Modise from South Africa asked me a question I'd never thought much about before: Hi, Can you send information on conducting a due diligence review. Regards, Modise Here is what I found: Juniper from the UK works on due diligence too: take a look as they give a few examples of what they have done in this area. SRK (UK) Ltd carries out due diligence work and the link here takes us to a fairly comprehensive opening page. The Miller Law Firm in the USA gives a checklist of what they do in their due diligence reviews. Schneider Downs provides a similar listing. ICF Consulting offers environmental due diligence that might help us to broaden our views of what the process involves. From Russia, Russaudit to be precise, there's a similar introduction to the due diligence process. That looks like a good start to me, Modise. DW

A follow up from Alvaro about Parameter Queries in Excel shows that we have settled this issue amicably! Thank you. I just realized that on Saturday. I had never worked with this command before. I do know how to solve my problem now. Your mail is giving me the certainty of it. I'll tell you just a little bit of what I'm doing. I'm the Maintenance chief at a microcomponents facility. One of my technicians is programming a database to control and manage the preventive and corrective issues. Because that database is just in the first stage, I don't want to make it hard for him, so I decided not to include yet the reporting module in the database, instead I'm consulting it with Excel. You know it is nice for charts. Well, friend, thank you very much for your help. Keep in contact. Well done! DW

George wrote to me from Texas as follows: I had a question regarding financial statement preparation in the UK - Are there separate books kept in the UK a la the US? US companies file financial statements for the tax authorities and outside investors and account with line items for the difference. I was wondering how similar circumstances are handled in the U.K. Thanks for your help. It's possible to answer this question in several ways, so I answered as follows in the first instance: Hi George, Whilst British Accounting Standards have many similarities to the FASB’s pronouncements, there are significant differences between them. However, to help you to get to grips with what is required of a British company and its accounting requirements, let me send you to the UK’s Companies House web site. Search through this site, asking for accounting, returns, filing and so on and see if that answers your question. If not, let me know what your remaining problem is and I’ll do what I can to help. Best wishes DW

Nikolai has written to me from Denmark to tell me something I didn't know. He wrote: Hi D, Excellent method for making box and whisker diagrams (boxplots) in Excel. Regarding the missing cross, it’s no big deal really since the dash is preferable to the cross as a median symbol. Anyway, in order to see the cross and other ‘missing’ symbols, background colour has to be set to ‘no colour’ and voilà, all missing markers are now available. The diagrams will look more professional if the markers for Q1 and Q3 are omitted, that is set marker to none. And to make the box plot statistically correct the whiskers should not extend to the minimum and maximum values but to the smallest and largest observations within 1,5*IQR (interquartile range, Q3-Q1). Observations between 1,5*IQR and 3*IQR are termed mild outliers and are marked with a circle (for example), whereas observations that fall outside of 3*IQR are termed extreme outliers and are marked with a cross. Creating a box plot that reflects true IQR, mild and extreme outliers will demand a bit more manual work as min and max observations will have to be compared to <1,5*IQR and then set as the range of the whiskers, and if there are observations >1,5 and 3*IQR, they will have to be included in the data table used for the box plots. Regards, Nikolai Graae I checked my work and found that all of my sources agreed with my method and I with theirs. Then I found a book that I have that agrees with Nikolai. So, very soon there will be a BoxPlots Revisions Page that will explain what Nikolai has shown me, how to use his knowledge and what it all means. Watch this space ... DW

For anyone who's hanging on with bated breath to see my revised palm tree photograph, wait no more! It's here, well, scroll down anyway and see a much better version than was here until today. Any plam tree experts who come to call, let me know what you think I should do with the thing. DW

Every now and again I get a question that I can't fully answer. This one came in from Costa Rica of all places and is as follows: Dear D, I'm an engineer trying to get a query from one of our maintenance system databases. I need to use the Parameters option of the Excel's External Data toolbar but it isn't active and I can't find the way of making it active. Can you help me? Thanks in advance. Alvaro Why did Alvaro ask me that question? Well, take a look at this page to see: Download Data from the Internet Using Microsoft Excel XP/2002 What did I say in reply? Here you are: Dear Alvaro, Here is what I think you are facing. Firstly, the parameter query option is a DATABASE option and will not work in an ‘ordinary’ Excel External Data Query. Take a look at this Help page from Microsoft and make sure that you are following all of the rules to do with setting up a Get External Data query properly: I know you probably are; but just in case. For more advanced, Parameter Query, work, you need to do the following:

• Data
• Import External Data
• New Database Query

You might be told that you have to install this feature but it should do so automatically. However, once this is up and running I am sorry to tell you that I have never used it and a quick look tells me that it would take me a while to get used to it! Finally, I THINK this is the answer to your question but if not, let me know and I’ll ask someone who does know. Anyway, I hope this has been of some use at least. Best wishes DW