| Catching data entry errors - Excel | | Print | |
It's a fact: Shared workbooks generate more errors than workbooks with only one owner. Here's one way to flag errors as they occur:
1. Select all cells in which data will be entered.
2. Go to Format | Conditional Formatting.
3. In the Conditional Formatting dialog box, specify which cell values to flag.
4. Click Format.
5. In the Format Cells dialog box, click the Patterns tab and select a color to signal errors.
6. Click OK.
Now, when someone enters an error, it will be flagged with your selected color.
Quickly setting a print area
Your users probably waste a lot of time and paper sending entire worksheets to the printer when all they need is a printout of a few columns or rows. Teach them this quick trick to set specific print areas within the Print Preview mode:
1. Select View | Page Break Preview.
2. Select the cells you want to print.
3. Right-click on the selection and choose Set Print Area from the shortcut menu.
4. Click Print.
Counting the days via cell subtraction
By default, Excel 97 adjusts the display of dates to friendly displays that users can identify. But behind the scenes, Excel still thinks in numbers. So finding the number of days between two days is as easy as simply subtracting one cell that contains a date, regardless of format, from another date-carrying cell.
For example, let's suppose a user has entered the date 2/20/2000 in cell A1 and 3/10/2000 in cell A2. The formula A2-A1 will return the result 19 (2000 was a leap year). Note: You must use the date that falls later in the calendar year as the first argument of the equation, or the equation will return an error.
By default, Excel will format the result of a formula in the same format as the source cells. So in our example, it reports that the difference between 2/20/2000 and 3/10/2000 is 1/19/1900. However, simply right-clicking the formula cell, selecting Format Cells, and selecting a Number format will fix this problem.
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