For the past 82 years (approximately), I’ve used Excel almost every day. Along the way, I’ve learned a few tricks, and produced some sophisticated workbooks. One of the joys of Excel is that there’s always something new to learn.
This week, while working on a client’s files, I wanted to review some calculations in a price [...]

Thanks for participating in the Very Scary Fall Giveaway for Excel Nerds! Your Excel horror stories were truly frightening, and the costume ideas were very creative. Thanks again to the generous prize donors:

Patrick O’Beirne of Systems Modelling Ltd
Jan Karel Pieterse, of JKP Application Development Services
Charley Kyd of ExcelUser, Inc.
John Walkenbach of J-Walk & Associates, [...]

Have you read all the Excel horror stories and costume ideas in the Very Scary Fall Giveaway for Excel Nerds? There’s some truly frightening stuff there! The entry deadline is tomorrow at noon, Eastern Daylight Time, so get moving if you haven’t entered already.
My Horror Story
One of my Excel horror stories involves sheet names. I [...]

The Very Scary Fall Giveaway for Excel Nerds is going strong, with lots of frightening Excel horror stories and some scary costume ideas. Please take a few minutes to read the comments, and add your contribution.
In the annoying, but not scary category, I’ve been entering network paths in Excel, and they turn into hyperlinks when [...]

It’s time for another Excel giveaway! Hallowe’en is just around the corner, so let’s find out what Excel Nerds do to celebrate. I’ve been given some awesome Excel utilities, books, and ebooks to give away, so let’s have some fun. Rules are at the end of this article.
To enter, write an original (and suitable for [...]

How much time do you spend trying to find and fix error in your Excel workbooks? Or even worse, fixing errors in other people’s workbooks. After commenting on my article See Formulas on an Excel Worksheet, Patrick O’Beirne, author of Spreadsheet Check and Control , asked if I’d like a review copy of his new [...]

In a lookup table, how can you get Excel to find the item that’s the exact match, including the upper and lower case?
For example, in this table, row 4 is M7 and row 5 is m7. There’s a different value for each of these in column B. If I do a lookup for m7, I [...]

Garbage in, garbage out. You depend on Excel spreadsheets to show accurate data and analysis. Enter the wrong data and the results will be incorrect, and that could have a negative impact on your business or reputation.
Here are 3 ways to help safeguard your data entry. I’m sure you use a few other methods [...]

It’s Thanksgiving Day in Canada, so some of us will be eating turkey and watching football. However, we don’t limit ourselves to one day, like the USA – we celebrate for three days! Tomorrow, eight feet of snow will fall, and we’ll stay inside for the rest of the winter.
For those of you [...]

This week I was travelling, and signs are really important for helping you figure out where you are, and where you should be headed. Whether you’re posting street signs, retail signs, or worksheet instructions, try to make them clear and helpful.
For example, this sign, in Ottawa, could have given better directional clues. Given the choice [...]