Contextures News

Excel Tables Quick Format

May 10, 2016

A quick way to create and format Excel tables, and more, in this week's Excel news. If there are topics that you'd like to see covered in future newsletters, please let me know.

 -  Debra -  ddalgleish @ contextures.com
     Visit my Excel website for many more tutorials and videos.

Excel Dashboards

Thanks for your enthusiastic feedback on the email that I sent about Mike Alexander's free Dashboard Tools last week. I hope you were able to grab a copy, and get it installed. If you aren't sure how to use the tools, I've make a short demo video, that you can watch on my website. That might help you get started.

If you want to learn more about Excel dashboards, attend one of Mynda Treacy's free Excel Dashboard webinars this week. You'll pick up some amazing tips and skills during the 1 hour presentation.

Mynda has also opened registration for her highly-rated Excel dashboard course -- it's only available a few times each year. You can get a 20% early bird discount if you sign up by Thursday May 19, at 8pm (Pacific time zone).

Create an Excel Table

Do you use Excel Tables in your workbooks? I love most things about them -- formulas fill down, and they expand automatically. That's a time-saver if you're using lists for in-cell drop downs -- you don't have to worry about changing the address, so new items show up.

You can create a list with a keyboard shortcut (Ctrl + L) or by going to the Insert tab, and clicking the Table command. Both of those options open the Create Table dialog box, and then insert a table in the default formatting style. After that, you can go to the Design tab, and pick a different style.

To save that extra formatting step, you can create a table from the Home tab:

• Select a cell in the list on the worksheet
• On the Ribbon's Home tab, click Format as Table
• Then, either click on one of the formats, or right-click, and choose one of the formatting options.

Tip: You can also right-click and choose a different formatting style as your default.

Excel Articles

Here are a couple of Excel articles I read recently, that you might find useful.

Excel Tips -- On Chandoo's blog, Hui has posted another collection of Excel tips. It will take you a while to go through all the "Tips, Tricks, Cheats and Hacks" in this list! The last tip reminded me of the Query Master sample file on my site, that lets you keep a catalog of queries (helpful if you don't have Power Query) (Level - Intermediate/Advanced)

Histogram Chart -- Annie Cushing shows how to create a histogram chart in Excel. She explains it in simple terms, and there's a video too.. (Level - Intermediate)

Just(in) For Fun: An extra link this week -- a "Learn Excel" video that's based on Justin Bieber's song, "Love Yourself". Crank up your speakers, and follow the lyrics to sing along! "Cause if you want to get the skills you need, Oh, baby, you should go and learn Excel"

More Excel Articles -- Visit my Excel website for many more tutorials and videos.

Math Blaster

Our first computer was a Mac -- one of the original ones in 1984. We started with MacPaint and MacWord, and eventually added more programs, including MultiPlan, and Excel, of course, when it came out.

I found this Math Blaster manual in my office last week, and it still has its $65.95 price sticker. These days, I can buy iPad apps that do about 100 times more, so why do I think twice before spending $1.99 for them? ;-)

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Recommended Excel Products

• Easy Data Entry: Add a popup list, to your worbook, so you can quickly enter items in a cell. The Data Validation Multi Select Premium (DVMSP) kit helps you set things up. Then, a list appears when you click a cell, so only valid items can be entered. Reduce data entry errors and typos. You can customize the list, to allow single or multiple selection, in specific columns.

• Excel Chart Tools: If you build complex charts, save time with Jon Peltier's Excel Charting add-in. Don't waste hours trying to format the chart yourself!

• See more recommended Excel products

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