Crabby's delicious Excel tips for every palate

Here are three highly useful (well, in my opinion) tips for Excel. They're not complicated, they're not "hidden," and their directions aren't hard to follow. I'll bet you'll have times when you can really use them. So try them out and file them in your noggin's Excel folder for future use.

Scenario

You want to have a fraction in a cell but each time you enter it (1/2, 3/4, 5/8, etc.) it formats as a date (2-Jan, 4-Mar, 8-May). Annoying!

Solution

1. Select the cell.
2. On the Home tab, click  (also known as the Dialog Box Launcher) next to Number.
3. In the Category list, click Fraction.
4. In the Type list, click the fraction format type that you want to use.
5. The number in the active cell of the selection on the worksheet appears in the Sample box so that you can preview the number formatting options that you select.
   
   

Scenario

You created a table from some data and now you want to delete the table without losing your data or the table formatting.

Solution

To stop working with your data in a table without losing any table style formatting that you applied, you can convert the table to a regular range of data on the worksheet.

• Right click anywhere inside the table, point to Table, and then click Convert to Range

Now, note that once you do, the  table features are no longer available. For example, the row headers no longer include the sort and filter arrows. But they still look cute...

Scenario

Excel doesn't normally print row and column headings on each printed page. But you want it to!

Solution

1.  
   1. Click the worksheet
   2. On the Ribbon click the Page Layout tab.
   3. In the Sheet Options group, under Headings, select the Print check box. (You can also click , and then under Print, select the Row and column headings check box.)

Let me know what other sort of tips you'd like to see (for Excel or any other Office program); I have quite the stash I'm just dying to unload...

"Hunger is the best sauce in the world." — Cervantes

— Crabby