The Microsoft web site contains numerous free Excel templates, including amortization tables for loans and mortagages, college costs calculators, personal budget, and more!

Decision Models can help you create more effective spreadsheets by understanding Excel's calculation secrets.

To close multiple Excel files at once, hold down the Shift key while you click on File,and then Close All. (Our thanks go to Somasundaram Kannan, who got paid for submitting this tip...learn how!)

You can lock certain rows or columns in place as you scroll through a worksheet. Position your cursor below any rows and/or to the right of any columns that you wish to freeze in place, then choose Window and Freeze Panes. Unlock the rows/columns by choosing Window, and then Unfreeze Panes.

Did you know that it's not possible to assign the name History to an Excel worksheet? This is a reserved sheet name that Excel uses in conjunction with the rarely used Track Changes feature that appears on the Tools menu. To work around this limitation, add a period or a space after the word History.

Press Ctrl-A to select all cells, and then choose Insert, and Reset All Page Breaks.

The Microsoft web site offers a helpful article that offers guidance on whether Excel or Access would be best for managing your data.

The Microsoft web site includes an article that discusses techniques for recovering damaged spreadsheets. Also, Greg Lovern reports that as a last resort, you may be able to recover a damaged Excel workbook created in Windows by opening the file in the Mac version of Excel.

In rare instances, you might need to search and replace the * or ? characters with something else. To keep Excel from seeing these as wildcard character, Ture Magnusson reports that you can just precede them with a tilde (~). Thus, if you're replacing question marks with a different character, use ~?.