Learn Basic Excel Formulas And Streamline Your Business

learn basic excel formulas and streamline your business

Basic Excel Formulas follow a simple, yet powerful pattern and can be used to accomplish automatically a number of functions that would many hours of manual calculation.  The structure of a basic excel formulas takes the pattern of an equals sign followed by a command, then parenthesis.  Inside of the parenthesis, you specify the values or cell references that serve as variables to the command.

Basic Excel Formulas

Examples of basic excel formulas you can use right now!

For example, you can use =SUM(7,7) to add the numbers 7 and 7 together.  While this simple example may not seem highly useful – after all, it takes less time to just put in 14, rather than this formula – it’s power expands when used with cell references.  As a second example, you may have the value 9 in cell A1, and the value 16 in cell A2.  To add these together in cell A3, you may put =SUM(A1, A2) instead.  You’ll still come up with the correct sum (25), but if you need to later change one of those values, say from 9 to 45, the cell in A3 will automatically update to reflect the change and give you the correct value of 51 without any additional input on your part.

In addition, most basic math functions can take many arguments. To continue our example using SUM, you can specify up to 255 discrete values or ranges.  So your SUM function may look like this: =SUM(A1-A295, B7, B23, 3.1415, 16, 32, 64, 256, D495) or even longer.  Note that this may look like it’s taking more than 255 values because of the range described in the first variable, however, ranges count as one value.

Some other basic functions that can be used in this manner include AVG (or AVERAGE depending on your version of Excel), SUM, COUNT, COUNTA, SUMA, AVERAGEA, MAX, and MIN.

SUM gives the SUM total of all entered arguments.  COUNT gives the total COUNT of all arguments in the range, COUNTA gives the COUNTA of all non-empty values in the range, AVERAGE gives the mathematical average of all the arguments in the range, AVERAGEA gives the mathematical average of all non-blank cells in the range, MAX returns the maximum value from the arguments, and MIN returns the minimum value from the range.

For more awesome computer tips for office users, contact us today or check out our blog at https://www.4cornerit.com/blog.

Understanding How IT Service Management Works for Organizations

understanding how it service management works for organizations
IT service management

Want to know how IT service management works?

Modern business cannot function without computers, technology and the increased communication and marketing resources they provide. However, it is impossible for most business owners to manage and secure their IT systems on their own. They need to know how IT service management works.

With the rapid rise in new cyber-security threats, the old solutions just don’t work anymore. In addition, modern organizations must have the proper infrastructure to support their company’s workload.

Just like you would hire a plumber or electrician to:

  • Do routine maintenance checks to ensure your systems are safe and up to code, and
  • Fix an issue that goes wrong,

… you should also hire a qualified IT service management firm to manage your IT infrastructure and cloud services.

What Zaps Organizational Efficiency?

Old computers can cause more problems than business owners realize. You and your workers might be losing several work hours a week waiting for slow loading computers to run through tedious bootups, browser crashes and lack of popup blocking.

All the machines and software in your office can wear out over time, including:

  • Desktops,
  • Laptops,
  • Printers, faxes and any machine that accesses your Wi-Fi
  • Server hardware,
  • Networking equipment, and
  • Old software

In fact, machines that are several years old lose Wi-Fi connection speed, making websites slower to load for you and your staff.

What Makes Our Managed IT Services Agreement Ideal?

We offer:

  • A flat monthly rate with no mystery fees,
  • Noticeably faster working systems and increased productivity,
  • Custom cloud service solutions,
  • Disaster recovery,
  • Dedicated hosting packages,
  • Preventive maintenance on your infrastructure, networks and servers,
  • 24/7 monitoring and management of all your critical IT systems, and
  • Complete software and hardware support

We provide preventive, proactive and reactive IT management and support for SMB’s, large corporations and organizations of any size throughout Southern Florida’s Palm Beach, Miami Dade and Broward Counties.

At 4 Corner IT, we not only serve your needs, we anticipate them. Contact us today.

Common Computer Problems: Not Powering Off Your Work Station

common computer problems not powering off your work station

Power off. At the end of the business day, unless your IT department has specifically instructed you not to do so, you should power your work computer off completely. Even if the IT department has told you not to leave your computer off overnight, you should still power down before you leave work for the day. Its one of the most common computer problems, but it’s important to be mindful of this habit.

common computer problems

If your IT department has told you not to leave the power off, make sure to turn it back on before you go (this is called cycling the power).

Avoiding common computer problems by powering off

Computers use memory to process actions at the users’ request. Some of the applications we use to effect those requests write information to memory, but when they are done with it, fail to remove it from memory (this is called a memory leak). Cycling the power on your computer forces all the memory in use to be emptied, clearing it up for future use and increasing the speed and availability of memory for other applications to use.

Almost all applications have some sort of memory leak. From the very minor for well established applications like the Microsoft Office suite, to much more major leaks from extremely memory-intensive applications such as AutoCAD or 3DSMax manager. End users can’t do anything to fix the leaks that are already present in these applications, but we can reset the severity of the leaks by powering off our systems or cycling the power at least once per day.

This is just one of the common computer problems that you can to avoid to help ensure that your work computer operates the best it can for you and the business you work for.

For more tips, subscribe to our blog, or go ahead and contact us today.

IT Support Helps Keep Your Data Backups Safe By Removing Ransomware

it support helps keep your data backups safe by removing ransomware

Ransomware continues posing a serious threat to businesses. IT support can keep your business protected by removing ransomware. A recent article from The Atlantic presents estimates of the staggering losses companies sustain when this malware takes hold of their devices and blocks access to their data.

The FBI’s estimate is that between January to March of this year alone, ransomware led to hundreds of millions of dollars in losses.

Keep in mind that this is a conservative figure, as many companies and individuals may not even report ransomware attacks to the authorities.

Along with the ransom payments that companies sometimes make to cyber criminals to regain access, other ransomware costs include reductions in productivity, missed sales opportunities, extended downtime, and losses in customer trust.

How can IT support professionals help? By removing ransomware and keeping your date safe. 

One of the key ways to minimize the impact of a ransomware attack is to have data backups available on a system that remains uninfected by the malware.

If your backups are intact, and you can retrieve and restore your data from them easily, you’ll be much less likely to suffer costly prolonged downtime. You’ll be able to restart your business operations more easily and continue meeting your own needs and customers’ demands.

IT support professionals can work with you by removing ransomware, ensuring that you have reliable copies of your data, and that they stay out of reach of malware. For example, one of the ways that ransomware can compromise your data backups is if you have all of them in an external drive that’s attached to a computing device when it gets infected. However, if you retain copies at another location, such as in the cloud, they’re more likely to stay safe.

Don’t underestimate the crippling damage you can suffer from ransomware attacks. Sometimes the losses are unsustainable.

Please contact us to further discuss protecting your business by removing ransomware.

With IT Support, Your Employee On-Boarding Goes More Smoothly

with it support your employee on boarding goes more smoothly

When you hire new employees and help them settle into their jobs, your company needs to make all kinds of adjustments.

  • There’s paperwork to send, fill out, collect, and organize. Most of the paperwork will contain sensitive data, such as SSNs and home addresses, that require protection.
  • New employees need to get assigned to a particular workplace and introduced to computing devices that you’d like them to use for their job. They’ll need to receive certain access privileges and have accounts set up for them on your system.
  • Employees may need to undergo training in how to use different devices and software tools for their job. They also need to become acquainted with different rules and regulations in your workplace and have access to general knowledge about your business.

How can strong IT support help with employee on-boarding?

When the employee on-boarding process goes more smoothly, both you and your employees benefit. Recently, Business 2 Community published an article that mentions how employee turnover rates can decrease if on-boarding is better structured. Your company helps employees adjust more easily to their jobs; as a result, they experience much less frustration and unproductive delays in trying to get started on their work.

IT support professionals can help make your employee on-boarding process more efficient, with fewer errors, improved security, and quicker transmission and processing of all relevant information.

Documentation will be better organized and protected; IT support professionals can help you find the best software tools for collecting, organizing, and storing documents. Employees will have an easier time training for their position and accessing all the relevant information digitally that they need for their jobs. They’ll have accounts and work stations set up for them more quickly, and if there are any problems, IT support will be on hand to handle the situation.

A key purpose of IT support is to help your business run more smoothly. Don’t hesitate to contact us for more information on how we can assist you with employee on-boarding.