Last week, in my Contextures Newsletter, I posted an Excel COUNTIF challenge. There were 100 codes on a worksheet, but when counted, the occurrences for each letter only added up to 99. What was causing the problem? Take the challenge yourself – download the workbook to see how you’d solve it.
Hide Used Items in Drop Down List
Don’t let Excel yell at us, if we accidentally enter a duplicate value in a column. Okay, maybe Excel isn’t really yelling, but it seems like that when a data validation error message pops onto the screen. Instead of letting people pick a duplicate, use this trick to hide used items in a worksheet drop down list. You can’t pick an item if it isn’t there!
Create an Interactive Excel Chart
If you add a chart to a dashboard, it’s helpful to let people choose what they’d like to see in the chart. In this example, you’ll choose a date range, and select other criteria, and the interactive Excel chart automatically adjusts to show total values for the selected data.
Excel Data Validation Error Messages
Do you like to use error checking in Excel, so that problem cells are flagged, or do you turn that feature off? There are options for data validation error messages too – do you use those?
Happy Spreadsheet Day 2016
Happy Spreadsheet Day 2016! Spreadsheet Day started in 2010, and we celebrate on October 17th every year, because that’s the date on which VisiCalc was first released, way back in 1979.
Quickly Close All Your Excel Files
First, I’ve got two quick announcements, and then there’s a handy Excel trick for you. Are you ready for Spreadsheet Day 2016? Quick, close all your Excel files, and bake a cake!
Create a Schedule in Excel
This weekend is our Canadian Thanksgiving, and we’ll have 16 people here for dinner. To make sure that all the dishes are ready on time, I’ll use Excel to schedule everything that has to be done. We’ve been using this meal planner for years now, and would be lost without it!
Contextures Blog Update
After having all kinds of problems on the blog last week, I’ve installed a new theme. Everything looks different, including the header image. It’s a photo that I took on a vacation, and the blues and greens match the Contextures logo.
Excel Sing Along
It was a busy and stressful week, with all kinds of computer fun – plugin updates that killed my blog, a touchpad that refused to turn off, Outlook contacts all disappearing into the iCloud, lots of laptop restarts, and much, much more. Good times!
So, instead of something serious and educational, let’s have an Excel sing-along!
Dependent Combo Box in Excel
You can add a drop down list in a worksheet cell, so people can select from a list of valid entries. The font in that list is pretty small though, even if the worksheet is at 100% zoom. And good luck trying to read it, if you go to a lower zoom setting! My eyes aren’t that good, so I use a pop-up combo box, in some workbooks, to make the list easier to use.