Now You See It, Now You Don’t
Ever have a beautiful MS Excel worksheet, I mean absolutely perfect, except that one column. You know, the one column with the necessary data for your calculations but not really a part of the presentation. We’re talking about the essential column that you must keep, but don’t want displayed for a presentation or on the hard copy.
Often, Excel users have a lot… Continue reading
Hide / Unhide Excel Key Combinations
In keeping with last Thursday’s theme (July 29, 2004) involving the hiding of rows and columns in MS Excel, I thought we might take a look at how to accomplish this task with some handy key combinations.
Hiding columns or rows is a good way to make necessary data “invisible”. This allows you to organize your worksheet the way you want… Continue reading
MS Excel Formatting Without The Mouse
I thought today might be a good time for an installment of keyboard shortcuts…
In MS Excel:
One-Click Cell Addresses
Did you know that there’s a faster way to enter cell references in Excel formulae… a way that doesn’t involve typing cell addresses?
Interested? (Yeah, I thought you might be.)
Here’s the scoop…
Next time you’re entering a formula and you get to a cell reference (like A5 for example), instead of typing A5 use your mouse and click on A5.
Some of you are already thinking… Continue reading
To The Bottom Right Now
As I’m sure most of you know that when working in MS Excel Ctrl + Home will take you to the upper left corner of your worksheet (cell A1).
Do you know where Ctrl + End will land you?
Let’s all hope that it’s not in the bottom most corner of a worksheet! Have you ever scrolled out right or down to find out just… Continue reading
Click, Click – Auto Fill It
OK, so you’ve got a long column of data in MS Excel and… in an adjacent column you’re going to apply the same formula to each and every item in the list.
What do you do?
For many of us we simply write the formula in the first cell and then use either copy / paste or the fill handle to drag the formula… Continue reading
Cell Formatting Trick
Do you constantly find yourself going to the Format menu, Cells choice to make changes in MS Excel? (You know, for things like data format, text direction, borders, fill color, etc.)
Do you hate using the mouse for all this?
Looking for a faster, keyboard-driven method to access the Format Cells window?
Yes?
Good, then you’re in the right place.
Next time skip the menu and highlight… Continue reading
Finding Excel Record Lengths
Here’s a tip I received from a reader who finds Excel’s function for determining data length (number of characters in the data) to be a useful tool.
Maybe you too have data sets in Excel through which you must search to find the longest or shortest element.
At any rate, I thought it might be a good idea to pass this one along so let’s get… Continue reading
MS Excel: Headers & Footers Demystified
Let’s continue on our journey through the world of headers and footers. The train stops next at the MS Excel station.
To access headers and footers in Excel, you will go to the View menu, Header and Footer choice.
The Page Setup window will open with the Header/Footer tab already selected. (You can also get to this location via the File menu, Page Setup… Continue reading
Selecting Multiple Worksheets in an MS Excel Workbook
We all know that to select one sheet you simply click on the sheet tab. The next logical question might be “How do I select several consecutive sheets at once?”
Easy enough answer. First, you’ll need to locate the worksheet tabs in order to select the ones you want.
Then, simply select the first sheet by clicking on its tab then… Continue reading
Cut vs. Copy in MS Excel
So we all know the difference between a cut / paste and a copy / paste.
I mean, it’s pretty obvious, one actually moves the cell contents and the other makes a duplicates.
But, did you know that there’s a difference in the way each of them treats formulas with relative cell references?
(Relative Cell References are formula references to other cells based on… Continue reading
Changing Directions – Part 2 – MS Excel
Well, now that we’ve looked at the options for turning text in MS Word, let’s move on to MS Excel.
Excel allows for a lot of flex in text direction. You’re actually allowed to set the text angle as opposed to the limited choices of vertical and horizontal offered by Word.
So, let’s get started.
The first thing you need to do… Continue reading
Add A Little Color To Your Life
Ok, so maybe not exactly to “your life”, but would you settle for a little color added to your Excel worksheet tabs?
Yes?
Good.
Of course I’ve got to mention one small catch… this one wasn’t in Excel 97 or 2000. It seems to be an additional feature of the newer versions.
So, anyway, here’s the deal—you can now turn this…
Into… Continue reading
The Four Direction “Zoom” Scroll
Tired of the scroll bars in MS Excel?
Looking for a quicker way to move through the worksheet—one that doesn’t involve you dragging around the horizontal or vertical scroll bars?
If this sounds like it might be a handy thing to know then you’re in the right place, that is, if you have a scroll wheel on your mouse.
Click down on the scroll wheel.… Continue reading
MS Excel: A Quick AutoFit Solution.
Have you ever been working in MS Excel and found yourself spending all kinds of extra time trying to manually adjust column width or row heights? Or are you one of the many people who simply skip a column whenever text gets too long?
Well, here’s one of the many solutions to these time-consuming problems.
AutoFit.
What’s AutoFit, you ask?
Well, it’s exactly what… Continue reading
Brrrr… It’s Cold in the Freeze Pane Zone
OK, so it’s not really that cold here, but the real question is, “What’s Freeze Pane?”
Well, to answer a question with questions, have you ever been frustrated while working in an MS Excel worksheet because you were so far down the columns that you no longer could see the column titles? Did you find yourself constantly scrolling up to make sure… Continue reading
Have you ever needed a quick way to really make a statement stand out on a flyer, presentation, worksheet or some other document? (You know, a way to really catch their attention.) Are you tired of the plain old text boxes in MS Excel? Want a way to make text more interesting?
Do you want to turn this…
into this?
(Sorry, beginning to sound like an infomercial… Continue reading
Mouse-less Cell Formatting
So, you’re working in MS Excel and you’ve got some cells to format. What do you do?
Oh, wait, I know.
You highlight the cell(s) to be formatted and then use the Format menu, Cells choice (or Ctrl + 1) to open the Format Cells window. This is followed by some “quality mouse time” spent scrolling through the choices until you find the right format.
What was… Continue reading
Office Tip of the Day
Three Key Range Highlighting in MS Excel
Have you ever found yourself playing the highlighting game in MS Excel? You know, where you’re trying to highlight with the mouse and find the file flying by creating incredibly huge highlighted areas?
Many of you may know lots of keyboard tricks for highlighting using the Shift key combined with the arrows, Page Up, Page Down, Home and… Continue reading
