Learn Excel 97 Through Excel 2007 from Mr. Excel: 377 Excel Mysteries Solved!

Learn Excel 97 through Excel 2007 from MrExcel

© 2008 by Bill Jelen

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Printed in USA by Malloy

First Printing: November 2007

Author: Bill Jelen

Editors: Kitty Jarrett

Cover Design: Shannon Mattiza, 6Ft4 Productions

Illustrations: Bob DAmico, Millenium Design Group

Cover Photo: Dallas Wallace, Paramount Photo

Published by: Holy Macro! Books, PO Box 82, Uniontown OH 44685

Distributed by Independent Publishers Group

ISBN 978-1-932802-27-6 (Print); 978-1-61547-402-8 (ePub)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2007922378

ABout The Author

In 1989, Bill Jelen took a job in a finance department to maintain a very expensive reporting tool. When he discovered on day one that this new tool did not work, he began to learn how to use a $299 spreadsheet program in ways no sane person would ever think to use it. To the manager who hired him, he now wants to admit that all the reports that allegedly came out of the $50K 4th GL reporting tool from 1989 through 1994 really were actually produced with Lotus 1-2-3 and, later, Excel.

Thinking he was the smartest spreadsheet guy he knew, Jelen launched MrExcel.com in 1998 and quickly learned that while he knew everything about taking 50,000 rows of mainframe data and turning them into a summary report, there were many people using Excel in many different ways. To all of the people who mailed in questions back in 1998 and 1999, Jelen thanks them for honing his spreadsheet skills. He now admits that he initially knew the answers to none of their questions, but secretly researched the answer before replying to their e-mails.

Today, MrExcel Consulting provides custom VBA solutions to hundreds of clients around the English speaking world. The MrExcel.com Web site continues to provide answers to 30,000 questions a year. In fact, with 250,000 answers archived, it is likely that the answer to nearly any Excel question has already been posted on the Web site’s message board.

Jelen enjoys getting out to teach a Power Excel seminars. There are so many features in Excel, that Jelen has never taught a seminar without learning something new from someone in the audience who reveals some new technique or shortcut. Mostly, though, Jelen learns what Excel annoyances are driving people crazy. The questions in this book are the types of questions Jelen hears over and over.

Jelen is the author of 18 books on Excel. You can see him regularly on The Lab with Leo Laporte on TechTV Canada and Google Video. He has produced over 500 episodes of the Learn Excel from MrExcel video podcast.

Jelen lives outside Akron, Ohio with his wife Mary Ellen, sons, Josh and Zeke, and two dogs.

Acknowledgments

This book and its predecessor have been honed by hundreds of people. More than 6 million chapters of the previous edition were downloaded. More than 250 podcasts were produced and downloaded by thousands each day. I’ve discussed tips in my Power Excel seminars for thousands of people. Along the way, people have added comments, suggestions, and new tips to make the book better.

This edition was edited by Kitty Jarrett. Cass White did the layout. Suat Ozgur provided countless macros to help format the text. Lora White provided production help and proofreading. The previous edition was edited by Linda Delonais, with special advice from Kat Chamberlin. Shannon Mattiza provided a great cover and publicity materials.

Some of the people who sent in suggestions are James Afflitto, Paul Allen, Andres Alvear, Loren Anderson, Neil Appleton, Ilia Asafiev, Doug Bailey, David Baker, Cliff Barnett, Wolfgang Bartel, Bill Bentley, A. Besis, Ron Binder, Alan Brady, Derek Brown, Alan Brown, Daniel Burke, Price Chadwick, Phil Chamberlain, Ronnie Chio, Richard Clapp, Dave Connors, Mark A Davis, Vlad De Rosa, Patrick Delange, Rob Donaldson, Adrian Early, Bryan Enos, Roger Evangelista, Nora Fazio, Linda Foster, Margarita George, Mark Grint, Sue Hartman, Peter Harvest, G. Russell Hauf, Dermot Hayes, Rich Herbert, Andrew Hinton, Steve Hocking, Mike Howlett, John Hulls, Odd Inge Halvorsen, Jerry Jacobson, Rick Johnson, Andrew Jones, David Komisar, Howard Krams, Ann LaSasso, Mark Leskowitz, Bei Lin, Sérgio Nuno Pedro Lopes, Stuart Luxmore, Carl MacKinder, Al Marsella, Giles Martin, Real Mayer, Wendy McCann, Bethany McCrea, Bill McDiarmid, James McKay, Henning Mikkelsen, Dan Miller, Richard Miller, Dan Miller, Mark Miller, Terry Moorehouse, Shawn Nelson, Susan Nicholls, Richard Oldcorn, Milind Padhye, E. Phillips, Pete Pierron, Bill Polen, Dave Poling, Brenton Prior, Blaine Raddon, Jerry Ransom, Bill Robertson, Julie Rohmann, Dave Rosenberger, Peter Rutter, Marty Ryerson, Dion Sanchez, Ricardo Santiago, Julie Scheels, Randal L. Schwartz, Ashokan Selliah, Wayne Shelton, Don Smith, Clay Sullivan, Bill Swearer, Brian Taylor, Sarah Thomas, Denise Thomson, Paul van den Berg, Dinesh Vijaywargiay, Tim Wang, Susan Wells, John Wendell, Douglas A. Wesney, and Bill Wood. Thanks to them and the many others who offered cool tips during a seminar.

Before the book went to print, I formed an advisory board of people to read and review the book. This global cross section provided excellent feedback. For example, around the world, the symbol that I call a pound sign (#) is also known as a hash sign or a number sign. In England, a pound sign is a currency symbol (£). Feedback from advisors indicated that my use of the term pound sign would cause confusion internationally. So, in this book, you will hear about number signs when the column is not wide enough for a value. This is just one example of hundreds of tweaks suggested by the advisory council. Thanks to the advisory council members: Paul Allen, Mr. Loren Anderson, Apostolos H. Besis from Greece, Wolfgang Bartel, Tim Bene, Ron Binder, Graham Booth, Derek Brown from Basingstoke UK, Andres Cabello, Mark Chambers, Natalie Chapman, Jack Chopper, Richard Clapp, Patrick Delange, Bill Fuhrmann, Marc Gershberg, Cheri Grady of Seneca MO, Peter Harvest, Karen Havens, Dermot Hayes, Andrew Hinton, Steve Hocking, Howard Kaplan from Personal Computer Training Services of LI, Ari Kornhauser, Stuart Luxmore, Al Marsella, Matt, Susan Miller-Wells, Terry Moorehouse, Susan Nichols, Dara Nolan, Dolores Oddo, Richard Oldcorn from Sydney, Jeremy Oosthuizen, Stephen Pike from Beyond Reporting, Bill Polen, Sandra Renker, Bill Robertson, Julie Rohmann, Dion Sanchez, Lorna A. Saunders, Bryony Seume, Sarah Thomas, Mark Tittley, Mr. Andrew Tucker, Rebecca Weing, and Dick Yalmokas.

I always thank Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston for inventing the spreadsheet in the first place. Without them, the computer industry would not be where it is today. At Microsoft, David Gainer and his team keep adding new features to Excel. Thanks to those folks who dramatically improved Excel 2007.

Thanks to the entire crew at The Lab with Leo, including Leo Laporte, Matt Harris, Mike Lazazzera, Sean Carruthers, Ryan Yewell, and Kate Abraham.

Tracy Syrstad managed MrExcel Consulting while I was writing this book. My sister Barb Jelen likely packed and shipped the book if you ordered it directly from MrExcel.com.

Thanks to Josh Jelen, Zeke Jelen, and Mary Ellen Jelen!

Foreword

I am a comic book superhero.

At least, I play one at work. As the mighty man of macro, I have the coolest job in town: playing MrExcel, the smartest guy in the world of spreadsheets.

Well, yes, that is a lot of hype. I am not really MrExcel. In fact, there are so many different ways to do the same thing in Excel that I am frequently shown up by one of my own students. Of course, I then appropriate that tip and use it as my own!

I have incorporated some of these discoveries in a pretty cool 3.5-hour seminar titled Power Excel Tips. This is amazing stuff—like pivot tables, filters, and automatic subtotals. I love to be in front of a room full of accountants who use Excel 40+ hours a week and get oohs and ahhhs within the first few minutes. I have to tell you, if you can make a room full of CPAs ooh and ahh, you know that you’ve got some good karma going. At that point, I know it will be a laugh-filled session and a great morning.

One of these classes, which I was presenting at the Greater Akron Chamber, provided the Genesis moment for this book. One of the questions from the audience was about something fairly basic. As I went through the explanation, the room was silent as everyone sat in rapt attention. People were interested in this basic tip because it was something that affected their lives every day. It didn’t involve anything cool. It was just basic Excel stuff. But it was basic Excel stuff that a room full of pretty bright people had never figured out.

Think about how most of us learned Excel. We started a new job where they wanted us to use Excel. They showed us the basics of moving around a spreadsheet and sent us on our way. We were lucky to get 5 minutes of training on the world’s most complex piece of software!

Here is the surprising part of this deal. With only 5 minutes of training, you can use Excel 40 hours a week and be productive. Isn’t that cool? A tiny bit of training, and you can do 80% of what you need to do in Excel.

The problem, though, is that there are lots of cool things you never learned about. Microsoft and Lotus were locked in a bitter battle for market share in the mid-1990s. In an effort to slay one another, each succeeding version of Excel or Lotus 1-2-3 offered incredibly powerful new features. This stuff is still lurking in there, but you would never know to even look for it. My experience tells me that the average Excel user is still doing things the slow way. If you learn a just couple of these new tips, you could save 2 hours per week.

This book talks about 377 of the most common and irritating problems in Excel. You will find each of these 377 items (which you have been stumbling over ever since your 5 minutes of training) followed by the solution or solutions you need to solve that problem. A lot of these topics stem from questions sent my way in seminars I’ve taught. They may not be the coolest tips in the whole world, but if you master even half of these concepts, you will be smarter than 95% of the other Excellers in the world and will certainly save yourself several hours per week.

Each of the 377 topics in this book presents a problem and its solution. There are plenty of books that go through all of Excel’s menus in a serial fashion. The trouble with those books is that you have no clue what to look up when you are having a problem. No one at my dinner table has ever used the word concatenation, so why would anyone ever think of looking up that word when they want to join a first name in column A with the last name in column B?

Despite its size, this book is a quick read. You can probably skim all 377 topics in a couple of hours to get a basic idea of what is in here. When you face a similar situation, you can find the appropriate topic, apply it to your own problem, and you should be all set.

This book takes a different approach than others I have tried to use. I am MrExcel, but I am hopelessly clueless with PhotoShop. Wow! This is an intimidating program. I own a ton of books on PhotoShop. There must be a bazillion toolbars in there. Most books I pick up tell me to press the XYZ button on the ABC toolbar. I can’t even begin to figure out where that toolbar is. I hate those books. So, my philosophy here is to explain the heck out of things. If you find a topic in this book in which I tell you to do something without explaining how to do it, please send me an e-mail to yell at me for not being clear.

How to Use This Book

Each topic starts with a problem and then provides a strategy for solving the problem. Some topics may offer additional details, alternate strategies, results, gotchas, and other elements, as appropriate to the topic. Each chapter wraps up with a summary and a list of any Excel commands or functions used in the chapter. Finally, at the end of each topic, you’ll find a section labeled Excel 97-2003. If you are using Excel 97, Excel 2000, Excel 2002 from Office XP or Excel 2003, you can easily do the techniques in this book. Most of the dialogs look the same, but getting to them may require different commands. Each topic’s directions include the Excel 2007 commands. To complete the same task in an earlier version of Excel, use the commands listed in the Excel 97-2003 section.

In Excel 2007, Microsoft has organized the ribbon into a series of tabs: the Home tab, the Insert tab, the Page Layout tab, and so on. Within each tab, Microsoft has organized icons into various groups. On the Home tab, for example, there are groups for Clipboard, Font, Alignment, Number, Styles, Cells, and Editing. In this book, if I want you to choose the Delete icon from the Cells group on the Home tab of the ribbon, I say, Choose Home – Delete. The other option is to say Choose Home – Cells – Delete, but you never actually choose Cells; it is merely a label, so I generally do not mention the group when I write about a command.

Gotcha: When you are working on a chart, Excel adds three new tabs under the Chart Tools heading, as shown in Figure 1. (These tabs do not appear when you are not working with charts.) You might see Excel Help referring to the Chart Tools | Design tab. I won’t don’t do this. There can only be only one Design, Layout, or Format tab available at any given time. If the topic is talking about charts, I am going to assume that you are actually working on a chart, and I will refer to the Layout tab instead of the Chart Tools | Layout tab.

Figure 1

This book refers to the Design, Layout and Format tabs.

Gotcha: Some of the icons on the ribbon tabs have two parts: the main icon and a dropdown. You can see the dividing line between the two parts only when you hover the mouse over the icon. When you need to click the icon itself, this book uses the name of the icon. For example, when you need to select the Paste icon from the Home tab, the text says to choose Home – Paste. When you need to select something from a dropdown under an icon, the text specifies dropdown; for example, when you need to select Paste Values from the Paste dropdown, this book tells you to choose Home – Paste dropdown – Paste Values.

In addition to the tabs across the ribbon, many dialog boxes contain a number of tabs. For example, if you click the Print Titles icon on the Page Layout tab, Excel displays the Page Setup dialog, which has four tabs as shown in Figure 2. If I want you to choose the Header/Footer tab of the dialog, I might write, Select Page Layout – Print Titles – Header/Footer – Custom Header. Or, I might say, From the Page Layout tab of the ribbon, select Print Titles. In the Page Setup dialog, choose the Header/Footer tab and then click Custom Header.

Figure 2

Select Page Layout – Print Titles – Header/Footer – Custom Header.

Gotcha: In newer dialog boxes, Excel has abandoned tabs across the top and used a left navigation instead. This is particularly true in the Formatting dialog, in the Excel Options dialog, and in the Trust Center dialog. For such dialogs, I sometimes write to choose Fill from the left pane of the Format Data Series dialog, but I also sometimes write Choose Layout – Format Selection – Fill – No Fill. In this case, Layout is the ribbon tab, Format Selection is the icon, Fill is the name of the category along the left pane, and No Fill is the option to choose.

Figure 3

Use the Page Layout tab of the ribbon to get to this dialog box.

I’m also getting to the point in life where I can’t see as well as I used to. Rather than show you the entire Excel window, I zoom in and show only the relevant portion of the screen in the figures. This will make the figures big enough to see.

This book uses the term press to refer to keyboard keys (for example, press Enter, press F2). It uses the term click to refer to buttons and other items you click onscreen (for example, click OK, click the Paste icon). It uses the term select or choose to refer to selections from the ribbon and option buttons and check boxes within dialogs (for example, select the Home tab, select the No Fill option).

Additional Resources

The files used in the production of this book are available for download at www.mrexcel.com/learn2007files.html. All 277 topics in the original edition were eventually covered on the free MrExcel podcast. I suspect that by the end of 2008, all the chapters in this book will also be covered by the podcast. Visit www.mrexcel.com/podcast.shtml for details on how to get the podcasts for free.

The Excel

Environment

PART

1

Find Icons on the Ribbon

Problem: The new ribbon user interface might be great for people new to Excel, but I knew the old Excel perfectly well. Why did Microsoft put pivot tables on the Insert tab instead of the Data tab, where they belong?

Strategy: You can use one of many available third-party tools to assist with the transition.

At MrExcel.com, I offer a free tip card that maps each item on the Excel 2003 menu to a tab on the Excel 2007 ribbon. If you have a color printer, download the card and print it for free.

Lin Jie was the first to solve the Excel 2007 ribbon confusion. His Classic Excel Menu add-in will add a new menu tab to the Excel 2007 ribbon. This tab replicates the Excel 2003 menu. The add-in sells for $16.95. Versions are also available for Word 2007 and PowerPoint 2007.

Figure 4

The Classic Excel Menu add-in brings the File, – Edit, – View, – and Insert menus back to Excel 2007.

The second impressive utility is the Toolbar Toggle add-in. This add-in offers a lite version similar to the Classic Excel Menu add-in and also offers a full-featured utility that brings back the Excel 2003 menu and toolbars, as well as the ability to customize the toolbars. If you were a fan of customizing toolbars in Excel 2003, you will love the functionality of this product.

With both of these add-ins, you can work in the Excel 2003 menu, and then switch over to the Excel 2007 menu when you need to access new features.

Find links to these utilities as well as any others that become available at www.mrexcel.com/excel2007.html.

Summary: You can ease the transition to Excel 2007’s ribbon interface by using a third-party solution.

Go Wide

Problem: I can’t find anything on the Excel 2007 ribbon.

Strategy: Invest in a wide-screen monitor. The Office 2007 experience dramatically improves at a 1440x900 resolution.

When you reduce the size of the Excel window, Excel automatically starts consolidating ribbon options into smaller icons and then groups. Figure 5 shows detail of the Home tab of the ribbon at normal size.

Figure 5

On a typical monitor, Excel uses many icons.

If the Excel window gets smaller, more and more icons are grouped into dropdown menus, as shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6

The icons are grouped into dropdowns at smaller window sizes.

If you open Excel 2007 on a 1440x900 monitor, as shown in Figure 7, you will be able to see more icons, as well as descriptive text for many of the icons. In Figure 7, for example, the Wrap Text icon (which has never existed in previous versions of Excel) is now labeled.

Figure 7

On a widescreen monitor, you can see more icons instead of dropdowns.

The price of widescreen monitors has dropped in recent years. In the summer of 2007, I found widescreen monitors on sale at the office supply chains for around $159. Purchasing one of these monitors is a worthwhile investment to help make your Office 2007 experience better. Not only does a widescreen monitor make the ribbon easier to work with, but it enables you to see 21 normal-sized worksheet columns.

Additional Details: If you reduce the Excel window down to about four columns wide, Microsoft assumes that you can not possibly be working in something that small, and it hides the ribbon completely. (see Figure 8)

Figure 8

When the window is smaller than four columns wide, the ribbon disappears completely.

Summary: You can make your Excel window as wide as possible to see the full set of ribbon icons.

Minimize the Ribbon to Make Excel

Feel a Bit More Like Excel 2003

Problem: The ribbon is taking up a lot of real estate at the top of my screen. It distracts me. I spend 99% of my Excel time in the grid, so I don’t need to see the ribbon all the time.

Strategy: You can minimize the ribbon, reducing it to a simple line of Home, Insert, Page Layout, Formulas, and so on, as shown in Figure 9.

Figure 9

You can minimize the ribbon to a single line.

To minimize the ribbon, you can either press Ctrl+F1 or right-click anywhere on the ribbon and then choose Minimize the Ribbon.

Additional Details: When you either click a ribbon tab with the mouse or use an Excel 2007 shortcut key, the ribbon will temporarily reappear. When you select the command from the ribbon, it will minimize again.

Double-click any ribbon tab to permanently exit minimized mode.

Alternate Strategy: Excel also offers a full screen mode. If you choose View – Full Screen, Excel will hide the ribbon, the ribbon tabs, and the Quick Access toolbar. You can press the Esc key to exit this mode.

Summary: Minimizing the ribbon frees up more space for the grid.

Commands Discussed: Minimize the Ribbon; Ctrl+F1; View – Full Screen

The Office Development Team Likes

the Artist Formerly Known as Prince

Problem: I’ve searched all the ribbon tabs, but I cannot find a Print icon or a Save icon. What happened to all my File menu favorites?

Strategy: The round circle to the left of the Home tab is what was the File menu in earlier versions of Excel. Many important commands are hidden behind this nameless menu item (see Figure 10).

Figure 10

Menu items like Save are hidden behind this icon.

I had the opportunity to use five different beta versions of Excel 2007. For the first several versions, the round icon was a menu named File. Somewhere along the line, someone at Microsoft decided to replace the word File with an unintelligible symbol.

It wouldn’t be so bad if nothing important were behind the symbol. But important tasks such as Save, Print, Close, and Excel Options are in this menu formerly known as File.

I’ve checked out a few books on Excel 2007. Some are calling this the Orb. Some are calling it File or Start. My rule is to refer to this menu as the Office Icon. In this book, if I say to use Office Icon – Close, I am telling you to use the Close option on the Office Icon menu.

Additional Details: The very first time you open Excel 2007, the Office Icon pulses from white to orange. Did you notice this? This was Microsoft’s only indication that there is something important under the icon.

Summary: Important items are under the Office Icon, the menu formerly known as File.

The Paste Icon Is Really Two Icons

Problem: When I click Paste, Excel 2007 does a regular paste instead of offering to paste only values. What’s the deal?

Figure 11

The Paste icon on the Home ribbon tab.

Strategy: Many icons on the ribbon have an upper half and a lower half, but you can see the dividing line only if you hover above the icon (see Figure 12).

Figure 12

Click the upper half of the icon to paste.

You can click the upper half of Paste to invoke the Paste command. The lower half leads to a larger menu with various paste options, as shown in Figure 13.

Figure 13

Click the lower half of the icon to access a menu.

When you need to click the Paste icon, this book says to select Home – Paste. When you need to select something from the Paste dropdown, such as Paste Values, this book tells you to select Home – Paste dropdown – Paste Values.

Additional Details: In addition to Paste, several other icons have an upper (icon) half and a lower (dropdown) half: