Microsoft Excel 2007,
Adding Due Date Alerts
Adding Due Date Alerts
We all use Excel for keeping track of personal finance—paying bills, for instance—wouldn’t it be great if Excel could alert you of an approaching due date?
Here’s how you do it:
1. Select the cell that contains the due date and go to the Home tab.
2. Click the Conditional Formatting option in the Styles group and choose Manage Rules. This will invoke the Rules Manager dialog box.
3. Click on the New Rule button
4. Choose Format Only Cells that Contain
5. In the Edit the Rule Description area, make sure the first drop down list has Cell Value. The second drop down should be set to Less Than
6. In the formula area enter =Today()+7
7. Click the Format button and in the colour drop down choose any colour you like.
8. Here, if the due date is within the next seven days, it changes to the colour you chose. You can create one more rule and replace the formula with Today() and changing the colour to say Red, so if the date is past due it will appear red.
Changing Gridline Colours
By default, the gridlines are a boring gray, and some people might want to change the colour to, say, black or blue. This how it is done:
1. Click the Office button and choose Excel Options.
2. Click Advanced in the left column and scroll through the right list until you see the Display options.
3. Ensure the Show Gridline check box is selected. Then using the Gridline Color drop-down list, choose the colour you want to use and click OK.
4. When you want to hide the gridlines you can simply deselect the Show Gridline check box
Don’t Recalculate Now
When you change any cell in a worksheet, Excel automatically recalculates the whole worksheet to keep it up to date. But if you have a huge worksheet or terribly slow computer, this behaviour will hog more time to calculate than to enter data. One way to get over it is to change the default behaviour to manual worksheet calculation:
1. Click Office button and choose Excel Options
2. In the left side column, click on Formulas and scroll to Calculation Options in the right side column.
3. Select the Manual radio button which ensures the workbook calculation is done manually.
4. Click OK to complete. For manual calculation, hit [F9] for the final changes to reflect in the workbook.
Error Checking
Excel checks each workbook for errors of various kinds and these settings can be altered if you like.
1. Click on the Office button, then click the and choose Excel Options
2. In the left side column, click on Formulas and select Enable Background Error Checking
3. You can select or deselect the rules in the Error Checking Rules area as per your needs
Changing [Enter] Behaviour
Normally, when you hit [Enter] in Excel, the cursor moves down but you can change that behaviour. This tip comes handy when your Excel work spans horizontally and not vertically.
1. Click on the Office button and choose Excel Options to open the Options dialog box.
2. In the left side column, select Advanced and look for Editing Options.
3. The first option in Editing Options section of the dialog box determines whether the cursor should move or not, if you select Move Selection.
4. Then select After Pressing Enter Move selection and select the appropriate direction in the drop-down menu.
Displaying Full Screen
There may be times when you want to see as much of the spreadsheet as possible. Switching to full-screen mode is a good option and can be used as an add-on to zooming.In the View tab on the Ribbon, select Full Screen in the Workbook View section. When done, simply click the on-screen button to restore or press [Esc].
Viewing Multiple Worksheets At The Same Time
At times you might have to view different worksheets of the same workbook simultaneously—this can be achieved by a small trick as soon below.
1. Open a single workbook.
2. Go to the View tab and choose New Window under Window. Excel will open the same workbook in another new window.
3. Now, on the View Tab of the ribbon, click Arrange All in the window group and arrange both the windows to your liking.
4. In each window, select a different worksheet to view them together.Saving With A Thumbnail
When you use the open dialog box to open any Excel workbook, some files display a preview of the workbook and some don’t. If you want all your Excel files to show a preview you need to save the preview when closing the file. Here’s how:
1. First open the workbook and select Office > Prepare > Properties. Excel will display some of the workbook’s properties.
2. Click the Document Properties drop-down list (found at top-left corner of the visible properties) and choose Advanced. Here, make sure the Summary tab is selected.
3. Select the Save thumbnails for all Excel Workbooks check box and click OK to close the properties dialog box.
Cycling Through Font Colours
Excel provides a tool you can use to cycle though the available font colours. Though it isn’t provided by default, you can add it to the Quick Access toolbar.
1. Click on the Office button and choose Excel Options.
2. Click the Customize option in the left side column and in the Choose Command From drop-down list select Commands not in Ribbon.
3. In the list of commands select Cycle Font Colour tool and click the add button to add it to the right hand side dialog box.
4. The Cycle Font Colour tool will be available on the Quick Access toolbar.
Finding Cells By Colour
This can be achieved with the simple find and replace dialog box. This is how it is done;
1. Press [Ctrl] + [F] to invoke the Find & Replace dialog box and then select the find tab.
2. With nothing in the Find What box, click on the Format button, which will open the format dialog box.
3. In the Format dialog box, go to the Fill tab and then select the appropriate colour.
4. Click on OK to close the Format dialog and then choose Find All. The address of all the cells with that particular colour will be listed in the find and replace box.
5. Select one and then press [Ctrl] + [A] to select all other similar coloured cells.
Indent Cell Contents
There might be time when you need to indent contents in a cell—like when putting down things below a main heading. The easy way is to insert spaces, but it’s just tacky.
Here’s how you indent right:
1. Select the cells you want to format.
2. Click the small icon at the bottom right in the Alignment group on the Home tab. This will invoke the Format cells dialog box
3. In the horizontal drop-down list select Left (Indent) or Right (Indent), depending on how you want to indent.
Protecting Worksheet Names
In a collaborative environment where workbooks are shared, you might want to protect worksheet names. Here’s how:
1. In the Review tab, choose Protect workbook in the Changes group. This will open the Protect Structure and Windows dialog box.
2. Select the Structure check box and enter a password in the Password box.
3. Click on OK. Excel will prompt to re-enter the password; do so.
Sort Data In A Protected Worksheet
Once you protect a worksheet, Excel stops users from executing variety of tasks on the worksheet data. You can still allow you colleagues to do some basic operations and yet have the sheet protected:
1. Under the Review tab, select Protect Sheet.
2. At the bottom of the dialog box you will see long list of check boxes. Checking each box will allow the user that particular operation. This way, you can specify what all functions the users are permitted to perform on the worksheet.Source URL: http://gbejadacosta.blogspot.com/2010/11/microsoft-excel-2007-adding-due-date.html
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