Debra Dalgleish - Contextures Blog

Happy 30th Anniversary Excel!

Today is the 30th anniversary of the first release of Microsoft Excel. To celebrate this auspicious occasion, I invited you to share your memories of getting started with Excel, and thank you for your contributions!

In 2005 there was a 20th anniversary celebration, and I wasn’t invited to the party, but I was at Microsoft that day. There was a party that night at Seattle’s Experience Music Project, and we formed a band – Excelerongs – for a special one-night appearance. That’s Dick Kusleika at the left, and I’m 3rd from the right.

So take time to celebrate today, and form your own band to sing the praises of Excel.

Excelerongs at Microsoft Sept 30 2005

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Excel Roundup 20150928

In this week’s roundup, Excel history, Office 2016 reviews, add-ins to reduce Excel errors, and much more.

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When Did You Start Using Excel?

Next Wednesday is the 30th anniversary of Excel’s first release, and I’d love to hear your Excel memories, and share them here next week. The more the merrier, so please take a few minutes to jot down a few memories.

Here are some questions, to help you get started:

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Excel Roundup 20150921

In this week’s roundup, avoid nested IF formulas, understand circular references, see bad charts, and much more.

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Excel Can Talk Like a Pirate

Did you know that today is Talk Like a Pirate Day? It’s not as awesome as Spreadsheet Day, obviously, but it could add some fun to your workday!

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Beware the Nested IF Formula in Excel

Do you use the IF function in your workbooks? It’s helpful if you want to check something, and then show a result based on the result of your test.

For example, in the screen shot below, the total won’t show if a quantity hasn’t been entered in cell D7.

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Excel Roundup 20150914

In this week’s roundup, create a seating plan, do case sensitive lookups, learn Excel from Joel Spolsky, and more.

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7 Ways to Sum in Excel

What was the first function that you learned in Excel – if you can remember that far back?

I’ll bet it was the SUM function. There’s an AutoSum button on the Ribbon that makes it very easy to put a total – just select a blank cell below a column of numbers, and click that button.

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Excel Roundup 20150831

In this week’s roundup, see the results from the last roundup’s pivot table survey, build a better dashboard, see some new chart types, and much more.

We’re almost at the end of our summer schedule now, and the next roundup will be published on Monday, Sept 14th.

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Excel Worksheet Navigation Tips

It can be a real pain to find a specific sheet, if an Excel file has lots of worksheets. If I’m making a big file for a client, I’ll often colour groups of sheet tabs, to they’re easier to find. Then, if you want the admin lists sheets, look for the red group.

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