Microsoft Excel Tips

The fastest way to get an answer to your Excel problem is to post it to the new MrExcel Forum. The Excel Forum answers over 30,000 questions a year for free and is the most popular section of MrExcel.

• The original message board archive has 12,000 Excel answers.
• The New Board Archive is being updated with 70,000 answers.

• Download and watch a daily 2-minute podcast about Excel right on your PC.
• The Learn Excel from MrExcel Podcast Blog has over 1000 podcast videos on Excel tips and techniques.
• Directory of Excel video tutorials - over 600 video tutorials online, for free and indexed by topic.
• The Podcast DVD-ROM - A searchable DVD-Rom with over 20 hours of the Learn Excel from MrExcel daily 2-minute podcasts.
• OnHome&Office podcast by InformIT with 'experts' showing tips and tutorials on everything you need to get more out of the technologies you rely on at work and for play. This link will let you subscribe at iTunes.
• Crunching Data with Pivot Tables in Excel 2003 - Seven videos covering over 1 hour of Pivot Table basics & tips.

There are over 485 articles published here where MrExcel explains, in plain English, powerful ways to make Excel sing. Peruse the Excel article archive.

Visit the Excel 2007 Resource Page to learn about the updates made in this latest version of Excel.

MrExcel Engineering and Graphics Division: Mala manages our MrExcel Engineering & Graphics Division, which specializes in developing solutions to engineering problems and creates some of the most incredible graphics automation macros. Whether you are looking for engineering graphs or new chart types, check out Mala's work at the MrExcel Graphics & Engineering Division. The Engineering division can automate your Excel to AutoCad needs or custom design a new chart type for you.

• MrExcel will perform on-site advanced Excel training at your location. Choose a session that suits your organization.
• Sign-up for a 1-day Power Excel Seminar at The University of Akron instructed by MrExcel and offered various times throughout the year.
• Take your Excel learning level to the next step with advanced training in a 3-day Power Analyst Boot Camp.
• To see when MrExcel will be presenting a seminar in your area, check the list of scheduled Excel seminars around the country.

E-mail your problem to MrExcel. The best problems will be published on this site, in either the Daily Tips Weblog or as a Tip of the Week with our solutions. Due to the volume of mail received, MrExcel can not respond personally to all requests. Why am I giving away Excel answers? Your questions are helping me write a book of Excel tips. I'm betting the problem that is plaguing you is plaguing others out there. Note: MrExcel uses Excel 97, 2000, 2002, 2003, & 2007 in Windows XP & ME. For questions which are specific to a Mac or to Excel 4.0, MrExcel will not be able to help. Try the Excel forum.

Excel 2007 Miracles Made Easy

Learn Excel 97-2007 from MrExcel

MrExcel's Top Sellers

Excel 2007 Power Bundle

Holy Macro! It's 2,500 VBA Examples

LiveLessons Power Excel 2007 DVD-ROM

LiveLessons Excel VBA and Macros DVD-ROM

Excel for Auditors

Excel for the Small Business Owner

VBA and Macros for Microsoft Excel (Excel 97-2003) (Excel 2007)

Charts and Graphs for Excel 2007

Excel 2007 Expert

Excel 2007 VBA

All Excel Books & Products: In cooperation with Holy Macro! Books, there are now 33 titles available at the MrExcel Store:

• Excel Gurus Gone Wild: Do the Impossible - Filled with the bizarre and arcane - Most tricks will only be of interest to the hard-core Exceller!!
• Access 2007 VBA Made Accessible DVD-ROM - How to Steer Access 2007 Using Visual Basic for Applications - 1,110 slides.
• The Podcast DVD - 634 episodes of the Learn Excel from MrExcel Podcast on one searchable DVD-ROM.
• Excel 2007 for Scientists and Engineers - a second edition with expanded content on Excel for scientists and engineers.
• Learn Excel 97 through Excel 2007 From MrExcel - 377 Excel Mysteries Solved - This book takes an in-depth look at the topics from Bill's Power Excel Seminar. In the process of solving 377 real-world business problems, you will learn how to use Excel more efficiently than you ever thought possible. Updated to cover Excel 97 through Excel 2007, this book includes 100 new topics.
• See Sharper with C# DVD-ROM - Learn C# to enhance Excel's features. Bonus - a copy of Visual C# 2005 Express edition is included!
• Excel 2007 VBA CD-ROM - Get up to speed with on Excel 2007 VBA with this course from the Visual Training Series.
• Excel 2007 For Scientists CD-ROM - A self-paced visual training package covering Excel 2007 for scientists.
• Excel 2007 Miracles Made Easy - The quick guide to Excel 2007's new features.
• Excel 2007 Expert CD-ROM - self-paced visual training course on Excel 2007.
• Excel for The Math Classroom - Discover powerful uses of Excel to help bring math concepts home for your students and enable your students to become better at mathematics.
• Excel for Auditors - Learn essential Excel skills for analyzing mounds of data as well as tips to make your use of Excel far more efficient.
  
• Excel for the CEO - Learn how to use Excel in running your business using the "do & learn" style of teaching, enabling you to learn the techniques in an easy yet definitive way, which will remain forever in the mind.
  
• Learn Excel From MrExcel - 277 Excel Mysteries Solved - Discusses solutions, strategies, and gotchas for 277 real life Excel problems.
• Office VBA Macros You Can Use Today - 125 cool macros for Excel, PowerPoint, Word, Outlook, and Access.
• From VBA to VSTO - A book to help VBA programmers get comfortable with VSTO.
• Guerilla Data Analysis Using Microsoft Excel - for anyone who regularly processes large amounts of data in Excel.
• Holy Macro! It's 2,500 Excel VBA Examples CD-ROM - whether you've just recorded your first macro or you write Excel VBA for a living, you need this CD!
• Excel Knowledge Base CD-ROM - an archive of the first 2.5 years of MrExcel Q&A
• Slide Your Way Through Excel VBA CD-ROM - a self-paced, 5-day course on Excel VBA
• Excel for Scientists CD-ROM - a self-paced, 3-day course for Scientists and Engineers.
• Excel for Scientists & Engineers - a complete guide to Excel for Scientists and Engineers.
• Excel for Teachers - Learn Excel with 25 real-life applications for your classroom.
• Excel for Marketing Managers - Learn Excel using examples from the world of the marketing manager.
• Join the Excellers League CD-ROM - a self-paced, 5-day course on Excel.
• Dreamboat ON WORD - Anne Troy's guide to Microsoft Word
• Grover Park George ON ACCESS - George Hepworth's guide to developing Access databases.
• Kathy Jacobs ON POWERPOINT - Kathy Jacob's guide to PowerPoint.
• Link'em Up ON OUTLOOK - Stephen J. Link's guide to Outlook.
• Master the Web CD-ROM - a self-paced 3-day course on web design.
• Access VBA Made Accessible CD-ROM - a self-paced 10-day course on Access VBA.
• Unleash the Power of OneNote - covering Microsoft OneNote - the best new product from Microsoft in years.
• Your Access to the World CD-ROM - a self-paced, 7-day course on Microsoft Access VBA.

• Excel Bookstore.ca for Canada
  
• Excel Bookstore.co.uk for the United Kingdom
  
• Excel Bookstore.com for the United States
  

Recommended Products, Software, and Services for Excel

Excel Products

• EmployTest - Test your potential job applicants efficiency in Excel! The interactive (not multiple choice) Excel tests show you exactly what they know or don't know. To see how it works or to get a free sample test, email us at EmployTest@MrExcel.com.
• Xcelsius Dashboards: Get a competitive edge with Xcelsius dashboards for your business. We specialize in: Executive Cockpits, Financial Interactive, What-if-Analysis, Solutioning tools with real time inputs, ROI or Cost calculators, Budgeting, Benchmark dashboards.
• Visit ExcelGuru.net for a full line of mugs and shirts with sayings that all true Excel fans will understand.
  

  Just Back away from the keyboard!

  Why be Average when you can EXCEL?

• You can also buy the MrExcel logo on our new shirts, mugs, clocks at CafePress.com



Excel Function Clock

License Plate Frame

• MrExcel's Recommended Books Bookstore - There are many other great Excel books out there. Let MrExcel recommend a perfect book for users at various levels. Visit the MrExcel Bookstore to read my review and then purchase the cream of the crop of Excel books over the Internet.

Software for Excel

• Getting Excel 2007? Add Excel 2003 Menus to Excel 2007!
• Convert PDF to Excel or Word using Able2Extract. It is annoying how people use PDF now to ensure that you can not change their data. This easy-to-use utility will grab data from PDF files and quickly send it to Excel or Word. The Pro version can even take the super-hard-to-crack PDF files where all of the text is saved as an image and convert it to Excel. Check out my review of the product with screenshots.
• If you want to take your worksheets to the web, check out KDCalc.
• Auditors: If you need to crunch through millions of records, check out ActiveData for Excel.
• Are you working with big Excel workbooks that are difficult to maintain because of their size? Then Palo is for you. Palo is an advanced data store for Microsoft Excel that allows you to handle large amounts of Excel data on a small number of worksheets. In addition, it also allows you to share Excel data real-time with your colleagues. What is Palo? Click here for more information.
• If you have to deal with massive amounts of data, you have to try out the AMAZING DIG-DB Toolkit Add-in. You will wonder how you ever lived without it. Unlike the general-purpose utility add-ins, this POWERFUL add-in truly extends the power of Excel. Here are some of the features:
  
  • Do Access in Excel
  • De-dupe
  • Enhance & Simplify PivotTable
  • Complex Filter
  • Merge (Join)
  • Sort, Random, & More
  Buy now for $49 and download immediately!. You will be AMAZED.
• The number one complaint is from people suffering from a corrupt Excel file that will not open. Recover hours or days of lost work with these products or services!
  • ExcelFIX Software: Recover data, charts, images, comments, merged cells, groups and outlines, subtotals, and all the formula elements from a Microsoft® Excel file that shows an error on opening in 15 minutes.
  • OfficeRecovery.com: the web source of data recovery software for email, databases and office productivity applications. Over 40 quality software products are available to meet your data recovery needs.
  • Or, if you want to hire someone to solve your corrupt file problem, Florent Chassignol has launched a service called ExcelWordRecovery.com. The Excel recovery software is pretty easy to use, but if you would rather hire someone, give Florent a try. Send your file to Florent, and they will recover the entire file. The ExcelWordRecovery service can also recover files from damaged floppy disks. As a special offer, list the Discount Code of "MrExcel.com" at ExcelWordRecovery and receive 10% off the price of their excellent service.
• Want to lose weight? Try the new Weight Loss Boss from Ron Martin, author of Success Made Easy.
• Need to do Rollups? Read about the amazing new software to manage rollups from Balenz.
• Want to duplicate your Excel calculators on a web page? Convert Excel to JavaScript using Excel Everywhere
• LostPassword.com: Lost Passwords? The software at LostPassword.com can help. If you have just one file to decrypt, try the new service from decryptum.com. They offer instant online recovery service for password protected MS Word and Excel files, with free online preview of encrypted file content!
• Check out this cool Formula Manager Add-in for $29.95
• If you are interesting in stock market investing, you NEED these AnalyzerXL tools.
• If you are a techie who has to have the coolest toys, you should check out the Neural Network Tool for Excel. This add-in will help you forecast business, financial or sports outcomes.
• Excel OCX for VB Programmers is a powerful ActiveX Control with over a hundred useful functions to assist in exchanging data between Excel and Visual Basic and much more using COM technology! Included in the download is a sample Visual Basic project which demonstrates the power of Excel OCX. Try it now and see for yourself how your programming time can be cut down drastically with this handy control!
• Contractors - while we can design a custom program exactly for your business, first check out these affordable Excel programs: HomeCOST Estimator, RemodelCOST Estimator, RepairCOST Estimator, JobCOST Controller, PaintCOST Estimator, General Cost Estimator, ContractorPACK Advantage, Remodel Pack, BuilderPACK Advantage, or FloorCost Estimator.
• In his book, Beautiful Evidence, Edward Tufte introduced the concept of SparkLines. A SparkLine compresses intense amounts of data into a word-sized graphic like the ones shown below. SparkMaker allows you to add SparkLines to Excel. The free version can produce simple sparklines like the left example below. The Basic edition adds the SparkBars and the Pro Edition adds Excel functions to dynamically generate multi-color SparkLines. In the top right example, the monthly stock price for Google for 28 months. The red bar is the low, the blue bar is the high. Below that, the monthly stock price for Microsoft. Rather than show the current value of something on a dashboard, add a SparkBar to show the history of that number.
  
• Charley Kyd is the king of Excel dashboards. He has put together an EXCEL-lent kit showing how to make cool dashboards using nothing more than Excel. You get his e-book plus 18 sample files. I love this kit! Anyone responsible for reporting data to managers should have a copy of the Dashboard kit
  

Excel Services

• Chank Foundry: Design with Chank Fonts.
• MrExcel has partnered with EmployTest to offer tests to insure your job applicants have what it takes! It’s fast, efficient and will give you confidence to make a smarter hiring decision. The result is an easy to read Score Report, which is instantly emailed to you. We're offering a special deal to MrExcel site visitors! For more information see this page on Pre-employment tests by EmployTest.

Interact within the MrExcel Community

• Become a fan of MrExcel.com on Facebook and get the latest news on seminars, webinars, and all that is happening in the MrExcel community.
• Challenge of the Month: Take a stab at solving an Excel Challenge and win fame and fabulous MrExcel merchandise.
• Check out the free cool spreadsheets developed by the MrExcel community. Donate yours too!
• Add yourself to the MrExcel Community Map!
• Send in your Excel question for an episode or a 'better solution' to a previous episode of the daily, 2 minute Learn Excel from MrExcel Podcast and possibly earn the MrExcel master pin for top, new tips.
• Check out our photo album of various people we've met from the MrExcel community.
  
• Can You Total That Diagonally For Me? Seasoned Excel veterans will appreciate this feature, which looks at the bizarre and seemingly impossible requests handed down from real managers. To qualify for inclusion here, the problem must cause MrExcel.com's brain to nearly explode.

MrExcel Information

• I am honored to have received the Excel black belt from Colo and the Road to the Cell Masters.
  
• Bill Jelen is proud to have been named 2003 Computer America Guest of the Year.
• Thanks for your generosity! During the 2002 holiday season, MrExcel readers helped raise $210 for FISH. The donors are listed in our virtual store window. During 2004, we raised $2501 for the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life.
• Daily Tips Weblog: Visit my Daily Tips Weblog for a dose of Excel solutions, reviews on new Excel products, and updates of what's happening at MrExcel.
• Catch my appearance discussing Excel for Marketing Managers on the Anita Campbell Radio Show.
• See Bill's appearances on The Lab with Leo Laporte - free on Google Video .
  If you are looking for show notes from an episode, visit my complete list of TechTV appearances.




MrExcel Consulting can be hired to implement this concept, or many other cool applications, with your data.

MrExcel.com provides examples of Visual Basic procedures for illustration only, without warranty either expressed or implied, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability and/or fitness for a particular purpose. The Visual Basic procedures on this web site are provided "as is" and we do not guarantee that they can be used in all situations.





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MrExcel.com debuted on November 21, 1998. Last updated November 19, 2009. All contents copyright 1998 - 2009 by MrExcel.com.

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