If Rolls Royce says it’s “Ok to turbo”, then it’s “Ok to turbo”…

…if the Boss says it’s “Ok to Macro”, then it’s “Ok to macro”!

There was a time (for those of us old enough to remember) when a new word hit the motorcar market: “Turbo”. Some of us know it’s slang for “turbine” referring to the part that forces air into the engine rather than merely allowing air to be sucked into the engine resulting in a serious increase in engine speed and power.

For the boy (and girl) racers, they thought they’d died and gone to heaven, for manufacturers pushing an engine to the limits of it’s endurance sometimes resulted in lots of smoke pouring from under the bonnet, combined with the dashboard lit up like a Christmas tree.

So the upside, more power, MUCH more power, the downside, more to go wrong, and when it did, VERY wrong!

Now, where IS he going with this I hear you ask? Macros.

Like Turbos to the “old skool”, Macros to the office Excel user is something we all know is there but some are a little vague about what it does and what the pros and cons are. So if you’re a hardened programmer (and you know who you are!) being reminded of the basics you learned long ago might irritate you but I respectfully submit it’s good to return to basics some times.

If you’re a code-virgin (you also will know if you are!), let me take you through the fundamentals. Don’t worry, it’s not illegal or immoral but might be fattening on account of how much time you might spend in front of the computer.

Rule 1: ANYTHING you can do in Excel (and the other office products for that matter) can be undertaken with a MACRO.

Rule2: ANYTHING done by a macro cannot be undone with the undo buttons.

Rule 3: ALWAYS work with a copy, never an original!

Got all that?!

In a nutshell, you can “teach” or program Excel to do a particular task that might be very repetitive or complex, and it will carry out everything you tell it to do at lightening speed.

For example, before the days of Excel 2007, one client turned up on a VBA course (Visual BASIC [Beginners All Symbolic Instruction Code]) and explained she worked for a credit card company. Occasionally, due to the odd bug in their system, some customers might get charged twice for an item. Now, I’m sure you and I would go into orbit without the proverbial apogee motor if this happened to us (I know I would!)

She presented me with a sheet of several hundred rows and around 35 columns and explained they’d been sorted into credit card number order (I should stress the REAL numbers had been removed and randomly generated unique numbers substituted). She would then look through for adjacent pairs and remove one of the duplicate pairs. This would take a horrendous amount of time.

I wrote a Macro to do this and when it ran, it carried out the whole process in just under 2 minutes, turbo style!

Previously, it would take a day for some one to do the same process by hand and inevitably, the sheer boredom would lead to mistakes.

To begin investigating Macros, use Alt+F11 when in Excel.

In the next instalment, we’ll deal with Macro security and the turning on the Developer Tab.

The post Turbocharge Your Spreadsheets with Excel Macros appeared first on Excel Training UK.

It’s a versatile, advanced, formula that can be combined with other formulae where needed. This is exactly the sort of thing we’ll teach you in our Advanced Excel course.

If this is the kind of advanced Excel tip you find useful, you might also want to have a look at our tutorials on the VLOOKUP and HLOOKUP functions of Excel and Conditional Formatting in Excel.

How to Use the IF Formula in Excel

The IF formula is built on a premise of auto-populating a field with the result of a true/false test.

For example, an employer may have a bonus structure where employees get a staggered bonus payment based on how much they sell in a month. If they make more than 60 sales, they get 5 times their sales in pounds in their pay packet! If they make less than 60 sales, they get 2 times their sales.

The formula looks like this: IF (logical_test, [value_if_true], [value_if_false]).

So, using the example above, we’d say =IF(b3<60, 5, 2)

You can then add another column to calculate their final bonus payment.

Alternatively, you could just put it all together in one formula – =IF(B3<60, B3*5, B3*2):

You can also put two conditions in your IF formula. For example, if you want to restrict the higher bonuses to those who had not been late to work more than twice in the month:

=IF(AND(B3>60,C3<3), 5*B3, 2*B3)

So there you have it, how to enter an IF formula/IF statement, and base it on more than one condition.

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Microsoft Excel 2010 has a built-in sparklines feature, but you can easily create them in Excel 2007 – tutorial below. Our public Microsoft Excel for Beginners course teaches you how to use Excel 2010, but we’ll be happy to train you on  Excel 2007 if you choose a private course. (With regards to future updates to Microsoft Office, we’ll always check which version you’re using before we book you onto the course). This is the same for our Advanced Excel training and VBA for Excel course.

The main thing to remember about sparklines is that they are intended to be a simple visual of your data. If you find you want or need more labelling and legends, it’s worth going back to your usual graphs.

Inserting a Sparkline in Excel

Select the data labels for the X-axis, hold down Ctrl, and select the data for the Y axis.

Go to the Insert tab, choose Line and 2D-line

With your basic graph now on the page, you could remove all the labels and legends manually. A much quicker way is to click on ‘Chart Layouts’ in the Design tab and choose Layout 11 (no need to hover over them, it’s easily recognisable as the one that makes a sparkline as it has the least detail).

Now, drag your chart so one of its corners lines up with where you want it to be, then grab the opposite corner & shrink it to the right size. Then hold down Alt and move the chart – it will snap into place with the spreadsheet gridlines.

Sparklines are all about making use of space, so you can get rid of white space in your graph by selecting it, going to the Layout tab, clicking on Axes, Primary Vertical Axes and More Primary Vertical Axes Options. Select ‘fixed’ for the first two options, and enter the appropriate numbers.

Close this window (it will automatically apply changes) and look at your sparkline. If the axis labels have appeared on it, simply press ‘delete’ to get rid of them.

And you’re done! Now you have your data nicely illustrated with a sparkline.

The post How to Create a Sparkline in Excel appeared first on Excel Training UK.

The first thing to remember is that Print Preview is your friend. It’s a good idea to get into the habit of always previewing before you print – this will save you a lot of paper and time!

We cover the issue of printing from Excel in our Excel training course. We also offer Advanced Excel training and VBA for Excel.

To get you started, here are some tips for things to consider before hitting that ‘print’ button!

How to specify how many pages you want your document to be

You can put a limit on how many pages you want your document to be when printed.

If you use this option then you lose any manual page breaks (but see the next tip for how to get around this).

For Excel 2007, on a PC:

• Choose the Page Layout tab
• Click the little icon from the bottom right hand corner of the Page Setup group
• Choose ‘Fit to’ and enter the number of pages wide and tall you’d like your print out to be
• I advise going to ‘Print Preview’ now, rather than straight to ‘Print’, as you’ll need to check the printout won’t be scaled down so far as to not be readable!

Using a Mac? Skip the first two steps and go straight to File, then Page Setup.

Using Excel 2010? Follow the procedure for a Mac or you can choose the Page Layout tab and go straight to Scale to Fit.

How to specify either width or height – and keep your page breaks

This option is useful if your spreadsheet has lots of rows or columns but not both. This option will keep in any manual page breaks you’ve added to which ever dimension you set to Automatic.

For Excel 2007 on a PC, or any version of Excel for Mac:

• Go to Page Setup by clicking the arrow in the bottom right-hand corner of the Page Layout tab
• Choose Fit To, and enter the number for your specified width or height
• Leave the other dimension blank (delete anything that’s been automatically populated) – this will set it to automatic.

For Excel 2010, on a PC:

• Choose the Page Layout tab
• Select the Scale to Fit option for either width or height to 1 page, and set the other to Automatic
• Print preview/print

Printing part of a spreadsheet

To print just part of your spreadsheet, select the cells you want to print and choose the Page Layout tab. Click on ‘Print Area’ and ‘Set Print Area’. Next time you Print, or Print Preview, you’ll see your selected area.

Excel will remember your selection, so repeat the steps above and choose ‘Clear Print Area’ to remove it.

Adjusting Margins

If your spreadsheet is only slightly too big to fit on one page, you can adjust the page margins within the Print Preview, to squeeze it all on to one page.

When you’re in the Print Preview screen, and can see that just one column or row is on a second page, tick the box for ‘show margins’. You can then manually drag the page margins outwards until it’s all on one page.

As well as changing the page margins here, you can adjust column widths.

Setting Print Titles

Another thing to remember when printing large spreadsheets is that you may want your column titles/labels to appear on every page. If so, go to Page Set up then Print Titles and enter any rows or columns that need to appear on every printed page.

In this box, you can also select whether you’d like the gridlines or not, and which order you want the pages to print in.

The post How to Print From Excel appeared first on Excel Training UK.

When constructing large spreadsheets it is likely that you will need to cross-reference data from different worksheets.

An example of this could be monthly figures on individual worksheets and a total or yearly worksheet.

You can use a simple formula to automatically update the total figures based on the monthly worksheets but this means referencing cells in multiple worksheets in one formula. So how do you do this?

It is actually very simple. In this example I will show you how to add together two cells from separate worksheets into another worksheet using employee sales figures.

As you can see we have January, February & Total worksheets.

We want to combine Rachel’s January and February sales figures to give us her total in 2012.

1. Select the cell you want the total to appear in (in this case B2) on the ‘Total’ worksheet.

2. Type the = sign

3. Now click on the January worksheet and click on the first cell you want to add (B2)

4. Type the + sign

5. Click on the February worksheet and click on the second cell you want to add (B2)

6. You now have Rachel’s total sales! Press enter to close the formula and view the result.

7. To get the total sales for all employees, simply drag down from the bottom right hand corner of B2 to fill out the column.

The same process applies for any formula. Just type the formula as you normally would but select the cells in the relevant worksheet.

You may have noticed that the cells are referenced with the worksheet name and a !

Excel references cells in other worksheets as “nameofworksheet!cell”.

This is how Excel determines that you want the information from B2 in January and not B2 in February or Total.

See more Excel tips on our Excel blog or read our most recent tutorials:

• Create a Dice Roller
• Use the VLOOKUP and HLOOKUP functions
• Create a drop down list

The post How to Reference Cells from Other Worksheets in a Formula appeared first on Excel Training UK.

The current technical Preview beta version is private, and users have to sign a non-disclosure agreement. Bits and pieces have slipped out – even screenshots – suggesting very exciting changes indeed.

Paul Thurrott’s extensive screenshots and descriptions give you a thorough feel of the new developments – here are our top takeaways.

Look and Feel

The suggestion is that the Office 15 user experience will be a cleaner and more personal one.

As expected, Windows 8 design and concepts run through Office 15. Leaked versions run on the traditional desktop with a heavy influence from the new Windows Metro touch-screen style. A stepping stone, presumably.

The Ribbon

Love it or hate it, the ribbon (the one-touch UI of options, designed to avoid having to navigate through menus and toolbars) is still there – but hidden as default.

(Old version with ribbon)

(New version with hidden ribbon)

Integrated Design Options

Another first for Office version 15 is the introduction of a brand new tab for Design. This allows users to easily create and configure themes, borders, background colours and watermarks.

It’s likely that there will be extended video features for editing and broadcasting.

Cloud Integration

Microsoft Office 15 will automatically sign users into their Microsoft ID, including services such as Flickr, Windows Live Hotmail, Windows Live Messenger and SkyDrive. You can also set it to automatically connect to LinkedIn, SharePoint and Office 365.

When you select “Save As”, the top option will be to save the document to SkyDrive, followed by normal computer locations.

Tablet users

Tablet users will benefit from the new full-screen mode which allows more viewing space beyond the part of your screen that contains the keyboard.

There’s also a specific ‘touch mode’ that increases the size of some buttons to make them easier to navigate by touch.

Power

Microsoft Office 2012 will use less memory and processing resources – which will certainly make it more accessible to tablet and notebook users.

Individual Applications

The majority of leaked updates and screenshots are focused on most people’s first stop – Microsoft Word.

The specific changes to the features of individual applications are, for the most part, yet to be seen. We’ll have to wait for the public Beta to be released in the summer to find out more!

(Images of Microsoft Office version 15 from winsupersite.com.)

The post What To Expect From Microsoft Office 15 appeared first on Excel Training UK.

You’ve decided to have a family night in and play Cluedo. You open up the box, set up the game and go to start. One problem: you’re missing the dice. You frantically check all the other games; Monopoly,  Yahtzee, Risk and even Battleships – which doesn’t even have dice. As usual, there are none to be found – they’ve all disappeared. Probably down the back of the sofa or under some boxes in the wardrobe.

For some, this means that family night is over. For others, it’s time to open up Excel and create their own dice roller!

How to create a dice roller in Microsoft Excel 2007

Step 1: Open up a blank spreadsheet in Excel.

Step 2: Select cell A1. From the Cells Menu within the Home Tab, select ‘Row Height’ from the Format drop down and enter 41. This makes all of Row 1 square cells.

Step 3: Enter the formula =INT(RAND()*6)+1 into cell A1.

Step 4: Press F9 to roll your die, simply copy the formula into another cell if you want two or more dice. While you do have your dice working now, they don’t look very dicey, so here are some quick tips for formatting the cell. This is a great chance to show your kids (if you have any!) how to do some basic tricks in Excel.

Excel Dice Tutorial: Formatting Your Cells to Look Like Dice

Step 1: Center the text: Select cell A1 and center horizontally and vertically.

Step 2: Make the number bigger: Select cell A1, change the font to Times New Roman (or any font of your choice), font size to 28 and make it bold.

Step 3: Add a border: From the drop down menu for borders, select ‘Thick Outside Border’. This formatting actually looks better if you do it outside of Column A, Row 1 so use format painter to move your die into cell B2 and then clear A1 (or follow the steps above again)

Step 4: Copy and paste the cell into D2, and now you have a set of dice ready to play your game of Cluedo! Just press F9 to roll.

The post How to Create a Dice Roller in Microsoft Excel 2007 appeared first on Excel Training UK.

VLOOKUP and HLOOKUP allow you to search a data range for any value entered, and return information or a value based on that data. VLOOKUP allows you to search information formatted by column, HLOOKUP for information formatted by row.

For example, your primary school can use the function to create a vast spreadsheet of pupils’ test scores and their relevant grades/comments. This would be useful for grading ‘on the curve’ – if you change the grade relating to each mark out of 10, you only have to do it once rather than for each pupil.

Step 1: Begin with the basic table – possible marks, grades and comments.

Step 2: Select this table (without headings) and enter a title into the name box.

Step 3: Create a new table – in this case of pupil names and marks.

Step 4: Select the cell you want to enter the function in.

This is the formula you’ll be using:

=VLOOKUP(lookup_value, table_array, col_index_num, range_lookup)

For tables that have been formatted by row, simply use the following formula instead =HLOOKUP(lookup_value, table_array, row_index_num, range_lookup)

Step 5: The lookup_value is the value you want the spreadsheet to read, in this case cell B18.

Step 6: Add a comma, then the table_array (table name)

Step 7: Add a comma, then the col_index_num – which column of data you want, so in this case column 2

Step 8: Add a comma, then the range_lookup – either “true” or “false”; where “true” means to use information close to it, “false” means use only exact match data.

Close your bracket.

Step 9: Press enter and the information will be retrieved

Step 10: Repeat for any other columns of information you require

Step 11: Highlight and drag the cells down to copy the formula for the rest of the list.

Read more of our recent Microsoft Excel tutorials

• How to Create Drop-Down Lists in Excel
• Excel Scenarios Tutorial
• Pivot Table Slicers in Excel 2010
• Excel Function Keyboard Shortcuts

The post Excel Tutorial – How to Use the VLOOKUP and HLOOKUP functions appeared first on Excel Training UK.

Using a drop down list in Excel can make data input a lot easier – after all, you don’t want to waste time typing in the same thing again and again!

Preparing Your Excel Drop Down List Data

To start with, let’s make a list. Writing it out in alphabetical order can help, as the cell order is the order in which they will appear in the drop down list (the drop down list won’t automatically reorder itself). In this example, we’ll be using a list of flowers.

First, we write out our flower names in cells A1-A7:

Creating the drop down list

Once your source has been created, you can start creating the drop down list. Highlight all the cells you want your drop down list to appear in (here, we are using cells E2-E20):

Next, click the data menu (at the top of the screen) and select validation. Scroll down on the “allow” list, and select “list”, like so:

Next, click the source button:

and select our source list:

Finally, click OK!

You should now find that when you click any of the cells E2-E20 (or wherever you chose to place your drop down lists) that an arrow appears to the side of it:

Clicking on the arrow will make your drop down box appear!

Now you are ready to use your drop down boxes, and won’t have to type anything too repetitive ever again!

Read more of our recent Microsoft Excel Tutorials:

• Excel Scenarios Tutorial
• Pivot Table Slicers Excel Tutorial
• Joining Cells in Microsoft Excel Tutorial

The post How to Create Drop Down Lists in Microsoft Excel appeared first on Excel Training UK.

For more in-depth training in Excel come to Brighton for an Excel Workshop. We have courses for all levels including:

• Beginners Excel Training
• Advanced Excel Training
• VBA for Excel Training

If you want a course tailored to your needs then please call us on 01273 622272 as we also offer private and in-company training to suit you.

“The What-If Analysis tools in Excel enable the changing of values in cells to see how those changes affect the outcome of formulae. The Scenario Manager allows different scenarios to be created, for example to view results using different suppliers or for best  and worst case sales results.

Tip: The Scenario Report will use cell references, so naming the cells that will be used first, will make you scenarios much easier to read.

Setting Up A Scenario

1. From the data tab, in the data tools group click what-if analysis.
2. Select scenario manager and click on ADD to add a scenario.
3. In the SCENARIO NAME box, enter a name for the scenario.
4. In the CHANGING CELLS box enter the cell address for the area you want to change or highlight it on the worksheet, then click OK.
5. To change the current input values, click into the relevant box and enter the new values.
6. Click on OK when you have finished.
7. If you want to add additional scenarios click on ADD.

Showing Scenarios

1. From the data tab, in the data tools group click what-if analysis, select scenario manager.
2. Select the scenario you want to use and click on the SHOW button and the cell values stored within the scenario will now appear on the worksheet.
3. Click on CLOSE.

We have plenty more tutorials so have a look through the Excel resources or search for something specific. If there is a tutorial you would like to see or a niggling question about Excel then please leave a comment below and we will try to help you out.

Read our last 4 Microsoft Excel Tutorials:

Guide to Microsoft Excel Pivot Table Slicers

Joining Cells in MS Excel Tutorial

Creating Gantt Charts in Excel 2007

How to Freeze Panes in Microsoft Excel 

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