PICS ITech

reprinted with permission from the HP Small Business Center

It's your worst Excel nightmare: a damaged or corrupted workbook. This can happen for a variety of reasons -- and the good news is that there is a variety of ways to retrieve your damaged file.

If a file is corrupted, Excel should normally perform an automated recovery. However, if that doesn't work, there are a few other options you can try.

1. Recover or repair the file manually with Excel
The steps for manually recovering a workbook are quite simple.

1. Select "Open" from the File menu. In Excel 2007, click the Office button and select "Open".

by Bill Paone -  Executive VP | Eagle Consulting & Development

Many of you have worked with PICS over the years and may have known Terry Putman. Terry was a long-time member of the QAD community and was present at most of the user group meetings over the last 15 years, first as a QAD/PICS/Eagle customer, and later as the Director of Sales for PICS. Terry passed away on February 1, 2010 at the age of 47, leaving behind a wife and three children.

Pam Lopker and I, along with PICS, have arranged for a scholarship fund to help Terry's children (Peter age 18, Devlin age 12, and Connor age 10) with their upcoming tuition. Any donations would be greatly appreciated and will be presented as a single package to the Putman family in the near future. The QAD community is very much like a large family, and we appreciate your support during this time of need.

Please send your donations, along with any cards or letters of condolence, to:

Putman Children College Fund
c/o Pam Lopker
QAD
100 Innovation Place
Santa Barbara, CA 93108

Used with permission of Joel H. Weldon & Associates, Inc.
http://www.SuccessComesInCans.com

Forget the research evidence, the dozens of pages of documentation and the years of prodding by communications consultants. Do your own survey right now. Pick up your telephone and call ten companies or businesses in your area that provide some sort of customer service, such as banks, brokerage firms, business equipment or insurance companies. Ask to speak to "a manager." If you get through, explain that you called to evaluate their telephone techniques. Then give the manager a brief report, hang up, and record your findings.

Chances are your research will prove that the most common errors you encounter in telephone answering are among the "dirty dozen."

By Shane Robison, Chief Technology Officer, HP
reprinted with permission from the HP Small Business Center

Technology is in the early stages of a big shift, one that will transform how companies and individuals access information, share content and communicate. This next wave will be driven by a new model of computing: people and businesses will use their Web browsers to access a wide range of "cloud services"--computing services available on demand, over the Internet.

Imagine services that are intelligent enough to anticipate your needs, based on a real-time understanding of your location, time of day and preferences. In this next phase of computing, the search for information will be done for you, not by you. You will have a seamless, consistent experience across all the devices you own, and all the on-demand services you care about.

Upgrading to the new Windows® 7 operating system can make your PC faster and easier to use. Many users fear that the upgrade process itself will be stressful and difficult -- but fear not! Following these five simple steps will help you have a smooth and stress-free transition.

1. Check to ensure you meet system requirements
Before you upgrade to Windows 7, your PC will need to have:

1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver
For an easy way to ensure you've got what it takes, move on to Step 2.