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Today's Excel Tweets 20110719

Would your ancestors want to be in an Excel pie chart? That's just one of the intriguing Excel related tweets that I found today.

Today's Excel Tweets 20110719

Track Goals and Activities in Excel

David Seah produces a compact calendar each year, in Excel format, that you can download from his website. It's a vertical format, with a row for each week, and the month start dates highlighted.

He also posts a monthly review of his goals and activites, under the heading of Groundhog Day Resolution Review. In his April review, he includes a downloadable Excel file, in which he tracks his goals and results.

If you're looking for ideas on how to track your own work, download David's workbook, for some inspiration.

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Spreadsheet Food: Diners, Drive-ins and Drives

If you're a fan of the Diners, Drive-ins and Dives tv show, you'll enjoy
this blog:

http://dinersdrive-insanddives.blogspot.com/

And to make it even better, there are spreadsheets too! Look in the right-hand sidebar, and you'll see links to Google spreadsheets
-- one for the locations, and another for recipes. There's also a list of Flavortown Menus -- click on one of those to see a
filtered list of recipes.

Have fun, and use those recipes at your own risk!

Show Different Drop Downs in One Cell

With Excel data validation, you can create dependent drop down lists, so the selection in one drop down controls what appears in the next drop down. For example, in the worksheet shown below, you can select a country in column A, and cities from the selected country appear in the Column B drop down.

This is created by using the INDIRECT function in the data validation settings for column B:

=INDIRECT(A2)

For detailed instructions see Different Drop Down Lists in Same Excel Cell

 

Use VLOOKUP Function From Different Workbook

In Excel, you can use the VLOOKUP function to find information in a lookup table. For example, when you enter a product name in a data entry worksheet, a VLOOKUP formula in another cell can find the cost of that product in a pricing table on another sheet in the same workbook.

You can use VLOOKUP even if the lookup table is in a different workbook. To create the VLOOKUP formula, follow these steps:

1. Open both workbooks (this makes it easier to create the link)
2. Create the VLOOKUP formula, and in the second argument (table_array), select the lookup range in the other workbook.

For detailed instructions, and a short Excel video tutorial, see: Excel VLOOKUP in Another Workbook

 

Conditional Formatting Currency Symbols in Excel 2010

Use conditional formatting in Excel 2010 to show the appropriate currency
symbol when selling products in a different country. For example, show USA
sales in dollars, UK sales in pounds and Italian sales in Euros.

Sponsor an African Spreadsheet

From Engineers Without Borders -- A print ad is running in Engineering
Dimensions next week:

http://twitpic.com/1zty7d

Zoom to Selected Cells in Excel 2007

Did you know that you can quickly zoom in to focus on the selected cells in Excel 2007? This very short video shows you how.

Name a Range of Cells in Excel

This short video shows you a quick technique for naming a range of cells in
Excel.

For written instructions see Excel Named Ranges

Interacting with Excel 2010 Slicers

In Excel 2010, filter data for multiple pivot tables with one set of
slicers.

Interacting with Slicers by Microsoft Excel Team