All articles in 'hacks' Category

The Properties button on the Developer Tab in Excel 2007/10 can be used to access a number of Worksheet properties normally only available through VBA and even a few which aren’t available through VBA.
Lets take them for a spin.

Yesterday I have learned this cool excel charting trick and I cant wait to share it with you all. The problem: I have too many charts & want to show one based on selection You have made 3 charts to show your company performance in the last 8 years. But you don’t want to clutter [...]

In Petal Charts – an Alternative to Radar Charts I have suggested using a radar chart tweak to replace the radar charts. Both PTSBlog and Information Ocean have posted their critical reviews of these petal charts. So as a penance for proposing petals, I am going to provide a tutorial on creating a comparison table [...]

Gauges are a familiar metaphor, everyone can understand them, you can see them everywhere – near your stove, ac, car, gaming console, pc – you name it. So, when you are preparing a chart to tell a point, gauge chart like the one above can be effective. (I know charting pros like Jon Peltier wouldn’t [...]

Here is a quick excel tip to make your charts look professional by showing symbols in the axis labels instead of text. Just follow these 4 simple steps: First identify the symbols you want to show on the axis or as data label from symbol fonts like webdings, wingdings or a custom dingbat font like [...]

Firefox 3 has a ton of extremely useful productivity features and as I keep using it, I discover more and more of them. Here is one I found extremely useful and simple: When you have lots of tabs open, in order to switch between the tabs, place mouse pointer on any of the tab titles [...]

Blog reader Richard asks through email: I’m a non-programing user of Excel. I import stock prices, using what is called ( I believe) a dde link, into my spreadsheets,from a trading program. I would like to add a feature to my spreadsheets that, like conditional formatting, alerts me to a price change in a cell, [...]

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 Just select the cell comment, go to draw [...]

Do you know that you can mute conversations in gmail if you are do not want to see that lengthy thread on single subjected that people wont give up. Just select the mail / conversation you want to mute Click on “More actions” and select “mute” Enjoy the bliss If you want search for muted [...]

Often my work involves processing web page data in excel sheets. This includes extracting the hyperlinks from cell contents. There is no formula for extracting hyperlinks though, you can right click on cell and choose “edit hyperlink” to see which address the cell is linking to. But that is a tedious process especially if you [...]

change-sort-orientation-excel-columns You can sort data across columns instead of rows by changing sort options. If you ever had to sort across columns now you know a simple way to do this Follow these steps for changing sort orientation: Select the table you want to sort (just the data, not the headers as when you change [...]

Bullet graphs provide an effective way to dashboard target vs. actual performance data, the bread and butter of corporate analytics. Howmuchever effective they are, the sad truth is there is no one easy way to do them in excel. I have prepared a short tutorial that can make you a dashboard ninja without writing extensive [...]

In response to Making Incell charts better article, reader Tony mailed me an excel sheet in which he has modified the charts to display colors and negative values. This is pretty cool. Take a look at the chart below: The trick lies in displaying the charts in 2 rows, one for positive values and another [...]

I am fascinated by board games. They provide immense fun, anyone can enjoy them, they are unpredictable and best of all they are great value for money. That is why whenever I get sometime I experiment with simulating games to know them better [read Why Monopoly board game is not as random as it appears]. [...]

I can never get tired of in-cell charts, whenever I get sometime, I try to experiment something on them. Here is an idea to design true incell column charts without using any add-ins or installing fonts. These charts can be fun to have on your project report or annual news letter or memos, they take [...]