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From...
Spreadsheet tips make work 'Excel'
June 10, 1998
Web posted at: 4:05 PM EDT
by the TipWorld staff
(IDG)
-- Working with Excel worksheets can be as exciting as watching the grass
grow. To make short work of your worksheets, check out these tips for
viewing a page layout, quickly referencing formulas and ranges, and dragging
and dropping cells.
Switch the Display
Need to troubleshoot or debug a problem spreadsheet, where numbers don't add up properly or the pie chart has one slice too many? You can do this the long way or the short way. All you traditionalists, go to Tools, Options, and click the View tab. Select the check box labeled Formulas and click OK. Formulas will appear in place of the associated data.
Now for the secret shortcut: Just press Ctrl-Tilde (~), and Excel will toggle between data display and formula display.
Look at the Whole Thing
Layout is important when you're designing a complex worksheet. But it's hard to see how the layout looks when you can view only a portion of the worksheet at once. To see how your entire worksheet looks, choose View, then Full Screen. Now press Ctrl-Home to go to A1 if you're not already there, then press Ctrl-Shift-End to select the entire worksheet (only the areas that contain data). Choose View, Zoom, and select Fit Selection. Click OK, and there's the entire worksheet. You won't be able to read anything, but you can see how the layout looks.
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Drop That Cell
To move a cell or a range of cells to a new location, select the cell or range, and move the plus-sign pointer to the edge of the cells. When the plus sign changes to a pointer, press and hold the left mouse button, and drag the selection to a new location. When you get to the new spot, release the button. Be sure not to cover existing cells, or they'll be replaced by the new selection.
Name That Range
If you often reference the same range of cells in a worksheet, you might want to name that range. That way you can just enter the range name rather remembering or highlighting the actual cell range every time you want to pull that data.
Let's say that there are expenses for May 1995 through 1998 entered in cells A5, B5, C5, and D5. Use the mouse to highlight cells A5 through D5. Choose Insert, Name, Define. The Define Name dialog box appears. In the "Names in workbook" field, type May and click OK. Now move to a blank cell, say F7, and enter =sum(May) to see the total of all the May figures. You can move to any blank cell in any part of your worksheet and enter the range name to quickly see the data for that range.
Name That Formula
You can also name those long formulas you have to use--then when you need to use the formula in a new location you only have to enter its name. Try this: Open a new Excel worksheet and type the numbers one through five into cells A1 through A5.
Now go to cell A7 and type =sum(a1:a5) and press Enter. Select the cell in which you want the calculation to appear and choose Insert, Name, Define. The Define Name dialog box appears. In the Names in workbook field, type in a name for the formula you want to use. In this case, "SumItAll" will do the job. Next, in the "Refers to:" field, type in a formula, in this case =sum(a1:a5) and click OK. Now, type the numbers 8 through 12 in cells B1 through B5. Click an empty cell and type =SumItAll and the sum of B1 through B5 will appear.
For more Excel 97 tips delivered directly to your in-box, click the TipWorld link below.
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