Here is a familiar scenario: You are building a dashboard. Naturally, it has a few worksheets – data, assumptions, calculations and output. As you make changes to input data, you constantly switch to calculations (or output) page to check if the numbers are calculating as desired. This back and forth is slows you down.
Use Watch Window to reduce development time.
What is Watch Window:
Watch Window allows you to monitor values in other worksheets. This is very useful when you are testing your calculations / model. As you make changes to the input values / assumptions, Watch Window instantly reports the output values. See below demo to understand how Watch Window helps you.
How to Set up Watches?
Simple. Follow below steps:
- Go to Formulas ribbon tab and activate Watch Window from Auditing area.
- Select the cell(s) you want to add as Watches and click on “Add Watch” button on Watch Window
- The Watch Window stays visible until you close it. Edit input values to see the results in Watch Window instantly.
Adding Watches for VBA
Of course, Watches are a feature in almost all programming editors. Naturally, VBE also supports Watches. To add a watch to a variable / expression, just select it, right click and add Watch from the context menu.
Once you add a watch, you can monitor the expression / variable values when your code breaks. Alternatively, you can also ask VBE to break the code whenever your watch value changes.
Do you use watches?
Whenever I am developing complex pieces of VBA code or a big workbooks, I rely on watches to cut down the developing / testing time. They are very useful, light weight and simple.
What about you? Do you use watches in Excel? Share your experience in the comments section.
More ways to debug your formulas / VBA code
Check out below tips to learn more about formula / VBA code debugging:
Formulas
- Use F9 key to debug formulas
- Understand and fix Excel formula errors
- Auditing Excel formulas – a practical guide
- Show all names & their references -spreadsheet auditing
- Optimization tips for Excel formulas
VBA Development
11 Responses to “Fix Incorrect Percentages with this Paste-Special Trick”
I've just taught yesterday to a colleague of mine how to convert amounts in local currency into another by pasting special the ROE.
great thing to know !!!
Chandoo - this is such a great trick and helps save time. If you don't use this shortcut, you have to take can create a formula where =(ref cell /100), copy that all the way down, covert it to a percentage and then copy/paste values to the original column. This does it all much faster. Nice job!
I was just asking peers yesterday if anyone know if an easy way to do this, I've been editing each cell and adding a % manually vs setting the cell to Percentage for months and just finally reached my wits end. What perfect timing! Thanks, great tip!
If it's just appearance you care about, another alternative is to use this custom number format:
0"%"
By adding the percent sign in quotes, it gets treated as text and won't do what you warned about here: "You can not just format the cells to % format either, excel shows 23 as 2300% then."
Dear Jon S. You are the reason I love the internet. 3 year old comments making my life easier.
Thank you.
Here is a quicker protocol.
Enter 10000% into the extra cell, copy this cell, select the range you need to convert to percentages, and use paste special > divide. Since the Paste > All option is selected, it not only divides by 10000% (i.e. 100), it also applies the % format to the cells being pasted on.
@Martin: That is another very good use of Divide / Multiply operations.
@Tony, @Jody: Thank you 🙂
@Jon S: Good one...
@Jon... now why didnt I think of that.. Excellent
Thank You so much. it is really helped me.
Big help...Thanks
Thanks. That really saved me a lot of time!
Is Show Formulas is turned on in the Formula Ribbon, it will stay in decimal form until that is turned off. Drove me batty for an hour until I just figured it out.