Stop Excel AutoCorrecting

Bill from the U.K. writes, On Excel 2000 it is impossible to put "ehr" in a cell - Excel changes it to her. I can fool it by concatenating individual letters (Concatenate("e" & "h" & "r") but why doesn't it like it ? It's not a spelling or format thing as far as I can see - is it a reserved word!?

This is an AutoCorrect feature. To stop Excel from doing this or any other similar change, follow these steps:

• From the Tools menu, select AutoCorrect Options
  
• On the first tab (AutoCorrect), in the "Replace text as you type" section, there is a long list with a scrollbar. Use the scrollbar to go down to thhrough the alphabetical list to the "e"'s.
• Find the entry for ehr. Click that entry to select it. Click Delete.
  

Stuart from the UK asks, Please can you tell me how I can change the column headers in Excel. Somehow they have been changed to represent numbers rather than letters. This is therefore making it extremely difficult when trying to write a formula.

You are seeing the old Microsoft "Row 1, Column 1" reference style. To turn this off and go back to the usual "Lotus 1-2-3" reference style, follow these steps:

• From the menu, select Tools
  
• Select Options
  
• In the Options dialog, select the General tab
  
• Uncheck R1C1 Reference Style
  
• Click OK
  

For all of our readers in the UK and Europe - make plans to attend this conference:

European Spreadsheet Risks Interest Group 4th annual conference
Theme: 'Building Better Business Spreadsheets - from the adhoc to the quality-engineered'
Trinity College in Dublin
Thursday 24 - Friday 25 July 2003
www.eusprig.org

Sponsored by ECDL, ICS, KPMG, ISACA UK