Word
Adopting my experience from the command line window (boxed selection), I rediscovered how to make a rectangular selection in MS Word: Hold down Alt while dragging on the selection. This can be very useful in extracting data from a columnar/tabular information in a document. Simply select the desired column, copy & paste it in Excel. Repeat this for each column. Use the formatting techniques below as needed.
Rectangular selection/boxed selection:
Alt-drag
Excel
After years of using MS Excel, I still learn new things that makes work and life a lot easier! For today, these includes removing leading and trailing spaces (blank spaces) after a paste operation and adding leading zeroes to an existing number.
Remove leading/trailing spaces:
=TRIM(C2) in a blank cell then copy back the value to the original reference cell.
Add leading zeroes:
=TEXT(A1,"0000") in a blank cell then copy back the value to the original reference cell.
Source: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3992541/add-leading-zeroes-0s-to-existing-excel-values-to-certain-length by GSerg & Martin
Notepad++
I use this as intermediary between softcopies made in various applications, such as MS Office, and Dokuwiki. Here I paste formatted (Wiki-compliant - all symbols included) texts, usually from Excel, and simply "copy-find-paste-replace all" things I want deleted (like extra spaces or tabs) or formatted in a certain way as defined in the "replace with" string.
I choose the Extended option whenever I find/replace carriage return/CR (\r) and new line/LF (\n) symbols.
I hope these learnings can help others searching for similar solutions.
Have a nice day!
