Excel 2007 Disappointment

What an embarassment.

It was recently pointed out to me that, by default, Excel 2007 will not let you open two files with the same name that are stored in different folders.

Take these two files for example:

c:\source\projects\my_project\documentation\authentication\test_plan.xlsx

c:\source\projects\my_project\documentation\time_entry\test_plan.xlsx

If you tried to open both, you would receive the message "you cannot open two documents with the same name, even if the documents are in different folders."

I found a thread about the duplicate filename problem in Excel 97 and 2000. Unfortunately, their fix didn't work for Excel 2007. I guess that even bugs can be refactored sometimes. Their solution did give me an idea, though... here's what I did to stop it. I have not experienced any negative side effects, but I am no expert on DDE.

Press [Win] + E

Tools > Folder Options > File Types

find and select the entry for "xlsx"

click "Advanced"

select "Open"

click "Edit"

remove the "DDE Message" (highlighted at right)

at the end of the "Application used to perform action" field, change

%1 to "%1"

for me, this field now has this value:

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\EXCEL.EXE" /e "%1"

The value in this field is the DOS command-line syntax used to open the file. %1 is the filename for the document being opened. %1 needs to be encased in quotes to accomodate spaces in file names. It tells Excel that the value that will replace %1, even if it contains spaces, does not stop until the final quote.

Unification

I'm working on a blog entry, or a speech for Shreveport Toastmasters, or whatever. I remember reading an interesting web page about this-that-or-the-other, and I can't find it.

That's weird, because I bookmark every interesting website I find, so I can find it again. Or, if I don't have time to read it but it looks interesting, I bookmark it. Which reminds me, I need to clean up that folder.

Anyway, I realize now that the document I want is at work. And, although it rarely happens, I turned off my computer at work on Friday in move to convince myself that "I'm not going to think about that this weekend." So now, I have another partially-finished blog entry, information I can't access, and I'm a little frustrated.

This used to happen with documents, too, but then I discovered Google Docs, and that issue has been pretty much totally resolved.

So, my new goal is to find some way to aggregate / unify my bookmarks. I want them in IE and firefox, at home and at the office, synced in real-time, backed-up and, if possible, available at a website so if I'm on the road, I can still get to them.

And if it was free, that would be best.

The Opposite of Agile is Fear

Abstractly speaking, what makes a group agile? You can get a list of practices from various XP sites. I'm looking beyond the patterns and practices. If you look at the core of agile, why did these practices come about?

While thinking about this, I went down the proof-by-contradiction path. How can you prove that a group is not agile? What are possible characteristics of such a group?

It seems that one contra-positive to Agile is Fear. (This is ironical, since I often refer to Agile as The Force a la Star Wars, and Fear is the path to the Dark Side.)

Here's an example of how fear leads to a non-agile mentality:

We can't x because it might break everything.

This seems like an air-tight argument. No one like "everything" to be broken.

The possibility that "everything could break" really makes it difficult to even ask follow-up questions, because you could look insane. Do you want everything to break?

How likely is it? What leads you to that conclusion?

I've heard this argument before. The driving force behind the argument seemed to be that the result, breaking everything, was so heinous that the likelihood just didn't matter.

And that's just silly.