Category: Microsoft Excel
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Excel: Merge cells without losing data
If you’ve ever attempted to merge cells that hold data in Excel, you will almost certainly have encountered this warning: This can be annoying when you’re trying to combine data in multiple different fields, such as first and last names. Happily, there is a formula (in Excel, there’s more or less always a formula) to…
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Calculating percentage change in Excel
If you do a lot of work in Excel, odds are you’ve needed to calculate a percentage change. Luckily, Excel does this for you quite readily if you simply apply a basic formula of (New Value – Old Value)/Old Value. There is, however, a pitfall that you’ll not get the values you expect if the…
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Outlook: Mail merge
I have previously written about one of my many responsibilities; contacting users whose login credentials have shown up in breach lists. While the pertinent results of the breach files are delivered to me in a flat file, I use Excel’s Text to Columns feature to separate logins (usually email addresses) from the password. While this…
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Excel: Text to Columns
I work a lot with text files containing data which is, to some degree or another, structured. Whether a breach file from a published breach, or the result of a powershell query such as Get-ADUser, Get-ADComputer, or Get-ADDirectReports, I need to separate the data into columns so that I can work with it. This is…
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Excel freezes on 10 MB file
A few months ago, I had a user call in complaining that Excel would freeze and become completely unresponsive when she was working in a specific workbook. It was fairly large (10MB), but well within what the computer should have been able to handle. I opened a remote session to the computer, and started troubleshooting. My…
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Excel: Quickly remove blank cells
From time to time, Excel worksheets fill up with blank cells interspersed among the content. While the judicious use of whitespace can be useful, it may also make reading the worksheet somewhat challenging. Luckily, Excel has a tool to help us get rid of the blank cells. Here’s how: Open the worksheet in question Press F5…
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MS Excel: Create PDF of active worksheet
I recently had a user call in and ask me how he could export the contents of a single worksheet to PDF while working in Microsoft Excel 2010. As I told him, that is a simple feat to achieve. Here is how: Click File, then Save as… Change the format in which to save to PDF Click…