• "Changing Rich Text font styles on the Web" (August 2001) at http://www.dominopower.com/issues/issue200108/richtext001.html;

• "To upgrade or not to upgrade? XP is the question" (November 2001) at http://www.dominopower.com/issues/issue200111/xplotus001.html;

"Tips for being more productive with Notes R5 mail" (January 2002) at http://www.dominopower.com/issues/issue200201/productive001.html.

My five favorite tips of the last fifty
What I'd like to do for the rest of this article is to share with you five of my favorite tips of the last fifty I've written. I'm not saying that these are my best tips, necessarily, since a good tip is usually based on how relevant it is to you at the time you read it. These are just the tips that jumped out at me as I was reviewing all of the recent tips I've written.

Tip #1: Quickest way to export Notes view data to Excel
This tip was published on February 23, 2001. I like this tip because it describes something regular users can do to create reports based on information from a Lotus Notes database. This tip is also meaningful to me because it resulted from some great feedback I got from readers about a similar tip I wrote a week before. Many bright and helpful DominoPower readers pointed out there was a better way to do what I was describing, and I was happy to be able to share it with the rest of you.

I got many very helpful emails from readers in response to my tip last week about exporting data from a Notes view and then cleaning it up in Excel. They all mentioned a better way to do this, and that's what I'm going to share with you today.

By default, when you choose to export data from a Notes view in Lotus 1-2-3 format and don't specify a file extension, the default extension given is *.WK1. When you then open a *.WK1 file in Excel, it uses a filter associated with 123 for DOS, thereby resulting in the annoying boxes and extraneous characters.

The best way to prevent this, according to all of the helpful readers who sent me email, is to manually type in a file extension of *.WK3 or *.WK4 after the file name. Both of these extensions worked fine for me when testing it out with Excel 2000, but you might need to check compatibility if you're using an earlier version of Excel.

Here are the complete revised instructions:

• Choose the view you want to export and then File-->Export from the menu;

• In the Save As Type drop-down box, choose Lotus 1-2-3;

• Type in the file name you want and manually type the file extension as well (i.e., myfile.WK3 or myfile.WK4). Click Export. Select which documents you want to export and whether or not you want to include the view titles and click OK;

• Open the file in Excel. You might need to associate it with Excel if you open it directly, or you can first open Excel and then open the file through the File-->Open menu;