spreadsheets
Organise
Make Holiday Shopping Simple With Our Gift-Planning Checklist
6:00AM Jason Fitzpatrick | One of the best ways to cut down on holiday stress is proper planning. Our gift-planning template makes it simple to plan, track and budget for your holiday purchases. More »
Money
Plan Your Retirement With Excel’s Goal Seek Function
10:30PM Kevin Purdy | Excel journeyman know you can plug in numbers and get formula results from a spreadsheet. Lesser known, however, is the ability to figure out what numbers are need to get a certain result, which works perfectly for retirement planning. More »
Work
3:00PM Angus Kidman | We’ve just past June 30, so it must be Week 26 of the year, right? The answer turns out to be “maybe”, especially if you’re running Excel. More »
Calculating The Week Number In Excel
3:00PM Angus Kidman | We’ve just past June 30, so it must be Week 26 of the year, right? The answer turns out to be “maybe”, especially if you’re running Excel. More »
Work
Save Time With Excel’s Double-Click Tricks
4:00AM The How-To Geek | If you have to deal with boring spreadsheets on a daily basis, every tiny little trick that saves you time is worth it—and the Pointy Haired Dilbert blog runs down a whole list of useful tricks. More »
Work
4:30PM Angus Kidman | Confused by Office 2007’s Ribbon? Some free spreadsheet guides might help you untangle the mess. More »
Office 2007 Mapping Workbooks Show Where Everything Went
4:30PM Angus Kidman | Confused by Office 2007’s Ribbon? Some free spreadsheet guides might help you untangle the mess. More »
Work
Exhibit Transforms Your Spreadsheet Into An Interactive Web Page
7:30AM Gina Trapani | Turn a boring old spreadsheet into an interactive web-based map, timeline, or table with some simple HTML using the free, open source Exhibit project. More »
Work
1:00PM Angus Kidman | Excel can perform very complicated analyses on data, but often the trickiest part of the exercise is deciding what approach will get you the results most efficiently. Microsoft’s Excel blog offers a useful summary of the pros and cons of two common data analysis approaches: building formulas or using the pivot table function. The author admits his own bias towards formulas, but pivot tables also have some advantages (particularly if you’re working with external data). If you’ve got your own rule of thumb for making choices in these kinds of situations, share it in the comments.
Analyzing Data: Functions or PivotTables [Microsoft Excel Blog]
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Choosing Between Functions And Pivot Tables In Excel
1:00PM Angus Kidman | Excel can perform very complicated analyses on data, but often the trickiest part of the exercise is deciding what approach will get you the results most efficiently. Microsoft’s Excel blog offers a useful summary of the pros and cons of two common data analysis approaches: building formulas or using the pivot table function. The author admits his own bias towards formulas, but pivot tables also have some advantages (particularly if you’re working with external data). If you’ve got your own rule of thumb for making choices in these kinds of situations, share it in the comments.
Analyzing Data: Functions or PivotTables [Microsoft Excel Blog]
More »
Work
12:00PM Angus Kidman | Producing a chart in Excel in Office 2007 doesn’t require much more than selecting a suitable set of numbers and clicking on the appropriate chart icon (on the Insert tab if you’re ribbon-phobic). However, making that chart look presentable can be a bit more work. On the official Excel blog, developer Robin Wakefield discusses some of the techniques available for making charts look more professional, serving as a useful reminder that under the automated processes there’s some serious tweaking possible if you have the time and inclination. (There’s also a very non-MS admission of how the introduction of Themes in Office 2007 might have created as many problems as it solved.)
How to Create a Professional Chart using Excel 2007 [Microsoft Excel Blog]
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Produce Better-Looking Charts In Excel
12:00PM Angus Kidman | Producing a chart in Excel in Office 2007 doesn’t require much more than selecting a suitable set of numbers and clicking on the appropriate chart icon (on the Insert tab if you’re ribbon-phobic). However, making that chart look presentable can be a bit more work. On the official Excel blog, developer Robin Wakefield discusses some of the techniques available for making charts look more professional, serving as a useful reminder that under the automated processes there’s some serious tweaking possible if you have the time and inclination. (There’s also a very non-MS admission of how the introduction of Themes in Office 2007 might have created as many problems as it solved.)
How to Create a Professional Chart using Excel 2007 [Microsoft Excel Blog]
More »
Work
Google Spreadsheets Can Validate Data
12:00AM Kevin Purdy | If you’re sharing or collaborating on a Google Spreadshet, you can now set columns to validate data types. Cells can enforce certain data types, require valid URLs or mandatory text, for example. [via Google Blogoscoped] More »
Fix
2:00PM Angus Kidman | Even on modern PCs, large spreadsheets can sometimes seem to run at the speed of sludge. The Microsoft Excel blog runs through how to deal with one common reason for this problem: hidden objects in the spreadsheet introduced via indiscriminate cutting and pasting. Check the post for details on how to hunt down and remove those unwanted items. (Note to Microsoft: the ribbon doesn’t seem to make this particular common task any easier!)
Hidden and Invisible Objects [Microsoft Excel Blog]
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Speed Up Excel Files By Removing Hidden Objects
2:00PM Angus Kidman | Even on modern PCs, large spreadsheets can sometimes seem to run at the speed of sludge. The Microsoft Excel blog runs through how to deal with one common reason for this problem: hidden objects in the spreadsheet introduced via indiscriminate cutting and pasting. Check the post for details on how to hunt down and remove those unwanted items. (Note to Microsoft: the ribbon doesn’t seem to make this particular common task any easier!)
Hidden and Invisible Objects [Microsoft Excel Blog]
More » 
