My wife and I are expecting our first child in just 5 days now. It’s a very exciting time in our household and it has taken a few months to get everything ready for the newborn.

To ensure I have everything I need, I made a checklist (in Excel of course) and worked my way through it.

If you want to learn Excel basics, this spreadsheet features a few fantastic tools that I thought you may be interested in seeing.

Download the new baby checklist.

1. Check boxes to make it easy for the user to mark of items as they go
2. Conditional Formatting to cross out the items with a strikethrough when it is checked
3. A Thermometer Chart to show progress through the list and how close it is to completion (See how to create a thermometer chart in Excel).
4. The COUNTIF function to count the items as they are checked off

The items in the checklist have come courtesy of www.newparent.com.

The popular data entry form was removed from the Ribbon in Excel 2010. I am often asked where this feature went. So what is this feature? And where can it be found? Find out in this Excel tutorial.

What is the Data Entry Form?

The Excel data entry form makes it easy to;

• Add new records to a table
• Edit and delete records from a table
• Search for records in the table

The data entry form is very user friendly and is a must for anyone who performs alot of data entry, especially in a large table.

[Read more…] about The Excel Data Entry Form

I was asked yesterday how to highlight dates that were over 30 days old. The situation was that the date of a transaction is recorded and the team need to be alerted when that date is older than 30 days.

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.

Once you are familiar with how to compare dates in Excel and highlight the dates that meet specific criteria, you can adjust the formula used in this tutorial to meet your needs. For example, to highlight overdue dates, or those due within the next 7 days.

[Read more…] about Highlight Dates Over 30 Days Old

It is possible to perform quick calculations in Excel without having to write any formulas. This technique is brilliant and provides the formula result you need quickly and easily.

You can count, sum, average and find the maximum or minimum number in a range simply by selecting the numbers you want to calculate.

[Read more…] about Perform Quick Calculations in Excel