Archive of Mr Excel Message Board

The message board at MrExcel was launched in June of 1999. Readers were encouraged to help other readers. From June of 1999 through January of 2002, approximately 40,000 messages were posted at the message board.

The original message board script was written by Matt Wright. Although it was worth every penny, it eventually could not keep up with the sheer volume of postings. We would lose weeks of posts for unknown reasons. Also, because every question or reply was stored as a separate file, any search had to try to read 40,000 individual HTML files and always timed out.

The original board was moved to a searchable CD and is available from our online store. We've organized the messages into general categories. We've tried to take out the unanswered threads, etc. In 2004, recognizing that Google can search, the HTML versions of the message board were added to the site.

We make no warranties about the suitability of the answers in this archive. Just as with the message board, many of the readers post the right answer, but sometimes a novice Excel person will post an answer that is incorrect. The regular readers will usually spot the mistake, but there are no guarantees that every question here is accurate.

My thanks to Scott Pierson, who tirelessly read through 12000 message threads in an effort to categorize them into meaningful categories.