthday hasn’t happened, or 0, if it has.

=IF(A1-DATE(YEAR(A1),1,1)>TODAY()-DATE(YEAR(TODAY()),1,1),1,0)

If the day-of the-year-number for the date of birth is bigger than today’s day-of-the-year number, then this means we haven’t had our birthday yet.

The final step is to put all this together into one long formula. It looks pretty scary, but if you break it down into parts, then it’s not so bad.

=YEAR(TODAY())-YEAR(A1)-IF(A1-DATE(YEAR(A1),1,1)>TODAY()-DATE(YEAR(TODAY()),1,1),1,0)

Don’t forget to format the result of this formula as a number; otherwise you will get some strange results.

Ian Balboa, Happy Trainer.

If you have any Excel questions or hints and tips you would like shared get in touch, use this link!

If you would like any further information on the Excel course we train, go to our dedicated Excel page on our website. If you are unsure of your Excel level, take our handy Excel survey.

Remember – If you’ve been on a Happy Computers course you get 2 years free helpline access.  Call the helpline on 020 7375 7373.