Skip to Main Content
Excel Hacks, 2nd Edition
book

Excel Hacks, 2nd Edition

by David Hawley, Raina Hawley
June 2007
Beginner content levelBeginner
410 pages
10h 2m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Excel Hacks, 2nd Edition

Chapter 1. Reducing Workbook and Worksheet Frustration

Hacks 1–16

Excel users know that workbooks are a powerful metaphor. But many users are equally aware that dealing with workbooks can cause a huge number of snags. The hacks in this chapter will help you avoid some of these snags while taking advantage of some of the more effective but often overlooked ways in which you can control your workbooks.

Before we leap into the hacks, though, it’s worth taking a quick look at some basics that will make it much easier to create effective hacks. Excel is a very powerful spreadsheet application, and you can do incredible things with it. Unfortunately , many people design their Excel spreadsheets with little foresight, making it difficult for them to reuse or update the spreadsheets they’ve so carefully built. In this section, we provide several tips you can follow to ensure that you’re creating spreadsheets that are as efficient as possible.

The 80/20 Rule

Perhaps the most important rule to follow when designing a spreadsheet is to take a long-term view and never assume you will not need to add more data or formulas to your spreadsheet because chances are good that you will. With that in mind, you should spend about 80 percent of your time planning your spreadsheet and about 20 percent implementing it. Although this can seem extremely inefficient in the short run, we can assure you that the long-term gain will far outweigh the short-term pain and that the planning gets easier after you’ve ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Start your free trial

You might also like

Excel Hacks

Excel Hacks

David Hawley, Raina Hawley
Excel® 2007 VBA Programmer's Reference

Excel® 2007 VBA Programmer's Reference

John Green, Stephen Bullen, Rob Bovey, Michael Alexander

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9780596528348Errata PageSupplemental Content