It's easy to protect a worksheet in Excel, but it's not so obvious how you leave some of the cells unprotected, so users can make changes to those cells. You can follow this tutorial to learn how to do that, and maybe you'll even see the weird dialog box heading that I show below.
For [...]

In Monday's blog, you saw how to make simple dependent data validation drop down lists. After creating the drop downs, you added some flexibility by using the IF function in the data validation formula.
Today you'll see a couple of problems that can occur when you refer to other cells in your data validation, and [...]

You can use data validation to create drop down lists in Excel. With a bit of Excel magic, you can create dependent drop down lists, so the selection in one drop down controls what appears in the next drop down.
We'll take a quick look at how a basic dependent drop down works, then [...]

Someone emailed me last week about problems with a range named Database. For reasons known only to the hamsters that operate my brain wheels, that reminded me of Excel's Data Form. It's a built-in data entry tool, that lists all the fields in a table, with entry boxes for some fields, and the formula results [...]

You're comfortable with Excel, and can change formulas on the fly, when necessary. If you're creating Excel workbooks for other people to use, their Excel skills probably aren't as strong as yours.
Last month we looked at the COUNTIF formula, and how you can type an operator, then refer to a worksheet cell, to set a [...]

If the customer name is missing from an Excel worksheet order form, you'll waste paper if you print that order form, and then have to reprint it.

Previously, you saw instructions for automatically showing an error message before printing, if data is missing from an Excel worksheet.

Well, it took a long time (okay, half [...]

You set up a data validation drop down list, so you can select valid items from a drop down list.

After you select a season, if you type an invalid month name in the adjacent cell, you'll see a warning message.

It's a great plan, but people are sometimes typing invalid entries in the month column, and [...]

If you sell products in several countries, you might want to show the prices in different currencies. With the conditional formatting options in Excel 2010, you can change the number format, to show a specific currency for the country that's selected.
Note: Conditional Formatting for numbers was available in Excel 2007, but didn't work correctly. (Thanks, [...]

If you add pictures to an Excel workbook, the file size can increase pretty quickly. And if you're updating the pictures occasionally, perhaps for a product catalogue, you'd have to remember to update all the Excel files that have those pictures.
Instead of adding the pictures to the Excel file, Ron Coderre has created a sample [...]

To highlight specific cells on an Excel worksheet, you can use conditional formatting. In the example shown below, orders with a quantity greater than 50 are highlighted with green fill colour.

This was the result of simple conditional formatting, based on the cell value.

Sometimes though, the conditional formatting can be distracting, and there's no built in [...]