Contextures News

Stop using Excel?

Dec 5, 2017

Excel event planner, quick copy, and more, in this week's Excel news. Visit my Excel website for many more tips, tutorials and videos.

Note: For some products mentioned below, I earn a commission on sales. That supports the free info on my site!

Event Planner

Whether or not you're planning any holiday events this year, go to the Holiday Planner page on my Contextures site, and download the sample file. There are several techniques in there that you can use in other types of workbooks -- the code is unlocked, so you can see how it all works (just a few simple macros, and lots of formulas).

For example, add a Custom Ribbon tab that appears when the workbook opens, to make navigation easy. I created simple icons, using arrows, circles and squares -- no art skills required!

There's a simple dashboard sheet too, and a calendar sheet that shows the events that you've listed on a different sheet. Set up a budget, and track your spending, and get organized for your holiday, or any other type of event.

Quick Copy

Do you use this mouse shortcut to quickly copy formatting? I was helping someone with conditional formatting, and we set up the rules in the first cell.

Then, to copy those rules to the cells below,

• Point to the Fill Handle, and press the RIGHT mouse button
• Drag down to the end of the list
• Release the mouse button, and click the command -- Fill Formatting Only.

The animated screen shot below shows the steps -- I find this quicker than using the Format Painter.

If you prefer to use the keyboard, there is a long list of Excel Keyboard Shortcuts on my website.

Interactive Dashboards

Don't miss this! Join Mynda Treacy for her free one-hour webinar, and learn how to build interactive dashboards in Excel, with or without Power BI tools. The live webinars are only available until Thursday, Dec. 7th, so click this link to register today.

If you want to learn even more, Mynda offers full dashboard courses too. You can get 20% off if you register by Thursday, December 7th. Click here for the Excel Dashboard Course or the Power BI Course

Excel Articles

Here are a couple of Excel articles that you might find useful or interesting.

Excel Complaints - Should you stop using Excel? A recent WSJ article said that some CFOs want their employees to use other software instead. This Bloomberg article says some Excel complaints are valid, but others are misguided. (Level - All)

Excel Viewer - Does anyone still use the free Office viewers? If you need one, get it soon - Microsoft is retiring them in April 2018. (Level - All)

Also see: My Excel Products || Excel Events || Previous Issues || Excel Humour

In the Big City

We don't go into Toronto too often, but I had an eye appointment there last week, so we made a day of it. First, we spent a couple of hours at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), and then went across the street for lunch, at the Gardiner Museum. The photo below shows the Exhibit Residences, across from the ROM, and the building looks like a few Excel workbooks that I've seen!

That's it for this week! If you have any comments or questions, send me an email.

NOTE: If you have trouble with the images or links in this email, paste this URL into your web browser, to see the online version: https://www.contextures.com/newsletter/excelnews2017/20171205ctx.html

Debra Dalgleish
ddalgleish @ contextures.com

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