Today's question from Ken: I've lost a slicer. I know it is somewhere on the worksheet, but how can I find it?
Thanks to Lou Pham, we have an answer. Use Home, Find & Select, Selection Pane. Select the object. Press F2 to bring it back into view.
Also covered today:
You can format a drawing shape and then set AutoShape Defaults on the right-click menu to change the color of future shapes.
Right-click the Shape in the gallery and choose Lock Drawing Mode to create many shapes with a single click for each shape.
If a worksheet becomes super-slow, check Home, Find & Select, Selection Pane to see how many shapes there are! With 1400 shapes to draw, Excel becomes very slow.
Use Hide All to make the spreadsheet fast again
If the active cell is scrolled out of view, Ctrl+Backspace brings it back again
Ken: Lost a shape. Display Selection Pane. Click in Selection Pane to select shape.
Press F2 to bring it into view.
Table of Contents
(0:00) Drawing many shapes quickly in Excel
(0:24) Slow worksheet due to 1400 shapes and Hide All
(1:17) How to find a lost slicer in Excel
(1:58) Ctrl+Backspace in Excel
(2:39) F2 to bring a shape back in to view
(3:43) Using Select Objects to select many objects in Excel
(3:56) Wrap-up
Thanks to Lou Pham, we have an answer. Use Home, Find & Select, Selection Pane. Select the object. Press F2 to bring it back into view.
Also covered today:
You can format a drawing shape and then set AutoShape Defaults on the right-click menu to change the color of future shapes.
Right-click the Shape in the gallery and choose Lock Drawing Mode to create many shapes with a single click for each shape.
If a worksheet becomes super-slow, check Home, Find & Select, Selection Pane to see how many shapes there are! With 1400 shapes to draw, Excel becomes very slow.
Use Hide All to make the spreadsheet fast again
If the active cell is scrolled out of view, Ctrl+Backspace brings it back again
Ken: Lost a shape. Display Selection Pane. Click in Selection Pane to select shape.
Press F2 to bring it into view.
Table of Contents
(0:00) Drawing many shapes quickly in Excel
(0:24) Slow worksheet due to 1400 shapes and Hide All
(1:17) How to find a lost slicer in Excel
(1:58) Ctrl+Backspace in Excel
(2:39) F2 to bring a shape back in to view
(3:43) Using Select Objects to select many objects in Excel
(3:56) Wrap-up
Transcript of the video:
How to locate a lost object or shape in Excel?
I was doing a webinar last night about some Excel oddities.
And I was talking about Home, Find & Select, the Selection Pane.
I had run into a friend who had a spreadsheet with exactly 3 shapes on it.
And very slowly, this spreadsheet became insanely slow.
So I went down to check it out.
What had been happening is someone at that company had, once a day had been copying the entire sheet and pasting it.
And when they did that, the three shapes on the sheet?
On day two, became 6 shapes.
And then the next day 9 shapes and then 12 shapes.
By the time I got there, it was true, if you scroll just one row, it took minutes.
It was impossible to work with, and when I went to Home, Find and Select, Selection Pane.
I realized that there were over 1400 shapes on the sheet.
And simply by clicking Hide All, the thing became very snappy and responsive again.
And then came the question for today's video.
Ken just today he said, “I've lost my slicer”.
I have a spreadsheet and somewhere on the spreadsheet is a slicer, but it's not in view.
He said even if you have, the selection here, how can you bring that back into view?
And so the first thing that I thought of, let's scroll, way way out here.
OK, so at this point I now have the cell pointer somewhere and I can't see it anymore.
To bring the cell pointer back into view, you would press Ctrl+Backspace.
Just a beautiful trick.
So I said, well, OK, let's see if Microsoft is consistent.
And just came out here and selected something, Home, Find and Select, Selection Pane.
I can select that textbox (or any object) by clicking on it.
But if I press Control+Backspace, It doesn't bring it back into view.
Tried right click, there's nothing there.
I tried double click, it just allows me to rename it - that doesn't work.
But what is absolutely amazing?
And thanks to Lou, who was in the audience at the webinar.
Lou said, try this: Click on it to select it and then instead of control backspace, press F2.
[ laughing ] F2?
You've got to be kidding me.
Why F2?
F2 is usually Edit.
And I knew that I had the exact same problem.
I have this very wide spreadsheet that you've seen me talk about before that I used to solve Wordle each day.
It goes out to column SDC over 12,000 columns.
And I know that somewhere in here there is an image, but I've lost that image.
So let's try it.
Home, Find and Select, Selection Pane.
There's the picture: Picture 3.
To bring that back into view, thanks to Lou, we press F2.
There it is all the way out in column BJB and now finally it has gone away.
The other really useful item under Home, Find and Select is the Select Objects tool.
Which allows you to select many objects just by drawing a box around them and then very easy to delete them all at once.
Well, this was going to be a simple little podcast talking about F2, but we also talked about: Formatting a drawing shape and then setting the autoshape defaults from the right click menu.
Right click the shape in the gallery and choose Lock Drawing Mode and then you can create many shapes just by clicking.
If your worksheet becomes super slow, check this Selection Pane to see how many shapes you have.
With 1400 Shapes, Excel becomes very slow, but you can use Hide All to make it fast again.
When the active cell is scrolled out of view, Control+Backspace brings it back.
If you've lost a shape, selected it in the Selection Pane and then F2 to bring it into view.
One of my Excel guru patches to Lou for knowing that awesome F2 trick.
I want to thank Ken for sending that question and I want to thank you for stopping by.
We'll see you next time for another netcast from MrExcel.
If you like these videos, please, down below, Like, Subscribe, and Ring the bell.
Feel free to post any questions or comments down in the comments below.
Now if you love Excel, check out my new courses on the Retrieve platform.
They are video courses but you just type what you're looking for.
It takes you right to that spot in the video and there's a complete transcript in several languages.
It's a super fast way to learn.
I was doing a webinar last night about some Excel oddities.
And I was talking about Home, Find & Select, the Selection Pane.
I had run into a friend who had a spreadsheet with exactly 3 shapes on it.
And very slowly, this spreadsheet became insanely slow.
So I went down to check it out.
What had been happening is someone at that company had, once a day had been copying the entire sheet and pasting it.
And when they did that, the three shapes on the sheet?
On day two, became 6 shapes.
And then the next day 9 shapes and then 12 shapes.
By the time I got there, it was true, if you scroll just one row, it took minutes.
It was impossible to work with, and when I went to Home, Find and Select, Selection Pane.
I realized that there were over 1400 shapes on the sheet.
And simply by clicking Hide All, the thing became very snappy and responsive again.
And then came the question for today's video.
Ken just today he said, “I've lost my slicer”.
I have a spreadsheet and somewhere on the spreadsheet is a slicer, but it's not in view.
He said even if you have, the selection here, how can you bring that back into view?
And so the first thing that I thought of, let's scroll, way way out here.
OK, so at this point I now have the cell pointer somewhere and I can't see it anymore.
To bring the cell pointer back into view, you would press Ctrl+Backspace.
Just a beautiful trick.
So I said, well, OK, let's see if Microsoft is consistent.
And just came out here and selected something, Home, Find and Select, Selection Pane.
I can select that textbox (or any object) by clicking on it.
But if I press Control+Backspace, It doesn't bring it back into view.
Tried right click, there's nothing there.
I tried double click, it just allows me to rename it - that doesn't work.
But what is absolutely amazing?
And thanks to Lou, who was in the audience at the webinar.
Lou said, try this: Click on it to select it and then instead of control backspace, press F2.
[ laughing ] F2?
You've got to be kidding me.
Why F2?
F2 is usually Edit.
And I knew that I had the exact same problem.
I have this very wide spreadsheet that you've seen me talk about before that I used to solve Wordle each day.
It goes out to column SDC over 12,000 columns.
And I know that somewhere in here there is an image, but I've lost that image.
So let's try it.
Home, Find and Select, Selection Pane.
There's the picture: Picture 3.
To bring that back into view, thanks to Lou, we press F2.
There it is all the way out in column BJB and now finally it has gone away.
The other really useful item under Home, Find and Select is the Select Objects tool.
Which allows you to select many objects just by drawing a box around them and then very easy to delete them all at once.
Well, this was going to be a simple little podcast talking about F2, but we also talked about: Formatting a drawing shape and then setting the autoshape defaults from the right click menu.
Right click the shape in the gallery and choose Lock Drawing Mode and then you can create many shapes just by clicking.
If your worksheet becomes super slow, check this Selection Pane to see how many shapes you have.
With 1400 Shapes, Excel becomes very slow, but you can use Hide All to make it fast again.
When the active cell is scrolled out of view, Control+Backspace brings it back.
If you've lost a shape, selected it in the Selection Pane and then F2 to bring it into view.
One of my Excel guru patches to Lou for knowing that awesome F2 trick.
I want to thank Ken for sending that question and I want to thank you for stopping by.
We'll see you next time for another netcast from MrExcel.
If you like these videos, please, down below, Like, Subscribe, and Ring the bell.
Feel free to post any questions or comments down in the comments below.
Now if you love Excel, check out my new courses on the Retrieve platform.
They are video courses but you just type what you're looking for.
It takes you right to that spot in the video and there's a complete transcript in several languages.
It's a super fast way to learn.
