Coming in January 2013 CDA will add ACCESS data base to the Excel and PDF formats we now offer. The ACCESS data base will contain five years worth of data in one file. The file can be sorted, searched and printed. It will contain over 18,000 records.

CDA will be offering a introduction seminar in December to review the new offering. We will also be offering one on one education.

If you are using OO Calc and are having trouble displaying the numbers for Owner to Owner sales or Trustee to Bank sales then you have to set a switch in Calc to make it read the Excel formulas correctly.

It is easy to set the switch but it is a step you have to do before opening the Excel file CDA sends in order to read the number of foreclosures and owner to owner transfers.

1. Load the Excel file in Calc and then
2. left click the “tools” drop down list in the Calc toolbar
3. then left click the “option” button
4. then hit the + sign next to “openoffice.org Calc” (we’re almost done)
5. then left click “calculate”
6. then put a check mark in the little box next to “enable regular expressions in formulas”

Now wasn’t that easy? Well maybe not. If this is confusing just give Bill a call when you have the file in Calc and he will try to walk you through the process. 🙂

Sorting your Excel files is easy to do but you need to be cautious when setting up the sort criterion.

My first suggestion if you are going to save the sorted file (in lieu of just temporarily working with a sorted file) is to rename and save the file before starting any sorting. This will assure you do not lose the original file.

The first step will be to select the cells you want to include in the sort.

1. Place the cursor in the bottom right cell you want in the sort fields.
2. Left click and hold the mouse button and drag it to the upper left hand cell you want to include in the sort fields. Release the mouse button and make sure all the cells you want to include in the sort are highlighted. If you neglect to include a desired column then that column will remain the same as before the sort.
3. Click the toolbar tab named “Data” this is true for all versions of Excel or Open Office Calc.
4. When the “data” tab drop down list appears you will see another tab called “sort”. Left click on the “sort” button. When the sort window opens you will have a choice to include a header (in the case of CDA monthly report the heading row would include Buyer – District – Development etc). IF you want to sort on the header row then that row must be the first row in the selected cells. If you select the header row option you can select the columns to sort on indicated by the heading name. If you do not include the header row then you will select the columns to sort by their excel alphabetic heading such as “A” “B” ….. “ZZ” etc. You can sort on three columns in Excel 2003 and Open Office CALC and more in Excel 2007.
5. Once you have selected the columns  just click the “OK” button and the columns are sorted.

Don’t understand these instruction? Just give me a call and we can walk through the process on the phone.

If you mess up a CDA file just send me an e-mail and I will resend the file in error.