Tips, tricks & tweaks : Excel 2007

Like its sibling, Excel 2007 received some considerable grief when it was unleashed to an unsuspecting public. Those who used Word just grumbled about the horrible Ribbon UI, and the fact that it looked different; however, those who used Excel on a regular basis suddenly found themselves staring at the screen and not knowing quite what to do. Everything seemed to have been moved, macro’s stopped working and the layout all added to the utter confusion.

Saying that, though, we’re a hardy bunch, and the office workers of 2007 knuckled down and re-learned their way around Microsoft’s spreadsheet application. Good for them! Although I, like every good manager, admittedly allocate responsibility for all things Excel onto my poor wife, there’s really little excuse not to get to grips with some worthy tips, tricks and tweaks for Excel 2007.

Manual Calculations

Excel is rather like that clever kid at school, you know, the one who could sums in his (or her) head and somehow manage to keep the answers there without being distracted by a passing seagull. Nevertheless, there are times when even Excel can get its knickers in a twist, those times usually being when there’s thousands of calculations going on in real time; after a while the grind begins to show, and Excel slows to the mathematical skills of a three year old. The solution to this is to disable automatic calculation, and here’s how:

Click on the ‘Formulas’ tab in the Ribbon. In the ‘Calculation’ section, click on the down arrow under ‘Calculation Options’. In the drop-down menu, select ‘Manual’.

When you input data, you will now have to press ‘F9’ to update the calculations, and Excel will have a sudden spurt of life.

Copy As Picture

Copying a chart, graph or a set of cells to an application outside of Excel can have some disastrous effects. Formatting goes all wonky (a technical term), the sections of the nicely presented 3D pie chart end up looking like the left-over’s from the Micro Mart lunch trolley and you begin to foam at the mouth. Never fear, though, simply consider copying the item as a picture instead.

Select the chart, graph or cell range. In the ‘Home’ tab, click the down arrow under ‘Paste’. Scroll down the drop-down menu until you reach ‘As Picture’, then extend the sub-menu and select ‘Copy As Picture’.

You can now paste into other applications without fear of bringing down the wrath of the formatting god.

A Change of Order

Normally, when entering data into Excel after pressing the Enter key, you move down to the cell below. This is great for when you’re entering data in a column, but what about when you need to enter data in rows?

Click the Office button (the round button in the top left). Click on the ‘Excel Options’ button at the bottom of the new window. Click the ‘Advanced’ link, and using the drop-down menu under the first item, ‘After pressing Enter, move selection Direction’, choose from Up, Down, Left or Right.

Custom Autofill

The Autofill function is great for completing rows or columns of sequential data; simply enter the first two values into the initial cells, select the cells and drag the fill handle to extend the rest of the cells. But, instead of just 1, 2, 3, and so on, you can add your own custom lists by doing the following:

Again, click the Office button, followed by ‘Excel Options’ at the bottom. Select the ‘Popular’ link, and in the first section click on the ‘Edit Custom Lists...’ button. Select ‘New List’ from the left window, and click in the ‘List entries’ box.

Start typing your new sequence, pressing Enter after each entry. When you’ve finished, click on the ‘Add’ button, followed by ‘OK’

There you have it, a custom sequential Autofill list, ready for you to use.

Creating A Named Range

You can quickly create a named range for a group of cells by doing the following: Highlight the cells you want named and click in the left of the Formula bar, and start typing in a name for the range.

The named range for those group of cells is now assigned and can be called via macro, or other function.

Developer Ribbon

If you’re into playing around with macro’s and form authoring tools, then you’re going to need to activate the Developer Ribbon. It’s really easy to do, and offers a wealth of otherwise hidden options. Here’s how:

Click on the Office button, followed by ‘Excel Options’. Select the ‘Popular’ link, and in the first section, tick the ‘Show Developer tab in the Ribbon’ box.

And there you have it, the Developer Ribbon, containing Form Controls, ActiveX Controls, XML Source and a Visual Basic Editor. Not for the faint of heart, but interesting nonetheless.

Add Hidden Features To The Quick Access Toolbar

Excel has a number of extra hidden features that are, by default, invisible to the Quick Access Toolbar - which is that bit along the very top of the Excel window. To include any, or all, of these hidden features, do the following:

Click on the Office button, followed by ‘Excel Options’, then select the ‘Customize’ link (American spelling, I know!).

In the drop-down menu, ‘Choose commands from’, select ‘Commands not in the Ribbon’ and pick the commands you’d like to include in you customization, followed by the ‘Add’ button in the middle of the two screens.

Besides creating new icons on the Quick Access Toolbar, adding these can help improve your productivity somewhat. Or, at the very least, give you access to a more personalized Excel experience.

Clipboard Pane

Another helpful boost for productivity is activating the Office Clipboard Task Pane. Once launched, it sits in the left hand side of the Excel window and gives you access to the entire contents and history of the clipboard, which is handy for multiple copy and pastes.

Select the ‘Home’ tab in the Ribbon then, in the ‘Clipboard’ section, click on the little diagonal arrow, located in the bottom right of the section. This will launch the Clipboard Pane and give you access to the set of options that lie within.

Excel At Spreadsheet Creation

As with all the office products, there are volumes of weighty tomes devoted to the ins and outs of the various features and offering extensive ‘how to’ guides. If you’re interested consider having a look at the likes of Step by Step Office Excel 2007 from Microsoft, or the Excel 2007 Bible by John Walkenbach. Both are available from Amazon, or any high street bookshop, and contain many useful guides and advice.

Other than that, go for good old trial and error, and the ever helpful, Google search. mm

Keyboard Shortcuts

Nothing impresses an onlooker like whizzing through the functions of Excel using only the keyboard. Of course, it also usually means you’ll end up being given more work, since you’re so cocky and you appear to know what you’re doing. Never mind, though. Here are a number of useful keyboard shortcuts, courtesy of Microsoft’s wonderful employees, that are guaranteed to get you noticed around the office. Maybe.