Tag: AccountingWEB articles

Mar 29

You Want to Use Sparklines, but they Seem to Be Disabled

 

By David Ringstrom. CPA

 

Earlier this week I presented the Chart Edition of AccountingWEB’s High Impact Excel webinar series. One of the many topics I covered was the Sparklines feature, which was first introduced in Excel 2010. Several attendees asked “What do I do when the Sparklines feature is greyed out?” One of my favorite truisms is that Excel is fraught with nuance. Indeed, a subtle nuance can disable this feature, which I’ll reveal, along with an overview of Sparklines.

As shown in Figure 1, Sparklines are a means of displaying tiny charts inside worksheet cells. This capability is built into Excel 2010, Excel 2011 for Mac, and Excel 2013. A free add-in offers similar functionality for earlier versions of Excel. Sparklines are helpful in showing trends for numbers, and are often helpful in spreadsheet-based dashboards. Within Excel, dashboards are used to enable users to assimilate a lot of data within a compact space. Sparklines can take three different forms:

 

Continue reading at www.accountingWEB,com

Mar 21

Getting Excel to Handle Social Security Numbers Properly

by David Ringstrom, CPA

 

During the recent High Impact Excel: VLOOKUP Edition webinar a senior financial analyst named Lisa asked a question related to Social Security numbers. She periodically receives employee lists where the Social Security numbers aren’t necessarily in a uniform format. For instance, some are all numeric, others have dashes, and some might be text-based. Any data analysis involving look-up functions in Excel requires that our data be clean. Here are some techniques for cleaning up the numbers.

 

Continue reading article where it first appeared: www.accountingweb.com.

 

About the author:

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

Mar 14

The Indispensable NCAA Bracket Tool: Excel

by David Ringstrom,CPA

 

It’s almost Selection Sunday, when it seems that everyone in the country, including President Obama, makes their picks for the Final Four. There’s no need to search the Internet for a bracket template – you’re just a few mouse clicks away from one in Microsoft Excel. Many users overlook the wide variety of templates that are readily available in Excel. Poke around a bit, and you’ll find a dizzying array of business templates, along with a cricket scorecard, football pool squares, and much more.

 

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An alternate version of this article also appeared at GoingConcern.com.

About the author:
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, teaches webcasts for CPE Link, and writes freelance articles on Excel for AccountingWEB, Going Concern, et.al.

 

Mar 11

Techniques for When Excel Worksheet Tabs Go Missing

by David Ringstrom,CPA

 

It can be disconcerting when you open an Excel workbook that has several worksheets, but you only see single worksheet. If this happens, your “missing” worksheets may be hiding in plain sight due to a simple Excel setting. In addition to restoring vanished worksheet tabs, I'll also describe a couple of techniques for navigating workbooks easier, as well as other ways to find hidden worksheets.
 
Typically, within an Excel workbook you'll see worksheet tabs along the bottom of the screen, but it's also possible to hide the worksheet tabs, as shown in Figure 1. To manage this setting:
  • Excel 2010/2013: As shown in Figure 2, choose File, Options, and then enable the Show Sheet Tabs setting in the Display Options section of the Advanced options.
  • Excel 2007: Click the Office button, choose Excel Options, and then then enable the Show Sheet Tabs setting in the Display Options section of the Advanced options.
  • Excel 2003 and earlier: Choose Tools, Options, Display, and then Show Sheet Tabs.
  • Excel 2011 for Mac: Choose Excel, Preferences, View, and then Show Sheet Tabs. 
 

 To continue reading see www.accountingweb.com . 

 
About the author:

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.

Nov 23

How to Conditionally Display Decimal Places in Excel: Part 2

 
by David Ringstrom,CPA
 
In Part 1 of this series I showed how to use a custom number format to conditionally display decimal places. Although the technique is simple, the downside is it may not work in every situation. For instance, the number formats shown in Part 1 would display 0.75 with two decimal places, but would round 4,200.75 up to 4,201 since 4,200.75 is greater than 1. In this article, I'll describe how to use Excel's Conditional Formatting feature to handle just about every imaginable situation.
 
Excel's Conditional Formatting feature is available on the Home tab of Excel 2007 and later for Windows as well as Excel 2011 for Mac, or the Format menu of Excel 2003 and earlier. You can establish up to 64 levels of Conditional Formatting in Excel 2007 and later, or 3 levels in Excel 2003 and earlier.
 

 

Related article:

A previous version of this article first appeared on www.accountingweb.com .
 
About the author:

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.

 

Nov 13

How to Conditionally Display Decimal Places in Excel: Part 1

 
by David Ringstrom,CPA
 
 
The simple task of displaying decimal places sometimes causes angst for spreadsheet users. If you have a list of both large and small numbers, there's tension between rounding the small numbers to whole values and making the large numbers harder to read by adding two trailing zeros.
 
In this article, I'll describe how to add decimal places on demand by way of using a custom number format. In Part 2 of this series, I'll demonstrate an alternative that uses the MOD function along with Excel's Conditional Formatting feature.
 

 

Related article:
 Continue reading on www.accountingweb.com .
 
 
About the author:

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.

 

Oct 31

Reinstalling Microsoft Office When You Don’t Have a Disc or Download

 
by David Ringstrom,CPA
 
 
From time to time, you may need to reinstall Microsoft Office because you purchased a new computer or you're trying to resolve a program error. Or, in Excel 2010 and later, you may need to move between the 32-bit and 64-bit versions. In this article, I'll describe how to download the installation files on demand as well as recover a lost product key for Office.
 

 

Continue reading on www.accountingweb.com .
 
About the author:

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.

Oct 24

How to Restore “Shrink One Page” in Word 2010 and 2013

by David Ringstrom,CPA

 

Long-time Word users may recall a handy feature in Word 2007 and earlier called Shrink One Page. This highly useful feature enables you to condense the font size of your document just enough so that you don't end up with a mostly blank page at the end. This feature may appear to have vanished from Word 2010 and 2013, but you can easily resurrect it.

 

Continue reading on www.accountingweb.com .
About the author:

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.