Make It Easy to Ask Excel Questions

While working with PowerPivot in Excel 2010, I noticed the Ask Questions command on the Ribbon.

When you click that command, your web browser opens, and takes you to the PowerPivot Help forums on the Microsoft website.

That’s a nice feature, if you’re struggling with PowerPivot.

Ask Questions command on PowerPivot Ribbon
Ask Questions command on PowerPivot Ribbon

Where Do You Ask Excel Questions?

Why doesn’t Excel have an Ask Questions command? We have questions too! (A moment of silence for the old Excel newsgroups.)

The closest thing that I could find is a Contact Us command, which leads to the Microsoft website.

Contact Us command in Excel
Contact Us command in Excel

Microsoft Answers Forum

At the bottom of that page is a link that leads to the general Answers form – not to an Excel related forum. It takes a couple more clicks to get to the Excel section.

ExcelHelpContact02

Ask Excel Questions

Maybe that Ask Questions command will be in the next version of Excel. Until then, here are links to the Excel help forums on the Microsoft site.

Answers – http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/excel

Technet — http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/excel/threads

MSDN (Excel Developers) — http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/exceldev/threads

MSDN (VBA) — http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/isvvba/threads

There are links to other Excel forums in the following article that I wrote:

7 thoughts on “Make It Easy to Ask Excel Questions”

  1. we sell four flavour milk ( 4 items ) everyday to ten parties & i have open 30 sheets in excel for each day in a workbook.
    party 1. std milk gold milk lemon milk cream milk
    party 2.
    so on .
    i want 30 days data in a sheet for a perticular party .how?
    say monthly report.
    if i place party 1 in fourth row ,the milk issued to party one shoud be change automatically. kindly do the needfull

  2. Hi,
    I have excel 2010 and my question is that I have many columns but I have to lets say compare date of column B with Column A ,if(data of Column B) is found in Column A then delete entire row of column A…. if not found then column B highlighted with some color

  3. Months Meter Reading
    January 176.2333333
    February 180.4333333
    March 184.6333333
    April 188.8333333
    May 193.0333333
    June 197.2333333
    July 201.4333333
    August 205.6333333
    September 209.8333333
    October 214.0333333
    November 218.2333333
    December 222.4333333
    Total Consumption Gallons = Answer Is 50.4
    Please tell me how do I calculate these values in Microsoft excel to get the yearly consumption of water.

  4. Dear Sir/ Madam
    My current data form in excel is under:
    COL A COL B
    TKT NO SECTOR
    123456789 LHR-NYC
    123456789 NYC-DCA
    123456789 DCA-LHR
    134257896 LHR-PAR
    124532216 LHR-PAR
    124532216 PAR-LHR
    I WISH MY DATA SHOULD APPEAR AS UNDER
    COL A COL B
    TKT NO SECTOR
    123456789 LHR-NYC-DCA
    134257896 LHR-PAR
    124532216 LHR-PAR-LHR
    Your help will be appreciated.
    Best Regards
    Ijaz

  5. I have 247,540 pieces of product packed with 450, 440, 430, 420, 400, 360, 270, 220, 100, 60, and 50 pieces and their frequency 8, 4, 6, 457, 111, 1, 20, 6 and 1 respectively. I want to distribute to 12 warehouses which are A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K and L and each warehouses have different capacity that 10,738, 5,000, 30,000, 40,000, 32,000, 20,000, 25,000, 30,000 and 15,000 respectively. how can I divided to warehouses without remainder or most minimum leftovers using excel functions?

  6. Option Explicit
    ‘ Developed by Contextures Inc.
    http://www.contextures.com
    Private Sub Worksheet_Change(ByVal Target As Range)
    Dim rngDV As Range
    Dim oldVal As String
    Dim newVal As String
    Dim strVal As String
    Dim i As Long
    Dim lCount As Long
    Dim Ar As Variant
    On Error Resume Next
    Dim lType As Long
    If Target.Count > 1 Then GoTo exitHandler

    lType = Target.Validation.Type
    If lType = 3 Then
    Application.EnableEvents = False
    newVal = Target.Value
    Application.Undo
    oldVal = Target.Value
    Target.Value = newVal
    If oldVal = “” Then
    ‘do nothing
    Else
    If newVal = “” Then
    ‘do nothing
    Else
    On Error Resume Next
    Ar = Split(oldVal, “, “)
    strVal = “”
    For i = LBound(Ar) To UBound(Ar)
    Debug.Print strVal
    Debug.Print CStr(Ar(i))
    If newVal = CStr(Ar(i)) Then
    ‘do not include this item
    strVal = strVal
    lCount = 1
    Else
    strVal = strVal & CStr(Ar(i)) & “, ”
    End If
    Next i
    If lCount > 0 Then
    Target.Value = Left(strVal, Len(strVal) – 2)
    Else
    Target.Value = strVal & newVal
    End If
    End If
    End If
    End If

    exitHandler:
    Application.EnableEvents = True
    End Sub

    I used your code and removed the two areas you noted so it will work on any drop down menu in my spreadsheet. It works on column # 1, and #2. It will not work on column #17. Can you help me understand why?

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