Comments on: Printing Schedules (again)

By: Bret Whissel

Bret Whissel — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 02:50:08 +0000

Thanks for the tips, dculberson. I’m sure at least a few folks will appreciate the hints for transferring the data into an Excel spreadsheet.

By: dculberson

dculberson — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 15:47:57 +0000

Darn, also WordPress filtered out all my angle brackets and their contents. Everywhere that it says “+” and a letter, it’s supposed to be control – plus – letter. So “+C” is control – plus – C. Hold down the control key and press the C key. Sorry about that.

By: dculberson

dculberson — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 15:45:14 +0000

Note that the smiley face with sunglasses above is supposed to be point number eight followed by a closing parenthesis. Curse you WordPress!

By: dculberson

dculberson — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 15:44:23 +0000

I realize this is an old post, but I thought I’d put in a comment that might be helpful for Irene and others wanting to put the amortization schedules into Excel. The schedule is already in a format that can be easily transferred to Excel, but Excel doesn’t like some of the HTML stuff in it. If you strip out the HTML by first pasting it into Notepad, then re-copying it, you get a perfect six-column table with the amortization schedule in it. Step by step:

1) Get your amortization schedule ready on bretwhissel.net
2) Open both Excel and Notepad with blank documents
3) Highlight, using your mouse cursor, the amortization schedule, starting with the “Pmt” heading and ending with the last number in the table.
4) Copy the highlighted area into the clipboard – either by pressing +C on the keyboard, right-click and go down to “Copy” or go to your “Edit” menu and choose “Copy.”
5) Switch to Notepad and hit “Paste,” either +V, right-click then “Paste” or “Edit” menu then “Paste.”
6) Select all in Notepad by either pressing +A, or right click and choose “Select All” or go to “Edit” menu and choose “Select All.”
7) Copy the selection to clipboard [either +C, right-click then "Copy" or "Edit" menu then "Copy."]
Switch to Excel and hit “Paste” [either +V, right-click then "Paste" or "Edit" menu then "Paste."]

Voila, text labels in first row and numbers in remaining rows, separated by columns. It sounds more complicated than it is – with practice you can do all these steps in just a few seconds. Notepad – or any other text-only editor – is great for stripping formatting out of a lot of text and data. I even use it on my own stuff within Office documents at times as Office is really pernicious with its format codes.

You won’t have formulas in your spreadsheet – just values – but there’s no way around that without a ton of work on Bret’s part. My suggestion is either use the online calculator again and repeat these steps or use this as a step to learning Excel and how to use its built-in amortization functions. [Help keyword amortize]

Bret, thanks a ton for the calculator – I’ve used it dozens of times over the years.

By: Bret Whissel

Bret Whissel — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 22:35:08 +0000

Hi, Irene. Making the calculator data Excel-able would be quite a bit of work. I will think about how that could be done effectively.

Could you give me an idea of how you would like to use the data if it’s in an Excel format?

By: Irene

Irene — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 12:17:50 +0000

I’m a great fan of your calculator – have used it countless times at home and at work. It’s 99.9% perfect – the .1% would be taken care of if I could download the schedule into Excel. Any plans for that in the future?