Kolz Blog

As promised, here is the first of  a week's worth of addins/powertoys for OneNote 2007.  This addin will sum the columns of a table for you and add the new row to the bottom.  It ignores non-numeric values in the column.  It's only requirement is that you need to click in a table to select it before hitting the Sum button (although it will prompt you for clicking the table if you need to).

 

It does have some limitations. Inking (writing numbers in tables w/o converting them to text) is not supported, and tables within tables will cause problems.

 

Here's the link for the setup file: http://johnguin.members.winisp.net/Shared%20Documents/table_sums.zip

 

Alternate location: http://elhombre.members.winisp.net/api/table_sums.zip

 

And the source code: http://johnguin.members.winisp.net/Shared%20Documents/table_sums_Source.zip

 

Alternate location: http://elhombre.members.winisp.net/api/table_sums_Source.zip

 

Standard setup directions apply:  ensure OneNote has exitied, run setup.exe (as an admin on Vista) and install for all users. 

 

Here it is in action.  Before adding the columns:



 

 

And after:



 

 

(And there is a hidden preview for another addin to be released later this week in the images above.  Can you find it?)

 

There is a lot to do with this from here.  Adding support to sum rows (relatively easy, but requires some new UI), performing other simple math routines, completely ignoring columns which have no numbers at all, perhaps applying boldface to the answers and similar tasks would all be appreciated.  Moving this code over to the Object Model at www.codeplex.com/onom and extending it there is also a task on my radar.

 

As always, let me know what you think. 

 

Questions, comments, concerns and  criticisms always welcome,

John

Disney CEO Bob Iger shares a few tidbits about how his typical workday goes with Fortune magazine. He gets up at 4:30 a.m., exercises regularly and he eschews the chauffeur and drives himself to work so he has a little extra privacy. He's also a stickler for punctual meetings: [Read more]

If you have a goal, then you’ll probably face a lot of discouragement. Rejection, criticism, frustration, obstacles and failure are all part of the package. Although a few people might be immune to discouragement, I know I’m certainly not. I suspect you probably aren’t either. For myself, I’ve found that trying to resist negative experiences isn’t helpful. Trying to be stoic and pushing through problems can help initially, but eventually it wears you down emotionally. The alternative is to recharge your motivation. Just like resting for a day can help sore muscles, refueling your motivation can help a bruised ego. Motivation Isn’t Affirmations… When I talk about motivation it’s easy to get the picture of Stuart Smalley. This character from Saturday Night Live has such insights as, “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me!” These affirmations might work for some, but I’ve gotten pretty lousy results from them. Instead of affirmations, motivate yourself with ideas. I’ve found getting my ideas flowing to be a far better remedy for an emotional setback than telling myself I’m a good person. Generating new ideas, solutions and goals can snap you out of a negative state. Here are some motivational idea-generating tips I’ve found helpful:

1. Do Something Creative. If you’re recovering from a particularly disappointing setback, getting new ideas won’t be easy. Trying to tackle the problem directly may backfire. Instead, I like to spend a few hours doing something creative and relaxing. Drawing, painting and building can start your idea-generators going in the background before you try to motivate yourself [Read more]

It’s painful to watch Microsoft wake up slowly to the threat posed by a growing gaggle of Web-based office productivity software, led by Google Docs and Spreadsheets. [Read more]

Last week, I asked you to recommend your favorite productivity book to a friend or colleague you saw struggling to keep on top of thing. You responded with several great suggestions which I’ll recap below. Of course, the idea was somewhat contrived — hopefully you don’t go around handing out book recommendations to everyone you see struggling (unless you’re that guy). Sometimes we offer a little tip, a piece of advice culled from some book or from our own experience, or at the other extreme we might suggest an organization coach. And, of course, reading about productivity and organization isn’t for everyone; you may know people who would be better served by a video, a lecture, or a workshop. Still, I think it’s an interesting question to launch our “We Ask, You Answer” series with, since many of us read a variety of books seeking advice on productivity, organization, and overall life success. I half expected a string of responses saying the same thing — David Allen’s Getting Things Done — but I was pleasantly surprised at the range of books people recommended. I (foolishly?) promised to offer my own favorite in my follow-up post, and I’ve spent the last week thinking of what I could offer here. My post on Charles Mingus’ Beneath the Underdog, Improvise Like a Jazz Musician, was one outcome of that process, as I pushed myself to think creatively about the limits of the genre of personal productivity literature. But I’d hardly recommend Beneath the Underdog to anyone struggling to get a grip on a runaway schedule! It’s a brilliant piece of work, but not exactly down-to-earth advice. Instead, I have to pick exactly what I was afraid everyone else would pick: Getting Things Done. Personal honesty precludes any other choice, since I actually have given copies of GTD to three people. It’s not the system, though — I don’t practice anything all that close to “orthodox” GTD. What I like about Allen’s book is the matter-of-fact, common sense way he approaches the problem of personal productivity. The core message of Getting Things Done is, in my estimation:

We all have a bunch of stuff to do, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientists to wrangle it all into some sort of order. So stop worrying so much about keeping track of everything; write it down, and do it.

The rest is, as they say, commentary. The tickler file, the inboxes, the 2-minute rule, the contexts, the someday/maybe list, the 10,000/20,000/30,000/etc. foot views, all of it. The main problem I see others dealing with, and the problem Allen directly deals with, is the anxiety people face when they begin to feel overwhelmed and start doubting whether they’re keeping on top of all their obligations. Several of you (Justin Prud’homme, Ravindran, Jens Poder, and Chat) agreed, at least about the book if not about the reasons. Justin also recommended Allen’s follow-up, Ready for Anything, a collection of 52 meditations/advices that expand ideas brought up in Getting Things Done. Chat bought a copy of GTD for her mother for Christmas (hopefully mom doesn’t read lifehack! At least, not until Christmas…), agreeing that it’s not the whole system that’s important but the approach to remembering and prioritizing tasks that makes the biggest impact in many people’s lives. Jens Poder made an interesting and, I think, useful distinction between “personal leadership” and “personal efficiency”, recommending GTD to people who need to get a grip on their personal organizational habits and Steven Covey’s The 7 Habits of Effective People for people whose issues lay less in getting things done and more in creating and implementing a vision. Vamsi agreed with Jens’ recommendation, calling 7 Habits “the bible” of personal productivity. As Jens says, GTD and 7 Habits are “the usual suspects”, but for good reason: many people have found their lives improved by reading these books and following the principles Allen and Covey outline. But they are far from being the only books out there, and you came up with lots of other books offering different strategies and different philosophies for taking charge of your out-of-control life. Some of these I’ve read, but many I had not only not read but had never even heard of, so it was doubly interesting for me to read your responses. Teknitis and Kevin X both recommended lifehack contributor Leo Babauta’s new e-book Zen to Done, which offers a “boiled down” take on the GTD system, with a few twists. I’m just starting to read this, and will offer a full review here at lifehack later on. If you’ve read Leo’s work, though, either here or at his blog Zen Habits, you know that Leo has a likeable and approachable writing voice and a real kind of wisdom in his writings; Zen to Done looks to be more of the same, focused tightly around the question of personal productivity habits. Another book with multiple recommendations was Neil Fiore’s The Now Habit, which drew attention from both KRS and Jan. Fiore’s approach deals with some of the underlying issues that cause us to overload ourselves with work and then procrastinate getting it done; as KRS says, you have to deal with this stuff before any system is going to have much of a result. [Read more]