Category: Excel®
3 Easy Ways to Customize Excel Sparklines
After your sparklines have been created, Excel offers several tools for you to control which value points are shown, set options on the vertical axis, and define how empty values are displayed. You can also change colors, apply styles from Office’s pre-loaded style gallery or apply a custom style that…
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Use Sparklines to Display Trends in Excel
A sparkline is a tiny chart in the background of a cell. When you use a sparkline, you can easily see the relationships between it and its underlying data. And, you can copy sparklines to adjacent cells by using the Fill Handle. Sparklines are printed as-is when you print a…
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Make Your Own Theme in Excel
Do you want to enhance your Excel dashboard, charts or reports with branded colors and elements? Say you are working on a new marketing effort that requires a specific look and feel. These elements include specific color combinations to match your corporate logo and so on. It’s possible that Excel’s…
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Quickly Find Set Criteria With Data Filters in Excel
There are many ways to filter and isolate data in Excel. Using data filters is one of the fastest ways to locate the data you seek under set criteria. Say, you are looking at a list of sales records for a particular time period that includes multiple stores, sales associates,…
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Apply Simple Formatting to Numbers, Dates and Times in Excel
Have you ever been asked to present your data in specific accounting formats? Excel provides a multitude of preset formatting options for customizing numbers, dates and times. You can present data in the way that best expresses your needs and conforms with any government, industry or company standards and styles…
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Use Excel to Determine if Your Data Shows a Relevant Trend
Problem: You have a workbook that contains a full twelve months of production. Even after graphing the data, it still isn’t clear if production went up or down last year. Solution: Insert a trendline. With a trendline, you can see if your sales went up, and if so, by how…
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How to Customize the Settings for Auto Spell Check in Excel
While working in Excel, you may want to change which AutoCorrect / AutoFormat alerts you see (and don’t see) in the creation process. Luckily, you can customize the spelling and grammar checker by selecting specific options to employ (or not) as Excel checks your cell data. Customize Spellcheck Settings Click…
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Excel Template or Macro? When to use each!
A lot of Excel users are confused about when to use macros and when to create templates. A macro is a recording of formatting changes and other steps that can be replayed quickly. A template is a pre-formatted spreadsheet with headers and formulas – awaiting your data. I find that…
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Calculations Without the Formulas!
Some people use Excel because they LIKE numbers and math. Some use Excel because they DON’T! Nick counts on Excel to do the mathematical heavy lifting. He needs to calculate rows of data, but the thought of creating formulas and then checking the answers seems daunting. If you feel the…
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Hidden Security Options in Excel
If you have any experience in Excel, then you have probably found a few reasons to want to secure your workbooks. Here’s an example of what happened to Mary. She spent weeks making the perfect worksheet for her sales team to collect data about their sales. Then, accidentally, one of…
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