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

Other Table techniques

This section offers a grab bag of techniques related to Tables. First, I’ll show you how to customize Table Styles and then how to transfer Table Styles that you have created between workbooks. After that, I’ll show you how to copy data from a Table and then choose between pasting it as a Table or as normal range of cells. Finally, I’ll compare how keyboard shortcuts that you might already use to navigate around worksheets can behave differently within Tables.

Customizing Table Styles

Ironically, the Table feature enables you to automate many repetitive tasks and yet will spawn new repetitive tasks for some users, meaning removing or changing Table Styles. There are only a couple of Table-related settings that you can manage on a global basis, which I’ll discuss in the upcoming Troubleshooting Tables section. Otherwise, you must customize your Table settings on a workbook-by-workbook basis.

Setting a default Table Style

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