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  • =VLOOKUP (uhh…now what?)

    Today’s post is brought to you by Anneliese Wirth, a writer on Office.com. On Office.com , the term “VLOOKUP” frequently bubbles up in our list of high-volume search queries. My job is to figure out why this is and what specific information people are actually looking for when they type “VLOOKUP” into the search box in Help or on our web site. The “VLOOKUP” query appears to represent a bunch of different questions. Certainly, one of the main ones has to do...
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  • You Asked: What the heck is Scroll Lock

      This week’s post is written by Amy Miller. Amy is a writer for Office.com. She’s written and edited content for Excel, Access, OneNote, and InfoPath.   Imagine you’re working in a spreadsheet and you innocently press the arrow keys on your keyboard to move to another cell, but instead of moving to another cell, the entire spreadsheet moves. You may have asked yourself, what the heck just happened, and how do I make it stop? Lucky you. You’ve encountered that pesky little problem called...
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  • Excel Web App leads to healthier snacks for kids

      Today’s blog post is brought to you by Roxanne Kenison. Roxanne is a writer on Office.com who writes primarily about Office Web Apps and Office Starter.     My son starts Kindergarten this fall. I’m excited, but a little sad that our days of co-op preschool are over. Our local community college sponsors a co-op preschool program where parents run the preschool. Each parent works one day per week in the classroom, rotating through a series of jobs. We use an Excel spreadsheet to keep...

  • Got lots of text in a cell? Make it readable

      Today’s blog post is brought to you by Gary Willoughby. Gary is a writer on Office.com who has created and edited content about Excel, Access, and Project.     Sometimes, I find I have text in a cell that spans far past its own column or…yikes, maybe even off the screen. Because I tend to be a little borderline compulsive, that bothers me just a bit. Of course, if I autosize the cell by clicking the column border on its right edge, all the cells below that cell could end up being...
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  • Use SUMPRODUCT to find the last item in an Excel list

    Today’s author is Charley Kyd, an Excel MVP, who describes how to use the SUMPRODUCT function to find the last sequential item in an Excel list. Charley has worked with spreadsheets in business since 1979, and has written books on spreadsheet use for McGraw-Hill and Microsoft Press. You can find more useful tips and posts from Charley and other Excel MVPs at his website, ExcelUser.com . Suppose you have a Sequential List of items, as in the second table here. And suppose you want to show the date...

  • How it's Made: Tower Defense - a Game in Excel 2010

      This blog post is brought to you by Karen Cheng a Program Manager on the Excel team.     In today's post, we'll show you how the arcade game Tower Defense was created in an Excel spreadsheet (see a video of the game being played here ).  In this game, creeps move toward your castle. You must defend it by placing towers which shoot at the creeps. The more creeps you kill, the more money you get to buy and upgrade your towers. To play, you'll need - · To download the...

  • Announcing Excel 2010 Developer Challenge Winners

    We want to thank all of you who submitted entries for our Excel challenge. We had great entries that were well designed using Excel 2010 features, VBA and the user interface. Many of you are as passionate about Excel as we are and we thank you for your feedback. We extend our congratulations to the following winners: First Prize Winner : Andre L G Viol, United States Prize: Xbox 360 Elite Video Game Entertainment System and a copy of the Xbox 360 game: FIFA 2010 Description of the application : The...

  • Vote for the prototype you like for the Open XML SDK

    The developer documentation team is asking for your feedback on a couple prototypes for the Open XML SDK Documentation. Visit their blog to download the prototypes and vote: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/officedevdocs/archive/2010/07/13/vote-for-the-prototype-you-like-for-the-open-xml-sdk.aspx Read More...

  • How it's Made: Missile Command - a Game in Excel 2010

    This blog post is brought to you by Karen Cheng a Program Manager on the Excel team. In today's post, we'll show you how the classic arcade game Missile Command was created in an Excel spreadsheet. We also explain how it's made in this video . In this game, missiles drop from the sky, attacking the city. You must click on the missiles to destroy them. To play, you'll need - · To download the game ( here ) · To install Excel 2010, hot off the press last week. You can...

  • The analytics of the World Cup in Excel with PowerPivot

    This post is brought to you by Bruno Aziza, WW Strategy Lead for Microsoft Business Intelligence. The Soccer World Cup is watched by billions around the world and many have tried to use models, from macro-economic to financial ones, to predict the outcome of the world cup. Our team and partners have put together a set of tools and videos to help you experience a more “analytical” world cup. See our intro video here ! · Start by enrolling in the World Cup Challenge to win prizes...

  • Excel 2010 Games: Missile Command and Tower Defense

    Thanks to Mauricio Acevedo, Nathan Shomber, Karen Cheng, and Manpratap Suri for putting together this blog post. It's official, Office 2010 is out! To celebrate, we've created two games that are playable in Excel for you to download. Missile Command Tower Defense To play, you'll need - · Download games here · To install Excel 2010, hot off the press last week. You can get a free trial here . The games use features that are new to Excel 2010, so they won't work in older...

  • New Visualization Types in Excel

      This post is brought to you by Scott Ruble , Senior Program Manager in Excel.     Over the last year, we’ve written a number of articles on the new capabilities of Excel 2010 . Several of these were related to new charting features in Office 2010. Here is a quick list of them. · More Charting Enhancements in Excel 2010 · Improvements to Chart Performance · Chart Object Model in Word & PowerPoint These improvements were well received; however, we understand there is a pent up...

  • Importing Text Files in an Excel Sheet

    Today’s author is Jan Karel Pieterse, an Excel MVP, who describes the process of importing text in great detail. You can find more useful tips from Jan Karel on his website: http://www.jkp-ads.com/ . In this article, I'll explain how to ease importing of .txt, .prn and/or .csv files into an existing sheet in Excel. Introduction If you've ever tried to open a text file, you have probably used the Text import wizard. If you have ever opened a CSV file, you have probably noted you can't...
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  • Solutions to Three Common Problems when Using VLOOKUP()

    Today’s author is Greg Truby, an Excel MVP, who addresses some common issues you may encounter when you use the VLOOKUP function. This article assumes a basic familiarity with the VLOOKUP() function, one of the easiest ways to lookup up a key value in one worksheet or block of data and return a related piece of information from a second worksheet or block of data.   When using VLOOKUP() we frequently find ourselves facing three common problems: ·         We...
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  • [Deadline Extended] Excel 2010 Developer Challenge - Soccer Edition

    We had some issues with our entry submission e-mail so we are extending the challenge end date to July 5 th , 2010: o If you already submitted your entry but have not received a confirmation e-mail, please re-submit your entry to emanb@microsoft.com before July 5 th , 2010. o If you are new to this challenge , this is a unique opportunity for you to join. If you’re into developing Excel-based applications, then participate in the Excel 2010 Developer Challenge- Soccer Edition! We’re looking...
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