Excel User Group

The Great Microsoft Office Portal

VSTO & .NET & Excel — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 14:46:04 GMT

As most of us already know, Microsoft has for the last couple of years built up an enourmus giant knowledge base about Microsoft Office on the internet. As a consequence it has also become more difficult to navigate around and find the wanted information we are looking for. However, today I discovered the Great Portal to Microsoft [...] Read More......(read more)

Excel: The Basics (Video)

Excel Blog — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 17:38:00 GMT

For those of us who crunch words instead of numbers, Excel can be intimidating. We don't know the difference between a workbook and a worksheet, and for sure don't know to ask about conditional formatting (a cool way to visually display data). Then one day your boss asks you to create a report--with numbers. Gulp. In this video, the Office 911 emergency responders show a beginning Excel user how to add a table to a worksheet so she can better organize and view her data. So what's a worksheet...(read more)

Best Practices Export Data to Excel

VSTO & .NET & Excel — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 12:43:28 GMT

If You’re a VBA Developer You should know what best practices is to export data to MS Excel. Two expressions summarize it; Microsoft ActiveX Data Object Library and CopyFromRecordset. However, if You’re a .NET developer and face a situation where You must find a solution to export data to MS Excel then there is a [...] Read More......(read more)

Five most popular posts on the Excel blog in 2011

Excel Blog — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 19:03:00 GMT

It's still January. There's still time to share the most popular posts on the Excel blog in 2011. Thanks for reading them! Can't remember all those Excel keyboard shortcuts? Now you don't have to! There are a lot of keyword shortcuts in Excel. You can scroll through a long list of them on Office.com, or you can download Quick Reference Cards from our blog and pin them to your corkboard. There are cards for Keyboard shortcuts with theCtrl keys , Keyboard shortcuts with Function keys...(read more)

New Q&A Forum for PowerPivot!

VSTO & .NET & Excel — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 23:23:13 GMT

With the release of Excel 2010 Microsoft released a new powerful tool, PowerPivot, to work with large datasets and reports. The beta of version 2.0 has been out for a while and it seems that Microsoft is about to ship the final version soon. Meanwhile, I was pleasant surprised to learn that Mr Excel has recently launched a public [...] Read More......(read more)

Yes, it is possible to create nice looking spreadsheets

Excel Blog — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 21:23:00 GMT

15 Spreadsheet Formatting Tips For the last couple years I’ve been meaning to pull together some of the tips that I’ve learned working on the Excel team about how to make nice looking spreadsheets. Well, last week, Rob Collie (a previous Excel Program Manager, and now CTO at Pivotstream and author of PowerPivotPro.com) beat me to it with his post “In the Browser, Aesthetics Yield a Greater Return.” ...( read more ) Read More......(read more)

Guy Kawasaki's guide to creating a financial forecast in Excel

Excel Blog — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 00:46:00 GMT

You've finished your business plan and polished the pitch for investors. As an entrepreneur you know what comes next: number-crunching. To clinch funding, you need a financial projection that shows investors the path to profitability. We worked with @Guy Kawasaki to guide you through creating a financial forecast that will wow funders. ...( read more ) Read More......(read more)

Generate invoice numbers in Excel

Excel Blog — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 19:50:00 GMT

If you need a way to create invoices in Excel, feel free to use one of the many invoice templates on Office.com. While these templates are a great starting point, they won't automatically generate unique invoice numbers for you—you need a macro for that. Fortunately, Excel MVP Bill Jelen created a short video that shows you how to create just such a macro. Enjoy! ...( read more ) Read More......(read more)

Beyond spreadsheets: Spiffy Excel calendars for 2012

Excel Blog — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 20:56:00 GMT

Need a plain-vanilla calendar for your business which shows the year in a glance? Or the kind that your local hardware passes out for free (marketing) at the end of the year? Or if you're a student, how about one that lets you juggle assignments as the professors keep juggling dates? ...( read more ) Read More......(read more)

VBA tip: Limit the number of times a file can be opened

Excel Blog — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 19:51:00 GMT

Suppose you want to send someone a demo workbook, but you don’t want that workbook to be used more than a certain number of times, perhaps because you want to be paid for your work. In today's VBA tip, Excel MVP Bob Umlas shows you how to limit the number of times a file can be used by using simple SaveSetting and GetSetting statements. ...( read more ) Read More......(read more)

Excel Mashup Tutorial

Excel Blog — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 20:12:00 GMT

One of our Excel MVP--Jan Karel Pieterse--emailed us this week suggesting we take a look at the online tutorial he created about Excel Mashups. We did, and now we want to share it with you. ...( read more ) Read More......(read more)

Real Studio – The Perfect Companion for SMEs

VSTO & .NET & Excel — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 23:43:32 GMT

Introduction In the beginning of this year I decided to explore Real Studio (formerly Realbasic, RS) which is a full featured cross-platform software development tool. With it we can create a wide range of applications, from small tiny utilities to enterprise applications that target Mac OS X, Windows, Linux and the web. Initially I had [...] Read More......(read more)

Last-minute budget tips for those last-minute gifts

Excel Blog — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 18:56:00 GMT

At this point in the holiday season if you’re like me, you’re over budget. Yesterday I started worrying about that cashmere sweater I bought for one sister-in-law and the sweatshirt I bought for the other. It’s back to shoping this evening to try to even it out. This time when I’m wandering the aisles, I’ll check my Excel holiday budget on my phone. I saved it on SkyDrive—Microsoft's free cloud service—so that I can take a look to remind me what I bought...(read more)

Creating Excel mashups

Excel Blog — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 19:00:00 GMT

If you’re a web developer (or even if you’re not), you’ve doubtless heard of mashups—apps or web pages that combine existing functionality from different sources to create something entirely new. It’s now possible to create cool spreadsheet-based mashups by combining features from Excel Web App—specifically, the embedded workbook feature—with existing JavaScript APIs. Read on to see a couple of demo mashups, and learn about our new site for web developers...(read more)

Excel Mashup, Java & HTML 5

VSTO & .NET & Excel — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 13:11:20 GMT

Microsoft has recently launched a new site that target how to create rich and interactive data mashups in Excel for use on the web. Technically speaking, we use the programming language JavaScript to interact with embedded Excel Web Application’s objects. For basic and small projects we can use auto generated JavaScript. For more advanced solution we [...] Read More......(read more)

Remembering Nathan (Nate) Oliver

Excel Blog — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 21:05:00 GMT

This week, the Excel team here at Microsoft received the tragic news that Excel MVP Nathan Oliver passed away unexpectedly. Nate was a vital member of the MVP community who loved sharing his vast knowledge of Excel with customers and fellow Excel enthusiasts. We’ll always be grateful to Nate for his countless contributions to various Excel forums and his insightful feedback to us about how to make Excel a better product. From the testimonials pouring in on the Microsoft MVP Facebook page, it’s...(read more)

Excel as a project management tool

Excel Blog — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 21:26:00 GMT

It goes without saying that Microsoft Project is THE program to use if you need to manage large projects. But what if you manage smaller projects? Can you do that in Excel? Sure, but life will be easier if you start with a template that is specifically designed to facilitate project management. With that in mind, PowerPoint expert Glenna Shaw created a free project plan template for tracking projects in Excel. You can use this template to estimate time and costs, create a project schedule, manage...(read more)

When a macro won't cut it, try a VBA script

Excel Blog — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 01:00:00 GMT

This post written by Daniel Ferry, an Excel MVP, chronicles how he and Beth Melton, a fellow MPV, designed a Gradebook template in Excel that makes teachers’ lives a whole lot easier. Several teachers, however, wanted to make the template even more useful. They asked us whether the template could batch print all student progress reports at once. To tackle this task, we knew recording a new macro wouldn’t cut it. I needed to write a VBA script. Here's how I did it. ...( read more Read...(read more)

Data’s got a brand new bag: PowerPivot for Excel (video)

Excel Blog — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 14:16:00 GMT

There's lots of data out there: LOTS. The digital universe is about eight hundred thousand petabytes (that's eight hundred million gigabytes). Your business is no doubt contriubting to that number and needs a way to work with it. PowerPivot is a free add-in for Excel that can link multiple spreadsheets or even link to databases. That means you can work with millions--emphases on the "s"--of lines of data. Excel also has another tool to help you slice through data, which I'll...(read more)

The Excel part of mail merge

Excel Blog — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 19:30:00 GMT

Hey, the holidays are fast approaching, which means you've got to get your cards signed, sealed, and delivered! This post goes out to those of you who keep your address list in Excel and need to figure out how to use it to create mailing labels in Word . Creating labels can be intimidating, mainly because there are a number of steps and you're typically working across different programs—in this case, Excel and Word. Read on to learn best practices for preparing your address list in...(read more)

Now where on the network did I save my workbook?

Excel Blog — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 00:00:00 GMT

If you commonly share workbooks that are saved on your network, consider adding the Document Location box to your Quick Access Toolbar. This box shows you exactly where your workbook is located. If you can see the path, you can easily paste it into an email message and send it to people. This is way better than sending around big file attachments! ...( read more ) Read More......(read more)

Paradigma offer Valentina Office Server 5.0 for free!

VSTO & .NET & Excel — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 14:43:32 GMT

Paradigma announced today that they will offer the next version (5.0) of their Valentina Office Server for free. The offer targets certain groups of users, including Small and Medium sized companies, and for certain tasks. Not only that, under the same license conditions they also offer Valentina Studio + Valentina Report for free together with any [...] Read More......(read more)

Excel & Valentina Database

VSTO & .NET & Excel — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 23:42:33 GMT

Introducing the Valentina Database I thought I would introduce the Valentina Database (Valentina DB) with this article and discuss how we can connect to it by using ODBC, both in VBA and in VB.NET. For the last 11-12 months I have been using Valentina DB as an embedded database in all clients’ solutions where it [...] Read More......(read more)

List all folders in a Microsoft Outlook account

Daily Dose of Excel — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 14:00:00 GMT

Recently, I wanted to create a list of all the folders in my MS Outlook PST file together with the size of each folder. Outlook provides that information through the user interface. Unfortunately, it shows the result in a modal dialog with no way to save the information elsewhere. So, I decided [...] Read More......(read more)

How Much to Charge for Freelance VBA Development

Daily Dose of Excel — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 02:36:32 GMT

$150 per hour. $120 per hour if the project is big enough that you won’t have to look for work for a while. $100 per hour if you’re really hungry. I’m sick of reading blog posts about how much to charge. They don’t tell me anything I don’t already know. And they [...] Read More......(read more)