Archive for the ‘Excel Tips and Tricks’ Category

Paste Special Values with the Mouse

July 18th, 2011

It’s summer time – and we’re taking it easy with some Oldies but Goodies.

In this summertime series, we’re exploring those old tips and tricks that are still solid gold today.

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Today, we’ll cover the old Right-Mouse drag options. Specifically, how to Copy – Paste Special – Values with the mouse.
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Inserting a Line Break inside a Cell

July 12th, 2011
It’s summer time – and we’re taking it easy with some Oldies but Goodies. In this summertime series, we’re exploring those old tips and tricks that are still solid gold today.
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Today, we’ll travel down memory lane with the old Alt+Enter line break trick.
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Fill in a Series with the Fill Handle

July 11th, 2011

I’ve been away for a while doing project-related things. Now I’m back just in time for summer.

During the summer, blog readership will be down. So I’m saving my good Excel and Access tricks for later.

Right now, I’m starting a series called ‘Oldies but Goodies’. In this series, I’ll share some of the older Excel and Access tricks that have been around for years.

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Today’s tip….Filling in a Series with the Fill Handle! Ha-cha-cha-cha!
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Forcing Carriage Return in Custom Date Format

May 19th, 2011

I just finished four days of DataPig workshops with Jon Peltier and Dick Kusleika. As always, everyone who attended had a blast and learned a ton of new tips and tricks. If you’ve never been to one, you’re seriously missing out.

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Here’s an example of why I love these events.
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Enhance Excel 2010 Dashboards with Camera Tool and Picture Effects

May 16th, 2011

For those you who have Excel 2010, you get the benefit of a new feature called Picture effects. With picture effects, you can take an ordinary picture and wrap them in fancy borders, colors, and other such visualizations.

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So I thought, why not use these effects in my dashboards. What you see here are charts that I’ve captured with the Camera Tool then applied Picture Effects.
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Building a Multiplication Heat Map

May 11th, 2011

The boy is now doing a lot of math that involves multiplication, so he’s been reviewing the dreaded multiplication table.

It occurred to me that you could build a quick multiplication table in Excel.
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Suppressing the Excel Splash Screen

May 4th, 2011

On Monday I posted a brilliant tip, showing how to replace the Microsoft Access splash screen. Steve T posted a comment lamenting that the trick did not work with Excel. While it’s true you can’t replace the Excel splash screen as easily as you can in Access, you can use a command line switch to suppress it.


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Changing Font Size of Just the Formula Bar

April 25th, 2011

I just got back from a whirlwind week of live training events. The most exciting one was the live Xcelsius training we did in Miami. We had a blast, as we always do at our live events. I was on my game – of course – and everyone walked away with coffers full of new techniques.

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During my live training events, I have gotten into the habit of using a trick I learned from John (a Senior VP at Ernst &Young) a few months ago.

With this trick, I can increase the font of just the Formula bar. Like this:

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Showing Multiple Pivot Table Subtotals for One Field

April 11th, 2011

Hi there! Remember me? I run a blog on Excel and Access. I’ve been away for a while doing some exciting stuff for lots of people. I can’t talk about any of it, but let’s just say it involves a plastic funnel and hotel soap.

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Anyway, for my first post back, I thought it would be fun to do a light Pivot Table trick.

Did you know you can show more than one subtotal for a particular field in a pivot table?

In this example, I’ve got some information on the sales of bar equipment. Although we do see the sum of all sales at the bottom, let’s say we’d like to see a few more descriptive statistics (like avg, min, and max).
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Exorcizing Microsoft Office

March 16th, 2011

The other day, a co-worker of mine lost the ability to send an email from Excel. You know…Office button -> Send -> E-mail.

He used to be able to do this, but for some reason, things went all wonky and now he can’t. I guess sometimes Microsoft Office gets a bug up its butt and starts acting possessed.

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The good news is that Microsoft comes with its very own Father Merrin who can exorcize Office, returning it to the happy little girl it usually is. Yes…Microsoft Office is a girl.

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Microsoft Office comes with a built in tool called Diagnostics (or Detect and Repair). This tool is designed to (according to Microsoft):   “solve some problems directly and might identify ways that you can solve other problems.”

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