Excel Tips


Excel 2024: See Intermediate Calculations »

January 13, 2025

My friend Mike Girvin at the ExcelisFun YouTube channel has a great trick when explaining a long formula. Mike will select part of the formula in the formula bar and press F9 to calculate just that part of the formula. It is a cool trick, but you must remember to press Escape or you will hard-code the intermediate results in the formula.


Excel 2024: Check Performance in Excel »

January 9, 2025

A new feature debuted in 2023. Go to the Review tab and choose Check Performance. If you have a workbook that you've been using for years, you should check performance. It looks for excess formatting, unused cell styles, unneeded metadata that can slow your workbook down.


Excel 2024: Prevent Default Conversions »

January 3, 2025

Since the beginning of time, Excel has performed some annoying conversions. The conversions happened automatically when you imported from a CSV or Text file, Pasted from another application, or typed data in Excel.


Excel 2024: Checkboxes »

December 31, 2024

In late 2023, Microsoft added a checkbox icon to the Insert tab. As I write this in January 2024, the feature is still in beta. Adding a checkbox to a cell seems to be a special number format that displays True/False values as either checked boxes or unchecked boxes.


Excel 2024: New Scrolling Tricks  »

December 25, 2024

Excel now offers horizontal scrolling and smooth scrolling. Smooth scrolling is a popular improvement, particularly for people who store a lot of text in a cell.


Excel 2024: Use the Windows Magnifier »

December 23, 2024

Someone always asks how to use Windows Magnifier on my live Power Excel seminars, so I will write up the key steps.


Excel 2024: Surveys & Forms in Excel »

December 17, 2024

I often start my live Excel seminars off by asking you to point your cell phone camera at a giant bar code I have projected on the screen. That QR code leads to a three-question survey. Answers automatically flow into my Excel worksheet and those answers get used in the afternoon demo of 3D Maps.


Excel 2024: Format as a Façade »

December 13, 2024

Excel is amazing at storing one number and presenting another number. Choose any cell and select Currency format. Excel adds a dollar sign and a comma and presents the number, rounded to two decimal places.


Excel 2024: Fill in a Flash »

December 9, 2024

Excel 2013 added a new data-cleansing tool called Flash Fill.