Psion Spreadsheets

Here are a few useful spreadsheets. They were written on a Siena, but most run on any other recent Psion handheld.

Characters.
Calculates the complete character set of your PDA, and lets you copy characters to other applications.
Convert.
Convert easily between many different units.
Easter.
Calculate the date of Easter for any year since 1900.
Batteries.
Keep track of how long your batteries last, and estimate when your current set will run out.
Credit Card/Travel Expenses.
Keep track of your credit card payments or travel expenses, even if you pay in several different currencies.
Shared Costs.
Keep track of shared costs for any group of two or more people, for instance, a group of students living together, or a group of people on holiday together.

Characters

Calculates the complete character set of your PDA, and lets you copy characters to other applications.

chars.spr

You can either download this spreadsheet, or create it for yourself:

  1. Open a new spreadsheet.
  2. In the first cell type the following:
        =char((cell("row",b1:b1)-1)*16+cell("col",a2:a2)-1)
    
  3. If all is well the word "Error" appears in the cell.
  4. Copy the cell.
  5. Select the 16 columns A:P (hold shift down and use the right arrow), and set their width to one (menu View>Column widths).
  6. Still holding shift, select rows 1:16. Now you should have 16 rows of 16 columns selected.
  7. Do "Insert". If all is well, each cell now contains the next character in the character set.
Notes:

Convert

Convert easily between different units.

convert.spr

There is no set-up needed for this spreadsheet. To use it, enter the number of units in A1, and the name of the unit in B1, and read off the conversion.

Notes:

Easter

Calculate the date of Easter for any year since 1900.

easter.spr

There is no set-up needed for this spreadsheet. To use it, just enter the year you are interested in (1900 and later), and read off the date of Easter for that year.

Batteries

Keep track of how long your batteries last, and estimate when your current set will run out.

battery.spr

To use this spreadsheet:

  1. Go to System, and look at Info>Usage Monitor (see the first image above)
  2. Copy the details of your previous set of batteries to the spreadsheet: put the date of insertion (in the form =date(97, 06, 29)) into cell B3, and the total battery used (the mAh value) into cell C3. Including the Hours and Average Current values is optional, and only needed if you want to keep these values for future reference.
  3. Now do the same for your current batteries from the live readings (only use the date and mAh values).
  4. The spreadsheet will now tell you how many days your batteries have been in use (F5), and give an estimate of how many days they are likely to last (G5). C2 gives the estimated date that you will have to replace your batteries.
Notes:

Credit Card/Travel Expenses

Keep track of your credit card payments or travel expenses, even if you pay in several different currencies.

credit.spr

To set up this spreadsheet:

  1. Enter the currencies you are likely to use in cells I3:J7. Enter the symbol you will use for that currency in the first column, and its exchange rate in the second. This amount is how much of your own currency you have to pay to buy one of the other currency. If the rates are quoted the other way round in your country (i.e. as the amount of a currency that you get for one of your currency), use that figure, and put any character (e.g. a /) in cell H2.

    You do not need to enter your default currency.

To use this spreadsheet:
  1. Each time you use your credit card, enter the date, who it was paid to, for what, the amount, and if not the default, which currency. Cell F1 then shows your outstanding credit debt in your default currency.
  2. When you get a credit card statement, go through the statement, and put any character in column F against items that are on the statement ("y" is used in the example above). The total in F1 will be adjusted to match.
Notes:

Shared Costs

Keep track of shared costs for any group of two or more people, for instance, a group of students living together, or a group of people on holiday together.

share.spr

To set up the spreadsheet:

  1. In cells G5, I5, etc., insert the names of the people involved. The spreadsheet uses the first letter of the name to identify each person, so use lower case (to make typing easier) and decide how you are going to refer to people who have the same initial letter (for instance use "john" and "Joan", so that you refer to one as "j" and the other as "J"). As a check, the spreadsheet reports in A3 how many people it thinks you have entered.
To use the spreadsheet:
  1. Each time that someone spends money that has to be shared, enter the date (optional), what it was for (optional), the amount, the identifying letter of the person spending, and the identifying letters of all the people sharing that cost (including the person paying if that person is also sharing the cost). If you leave this field blank, the amount will be shared amongst everyone.

    The cost will be shared equally among all those sharing, and added to their total "bill". The amount spent will be subtracted from the person paying.

    The total amount paid out is shown in cell C5. The next person who should spend something (the person with the highest bill) is shown in B4.

  2. At the end of the holiday, or whenever you want to settle accounts, you can see how much each person owes or is owed.

    For each person there are two columns: spent, and due. These are totalled at the top of the column (for instance G3 and H4 above), and the difference is shown below the person's name (H6) as either owing or being owed. The spreadsheet ensures that the totals owed and owable themselves all total to zero.

Notes:
Steven Pemberton
Last modified: Fri Jul 3 15:58:50 MET DST 1998