How to Add a Watermark to a MS Excel Worksheet

As perhaps you’ve already discovered, MS Excel does not have a simple menu option to add a background watermark to a worksheet. But there is a way. Here is how: 1) Create and save your background image on your machine somewhere; for example, a pale pink “DRAFT” image. Make sure the image is light enough…

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How to Automatically Add a Decimal Point in MS Excel

It’s so easy to enter numbers into an MS Excel cell and have Excel add the decimal point automatically for you. Select the Excel button. Select Excel Options. Click and select the Advanced options. Select the “Automatically insert a decimal point” check-box. Select the number of places from the drop-down list. You’re done. If you’ve…

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How to Create Shortcuts to MS Office Files and Folders

© Ugur Akinci Creating shortcuts to MS Office files and folders is a great way to organize your content by providing multiple navigation points to the same document. Shortcuts eliminate the need to have the multiple copies of the save document in multiple locations. With this method, when you edit the source file, all shortcuts…

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How to Use Structured References in MS Excel

How to use structured references in MS Excel is a skill that you should develop to maximize your productivity when using MS Excel. MS Excel has three types of ways to refer to a data cell: Relative reference (like B1) Absolute reference (like $B$1) Structured reference (you need to use a table) “Why should I…

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How to Secure and Protect MS Excel Workbooks with Password

Secure and protect MS Excel workbooks by following the method described below. Open the Workbook you’d like to secure and protect. Select File > Info > Protect Workbook to display the options available to you: (Click images to enlarge them) (1) Click Mark as Final to freeze your workbook and make it read-only: Click OK…

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How to Create a MS Excel Pivot Table – An Introduction

Creating a MS Excel Pivot Table is very easy if your data is in proper TABULAR LAYOUT FORMAT. Here is a sample table representing the imaginary Atlantic and Pacific region sales of a fictitious fish company. (Click to enlarge the images) As you can see, it’s not easy to look at this data and answer…

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How to Create and Update a MS Word Chart

Here is a good way to create a MS Word chart that you may need to edit at some point in the future. The KEY IDEA is this: create your chart in MS Excel and then copy-paste it into your Word document. That way, the chart will maintain a link to the Excel document. Anytime…

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