Excel tools

Microsoft has included several Excel tools in their popular spreadsheet application that make it simpler to work with your worksheets.

Excel has flexible and powerful data protection tools that enable you to lock up worksheets or even just certain parts (or cells) of worksheets so that users cannot change their contents. Another useful tool is the Clipboard Viewer. The normal Windows clipboard can only hold the last copied (or cut) item, but the Office clipboard can hold up to 24 items. This is very useful for selecting and pasting regularly used data into spreadsheets.

Excel’s “Goal Seek” is very useful if you want to alter some of the data in formulas to obtain different results. It may be used to project various costing scenarios for new projects and compare their results. “Freeze panes” is a handy tool that enables you to freeze certain panes (like the ones containing headings) so that they do not scroll out of the window with the rest of the cells, but remain visible all the time.

One is able to change the colours of the tabs of individual worksheets in Excel. Related tabs may share a common colour, or it may make important sheets easier to locate. The Auto Fill tool in Excel is customisable and one may add commonly used to its list.

The Excel Timeline Template may be downloaded for free from Microsoft to add reference timeline boxes to spreadsheets. The boxes may be added, edited, moved, resized and deleted at will. Another one of the free Excel tools from Microsoft is the Excel Flowchart Template. This template works in all version of Excel from Excel 97 onwards. It enables the user to quickly and easily add colourful flowcharts to their spreadsheets. There is a sample flowchart with instructions how to use the template and create new flowcharts.