Book Image

Exploring Microsoft Excel’s Hidden Treasures

By : David Ringstrom
Book Image

Exploring Microsoft Excel’s Hidden Treasures

By: David Ringstrom

Overview of this book

David Ringstrom coined the phrase “Either you work Excel, or it works you!” after observing how many users carry out tasks inefficiently. In this book, you’ll learn how to get more done with less effort. This book will enable you to create resilient spreadsheets that are easy for others to use as well, while incorporating spreadsheet disaster preparedness techniques. The time-saving techniques covered in the book include creating custom shortcuts and icons to streamline repetitive tasks, as well as automating them with features such as Tables and Custom Views. You’ll see how Conditional Formatting enables you to apply colors, Cell icons, and other formatting on-demand as your data changes. You’ll be empowered to protect the integrity of spreadsheets and increase usability by implementing internal controls, and understand how to solve problems with What-If Analysis features. In addition, you’ll master new features and functions such as XLOOKUP, Dynamic Array functions, LET and LAMBDA, and Power Query, while learning how to leverage shortcuts and nuances in Excel. By the end of this book, you’ll have a broader awareness of how to avoid pitfalls in Excel. You’ll be empowered to work more effectively in Excel, having gained a deeper understanding of the frustrating oddities that can arise daily in Excel.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
1
Part 1: Improving Accessibility
6
Part 2:Spreadsheet Interactivity and Automation
12
Part 3: Data Analysis

Summary

In this chapter, you learned how to ensure that your spreadsheets are backwards compatible with Excel 2021 and earlier. The rolling release of new features across three channels presents a special challenge for Microsoft 365 users looking to take advantage of the rapid pace of improvements. You can determine if other users have the same functionality as you --or better --by comparing the build and version numbers between your copy of Excel and theirs.

You also learned about one of the biggest nuances in Excel, the difference between Enter mode and Edit mode, so that you can now spend less time fighting with Excel when you need to make changes to formulas and cell references. We also looked at an odd quirk of the Sparklines feature where the order in which you carry out steps will predicate whether you can complete a task or not. Fortunately, this is an outlier in Excel—I don’t know of any other feature that has this curious restriction.

If circular references...