One of the most commonly asked questions I get in my Excel classes is how do I navigate to the bottom of a column of data more efficiently. Here’s the tip… To quickly navigate to the bottom of a column of continuous data, hold down the [CTRL] key and press the down arrow key once […]
Archive | Excel
How to quickly find duplicates in Excel
Have you ever had a long list of items and you need to quickly identify which ones are duplicates? Thankfully, Excel’s Conditional Formatting feature makes it easy to quickly find duplicates in Excel. Open your Excel file and highlight the data that may have duplicates. From the ribbon, select Home (tab), Styles (group), Conditional Formatting […]
How to produce a family calendar in Excel
Microsoft Excel has many templates that you can download for free from Office.com. In this blog post we demonstrate how to produce a family calendar in Excel 2010 using one of these templates. Start Excel Choose File (tab), New Click Calendars Double click a folder such as 2012 Calendars Click Family calendar (any year, Sun-Sat) […]
Excel Review Questions
Have you ever had someone tell you they know Excel? Of course, one might ask, “What does it really mean to say you know Excel?” It is true that the program has so many features that it is almost impossible to know all there is to know about Excel. Even so, perhaps you can use […]
Using a Data Form in Excel 2010
Last week a friend of mine was doing some data entry into a large spreadsheet that had a lot of columns to it. She found it a bit cumbersome to enter the data going across in the spreadsheet. Her question to me was: “Is there a way to enter data going down a list (in […]
Understanding Macro Code
This is the third blog in a series about creating macros in Excel, Word and other applications within the Microsoft Office. This article is about Understanding Macro Code. Understanding Macro Code VBA is a Language Many people, after learning how to record a macro, take a look at the code and then they panic. “How […]
Working with Dates in Excel 2010
Recently, I was asked by one of my Excel students if there was a way to insert a date on their spreadsheet that doesn’t automatically update. The answer is “yes”. They were already familiar with the date function =TODAY(). Here is a short lesson on how to enter both types of dates and times into […]
5 steps for Creating Macros
This is the second blog post in a series about creating Excel macros, Word macros, and other macros for applications in the Microsoft Office. The big lie: Many people have been told that creating a macro is easy. They are told just turn on the recorder, do your actions, and stop the recording. While those […]
How to run a macro
This blog post begins a series of articles about Microsoft Office macros. Today’s article discusses what a macro is and how to run a macro. What is a macro? The following definition and description of macros comes from our “Excel VBA Macro Programming” book. A macro is a series of commands that can be executed […]
Understanding VLookup
Vlookup is a powerful function that can help you lookup information from a table or list of data. Suppose you have a list of 5000+ movies like the one shown below. The VLookup function will allow Excel to lookup an ID number and return the corresponding title, year, category, rating, etc. The following slides, used […]