The cells with actual input don't follow any sortable pattern so I think I'd end up with a bigger mess than I have, unfortunately. Maybe I'll play with that a little and see if I can figure out a workaround.

Excel question - if someone set up a workbook and spaced all their content by including an extra row between each item, is there a simple way to get rid of those empty rows other than deleting one by one?

You can select multiple rows by holding down CTRL as you click the start of each blank row. Then you can delete them all at once.

Or, depending on what you're doing with the spreadsheet, you could cheat. Turn on Filter and filter out the blanks.

ETA: I also have a solution that involves IF statements, if you need it.

Or, create a new column with a formula like (assume this example is in row 3): =if(a3="","",row(a3)) That'll put the row number in all rows that aren't blank. Copy/Paste Value this column, then sort by it. That'll keep the order the same, but put all the blanks together.

John McGrath, an email acquaintence who posts on Dymaxion Blog and who is one of the good guys (and who really ought to be a Buffista) has had a disasterous data loss while working a project for his masters: [link]

I'm working on a large article as my final assignment for my Master's degree, which has to date involved at least 5 hours of interviews with some pretty interesting people.

Last night I was consolidating the files scattered across three different hard drives when the USB drive I was using decided to cack out on me. I have, it seems, lost all of the recordings of my interviews.

Gun in mouth ---> pull trigger.

Man, I fucking hate computers. Anyone know a good service that can recover data from a corrupted USB drive?

If anyone wants to help him out either by commenting on the post linked, or by posting here... Cause google shows lots of data recovery services out there, and I suspect someone on this board knows who the good ones are.

there's a good one in Canada that I know people have used and is successful.

it is not cheap.

I suspect at this point good beats cheap.

Le Nubian, the thought occurred to me, did you intend to post a link or a name or something in your post and just forget? Or did you just want to see whether it was OK to post something that pricey? Cause either way, a link or some way to find the service would be perfectly OK, and if it turns out to be more expensive than John is looking for, totally not your fault. I can't speak for John but I will appreciate it. And I suspect he will too.

sorry, I split and didn't mean to leave you hanging. I have heard good things about the first 2, I cannot unfortunately remember the name of the Canadian service, but I think #3 might be it.

All three can give estimates before charging...

[link]

[link]

[link]

Thanks so much!

Interviews probably can't be recreated, cause given his field these are probably people who won't redo the interview, and asking for new interviews cause the old ones were destroyed won't help his future career prospects in any case. He really really should have backed up.

But the a data recovery service, if it can recover this data will really save his ass. So thanks again.

Although this is useful mainly for British Buffistas, it is such a clever design I had to share it. If you appreciate the sheer beauty of really clever design you will like it. Maybe more towards the genius end of the spectrum than just clever. Or if you are British and use portable electronic devices. Tremendous space-saver on portable plugs.

Edited to include the actual link. [link]