Sep 06
By David Ringstrom, CPA Depending upon your version of Excel, you have nearly 500 different worksheet functions at your disposal. Some worksheets functions, such as CUMIPMT and NPER, are like the chainsaw in my garage. I don’t use them very often, but when I do, no other tool will suffice. Other functions are more …
Aug 31
By David H. Ringstrom, CPA (If you didn’t already do so in Part 1, click here to download the accompanying Income Tax Calculator spreadsheet.) Last month I explained how to use the VLOOKUP function to cross-reference tax rates from a tax rate table. I then extended the functionality by creating 4 different …
Aug 31
By David H. Ringstrom, CPA Look-up formulas are one of Excel’s most powerful features. Instead of manually linking to a worksheet cell, such as =A2, a look-up formula allows you to provide a criteria, such as taxable income, and have the formula automatically return the proper tax rate. This enables you to quickly run …
Aug 15
By David Ringstrom, CPA From time to time, you probably get stymied in Excel and think, “I’ll just look in the help file.” Doing so is as simple as pressing F1 or clicking the question mark icon that appears in the upper right-hand corner of Excel 2007 and later. However, you might end up …
Aug 08
By David Ringstrom, CPA Depending upon your version of Excel, the Recent list on the File menu can streamline access to both files and folders. If you work on numerous spreadsheets, this list offers marginal value in Excel 2003 and earlier. The list gained some new functionality in Excel 2007, reached its …
Aug 02
By David Ringstrom, CPA In an unlikely mash-up, Matt Parker of Think Maths offers a free tool that converts a digital photo of your choice into an Excel spreadsheet. According to the website, “digital photographs are actually just spreadsheets. When you take a photo, your camera measures the amount of red, green, and blue light hitting each …
Jul 26
By David Ringstrom, CPA Some time ago, I explained how to use Excel’s Text to Columns Wizard for separating text within a spreadsheet into columns. Although this approach is helpful for data that’s in a spreadsheet, in other cases, you may wish to link spreadsheets to text files that change periodically. In this article, I’ll walk …
Jul 12
By David Ringstrom, CPA Data within Excel spreadsheets is commonly organized in columns, with explanatory titles at the top of each section. When carrying out this most basic of data entry tasks, many Excel users often unwittingly cause Excel to be harder to use. Whenever column headings within a worksheet span two or more …
Jun 28
By David Ringstrom, CPA Periodically, you may encounter numbers in Excel that you can’t sum or use arithmetically. A common cause for this is numbers formatted as text. Often, reports exported from other programs, such as an accounting package, will be formatted as text or they might contain embedded spaces. In this article, I’ll describe …
Jun 24
By David Ringstrom, CPA Working in an Excel spreadsheet can be somewhat like the Wild West – unless other provisions are made, users can enter any value in any cell. One way you can restrict users to a predefined set of values is by way of Excel’s Data Validation feature. I’ll explain how you can create in-cell …
Jun 14
By David Ringstrom, CPA My unscientific observation is that the SUM function is the most widely used function within Excel spreadsheets. This function makes it easy to add up multiple cells at once without laboriously adding multiple cells together individually. Taking things a step further, the AutoSum feature makes it easy to instantly add multiple …
Jun 09
By David Ringstrom, CPA Microsoft is dipping its corporate toe into the crowdfunding pool. An experimental program dubbedChip In allows students to tap friends and relatives in a quest to fund their next computer. The program will run through September 1, 2013, and offers a 10 percent discount on a selection of name-brand laptops, tablets, and …
Jun 04
By David Ringstrom, CPA It’s a frustrating experience when a simple Excel spreadsheet displays #VALUE! in a worksheet cell rather than the expected result. Many times the problem is obvious, in that you’ve tried to do arithmetic using text and numbers, but sometimes the culprit is harder to track down. As shown in Figure …
May 29
By David Ringstrom, CPA Many users rely on the Subtotal feature in Excel to instantly insert totals, averages, counts, or other statistics into a list. As you’ll see, the feature is easy to use – until you want to copy or format just the total rows. In this article, I’ll explain the nuance so that you’ll be …
May 17
By David Ringstrom, CPA IBM recently announced that Lotus 1-2-3 will no longer be available for purchase. Most readers of this article will likely have one of two reactions: “What is Lotus 1-2-3?” or else an incredulous “Lotus 1-2-3 was still on the market?” If you’re of a certain age, you may wistfully remember …