worksheet

A reader asked if there was any formula in Excel that would convert a date shown in the European format of day-month-year to the U.S. version of month-day-year. Technically, it may not be necessary to do this. Excel maintains dates as numeric values ... and displays them using various formats. If the dates are numeric values in your worksheet, then you can simply change the format and the dates will be displayed in the U.S. format. The day you see in a worksheet could instead be a text value rather than a numeric value. To see if the date is truly an Excel date or text value, you can change the ... (view more)

In a recent article, I told you some of my favorite tips and tricks to use in MS Word when looking to save time and keystrokes. Get ready for some of my favorite timesaving tips and tricks to use in MS Excel. Want to copy an entire worksheet? Simply ... select the tab of the worksheet. Hold down the Ctrl key and drag the tab of the worksheet to either the left or right. You will see what looks appears to be a little sheet of paper with a plus sign on it Drag the little sheet wherever you wish to copy it. Release the mouse and you are finished! Want to clear cells in a worksheet? I know that you ... (view more)

Many times it is necessary to protect worksheet information that is used and shared with others. Private information should be protected from unauthorized access. An expense report worksheet with complex formulas should be protected so that someone ... cannot unintentionally destroy the design of the report. Excel proves several ways to control and restrict the use of workbooks, worksheets and the data they contain. Protection can be established in a variety of ways depending on the extent of control that is needed. Below you will bee the levels of protection that are available to you: File Saves ... (view more)

Data that is stored in one section of a worksheet is often needed in other sections of the same worksheet, other worksheets within the same workbook, or even different workbooks. Excel makes it easy for you to create dynamic or active links between ... cells, whether they are in the same or different workbooks. Linking data eliminates the need to repeat information in several files. Links are often used to automate worksheets that share similar values. For example, several worksheets might use an interest rate figure that is constantly changing. Instead of updating the interest rate in each ... (view more)

Each new Excel workbook starts out with three blank worksheets, and an index tab at the bottom of each worksheet identifies the sheet by name. You can add a new worksheet or delete an existing worksheet and rename or rearrange worksheets to suit ... your whim. A fourth tab is the Insert Worksheet tab. Click it and a new worksheet is created instantly as well as a fifth Insert Worksheet tab that appears just in case you want to keep adding worksheets. In Workbooks with many worksheets, you will not be able to see all the sheet names without using the four arrow buttons to the left of the sheet ... (view more)

You don't have to have two separate pages, one from MS Word and one from Excel, to display text and numbers in your document. This is because Word and Excel are built to work together, so that you can seamlessly bring your data from Excel into Word. ... Using Excel to generate your numeric data opens the door to more sophisticated calculations and numeric formatting. You can use all the features of Excel for making calculations, rather than being limited to the few formulas available on Word's Table | Formula command. Copying between Excel and Word uses the same techniques you know already: Open ... (view more)

When you begin a new workbook, the "active cell" is located at the top-left corner of the worksheet (in Cell A1). To create your worksheet or make changes to it, you must move around in it. Getting around in a worksheet quickly is the mark of an ... experienced Excel user. You want to learn the quickest way to get from place to place so you can use your time more efficiently. Keyboard Shortcuts for Moving Around in a Worksheet You can move around in the worksheet by pressing the arrow keys and other direction keys on the keyboard. When you use the keyboard to move around in the ... (view more)

When you are creating small worksheets, you don't think about changing the direction of the page, but some worksheets and charts require the page to be wider than it is tall. Similar to landscape paintings that typically are wider than they are ... tall, landscape page orientation enables you to fit wider items on the page. A page that is taller than it is wide has what is called portrait orientation, like portraits of people. Scaling lets you specify a certain percent to reduce or enlarge your worksheet. The Fit to Page feature allows you to force the worksheet to print on a specific number of ... (view more)

In Print Preview, you might notice that a single column of your worksheet flows onto a second page. Although you can scrunch it in by reducing the scaling percent or by turning the orientation to landscape, sometimes all you have to do is adjust the ... margins (I.E.: the distance between the edge of the paper and the printed information). On the other hand: in Print Preview Mode, you might notice that a small worksheet looks awkward in the top-left corner of the page because the rest of the page is empty. You can center the small worksheet to the page without having to adjust the margins. You ... (view more)