The Excel Team Blog

Excel: The Basics (Video)

2012-02-01T17:38:00Z

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)

Five most popular posts on the Excel blog in 2011

2012-01-26T19:03:00Z

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)

Yes, it is possible to create nice looking spreadsheets

2012-01-19T21:23:00Z

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

2012-01-18T00:46:00Z

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

2012-01-12T19:50:00Z

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

2012-01-06T20:56:00Z

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

2012-01-04T19:51:00Z

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

2011-12-22T20:12:00Z

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)

Last-minute budget tips for those last-minute gifts

2011-12-20T18:56:00Z

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

2011-12-15T19:00:00Z

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)

Remembering Nathan (Nate) Oliver

2011-12-07T21:05:00Z

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

2011-11-30T21:26:00Z

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

2011-11-23T01:00:00Z

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)

2011-11-17T14:16:00Z

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

2011-11-15T19:30:00Z

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)