Excel "Ask Me Anything" session with the Excel team

[RoryA]

From the Office blog:

Join us Friday, April 4 at 1:00pm PDT/4:00pm EDT for the first Excel-hosted AMA (what’s an AMA?) on reddit. We get great feedback and input about Excel through customer site visits, bringing customers to Microsoft, sharing on blogs and support forums, and more, but we haven’t interacted broadly in real-time–until now. We’ll start a thread on reddit at 12:50pm PDT/3:50pm EDT and we’d love to hear from you, so ask us anything!

This is not an opportunity that comes up too often, so make the most of it!

 

[Smitty]

Hey Rory,

I also put something about it here: Excel AMA on Reddit.

Anytime you get a chance to actually interact with the folks who build Excel it's well worth it!

 

[bwarren]

Thanks for posting this - I would love to ask a couple of questions to the Excel team but unfortunately I can not make the time slot as I ma teaching an Excel modelling course! Was hoping you could post them for me.

Things I have always wondered about Excel (in order starting with biggest concern:

1. Why does Excel not have an active spell check or auto correct - like Word? If Active Spell check is not possible why can not excel highlight the word that the spell check has picked out, right now you have no idea where the spell check error is located.
2. When using some of the data analysis tools like regression or histogram and you click on OUTPUT OPTIONS - OUTPUT RANGE. Why does Excel select the Input range and not the Output Range box - which would be the logical thing as I am going to specify the output location
3. Why when I build a chart and edit series data do I have to delete the range first before I can replace it with a new range?

There are many more but these are my top 3 little quirks.

Thanks Mr. Excel
...Bernie Warren

 

[Smitty]

Here's a link to the completed AMA:

We are the Microsoft Excel team - Ask Us Anything! : IAmA

Unfortunately, I got there after it was over, so I wasn't able to ask your questions, but I'm forwarding this link to the Excel team for you.

 

[arkusM]

The MicrosoftExcelTeam pointed to this site!

Yeah, we've had a bug around this for a while and we've fixed most of the problem by Excel 2013 (what version are you using?).
There are tools on the Web (and @byundt72's answer seems pretty good, though I've never used that tool) that will remove styles for ya.
Lastly, you can run this bit of VBA to remove the unused styles: http://www.mrexcel.com/forum/excel-questions/508248-excel-2007-remove-all-custom-styles.html
Cheers, -danb

Link:
MicrosoftExcelTeam comments on We are the Microsoft Excel team - Ask Us Anything!Ha, I wonder if there has been a bump in traffic...

 

[schielrn]

I wish I had seen this earlier, there are always questions/suggestions I would like to provide:

1. Functions based off cell colors or formats, but I would assume the logistics of it would be a nightmare, such as like sumcolor(A1:A10,"Yellow"), how do you get a user to enter the correct color or depending on shading and such.
2. My favorite thing is multi-variable lookups. I have created a UDF for my office to use. =LOOKUPS(ReturnRange,LookupRange1,LookupValue1,Optional LookupRange2, Optional LookupValue1,etc... for 10 options). It only performs exact matches and is set up just like sumifs, but to return the first text with matching criteria. This seems like a simple one and I know it is used a ton in my department.
3. Unhide multiple sheets at once.
4. ConcatenateRange(Range,Delimiter)
5. Split function
6. CountUnique(Range)
7. TrimToCharacter(Range,CharacterToTrimTo) i.e. =TrimToCharacter(A1,",") A1 = Doe, John Result = Doe
8. TrimAfterCharacter(Range,CharacterToTrimAfter) i.e. =TrimAfterCharacter(A1,",") A1 = Doe, John Result = John only because it also trims the leading space

These are just a few off the top of my head at the moment that I would love to be able to simplify the formula I have to build for them or not have to have a UDF.

 

[shift-del]

4. ConcatenateRange(Range,Delimiter)
[...]
6. CountUnique(Range)

Yeah, missing #4 always bothers me.
#6 should be extended to:
CountUnique(Range,SearchRange1,SearchCriteria1,SearchRange2,SearchCriteria2,...)

 

[mikerickson]

I've found it useful for a ConcatIf(compareRange, criteria, stringsRange, Delimiter)