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  • How it's Made: Tower Defense - a Game in Excel 2010

      This blog post is brought to you by Karen Cheng a Program Manager on the Excel team.     In today's post, we'll show you how the arcade game Tower Defense was created in an Excel spreadsheet (see a video of the game being played here ).  In this game, creeps move toward your castle. You must defend it by placing towers which shoot at the creeps. The more creeps you kill, the more money you get to buy and upgrade your towers. To play, you'll need - · To download the...

  • Announcing Excel 2010 Developer Challenge Winners

    We want to thank all of you who submitted entries for our Excel challenge. We had great entries that were well designed using Excel 2010 features, VBA and the user interface. Many of you are as passionate about Excel as we are and we thank you for your feedback. We extend our congratulations to the following winners: First Prize Winner : Andre L G Viol, United States Prize: Xbox 360 Elite Video Game Entertainment System and a copy of the Xbox 360 game: FIFA 2010 Description of the application : The...

  • Vote for the prototype you like for the Open XML SDK

    The developer documentation team is asking for your feedback on a couple prototypes for the Open XML SDK Documentation. Visit their blog to download the prototypes and vote: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/officedevdocs/archive/2010/07/13/vote-for-the-prototype-you-like-for-the-open-xml-sdk.aspx Read More...

  • How it's Made: Missile Command - a Game in Excel 2010

    This blog post is brought to you by Karen Cheng a Program Manager on the Excel team. In today's post, we'll show you how the classic arcade game Missile Command was created in an Excel spreadsheet. We also explain how it's made in this video . In this game, missiles drop from the sky, attacking the city. You must click on the missiles to destroy them. To play, you'll need - · To download the game ( here ) · To install Excel 2010, hot off the press last week. You can...

  • The analytics of the World Cup in Excel with PowerPivot

    This post is brought to you by Bruno Aziza, WW Strategy Lead for Microsoft Business Intelligence. The Soccer World Cup is watched by billions around the world and many have tried to use models, from macro-economic to financial ones, to predict the outcome of the world cup. Our team and partners have put together a set of tools and videos to help you experience a more “analytical” world cup. See our intro video here ! · Start by enrolling in the World Cup Challenge to win prizes...

  • Excel 2010 Games: Missile Command and Tower Defense

    Thanks to Mauricio Acevedo, Nathan Shomber, Karen Cheng, and Manpratap Suri for putting together this blog post. It's official, Office 2010 is out! To celebrate, we've created two games that are playable in Excel for you to download. Missile Command Tower Defense To play, you'll need - · Download games here · To install Excel 2010, hot off the press last week. You can get a free trial here . The games use features that are new to Excel 2010, so they won't work in older...

  • New Visualization Types in Excel

      This post is brought to you by Scott Ruble , Senior Program Manager in Excel.     Over the last year, we’ve written a number of articles on the new capabilities of Excel 2010 . Several of these were related to new charting features in Office 2010. Here is a quick list of them. · More Charting Enhancements in Excel 2010 · Improvements to Chart Performance · Chart Object Model in Word & PowerPoint These improvements were well received; however, we understand there is a pent up...

  • Importing Text Files in an Excel Sheet

    Today’s author is Jan Karel Pieterse, an Excel MVP, who describes the process of importing text in great detail. You can find more useful tips from Jan Karel on his website: http://www.jkp-ads.com/ . In this article, I'll explain how to ease importing of .txt, .prn and/or .csv files into an existing sheet in Excel. Introduction If you've ever tried to open a text file, you have probably used the Text import wizard. If you have ever opened a CSV file, you have probably noted you can't...
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  • Solutions to Three Common Problems when Using VLOOKUP()

    Today’s author is Greg Truby, an Excel MVP, who addresses some common issues you may encounter when you use the VLOOKUP function. This article assumes a basic familiarity with the VLOOKUP() function, one of the easiest ways to lookup up a key value in one worksheet or block of data and return a related piece of information from a second worksheet or block of data.   When using VLOOKUP() we frequently find ourselves facing three common problems: ·         We...
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  • [Deadline Extended] Excel 2010 Developer Challenge - Soccer Edition

    We had some issues with our entry submission e-mail so we are extending the challenge end date to July 5 th , 2010: o If you already submitted your entry but have not received a confirmation e-mail, please re-submit your entry to emanb@microsoft.com before July 5 th , 2010. o If you are new to this challenge , this is a unique opportunity for you to join. If you’re into developing Excel-based applications, then participate in the Excel 2010 Developer Challenge- Soccer Edition! We’re looking...

  • Office Web Apps Now Available on Windows Live

    We are excited to announce that today Office Web Apps are available on Windows Live. The initial release is available to Windows Live customers in the USA, Canada, Great Britain and Ireland with support for English, Spanish (USA) and French (Canada). More languages and locales will be added over the coming months. This release includes Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote. The ability to edit Word documents and open OneNote notebooks is included. Not only do we want you to try these web apps, we also...

  • Running a SQL Stored Procedure from Excel (No VBA)

    Today’s author is Mike Alexander, an Excel MVP who shows us how to run a Stored Procedure to get data from a SQL server. For more useful articles and videos, visit www.datapigtechnologies.com . We all know we can use MS Query to get data from a SQL server. Typically though, we pull from a Table or a View. Well in some organizations, the IT department wants all interaction with the server to be done through Stored Procedure. This adds a level of risk management and makes the DBAs feel better. So today...
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  • Excel Team Favorite Keyboard Shortcuts – Part 3

    Today’s post is brought to you by Chad Rothschiller a Program Manager on the Excel team. In Part 3 of my series on Excel shortcuts, I’m going to focus on a few miscellaneous shortcuts that help out with daily tasks. F4 – Repeat Use F4 to repeat the last thing you did, a great shortcut especially if the action just took several clicks. For example: · Inserting cells to the right · Applying complex formatting to a cell (could also use the format painter) · Inserting more rows or columns (after the...

  • Track the Soccer World Cup scores with Excel®

    This blog post is brought to you by Diego Oppenheimer a Program Manager on the Excel team. As we approached the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, and continuing on a theme from a couple of weeks ago , I set off to create an Excel template that was as automated as possible; with not a single line of VBA code but with conditional formatting , formulas , and the camera tool feature; I wanted to create the ultimate couch companion for the hours I have planned to spend in front of the TV waking up at 4...

  • Excel Team Favorite Keyboard Shortcuts – Part 2 of 3

    This post is brought to you by Chad Rothschiller a Program Manager on the Excel Team and is Part 2 of his ongoing series on the Excel Team’s Favorite Keyboard Shortcuts. In Part 2 of this series on Excel shortcuts, I’m going to focus on a few shortcuts that help out with the absolute essence of Excel: Formulas.   F2 – Edit Mode For starters, pressing F2 is a convenient way to start editing a formula in a cell: it places the cursor at the end of the formula so you can make quick additions. Before...
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