10 Productive Excel Features for Accountants (and 3 Timewasters)

Level: Intermediate

Available Durations:

• 60 minutes

Description:

In this presentation Excel expert David H. Ringstrom, CPA cherry-picks 10 of the best features in Excel that can make accountants more productive. He’ll also share 3 common time-wasters that can frustrate accountants and heavy users of Excel. You’ll learn about two key worksheet functions, the benefits of the Table feature, pivot tables for report writing, and managing information overload by filtering. Tame unwieldy workbooks by instantly unhiding all hidden worksheets, and then deploying Excel’s Custom Views feature to enable you to hide/unhide multiple worksheets at once. You’ll see how to build in some insurance against Excel crashes, and quickly identify duplicates within a list. David will also discuss three common timewasters/frustrations in Excel.

David demonstrates every technique at least twice: first, on a PowerPoint slide with numbered steps, and second, in the Microsoft 365 (formerly known as Office 365) version of Excel. David draws your attention to any differences in the older versions of Excel (2019, 2016, 2013, and earlier) during the presentation as well as in his detailed handouts. David also provides an Excel workbook that includes most of the examples he uses during the webcast.

Microsoft 365 is a subscription-based product that provides new-feature updates as often as monthly. Conversely, the perpetual licensed versions of Excel have feature sets that don’t change. Perpetual licensed versions have year numbers, such as Excel 2019, Excel 2016, and so on.

Topics/Areas Typically Covered:

• Improving the integrity of spreadsheets with Excel’s VLOOKUP function.
• Employing the SUMIF function to sum values related to multiple instances of criteria you specify.
• Learning how the Table feature empowers you to improve the integrity of Excel spreadsheets.
• Streamlining filtering of lists in Excel 2013 and later by using the Slicer feature with tables.
• Gaining control of long lists of data by filtering instead of sorting.
• Creating a pivot table to transform lists of data into on-screen reports.
• Adding fields to a blank pivot table to create instant reports.
• Learning how to use a single line of programming code to unhide all worksheets within a workbook.
• Creating custom views that will enable you to unhide all worksheets in a workbook at once as well as hide/display selected worksheets.
• Choosing between custom views within a workbook to hide or unhide multiple worksheets at once.
• Tweaking Excel’s AutoRecover settings to raise the odds of recovering your work after an Excel crash.
• Identifying duplicates in a list using Conditional Formatting.
• Removing Conditional Formatting when it’s no longer needed within a spreadsheet.
• Overcoming user interface annoyances by making simple adjustments to Excel’s options.
• Jump-starting data visualization with the Quick Analysis feature.
• Discovering new worksheet functions available in Excel 2016 and later.

Learning Objectives/Why You Should Attend:

• Define the arguments used with the VLOOKUP function.
• Recall the benefits of Excel’s Table feature.
• State which Conditional Formatting menu contains the Duplicate Values option.

About the Instructor:

David H. Ringstrom, CPA is the owner of Accounting Advisors, Inc., an Atlanta-based spreadsheet consulting firm that he started in 1991. Throughout his career David has spoken at conferences on Microsoft Excel, and written dozens of freelance articles about spreadsheets. He offers Excel and Access training and consulting services nationwide.

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