Let’s add some frills to it:

1) Make list

How would you like the idea of creating the list of all the files that are in your folder in just one click?

Here’s the way to do it:

Suppose there is a folder named “Excel tips” and it has some text files and excel files which you want to list in just one excel file. It will take you ages if you start to key them in, especially when there are lots of files.

So here is how you can have your list ready in just one go:

Go to start menu, choose run and type “regedit”.

Hit OK. It will take you to Directory. Right click on shell and select New - Key

And give it any name, say “Make list.”

When you open this file you will notice that you don’t actually need a lot of stuff and everything has been put into column A as shown below.

In order to segregate the names of files and to delete all unnecessary stuff, you can simply use the Excel’s “Text to column” function.

Simply select column A and choose “Text to Columns” option under the “Data” menu.Choose “Fixed Width” as it gives you the option to create or delete a break line to suit your needs.

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I have - Table 1 and Table 2

How can I bring salary information in table 2 from table 1 for corresponding dept and jobcode?
Thanks
Bob Lee

Our take on this excel problem

You can join Department and Job Code in both table 1 as well as 2 using concatenate function. And then using vlookup function, you can look up salary from table 1 for a particular department and job code in table 2 as shown below:

Step 1: Concatenate column B and column C

Step 2: Vlookup on the new concatenate column just created

Hope this helps.

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As an example, I have taken some values in column A and B as shown below:

Now if I apply filter on the data and deselect say 2 and 4.

Now I want to replace 8 and 10 with 3 and 5 and want the values in row 4 to remain as they are.

Now if I simply copy 3 and 5 from column A and paste it in column B, then as you can see it will replace 8 and 9 with 3 and 5 and not 8 and 10.

Even if you copy 3 and 5 and then select 8 and 10 and using F5 do visible cells only and then try and paste, it will not work and the following window will pop up.

To get around this, just type =A3 in cell B3 and drag it down. If you want to do it all in one go, simply select 8 and 10 and type = A3 in cell B3 and hit CTRL+Enter.

Now as you can see below, this will paste data only into the visible cells.

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This will be very handy especially if takes too many clicks to navigate to a desired location when a folder contains too many sub-folders.
Plus, this would not only give you the option to create a new worksheet but also a new folder, text file or a word document.

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Suppose there are two tabs- Jan and Feb. And they both contain the same fields with exactly the same location. For e.g. Both Jan and Feb have 4 fields as shown below:

Now in the Summary tab, we want to bring in this information for both the months.
If you already have formulas in place for Jan and now you just want to fill up Feb numbers.

For Feb, you want Feb!B1 in cell C1 of summary. There is no point in linking all over again by going to Feb tab each time.
We want the same formulas as in Jan column but we just want to swap Jan with Feb.Like you have Jan!B1 in cell B1 of summary for Jan and we want Feb!B1 for Feb.

However, if we just copy the formulas from Jan to Feb, it will not stay the same but would change B to C.

In order to get around this, we need to do two things:
1) Freeze Jan formulas so that we can transport them to Feb.
2) Replace Jan with Feb.

In order to do the first step, just select the entire column B of the summary tab(Jan) and do “find and replace” and just replace = with any letter say s. This will keep our formulas intact.

Now just paste these in column C and then select column C and then using find and replace, just replace Jan with Feb.

 Once that is done, then select both  columns B and C, and replace back “s” with “=”.

And it is done as you can see below.

The above example can also be done using indirect function.Here is a link to the article which talks about “Indirect Function“.
 

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If your workbook contains links to other workbooks, you can locate the source files in the “Links” tab of the “Edit” Menu.

However, this will only show you the external workbook names but would not tell you where these external links are located in your spreadsheet i.e. it would not take you to the relevant cells which are referencing to those external workbooks.

In order to trace cells which contain links to other workbooks, you can use the following two options.

1) Excel Find Function
As links to external workbooks use open([) square brackets in their formula syntax which is
=Path\[file]Sheet!Cell

So, we can use [ in our find dialog box to locate the external references.

Click on Edit and then Find. Choose Options and then in the Find What box enter [.
In order to search across all sheets in a workbook, select “workbook” in the within box.
In the Look in box, choose formulas. And click Find All.
This will display a list of formulae along with the Source File Name, linked cell address, sheet name and we can click on the cell address to reach the cell directly.

This is a nice method to use as long as we do not have lots of linked cells. However, If we have a long list, then this approach will be very time consuming to look through each cell in turn.

2) A Macro to locate all the links in a workbook
The following macro will help you locate the cells which contain the links to other workbooks.

Sub ListExternalLinks()

    Dim FirstAddress As String
    Dim AllLinks As Variant
    Dim Rng As Range
    Dim I As Long
    Dim sh As Worksheet
    Dim k As Long
   
    AllLinks = ThisWorkbook.LinkSources(xlExcelLinks)
    Sheets.Add.Name = “ExternalLinks”
    Worksheets(”ExternalLinks”).Cells(1, 1).Value = “Cell Address”
    Worksheets(”ExternalLinks”).Cells(1, 2).Value = “Sheet Name”
    Worksheets(”ExternalLinks”).Cells(1, 3).Value = “Link”
    Range(”A1:C1″).Select
    Selection.Font.Bold = True
     
    k = 2
    For Each sh In ActiveWorkbook.Worksheets
       With sh.Cells
            For I = LBound(AllLinks) To UBound(AllLinks)
                Set Rng = .Find(What:=Mid(AllLinks(I), 1, 10), _
                                After:=.Cells(.Cells.Count), _
                                LookIn:=xlFormulas, _
                                LookAt:=xlPart, _
                                SearchOrder:=xlByRows, _
                                SearchDirection:=xlNext, _
                                MatchCase:=False)
                If Not Rng Is Nothing And sh.Name <> “ExternalLinks” Then
                    FirstAddress = Rng.Address
                    Do
                        Worksheets(”ExternalLinks”).Cells(k, 1).Value = Rng.Address
                        Worksheets(”ExternalLinks”).Cells(k, 2).Value = sh.Name
                        Worksheets(”ExternalLinks”).Cells(k, 3).Value = AllLinks(I)
                        Set Rng = .FindNext(Rng)
                        k = k + 1
                    Loop While Not Rng Is Nothing And Rng.Address <> FirstAddress
                End If
            Next I
        End With
    Next sh
End Sub
 

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The following example elaborates on “Indirect funtion’s” power.
For simplicity, let us suppose, there are two tabs - A and B. Both of them have names of students along with their marks and in “consolidated” sheet we want to bring in everything on the same page. If we do it using vlookup function, we cannot drag the formula down to the names that are in tab “B” and would need to change the range in the formula as shown below.

This can be easily dealt with by using indirect function along with vlookup.

In order to use indirect function just follow the steps given below:
1) Go to each tab and select the range and give it a same name as the tab using define name feature. But this is just a one time exercise. For e.g. we have named range A1:B15 of tab A as “A” and likewise we have defined B.

2) Now in the vlookup function, we can replace the range with indirect function i.e. instead of entering the range as “A!$A$1:$B$5″ in cell C3, we can use indirect(A3) and simply drag the formula to the last cell without changing the range as shown below.

If we simply enter A3 without indirect then it would not work as it will treat “A” as text.Indirect function gives the value of the cell. Like if cell A1 has value 100, then indirect(”A1″) will give us 100.
However, if we enter “A” manually instead of a range then it will work fine. But it will pose the same problem as changing the range meaning we would need to change the formula from cell C6 and replace A with B.

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1.Click on the Tools menu
2.Choose Options
3.Click on the General tab
4.Enter a new path in Default File Location and hit OK.

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If we want a number series say 1-100, we can simply drag the cursor to expand the series. But if we instead need an alphabetic series say we require A-Z in column A then simple dragging system would not work.And it will be very time consuming if we key them in manually.

We can use the following methods to get around this:

1)Using “Char” function
Enter =char(row()) in cell A1 and drag it.
You will notice cell “A65″ to “A90″ will give the A-Z letters.
Just copy these and use them anywhere. But make sure you make them values before pasting them somewhere else.You can do that using Edit- paste special - values.

2)Using cell function
Enter =CELL(”address”,A1) and drag it to the last column.
This will return $A$1. To pull out just A from this we can use left and right functions.
=RIGHT(LEFT(CELL(”address”,A1),2),1)

An excel worksheet has 65,536 rows and 256 columns.
Excel assigns numbers to rows starting with 1 and letters to columns starting from A.
But as number of columns are more than 26, so it names column 27 as AA and column 52 as AZ, and names column 53 as BA and so on.
Therefore, after 26th column, we will need to modify our right and left function a bit so that it takes two letters from the right and not just one as shown below:

Once we have the list, we can add it to a custom list so that next time we can simply drag cursor to get an alphabetical list.
To add it to a custom list, first keep the alphabetic list handy in column A. Then go to “Tools” and then “options” and then custom list. Just import the list from column A and hit OK.

Sometimes your worksheet may have several columns. And each may have functions referencing to different columns like cell B5 = D5+K5+AB5+BF5. It will be very time consuming if we go to each cell to check what it is. In that case, if we make a list of all the columns with their headings,it will save a lot of time. Say, we have the following worksheet with columns till J

We can make a list to display what each column represents.

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Holding down shift key for more than 8 seconds will lock the keyboard and it will stop responding. But if you keep pressing keys for few seconds you would be able to type in but it will be very slow. Plus, it will produce a nasty sound.

To get around this, go to start and then settings, then control panel and then finally accessibility options. Make sure all the 3 boxes are unchecked.

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If you have lots of tabs and you would like to go from one tab to another then doing ctrl+  pageup/pagedown would turn out to be quite a slow process.
There are following two ways that we can use to navigate between tabs:

1) Activate Sheet option
If you do right click on the extreme left corner, a window will pop up with a list of all the tabs currently in the workbook.

Simply click on the worksheet name that you want to visit.

2) Insert hyperlink
You can add one tab like “Tablist” at the beginning of the workbook and run a simple macro to get the names of all the worksheets.
Here is the link to “Worksheets name” macro:

List of all tabs in a workbook

Once you have the list of all the worksheets, you can create links to all the internal worksheets using “Insert hyperlink” option. Press Ctrl+K, and click on the “place in this document” button and this will give the list of all the tabs that are currenlty there in the workbook. Start from the first tab on your list, just select the same name from the hyperlink list and click on it. Once you do that, you will see that tab will turn into blue with a underline and if you move your cursor over it, you will notice it will show a link sign. If you click on it, it will take you to the relevant tab.

Although this is a time consuming method but it’s a one-time process and also a neater way to show worksheet names with the links to their respective location.
Also, if there are several users of this spreadsheet then some of them might not even be familiar with the first option and will find the second option much easier to use especially with a readymade list and links to the tabs.

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If your excel takes forever to open, try out the following solutions…atleast one of them is sure to work.

1) Add more RAM:
Excel consumes a lot of memory so make sure you have enough RAM. For XP, you need atleast 512Mb of RAM.

2) Delete temp files
Make sure you have enough space on your system Drive. Empty out your recycle bin and delete all your temp files. Sometimes when we close our excel files, it’s temporary file (.tmp) gets created and whenever we open the excel next time it first checks if it needs to restore a crashed file.
To delete your temp files, go to start, then in the run command type in the following command :
%userprofile%\Local Settings
Then empty out both the temp and temporary internet files folder.

Also, remove Programs  you no longer use. Go to start and then settings and then in the control panel there is a Add/Remove Programs option and from the list simply remove the programs you feel are reduntant.

3) Avoid formulas that consume lots of space and adds more size to an excel file.
Following formula’s increase the excel file size:

a) Macro’s and codes in VBA.
b) Array formulae
c) Filter: Whenever you use filter, make sure you set it to “All” before saving your excel file and don’t leave it with filters on.

4) Lastcell used Issues:
Make sure your last cell in each tab is what it should be. Sometimes by mistake we press some key on cells we don’t use. Like if we hit spacebar on some cells it will increase the file size tremendously and the worst part is you won’t even be able to see it as it looks like a blank cell.

To get around this problem, use Ctrl+End to find your last cell used. And simply delete that cell using the “Delete” key.
Plus, we should avoid using too much (”") condition in our if formulas. Sometimes to avoid “NA” or “Ref” error we say that if cell A1 has no value, then cell B1 which is dependent on cell A1 should also be blank. So, we might enter the following formula in cell B1 = if(A1= “”, “”, A1) and if we drag it to the last cell in our spreadsheet it will make the file too heavy. As you can see from the figures below:

In our first figure we have used a simple formula and in the second we have used “” in our if condition and dragged it down to the last cell.

It increased the size from 13 Kb to 3.5 Mb.

5)Close all other applications if you are trying to open a huge excel file.

6)Set recalculation to manual.This can be done using the “options” under the tools tab.

And whenever you change any formula, hit F9.
F9 will calculate all workbooks. If you only wish to calculate active workbook press CTRL+ALT+ F9. And to calculate only active worksheet press Shift +F9.

7) Broken Links

Excel slows down immensely when there are broken links.

Broken links can arise under following situations:

1) Links to External Files:
Excel slows down calculations when some formulas have links to external files. That is still OK if there are not too many linked cells. However sometimes we delete those files.And when you open excel it asks you if you would like to update the links.

If you hit don’t update then it will retain the previous number. This can be very risky because if there are some internal broken links and you delete some cells which feed others then it will start giving you reference error. However when you have external links then if you delete the file it will not give you reference error and will keep the old number.
To get around this, you should keep track of the external files you are using and delete others that you no longer use. To check the list of external files, go to “links” under the “Edit” tab.

2) Define Names
Although Naming cells in excel is a very handy feature. But it has disadvantages too.
If you delete the cells or range of cells that you have named then in your define name list, you will see a reference error.

And lots of such broken names can slow down excel a lot.
So we should keep checking our define name list to see if there are any broken links.
Moreover, when we move or copy some worksheet(tab) from one workbook to another, then all the defined names also move alongwith the worksheet. This is fine as long as names are defined in the same worksheet. However, if we have defined names in other worksheet and used it the one that we copied then it will keep referencing to the original workbook and link will be created between the two workbooks and users wouldn’t even realise this.
For e.g. in workbook “Book1″ we have two worksheets “sheet1″ and “Define Names”. And in sheet1 we have given a name “Brokenlinks” to some range of cells.

 And then in the “Define Names” tab we have used brokenlinks in our formula. Then if we only move and copy “Define Names” tab to some other workbook “list” then all the names will also move along with the worksheet but will keep referencing to the original worksheet i.e Book1.

Hence it is very important that we keep updating our define name list.

 8)Defrag: It is recommended that you run a disk defragmenter every month.
Go to “start menu” and then “Programs”, then “Accessories” and then “under “System tools” you will find “Disk Defragmenter”.

9)Disable Norton antivirus just for MS Office

In order to disable Norton antivirus for MS Office applications, open Norton antivirus and then select options under “other”. This will give you the option to disable the “office plug in”, just un-check it and when you open your excel file next time you will see it will open up so much faster than before.

10) Instead of double clicking on the excel file directly, open it through the “open” option on the “File” menu. You will notice your file will load much faster.

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To list tab names in excel, we can use the following macro:

Sub ListWorkSheetNames()

Dim Sheetnames
Sheetnames = Sheets.Count
Sheets.Add
ActiveSheet.Name = “SheetList”
Sheets(”SheetList”).Move after:=Sheets(Sheetnames + 1)

For i = 1 To Sheetnames
Range(”A” & i) = Sheets(i).Name
Next i

End Sub

The above macro would add a new worksheet “SheetList” and will list all the tab names there. If you don’t wish to add this new tab but would like to list the worksheet names in the active worksheet then you can shorten the above macro:

Sub ListWorkSheetNames()

For i = 1 To Sheets.Count
Range(”A” & i) = Sheets(i).Name
Next i

End Sub

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Naming cells comes in very handy when you need to use some cell or range of cells lots of times in your formulas. In functions like vlookup, match, offset etc you have to give the range, so instead of choosing the range manually all the time you can give a name to your data.For e.g. you have named some range as “List” then when you are using the vlookup function then in your formula you can refer to that range as:
=VLOOKUP(E3,List,2,FALSE) as shown in the diagram below.

To name a cell or a range of cells, we can use the following two methods:
Using the Name box:
Just select the cell or range of cells.Then just type the name in the Name box and hit Enter. In the diagram below, list refers to the range A1:B14.

Using the Define Name Feature

Select the cell or range of cells.From Insert menu, choose Name - Define
Type a name and hit enter.

Using the Define Name dialog, you can change the range that a name refers to, or delete a name.

Naming a cell can be very useful when you have lots of tabs in your spreadsheet and you frequently visit particular sections of some tabs then if you have named the data in those tabs you can simply type in the name in the name box and hit enter and it will take you to that tab in a second as the name box stores all the existing names.

Also, when you use names in your formulas, you don’t have to remember all the names. So when you are in midst of typing a formula and you wish to enter some already defined names then just hit F3 to get the Paste Name box and simply select the name you want to use in your formula and hit OK.

Although naming a cell is very handy but it has disadvantages too. If you named some range or cell and later on you deleted the tab in which it existed then in your define dialog box you will still see the name but you will notice it no longer refers to that range but gives a reference error. Lots of such broken links can slow down excel immensely.

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Countif function can be used to count the number of entries in some column based on a single condition.Whenever we want to get the count using two or more criteria, we can use the sumif array function.
Suppose you have a list of students in column A and in column B you have the names of subjects and Column C tells you whether the student passed or failed that particular subject. Tests happen every quarter and if a student fails the test three times, he/she won’t be promoted to the next class.

Now we want to count how many times a particular student has failed the given subjects.
We basically have to fill the following table.

We can simply do that using the sumif array formula.We have 3 criteria:
Student’s Name, Subject and Fail.So, the formula in cell G3 would be:
{=SUM(IF(($A$3:$A$86=$F3)*($B$3:$B$86=G$2)*($C$3:$C$86=”Fail”),1,0))}
Because it is an array formula, hit ctrl+shift+enter instead of just pressing enter.
Here, when selected range in column A equals student’s Name and chosen range in column B equals Subject Name and selected range in column C equals “Fail”, Excel puts the “1″ in a temporary array. Then SUM returns the sum of all the 1’s. The complete table would look like:

Now, we can highlight all the numbers that are  greater than or equal to 3, just so that we can see who got promoted at first glance. We can do this using the “Conditional formatting” feature under the “Format” tab by selecting the table region. 

Choose “greater than or equal to” option in the conditional formatting second drag down menu and type in “3″ in the third drop down option. And then using the format button choose any color to highlight the chosen criterion.

As we chose red color, all the numbers greater than or equal to 3 have turned into red as shown below:

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