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Programming blogs from Wise Owl (page 1 of 8)
Showing blogs 1-20 (out of 143)
Posted by Andy Brown on 26 April 2022
What happens when you try to defy gravity in Python, and why Excel sometimes creates worksheets with foreign names
Running a Python script within Power Automate Desktop
Posted by Andy Brown on 29 March 2022
How can you pass a value from Power Automate Desktop to a Python script, and then get the results back? This blog explains how.
Posted by Andy Brown on 31 January 2022
A modest Python program to mimic the popular online Wordle game, using a Tkinter form and some basic classes.
Extended and scheduled Python classes course
Posted by Andy Brown on 28 January 2022
We've extended our Python classes course from one day to two days to fit in many more topics, and also have now scheduled dates in our (and your?) diary.
Looping over rows and columns for a Pandas dataframe
Posted by Andy Brown on 17 December 2021
This blog shows you various ways in which you can loop over the columns of a pandas dataframe, and also explains how to loop over the rows of a dataframe (together with why you should avoid doing this!).
Creating executable files from Python programs using pyinstaller
Posted by Andy Brown on 17 December 2021
A summary of how to package up your Python program (including any referenced modules) into a single executable file.
Posted by Andy Brown on 24 November 2021
Ten reasons why Python is a better programmng language than C# (and most other languages), as well as two reasons why it might not be.
Reading Outlook emails and downloading attachments using Python
Posted by Andy Brown on 08 October 2021
This blog shows how you can use Python to loop over all of the emails in a folder in Outlook, saving the attachments for each to your hard disk.
Python ModuleNotFoundError in VS Code using Code Runner
Posted by Andy Brown on 08 October 2021
How to solve the problem that Visual Studio Code can't find a module that you've imported.
Five differences between Python and other languages
Posted by Andy Brown on 31 August 2021
How does Python compare with other programming languages like C#, VB or SQL? This blog looks at the differences we've come across in preparing our Python courses and videos.
How to use a $ symbol to introduce a string expression, and fill in the blanks
Posted by Andy Brown on 22 December 2017
Introduced in Visual Studio, string interpolation allows you to linking different C# expressions contained in curly parentheses, with everything preceded by a dollar sign. This blog explains how to use this handy new short-cut.
How to get Excel to read out cell values on calculation
Posted by Andy Brown on 26 September 2016
A short blog explaining how you can get Excel to read out values in cells every time that you recalculate a worksheet.
In SSMS, how to add multiple aliases to tables using the ALT key
Posted by Andy Brown on 23 March 2016
It's only a small thing, but … this blog shows how you can click and drag with the ALT key held down, then type to apply a table alias to lots of tables simultaneously.
Common Table Expressions are even better than I'd realised, as this blog shows
Posted by Andy Brown on 01 February 2016
CTEs (or Common Table Expressions) allow you to divide complicated queries up into two or more simple discrete tasks, as this blog explains.
A short blog listing many ways to create aliases for columns in SQL
Posted by Andy Brown on 01 February 2016
It's not often that this owl learns new things about SQL when giving a course, but when I do, I like to share my new knowledge! This blog shows a new way to create aliases for columns in SQL.
Referring to a range using square brackets
Posted by Andy Brown on 17 December 2015
This short blog shows that there is a third way to refer to a range, other than using the RANGE or CELLS keywords.
This blog explains the lesser known but better Excel VBA InputBox function
Posted by Andy Brown on 17 December 2015
There are two ways you can display an input box using Excel macros: the standard VBA InputBox function, or the much better (but lesser known, at least by this blog's author) Application.InputBox function.
Disabling Screen Updates in Excel VBA
Posted by Andrew Gould on 26 November 2015
You can give your VBA code a performance boost by simply turning off screen updating while your code runs. This blog explains how to achieve this and how to create a basic timer to test the results.
Installing the Microsoft Date and Time Picker for VBA
Posted by Andrew Gould on 24 February 2015
Some versions of Windows don't include the very useful Date and Time Picker control. This blog explains how to install the mscomct2.ocx file to get it back!
How to insert ActiveX controls after CANNOT INSERT OBJECT message
Posted by Andy Brown on 29 January 2015
When using Excel, we owls have had problems inserting ActiveX objects after recent security updates. Here's a solution which worked for us!