If you have ever received the "too many different cell formats" error message in Excel, stop what you're doing, take a look around your workbook and ask yourself "are all these cell formats really useful?" After you answer the inevitable "no", smack yourself in the back of the head for creating such a mess! Just kidding, don't actually smack yourself, but apologize to your … [Read more...]
Transition To Excel 2007
I've gotten a few requests for a way to help transition to Excel 2007 from earlier versions of Excel. As anyone who first tries using Excel 2007 will notice, the traditional File, Edit, View, etc. menus are no longer available. Instead there is a ribbon, which acts like the old menus. To help Excel 2007 newbies make the transition, I've designed a quick reference … [Read more...]
Goal Seek to Break Even
Recently I found myself deciding if I should sell some stock in order to provide a little extra cash to my bank account. I purchased shares of the company's stock four times in various quantities, and at varying prices. Due to the downturn in the stock market recently the prices dropped steadily, so I was able to purchase some of the shares at a low price. The company has … [Read more...]
Changing the Default Color Palette in Excel
Excel, by default comes with a standard pre-selected color palette, which is useful, however there are times when those standard colors just won't do. It's possible that your company's colors are not included in the standard colors found in Excel. If you'd like to use them in your workbook, you'll need to change the standard colors. In order to do this, select Tools … [Read more...]
Goal Seek to Solve A Problem
Microsoft Excel is jam packed with cool useful features that tend to go unused by most users, simply because they don't know how to use them, or even that they exist. One of these features is Excel's Goal Seek tool. First, some background on what it does. Goal Seek is essentially the answer to every middle school aged kid's math test word problem. It is best used when you … [Read more...]