Excel can be Exciting – 15 fun things you can do with your spreadsheet in less than 5 seconds

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Who said Excel takes lot of time / steps do something? Here is a list of 15 incredibly fun things you can do to your spreadsheets and each takes no more than 5 seconds to do.

Happy Friday 🙂

1. Change the shape / color of cell comments

1-change-cell-comment-shape

Just select the cell comment, go to draw menu in bottom left corner of the screen, and choose change auto shape option, select a 32 pointed star or heart symbol or a smiley face, just wow everyone 🙂

1-change-cell-comment-shape-howto

2. Filter unique items from a list

4-filter-unique-items-in-a-list

Select the data, go to data > filter > advanced filter and check the “unique items” option.

3. Sort from Left to Right

5-sort-left-to-right

What if your data flows from left to right instead of top to bottom. Just change the sort orientation from “sort options” in the data > sort menu.

4. Hide the grid lines from your sheets

6-hide-grid-lines

Go to Options dialog in tools menu, uncheck the “grid lines” option to remove gridlines from your worksheets. You can also change the color of grid line from here (not recommended)

5. Add rounded border to your charts, make them look smooth

7-rounded-border-for-charts

Just right click on the chart, select format chart option, in the dialog, check the “rounded borders”. You can even add a shadow effect from here.

6. Fetch live stock quotes / company research with one click

8-fetch-stock-quotes-live

Just enter the stock symbol (MSFT, GOOG, AAPL etc.) in a cell, alt+click on the cell to launch “research pane”, select stock quotes to see MSN Money quotes for the selected symbol. You can fetch company profiles in the same way. Learn more.

7. Repeat rows on top when printing, show table headers on every page

9-repeat-rows-when-printing

When you are on the sheet view, just hit menu > file > page setup, go to the last tab, specify “rows to repeat”. You can “repeat columns while printing” as well from the same menu.

8. Remove conditional formatting / all formatting with one click

2-clear-formats-conditional

Just go to Menu > Edit > Clear > All to remove all the formatting from selected cell / range.

9. Auto sum cells with one click

3-auto-sum-cells-1-click

Select a bunch of cells and click on the Sigma symbol on the standard tool bar. Alternatively you can use Alt+= keyboard shortcut.

10. Find width of a column with formula, really!

10-find-column-width-with-formula

Just use =cell("width") to find the width of the column to which that formula cell belongs. Width is returned as the nearest integer.

11. Find total working days between any two dates, including holidays

11-find-total-working-days-between-2-dates

If you work on project plans, gantt charts alot, this can be totally handy. Just type =networkdays(start date, end date, list of holidays) to fetch the number of working days. In the above sample you can see the number of working days between New years day and September first of this year (labor day).

12. Freeze Rows / Columns in your sheet, Show important info even when scrolling

12-freeze-rows-columns-at-top

Select the cell diagonally beneath the row / columns you want to freeze (for eg. if you wan to freeze row 1&2 and columns A&B, click in C3), go to menu > window and click on freeze panes.

13. Split sheets in to two, compare side by side to be more productive

13-split-sheet-to-two

Just click on this little vertical bar on the bottom right corner of the sheet (see below) and drag it to create a vertical split. You can do the same way for a horizontal split as well 🙂

13-split-sheet-to-two-windows-compare-side-by-side

14. Change the color of various sheet name tabs

14-change-tab-color-excel-sheet

Right click on sheet and select “Tab color” option to change the worksheet tab colors. Group them with similar colors if you have lot of sheets, it looks nice.

15. Insert a quick organization chart

15-instant-org-charts

Click on menu > insert > diagram to open the above dialog, just select the organization chart option, enter node values and you have a pretty organization chart. Alternatively learn how to create org charts in excel.

15-insert-org-charts-howto

So what do you say now? Isn’t Excel Exciting? 😀

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20 Responses to “Mortgage Calculator with Extra Payments – Excel Download”

  1. Rayd says:

    Kia ora Chandoo, thanks for this wonderful template brother. How can I modify this/ or do you have a similar template for a fortnightly
    payment? Thank you

    • Chandoo says:

      Morena Rayd. You can adjust the multiplier / divider to 26 (I think it was set to 12) to see fortnightly details. Watch the companion video to understand the steps / logic.

  2. Alicia says:

    It is very simple and easy to use. Is user interface is attractive. It is very helpful and beneficial for calculations.

  3. Vince says:

    This is great, thanks a lot!
    I think there is an error in the "You save X $ in interest". If i dont put any extra payment, it still says that I will save 19k in interest rate.

    • Chandoo says:

      I too realized this problem. I will post an update once I fix the error.

    • Chandoo says:

      Updated on 11-Sep: I fixed the problem with "interest saved" calculation. Turns out there was an internal bug in cumipmt function in Excel that reports incorrect values. Something new!
      Please use the link above to re-download the correct file.

  4. Lor says:

    Hi Chandoo, do you have a template that will make changes to figures going forward if the interest rate changes part way through the loan? Thank you for your help.

  5. Aniket says:

    I wanted calculator which can consider floating interest rate, can you please advise how to get that?

  6. Christine says:

    I love your tutorial. If I am making weekly acelerated mortgage payments, how to I account for that in the Eff term?

    Thank yo so much,

    Christine

    • VAGEESAN says:

      Hi Chandoo. I want an excel template where I can have my favourite stocks listed for which the prices changes on a dynamic basis every day as per the market. I mean a sheet which is linked to NSE for price changes and other changes like daily low, Daily high, Yesterday closing, last 10 day range, 52 week high, 52 week low, one month high, one month low, one week high and one week low etc

  7. Ritwik says:

    The excel is awesome but I am getting #NAME? error with the field 'Old Interest Paid' and subsequently Original Interest and Money saved. Can you tell me how to fix that. I am trying to check if I should complete my loan by the extra payments or instead invest the same amount elsewhere

    • Chandoo says:

      #NAME error could mean your Excel doesn't have one of the functions I am using. Can you tell me what version you are using? If I am not mistaken, this file requires Excel 365.

      • Monil says:

        Hi Chandoo, I am also getting the same error. I am using Office 2019. Would you be able to recommend a fix for this?

        Regards,

  8. Abhishek says:

    How do you change the dollar to rupees for whole sheet to match indian currency

  9. Hey Chandoo,
    Thank you for making the excel spreadsheet! It is great, but there another, little known money saving action that you can take to DRAMATICALLY reduce your total interest owed on your mortgage allowing you to pay it off 40% to 60% faster. I am going to share with you for free. It's called recasting your mortgage, which is a form of re-amortizing the interest that you owe on your loan by paying the the bank an early payment of $10,000 or more. The bank will modify your loan to cancel the original interest that you owe, and recalculate the total interest based on the new lower loan loan amount for the remaining term of the loan, instead of the original loan amount. This pays off the most expensive section of interest on your loan which is the next owed interest, instead of cancelling the interest at the end of your loan. Your charts show the interest being canceled on the last payments, however the interest can be canceled on your next upcoming portion of the loan, but keeps the ending date the same. However, the result of recasting the loan is you, pay the loan off 2 or 3 times faster, by paying off the portion of the loan with the highest interest cost. I am wondering if you can build a excel spreadsheet that shows this for me? I will pay you for making it. I am a mortgage loan officer and would like to use it to help my clients see the impact of paying off their loans this way. Thank you for considering this!

  10. Spiro Misi says:

    HI Chandoo.
    Excellent sheet i watched your video and tried to edit sheet to suit my current mortgage however i cant get it to work. I am trying to set it to weekly payments.
    I edited the monthly payments to =PMT(E7/52,E6*52,E5)
    eff.term =ROUND(NPER($E$7/52,$E$10,$D13),0)
    principal term to =PPMT($E$7/52,1,E13,D13)
    cb w/o to =IF(C13=1,$E$5,J12)+PPMT($E$7/52,C13,$E$6*52,$E$5)
    and interest paid to =IPMT($E$7/52,1,E13,D13) but i cant edit the arrays to increase the range to 1560 from 360, so i just added the numbers in and that worked for the array on the left but the old interest paid array im stuck. And the graph well the graph is useless now and i have no idea how to fix that. no idea at all.

    Any help would be great.

    Cheers

    • Chandoo says:

      To change the NUMBER OF ROWS, go to cell C13 and change the formula to
      =SEQUENCE(E6*52)

      The chart won't auto-adjust. So you need to adjust the chart's source data range to capture all rows.

  11. Karl says:

    Hey man, I really appreciate your contribution, this template is awesome, I am sure it will help me to plane my financial life, and also to pay debts earlier and create wealth.

    Thank you!!!

  12. clifton murphy says:

    how do i edit this to use months instead of years for term? i have a 90 month loan (7.5 years) that i am trying to use with this and it forces me to use 7 or 8 in years.

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