Microsoft Excel: questions & tips

[Don Arnold]

I have a question about microsoft excel. Okay, I'm sure there are specific forums and help sites. But, none of these will give answers in Progian. :lol

So, if you have a burning question, feel at ease to post it here. And if any tips come to mind as you're answering questions or just reading (because, reading thru a thread about spreadsheets is, well, absorbing), toss 'em in.

My question: I think this has happened since upgrading to office 2010, but I can't be certain. Sometimes, when deleting or adding multiple rows, when I scroll down to below the bottom of the screen, a row has had it's height expanded by a very very large number (so it's higher than the monitor screen). The only way to return that row to the default height is to close the file, saving it first, then reopening. Voila, fixed. Has any other excel users experienced this, and if so, have you happened upon a permanent fix so this won't repeatedly happen? I've been working on a couple files this afternoon and 3 or 4 times I've had to close and reopen - kind of gets annoying!

[NogbadTheBad]

Can you just highlight the row, right click, and edit the row height?

[Duncan Glenday]

My question: I think this has happened since upgrading to office 2010, but I can't be certain. Sometimes, when deleting or adding multiple rows, when I scroll down to below the bottom of the screen, a row has had it's height expanded by a very very large number (so it's higher than the monitor screen). The only way to return that row to the default height is to close the file, saving it first, then reopening. Voila, fixed. Has any other excel users experienced this, and if so, have you happened upon a permanent fix so this won't repeatedly happen? I've been working on a couple files this afternoon and 3 or 4 times I've had to close and reopen - kind of gets annoying!

I've never had that. However there's an easier way to resize all rows:

Click the top-left-hand button, to select all columns and all rows.

Click the button the aligns all data at the top of the cell (or the bottom - as preferred).

Bingo.

[Don Arnold]

I've never had that. However there's an easier way to resize all rows:

Click the top-left-hand button, to select all columns and all rows.

Click the button the aligns all data at the top of the cell (or the bottom - as preferred).

Bingo.

Under which tab (in MS2010) is that button Duncan?

thanks,

[Don Arnold]

Can you just highlight the row, right click, and edit the row height?

You'd think, but....

It's doing it for me again now and, under rows, it's displaying up to rows 36, then when I cursor down one, there's no row # showing - and only a single (or part of a single) row displayed on screen. Cursor down again and the top row is 38. Okay, I've now left clicked and held the row above the expanded one, and dropped the mouse down. It's not showing the bottom of the suspect row, nor moving below it. But, upon right clicking and adjusting the row height, it's returning the suspect row to normal size.

This seems to do the trick.

However, I'd still like to know why excel is doing this. Seems like a glitch to me, but I also realize I probably know & use less than 1% of this program's capacity (sort of like how much of my brain I use).

thanks for the help

[Duncan Glenday]

Under which tab (in MS2010) is that button Duncan?

thanks,

It's on the 'Home' tab - top-left-hand-corner of the 'Alignment' section.

[Duncan Glenday]

Here's one of the biggest tips I can give regarding Excel.

A lot of people think I'm an Excel genius because I do things with 1 mouse-click, that takes them a long time. But I cheat:

See that little strip of icons at the very top-0left-hand corner of the screen? Click the drop-down button, click 'Customize Quick Access Toolbar', and add all the functions you do all the time.

Here's what my quick access toolbar looks like (I've underlined it in red):
http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z201/dglenday/ExcelRibbon.png

Very cool - lets me do things with 1 click.



It's on the 'Home' tab - top-left-hand-corner of the 'Alignment' section.

I also circled the button that wil automatically resize your rows.

[Duncan Glenday]

Here's one of the biggest tips I can give regarding Excel.

A lot of people think I'm an Excel genius because I do things with 1 mouse-click, that takes them a long time. But I cheat:

See that little strip of icons at the very top-0left-hand corner of the screen? Click the drop-down button, click 'Customize Quick Access Toolbar', and add all the functions you do all the time.

Here's what my quick access toolbar looks like (I've underlined it in red):
http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z201/dglenday/ExcelRibbon.png

Very cool - lets me do things with 1 click.


Here's the list of functions my customized 'quick access toolbar' does:

http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z201/dglenday/ExcelRibbon2.png

You'll see there's a simple description (top-down) matching each button (left to right).

[NogbadTheBad]

First thing I always do post upgrade or on a new machine is customize the toolbars, great advice

[Greg]

However, I'd still like to know why excel is doing this. Seems like a glitch to me....

It's most likely a bug in a shared library. To get rid of it, try applying any service packs that are outstanding. If that doesn't fix it, completely uninstall MS Office, restart, and reinstall MS Office from scratch. For some reason, Microsoft has never figured out how to get their own software to install the same way into their own operating system even a reasonably small number of systems. It frustrated me so much I stopped supporting Microsoft products.

If you still get the same issues after a clean re-install, try LibreOffice.

[DaleGtr]

Good advice from Greg and Duncan. Also, another thing to try would be a Detect and Repair. I don't have access to 2010 right now so I'm not sure where they hid it. In older versions it's under Help. Try that as a quick fix. If not, then an uninstall and reinstall may certainly do it.

[AcousticWalden]

Sounds odd to me, I might guess your startup excel file is corrup.

[Big Block 454 part 2]

Sounds odd to me, I might guess your startup excel file is corrup.

Like your spell-checker :)