David Ringstrom

.by David Ringstrom, CPA

By David H. Ringstrom, CPA

Hiding and unhiding rows and columns are mundane tasks that many users take for granted. However, sometimes simple tasks can trip up Excel users, like unhiding just one row or column within a hidden set. Other users don’t know simple keystroke commands that can streamline hiding and unhiding columns or rows. In this article, I’ll explore these techniques as well as discuss two powerful alternatives to manually hide and unhide rows and columns. I’ll also discuss how to re-enable an Excel keyboard shortcut that’s disabled in any operating system subsequent to Windows XP.

• Excel 2007 and later: On the Home tab, choose Format in the Cells section of the ribbon, and then choose Hide & Unhide, and then either Hide Rows or Unhide Rows.

• Excel 2003 and earlier: Choose Format, Row, and then either Hide or Unhide.

• Click on Language within the Control Panel.
• Click Advanced Settings, and then click the Change Language Bar Hot Keys link.
• Click Change Key Sequence, select Not Assigned in the Switch Keyboard Layout section, and then click OK as needed.

• Click Region and Language within the Control Panel.
• Choose the Keyboards and Languages tab, and then click Change Keyboards.
• Click the Advanced Key Settings tab, and then click Change Key Sequence.
• Select Not Assigned in the Switch Keyboard Layout section, and then click OK as needed.

• No Control Panel changes are necessary.

• Excel 2007 and later: Choose Find and Select on the Home tab, and then click Go To.

• Excel 2003 and earlier: Choose Edit and then Go To.

• Excel 2007 and later: Choose Find and Select on the Home tab, and then click Find.

• Excel 2003 and earlier: Choose Edit, and then Find.

• Excel 2007 or later: Click the Group icon in the Outline section of the Data ribbon.

• Excel 2003 and earlier: Choose Data, Group and Outline, and then Group.

• Excel 2007 and later: Choose Custom Views in the Workbook Views section of the View ribbon. Click Add, and then assign a name, such as All Columns. Make sure that Hidden Row, Columns, and Filter Settings is selected, and then click OK.

• Excel 2003 and earlier: Choose View, and then Custom Views. From there, the commands are the same as described in Excel 2007.

By David H. Ringstrom, CPA

From time to time you may find yourself immersed in a large project that involves several related Excel workbooks. In such cases it can be tedious to manually open each Excel file when you need everything available at once. Excel has long had a helpful feature that is hidden in plain sight: the Save Workspace command. This command creates a bookmark file with an .XLW extension that you can use to automatically open a group of related spreadsheets. In this article I’ll explain Excel’s Workspace feature, as well as how to close all open worksheets at once while still leaving Excel open.

Workspace feature

A workspace is comprised of whatever spreadsheets are open at the time that you issue the Save Workspace command:

• Excel 2007: Choose Save Workspace in the Window section of the View ribbon.
• Excel 2003 or earlier: Choose Save Workspace on the File menu.

In either case, after making the menu choice, you’re presented with a traditional Save dialog box from which you can choose where to save your workspace file. Excel 2007 will prompt you to save each file within the workspace, while Excel 2003 and earlier won’t prompt you until you close an individual file within the workspace.

To reopen your workspace, you can either choose the .XLW file from your Recently Used file list, or open the file manually:

• Excel 2007: Click the Office button, choose Open, and then select the .XLW file.
• Excel 2003 or earlier: Choose File, Open, and then select the .XLW file.

You can further refine your search in any version of Excel. To do so, choose Workspaces (.XLW) from the Files of Type list, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Workspaces (.XLW files) display in the list of available files when you issue the Open command, but you can also filter the list to only show Workspace files.

Excel 2007 Trick: Click the pushpin next to your .XLW file to lock your workspace onto the Recently Used File List. It may shift down the list as you open other spreadsheets, but it won’t scroll off the list as long as its pushpin is depressed.

Figure 2: Click the pushpin to lock a workspace onto your Excel 2007 Recently Used File List.

Closing All Files at Once

Sometimes during the day you need to clear the decks of all open files, but leave Excel open. You can certainly close each file individually, but versions through and including Excel 2003 had a far easier way to perform this task: Hold down the Shift command before you click on the File menu. As shown in Figure 3, the Close command changes to Close All, which enables you to close all open workbooks at once. Although the Shift key trick doesn’t work in Excel 2007, you can actually create your own custom shortcut:

• Right-click anywhere on the Excel 2007 ribbon, and then choose Customize Quick Access Toolbar.
• Choose Commands Not in the Ribbon from the Choose Commands From List, and then add Close All to your Quick Access toolbar.
• Optionally move the Close All command to the top of your Quick Access Toolbar list, as shown in Figure 4, and then click OK.

If you moved the Close All command to the top of your list, you can now press Alt-1 to issue the Close All command whenever you wish. As shown in Figure 5, the shortcut code for every button on the Excel 2007 interface is revealed when you press the Alt key.

Figure 3: Hold down the shift key before you choose the File menu in Excel 2003 or earlier to display the Close All command.

Figure 4: You can add a Close All command to your Excel 2007 Quick Access Toolbar.

Figure 5: Shortcut keys for every button on the Excel 2007 ribbon appear when you press the Alt key once.

 
A previous version of this article first appeared on www.accountingweb.com .

David H. Ringstrom, CPA heads up Accounting Advisors, Inc., an Atlanta-based software and database consulting firm providing training and consulting services nationwide. Contact David at david@acctadv.com  or follow him on Twitter. David speaks at conferences about Microsoft Excel, and presents webcasts for several CPE providers, including AccountingWEB partner CPE Link

By David H. Ringstrom, CPA

Many users are not aware that Excel has long had a feature that enables you to browse through a table of data one record at a time. As shown in Figure 1, the Form command provides an easy way to navigate through a table of data. This command is easy to access in Excel 2003 and earlier versions, but is deeply buried in Excel 2007. In this article I’ll show you how to use the Form command to make quick work of reviewing a list of records.

Figure 1: The Form command allows you to navigate through a table of records.


Enable the Form command

It’s easy to use the Form command in Excel 2003 or earlier versions: Select a single cell within a table of data, choose Data, and then Form. While many Excel 2007 users will simply think that the Form command is no longer
available, you can easily uncover it:

• Right-click anywhere on the Ribbon and choose Customize Quick Access Toolbar.
• Choose Commands Not In the Ribbon, and then scroll down to Form, as shown in Figure 2, or press the letter F four times after you click on.
• Click the Add button, and then click OK.

As shown in Figure 3, you can now click the Form button on the Quick Access toolbar to display the Form window shown in Figure 1.




Figure 2: You must manually add the Form command to your Quick Access toolbar in Excel 2007.

Figure 3: The Form command is now available on the Quick Access Toolbar.
As shown in Figure 1, the Form window has several buttons:

• New: This button allows you to add a new record to the table. Complete the input fields, and then click New again to add a new record to the bottom of your list.
• Delete: This button deletes the record from the list, and cannot be undone.
• Restore: If you’ve made edits to a record within the Form window, the Restore button will undo your changes. Otherwise your changes are automatically saved when you move to a new record.
• Find Prev: This allows you to navigate to the previous record in the list.
• Find Next: This allows you to navigate to the next record on the list.
• Criteria: You can filter your list to see just certain records, such as the Atlanta region. Click Criteria, add criteria to the corresponding fields, and then click Form to view only records that meet the specified criteria. To eliminate criteria, click the Criteria button, click Clear, and then Form.
• Close: Closes the Form window.

Criteria trick: You can use wild cards, like *es to search just for fruit that ends in “es”, like apples, oranges, and mixed berries. You can also use question marks to mask selected characters, like ?o?th GA to view North GA and South GA at the same time, but exclude Mid GA.

 
A previous version of this article first appeared on www.accountingweb.com .

David H. Ringstrom, CPA heads up Accounting Advisors, Inc., an Atlanta-based software and database consulting firm providing training and consulting services nationwide. Contact David at david@acctadv.com  or follow him on Twitter. David speaks at conferences about Microsoft Excel, and presents webcasts for several CPE providers, including AccountingWEB partner CPE Link

By David H. Ringstrom, CPA

Add-ins are programs that plug-in into Microsoft Excel to add additional functionality. Some add-ins expand Excel’s core functionality, while others allow third-party products to add features to Excel’s environment. In this article I’ll discuss how to enable some of Excel’s hidden features, as well as give you some pointers on what to do when third-party add-ins vanish from Excel.

Hidden Features
Excel ships with several add-ins that you can manually enable. Some of these include:

• Analysis TookPak 
• Conditional Sum Wizard
• Euro Currency Tools
• Lookup Wizard
• Solver Add-In

It’s easy to enable these add-ins:

• Excel 2007: Click the Office button, choose Excel Options, and then click Add-Ins. Choose Excel Add-Ins from the Manage section at the bottom of the Add-Ins window as shown in Figure 1, and then click Go. As shown in Figure 2, select any add-ins that you wish to include.

Figure 1: Use the Manage section to work with Add-ins in Excel 2007.

Figure 2: You’re just a few mouse clicks away from enabling several hidden Excel features.

• Excel 2003 and earlier: Choose Tools, Add-Ins, and then select any add-ins you wish to enable, as shown in Figure 2.

In other cases, third-party applications may automatically install add-ins in Excel. For instance, Adobe Acrobat often adds a custom menu or toolbar in Excel. Some of my clients work in the financial industry and rely on add-ins from Bloomberg or Reuters that enable users to return prices and other data on financial products directly into an Excel spreadsheet. Most add-ins are well-behaved, and you may tend to take them for granted — until the day that you launch Excel and find that your add-in functionality has vanished. Much like a mother bear with cubs, Excel is very protective of its operating environment. If Excel determines — rightly or wrongly — that an add-in has caused an Excel crash, the add-in is benched and put on the disabled list. Excel will generally warn you in such cases, but in the case of a shared or public computer, someone else may choose to disable the add-in without you knowing. In such cases, the menu or toolbar that the add-in provides simply vanishes. Fortunately, it’s easy to re-enable the add-ins if you know where to look:

• Excel 2007: Click the Office button, choose Excel Options, and then click Add-Ins. Choose Disabled Add-Ins from the Manage section at the bottom of the Add-Ins window (shown in Figure 1), and then click Go. As shown in Figure 3, any disabled add-ins will appear on the Disabled Items list. You can enable such items one at a time, and then click Close.

Figure 3: Use this window to re-enable disabled Excel add-ins.
 

• Excel 2003 and earlier: Choose Help, and then About Microsoft Office Excel. Click the Disabled Items button shown in Figure 4 to display the Disabled Items window shown in Figure 3.

Figure 4: The Disabled Items button is fairly well hidden in Excel 2003 and earlier.

Excel 2007 tip: Although most add-ins have a .XLA extension, others are known as COM add-ins, and don’t appear in the Add-Ins list shown in Figure 2. Excel 2007 users can easily disable unwanted COM add-ins: Click the Office button, choose Excel Options, and then click Add-Ins. Choose COM Add-Ins from the Manage section at the bottom of the Add-Ins window as shown in Figure 1, and then click Go. As shown in Figure 5, you can then add or remove COM add-ins as desired. Users of earlier versions of Excel can use the free OfficeIns tool to manage add-ins.

Figure 5: Excel 2007 makes it easy to manage COM add-ins like Google DeskTop Office.

 
A previous version of this article first appeared on www.accountingweb.com .

David H. Ringstrom, CPA heads up Accounting Advisors, Inc., an Atlanta-based software and database consulting firm providing training and consulting services nationwide. Contact David at david@acctadv.com  or follow him on Twitter. David speaks at conferences about Microsoft Excel, and presents webcasts for several CPE providers, including AccountingWEB partner CPE Link