It may have been a while since you worked on this worksheet and you are not sure which cells are locked and which are not. You need a fast method of locating the locked cells. Let’s use Conditional Formatting to highlight the cells that are already locked so they are easy to identify.

Highlight the Locked Cells on a Worksheet

1. Select the range of cells you want to check
2. Click the Conditional Formatting button on the Home tab and select New Rule from the list
3. Select Use a formula to determine which cells to format
4. Enter =IF(CELL(“protect”,A1)=1,TRUE,FALSE) in the box provided

To identify the locked cells on a worksheet we can use the Cell function. The Cell function returns information about a cell, in this case whether it is protected. A1 represents the first cell in the selected range.

5. Click the Format button and choose the formatting you want to apply
6. Click Ok

All cells that are locked will be highlighted making them easy to identify.

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There are times when this kind of functionality becomes extremely useful. Especially whilst Excel does not provide many other means of finding the number format of a cell, or whether it has been locked.

The Excel Cell Function

The Cell function is an Information function and requires two items of information to be able to work.

=CELL(info_type, reference)

info_type – The type of information you would like to return about a cell.

reference – The cell that you want to return the information for. If omitted, the Cell function will retrieve information from the last cell that was changed.

What Information can you Return about a Cell

The Cell function can return any of the information listed below;

Cell Function Examples

Let’s see some examples of the Cell function in action based on the data below.

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Sections can also be used for better collaboration with other members of your team. Ownership amongst a team can be distributed by section rather than a selection of slides.

Add a Section to a Presentation

To a add a section to your presentation;

1. Select the slide to become the first slide of the new section
2. Click the Section button on the Home tab of the Ribbon and select Add Section from the list

Rename or Remove a section

When adding a section it is immediately given the name Untitled Section. This can then be renamed to something more meaningful or removed if no longer required.

1. Select the section you want to rename or remove
2. Click the Section button on the Home tab and select Rename Section or Remove Section from the list

3. If renaming a section you need to enter the new name you want to use and click Ok

Collapse and Expand Section

Once a presentation has been divided into sections, these divisions can then be collapsed and expanded to help you work with your slides.

This is a great feature for when working as a team on a presentation. Each team members section can be named appropriately. These sections can then be hidden and shown so that you can focus only on the slides you need to.

To collapse a section, click on the black arrow as shown below for the Recent Progress section. To expand a section, click on the white arrow as seen below in the Introduction section.

Jump to a section in a slide show

When a presentation has been divided into sections, you can jump to a specific section of a slide a show aswell as the traditional jump to slide feature.

To jump to a section of a slide show;

1. When in Slide Show view, click on the Slide Selection button on the Slide Show toolbar
2. Select Go To Section and click on the section you would like to jump to

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This is frustrating and without storing the value correctly as a fraction, any formulas dependent upon this value will not work correctly.

To enter a fraction in Excel, type a 0 and a space followed by the fraction. Excel then stores the number as a fraction and reduces it to the smallest possible denominator. So if you type 0 2/16, Excel stores it as 1/8.

Now with a fraction stored correctly the cell can be referred to within formulas without error. Further formatting can also be applied to the cell through the Format Cells dialogue box.

If you have entered a number as a decimal, this can easily be converted to a fraction by using the Number format list. If you enter the number 0.25, or it is returned as the result of a formula, it can be formatted as a fraction to get 1/4.

This can be achieved by using Paste Special rather than a normal paste or Ctrl + V. However if you regularly copy data from the Internet into a Word document you might find the need to use Paste Special each time quite irritating.

Fortunately Word provides a way for you to change the default paste setting for when pasting data between programs.

Change the Default Paste Setting

In Word 2007;

1. Click the Office button and then click the Word Options button
2. Select the Advanced category form the list on the left
3. Scroll down to the Cut, copy and paste section an choose Keep Text Only from the Pasting from other programs list

You can also change the default setting for pasting within a Word document, between Word documents or when there is a style definition conflict. It is a good idea to keep the source formatting when pasting within or between Word documents so these settings can be left alone.

4. Click Ok to save and close the dialogue box

The procedure for Word 2010 is similar to 2007.

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Listed below are my favourite Microsoft Visio shortcuts.

Moving Around a Diagram

• Zoom In – Ctrl + Shift + Left Mouse Click or Ctrl + Mouse Wheel Up
• Zoom Out – Ctrl + Shift + Right Mouse Click or Ctrl + Mouse Wheel Down
• Zoom to Whole Page – Ctrl + W
• Pan – Ctrl + Shift + Right Mouse Drag (Awesome shortcut when zoomed in for detail)
• Next Page – Ctrl + Page Down
• Previous Page – Ctrl + Page Up
• Full Screen – F5

Working with Shapes

• Pointer Tool – Ctrl + 1
• Text Tool – Ctrl + 2
• Connector Tool – Ctrl + 3
• Duplicate – Ctrl + D
• Duplicate and Move – Ctrl + Mouse Drag (Hold Shift aswell to align the duplicate shape with the original)
• Group Shapes – Ctrl + Shift + G
• Ungroup Shapes – Ctrl + Shift + U

Use these Visio shortcuts to improve your productivity when creating Visio diagrams, and save time for the finer things in life such as drinking coffee and watching episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Because they wish to highlight the cell, Conditional Formatting will be used. A new rule will be created with criteria to find those dates older than 30 days.

Create the Rule

1. Select the cells containing the dates you want to format
2. Click the Conditional Formatting button on the Home tab of the Ribbon and select New Rule from the list
3. Select Format only cells that contain as the rule type
4. Choose Cell Value from the first list and less than from the second list in the rule description
5. Enter the formula =today()-30 in the next box. This formula uses the Today function to find the current date and then subtracts 30 days from it

6. Click the Format button and choose the formatting you wish to apply
7. Click Ok

All dates older than 30 days are highlighted with the formatting you chose.

Conditional Formatting is an extremely useful feature of Excel. Check out more Conditional Formatting tutorials below.

Learn Conditional Formatting in Excel

Highlight Saturday and Sunday in a list

Following on from my fixture list creator and league table generator files, I was asked to create a combined file to create a fixture list and also generate a league table from results entered.

Download the Excel fixtures and league table generator.

To use the file;

1. Enter the teams competing and how many times they will play each other on the “Teams” sheet
2. Enter the results from fixtures on the “fixtures” sheet
3. View the league table on the “League table” sheet

If you want the slide numbering to start from number 1 on the second slide. You first need to remove the slide number from the Title slide, and then set the presentation slide numbering from 0.

Remove Slide Numbering from the Title Slide

To remove slide numbering from the Title slide of a presentation;

1. Click the Insert tab on the Ribbon
2. Click the Slide Number button
3. Check the Don’t show on title slide box

Start the Slide Numbering from 0

Setting the presentation slide numbering from 0 ensures that slide 2 is numbered as slide number 1.

1. Click the Design tab on the Ribbon
2. Click the Page Setup button
3. Set the Number slides from: box to 0

Another factor that will affect the flow of text across pages are each paragraphs pagination settings.The pagination settings are used to control how a paragraph breaks across pages.

Using Pagination Settings

To find the pagination settings in Word 2003, click Format > Paragraph and then click the Line and Page Breaks tab.

In Word 2007 and 2010, click the Dialogue Box Launcher arrow in the corner of the Paragraph group on the Home tab. And then select the Line and Page Breaks tab.

The four options under the Pagination heading control the behaviour of a paragraph when breaking across pages.

Widow/Orphan Control

Prevents the first line of a paragraph left alone at the bottom of a page, or the last line of a paragraph placed alone at the top of the following page. This setting is turned on by default as it is always useful.

Keep with next

Word will ensure that paragraphs with this setting applied are kept on the same page as the next paragraph. Very useful for headings so that they are not stranded at the bottom of a page.

Keep lines together

Prevents the lines of a paragraph being broken across pages. All the lines of the paragraph will always be on the same page.

Page break before

Word ensures that this paragraph always appear at the top of a page. This setting is great for headings.

Pagination settings can be applied directly to paragraphs or used with styles. Using these settings with styles allows greater control in large documents. Word will control the text flow across pages for you, without you having to worry about inserting page breaks manually.

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Inserting Page Breaks

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