An indexed collection of everything, arranged by tag to make it a little easier to find serendipity.

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Coding

Writings about coding & development

Articles

Google Calendars on the Web – Displaying Google Calendar events on the web, with this simple diary banner for your site. (Sep, 2018)

Logging the IP Address of your Raspberry PI to a Google Sheet – How to get your Raspberry PI to log it’s assigned IP Address to a Google Sheet every time it boots up! (Jan, 2018)

Coding

Simple Bulk Emailing from Google Sheets – Send better looking emails to a bulk set of email addresses, straight from Google Sheets. (Dec, 2017)

Google Apps

Anything & everything about the Google eco-system

Articles

Analysing Data with Custom Conditional Formatting – How to use conditional formatting to visually analyse data, including non-numeric data such as grades, levels and categories. (Nov, 2017)

Caveats when deleting G-Suite Accounts – If you are using Google Sheets or Google Apps Script in your domain, here are a few caveats you need to be aware of when deleting a G-Suite User Account. (Sep, 2017)

Dealing with confidential information in schools – Using a simple traffic light system for categorising types of information commonly found in schools and the classroom. (Jul, 2018)

Google Calendars on the Web – Displaying Google Calendar events on the web, with this simple diary banner for your site. (Sep, 2018)

Protecting Data with Google Drive – How to best protect and secure confidential data using Google Drive and Google Apps / G-Suite (Aug, 2018)

Coding

Running a Basic Helpdesk with Google Sheets – Create a simple helpdesk and request ticketing solution with just forms and sheets. (Jan, 2018)

Simple Bulk Emailing from Google Sheets – Send better looking emails to a bulk set of email addresses, straight from Google Sheets. (Dec, 2017)

Tutorials

Analysing Event Feedback with Forms & Sheets – Dynamically and professionally handle your event feedback, gathered with a google form, analysed with sheets. (Feb, 2018)

Markbooks with Google Sheets – A start of term chore, but also an opportunity to brush up on your spreadsheet & data-handling skills to make the rest of the year easier and more productive! (Aug, 2016)

Monitoring Data with Google Sheets – Easily monitor data collected weekly, with formatting to highlight missing & notable values. (Feb, 2018)

Sparklines with Google Sheets – Simple, quick and useful. Sparklines let you visualise your spreadsheet data as small graphs, inside a single cell. (Jun, 2017)

Using Grades in Google Sheets – Using grades in a spreadsheet doesn’t have be difficult, here is how to do it elegantly. (Sep, 2017)

Snippets

Columns by header name - Columns can move, and when using complex formulas (such as importrange), this can lead to problems. Here is how to address a column by its header value, rather than it’s position.

Mac Log Off Clearing Script - How to use a logoff script to clear authenticated web sessions on a Mac

Proxies and your Chromebook - If you are using a Chromebook in a school environment, you may need to make a few small adjustments to your network settings to successfully connect via a proxy server.

Email Address Domain Count - How to create a summary list of unique email domains from a list of email addresses, and count how many times they appear in that list.

Creating expanded rows from data - Like a database query join, how to denormalise tabular data to create expanded rows, ideal for mail-merges and data imports.

IMPORTRANGE in Formulas - How to embed the IMPORTRANGE function within other functions in Google Sheets.

Quick Filters for better sheets - How to create simple ‘drop-down’ filters in sheets to easily and quickly filter an imported range of data rows.

Finding Duplicates - How to identify duplicate values or rows in Google Sheets.

Find from a list - How to use the FIND function with an array of values to search for individual characters or words.

HIGHLIGHT List Matches - How to use conditional formatting to highlight cells that appear in another list.

Generating Unique Usernames - How to create a list of unique usernames from a list of given names and surnames.

Form Response Notifications - Use Google Apps Script to send notifications to different recipients based on a form value (e.g. organisation).

Aggregating data - How to aggregate data from different rows and columns for further processing.

CONCATENATE in Queries - How to concatenate columns in a query and return the results.

Identifying dissimilar duplicates - How to identify duplicate rows in a sheet that have dissimilar values, such as multiple grades for the same student in the same subject from different teachers.

Making column headers from values - How to transpose values to become headers, adding extra blank columns in between the values as well.

Query using dates - Use the QUERY function to return results before, on or after a certain or relative, date.

Menus in App Scripts - How to show menus and sidebars configuration to write more flexible App Scripts.

CONCATENATE Function - How to add or combine text or cells in Google Sheets.

IMPORTRANGE Function - Use the IMPORTRANGE function in Google Sheets to aggregate and link information across spreadsheets.

INDEX & MATCH Functions - How to link data from one part of a Google Sheet to another (or even between different sheets) using the INDEX and MATCH functions.

QUERY Function - Transform, filter and aggregate sets of data using the QUERY function.

SPLIT Function - Breaking down text values into their constituent parts using the SPLIT function.

Configurable App Scripts - Combining user and general configuration to write more flexible App Scripts.

Chromebooks

Specifically related to using Chromebooks, living a cloud life

Tools

Hand-picked, road-tested and thoroughly vetted tools

Mac Log Off Clearing Script - How to use a logoff script to clear authenticated web sessions on a Mac

Cloud Storage Platforms

How our data is stored, and where are the best places to put it

Articles

Dealing with confidential information in schools – Using a simple traffic light system for categorising types of information commonly found in schools and the classroom. (Jul, 2018)

Protecting Data with Google Drive – How to best protect and secure confidential data using Google Drive and Google Apps / G-Suite (Aug, 2018)

Education

Anything with specific educational relevance

Analysing Data with Custom Conditional Formatting – How to use conditional formatting to visually analyse data, including non-numeric data such as grades, levels and categories. (Nov, 2017)

Dealing with confidential information in schools – Using a simple traffic light system for categorising types of information commonly found in schools and the classroom. (Jul, 2018)

Fundamentals of Web Filtering & Logging – With ever more intrusive, and ever more expensive, web filtering options available - here is a fundamental review of the technology to help you decide what approach suits you best! (Jul, 2018)

Protecting Data with Google Drive – How to best protect and secure confidential data using Google Drive and Google Apps / G-Suite (Aug, 2018)

Tutorials

Using Grades in Google Sheets – Using grades in a spreadsheet doesn’t have be difficult, here is how to do it elegantly. (Sep, 2017)

Training

Information designed and written to help us all improve, just a little bit

Articles

Analysing Data with Custom Conditional Formatting – How to use conditional formatting to visually analyse data, including non-numeric data such as grades, levels and categories. (Nov, 2017)

Tutorials

Sparklines with Google Sheets – Simple, quick and useful. Sparklines let you visualise your spreadsheet data as small graphs, inside a single cell. (Jun, 2017)

Using Grades in Google Sheets – Using grades in a spreadsheet doesn’t have be difficult, here is how to do it elegantly. (Sep, 2017)

Markbooks

All about markbooks, how to create, use, analyse and make the best of data in the classroom

Articles

Analysing Data with Custom Conditional Formatting – How to use conditional formatting to visually analyse data, including non-numeric data such as grades, levels and categories. (Nov, 2017)

Tutorials

Using Grades in Google Sheets – Using grades in a spreadsheet doesn’t have be difficult, here is how to do it elegantly. (Sep, 2017)

Snippets

Google Sheets

Everything you could ever, ever, ever want to know about Google Sheets and all the great things you can achieve with them