Excel find first word without IFERROR() or IF(ISERROR())

In Excel, to find the first word in a cell, find the position of first space then return all characters up to but excluding the space: =LEFT(A1,FIND(" ",A1)-1).

The formula above fails with #VALUE if the string in A1 doesn't have a space or the cell is empty. A Excel 2007 solution is to wrap the entire formula in IFERROR to return a default value: =IFERROR(LEFT(A1,FIND(" ",A1)-1),A1). Excel 2003 doesn't have IFERROR, so the formula is much longer with the same formula for the condition and output of the IF formula: =IF(ISERROR(LEFT(A1,(FIND(" ",A1)))),A1,LEFT(A1,(FIND(" ",A1)-1))).

A shorter solution for Excel 2003 onwards is to append a space to the cell value in the FIND formula so that a default value can always be returned: =LEFT(A1,FIND(" ",A1&" ")-1). Note: Test if it works for OpenOffice Calc.

Netbeans Portable JDKHOME

You may get this dialog message when starting Netbeans Portable: Cannot find java.exe in specified jdkhome.. For me, the dialog appears because I have a JDK installed instead of inside the Netbeans Portable folder. To avoid responding to this message every time I start Netbeans, I made two changes to my configuration files:

?

1. Close Netbeans first. If you don't close Netbeans, it will overwrite your changes to the configuration files.
2. Edit ...\NetBeans_JavaSE_7.4_Portable\App\netbeans\etc\netbeans.conf and set netbeans_jdkhome to the path of your JDK installation.
3. Edit ...\NetBeans_JavaSE_7.4_Portable\App\AppInfo\Launcher\NetBeansPortable.ini and comment out the section that overwrites netbeans_jdkhome. You comment out lines in an INI file by inserting a semicolon in the first column of a row.

Install Perl CPAN modules behind a firewall

I had to install additional Perl packages using CPAN on a computer behind a firewall. The hack is to install the same version of Perl on a build computer first then copy the Perl/site folder to the destination computer as described in Cloning perl/site/lib directory?.

An icon called an icon

In Lotus Notes 8.5.3, some of the alternative text for icons in the mail view is useful (e.g. SameTime icons show the user's phone number and availability) but often the alternative text is the useless "icon called an icon" text such as "Paperclip Icon" for a paperclip or "Unopened yellow envelope Icon" for ... you can guess. Searching for the icon names in the Local Help results in 0 hits. Eye-rolling.