Excel Hints

Change Case of Text in Excel

john — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 02:52:58 +0000

One question I get all the time is how to change the case of text in Excel. Some applications require case-specific text to make a match with its data. Or you may just want to clean up your data to make it consistent across the document. Excel provides three quick formulas to accomplish the text-case [...]

How to Make a Worksheet Very Hidden

john — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 17:16:39 +0000

Today we will review two ways that you can hide a worksheet in your workbook. The simple way is very easy for the end user to unhide the worksheet; the same spreadsheet that you didn’t want them to see in the first place. To hide a worksheet this way, just select from the main [...]

Calculate Age in Excel

john — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 03:40:12 +0000

Using a combination of built-in functions in Excel, you can quickly calculate a person’s age. There are a couple different ways this method can be used, and we’ll go through both below. Functions Used in This Calculation To reach our goal of calculating a person’s age as of a certain date, we will use a [...]

Excel Keyboard Shortcuts from Microsoft

john — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 14:52:00 +0000

A few years ago, I wrote a post listing many of the keyboard shortcuts that are available in Microsoft Excel. They included anything from copy & paste shortcuts to formatting shortcuts that could increase your productivity within Excel. Well it looks like Microsoft has posted a printer-friendly list of Excel shortcuts for you to use. [...]

Date Expire and Password Protect Your Excel Project

john — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 02:39:40 +0000

When building your Excel projects, you may want to demo a trial version of the work you have completed without giving full access to the working program. There are a couple things you can do to the project to make it difficult to access the vba code you have created. In addition to that, we’ll [...]

How to Use Your Personal Macro Workbook

john — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 10:00:22 +0000

For any of the repeating tasks that you do through macros, Excel provides a way to have those commonly used actions always available to you. Instead of copying the macros you use frequently to every workbook, Excel gives you use of a Personal Macro Workbook. Quickly Create Your Personal WorkbookFollow these steps to create your [...]

View Two Workbooks at the Same Time

john — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 18:45:38 +0000

Excel has a built-in way to be able to view two workbooks at the same time side by side. This can be useful when comparing similar values or graphs between workbooks without having to flip back and forth or without copying data from one workbook to the other. Steps to Comparing Workbooks Side-by-Side 1. Open [...]

Adjust the Security Level in Excel

john — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 14:17:37 +0000

If you’ve ever used any Excel files that had macros included, you’ve probably come across the security settings in Microsoft Excel. There are multiple levels of security that Excel provides depending on your comfort level of running macros on your computer. Below we’ll look at how to change this setting and what each setting does. [...]

Quick Formatting Using Excel’s Format Painter

john — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 18:04:24 +0000

Formatting an entire spreadsheet to look just the way you desire can take longer than you’d expect. Clicking back and forth between the formatting options, usually repetitively, can possibly move the completion time of your project back. Excel does provide a quick way to copy a cell’s formatting and paste it to another cell or [...]

Find (and Delete) External Links

john — Wed, 26 May 2010 18:17:27 +0000

I’ve talked with many people that express frustration about having external links in their spreadsheet, but not being able to find them. If this has affected you, you’ve most likely noticed the warning Excel provides asking if you want to update external links when opening your spreadsheet. There are a few ways to locate these [...]