Date functions in Excel make it is possible to perform date calculations, like addition or subtraction, resulting in automated or semi-automated worksheets. When you mix date functions with conditional formatting, you can create spreadsheets that display date alerts automatically when a deadline is near or differentiate between types of days, like weekends and weekdays.

In this tutorial, Excel MVP Frédéric Le Guen shows how to put this functionality to work, with some examples in the Excel Web App so you can experiment with the results.

The new Excel makes creating and customizing charts simpler and more intuitive. One part of the fluid new experience is the Formatting Task pane, which replaces the Format dialog box. The new Formatting Task pane is the single source for formatting--all of the different styling options are consolidated in one place. With this single task pane, you can modify not only charts, but also shapes and text in Excel.

Have you ever wanted to incorporate data from online resources into your Excel spreadsheets, such as stock quotes, weather, Bing Search results or even Twitter feeds? With new Webservice functions, now you can pull data from the internet into Excel--and the best part is the information updates automatically in your spreadsheet! Read on to find out how to put this functionality to work for you.

We have some great news for Excel fans around the world! Our friends over at Microsoft Business Intelligence have launched an exciting new challenge on Facebook to test your skills and knowledge of Excel. Join the So You Think You Know Excel Challenge to answer 15 questions about Excel and you could get your name up on the leaderboard. Challenge your friends and colleagues or just play for fun.

And you'll have the chance to enter the sweepstakes portion of this event, where we'll randomly select 2 sweepstakes entrants to receive a brand new Kinect for Xbox 360 prize pack, plus 10 additional sweepstakes entrants to receive a Microsoft branded swag pack.

Need to navigate that huge spreadsheet quickly? Freeze panes can help by allowing you to view your column and row headings continuously while you scroll your document. In this webinar, we'll demonstrate how to freeze panes in an Excel workbook, plus we'll give you 5 tips of this feature, just in case you've ever been stumped while trying to freeze panes.

What you will learn at Tuesday's webinar

• How to freeze & unfreeze rows and columns
• The difference between freezing panes, locking cells, and...

CTRL+PgUp, CTRL+F, SHIFT+TAB: keyboard shortcuts can help you streamline work in Excel and look like a magician in a spreadsheet.   We're currently planning the next round of keyboard shortcuts to add to Web Excel and would love to hear your input. Let us know about your favorite shortcuts in desktop Excel by filling out this survey.

On February 27, we announced an early look at a future addition to our self-service line-up with Microsoft Data Explorer Preview for Excel. Data Explorer enhances the self-service BI experience in Excel by simplifying data discovery and access to a broad range of public and enterprise data sources, enabling richer insights from data that has traditionally been difficult for users to get to. With Data Explorer, users can now quickly and easily import data from a variety of sources, including Web, Excel, Text, Database and Azure. 

Read on to learn how access to non-traditional sources such as Active Directory, Facebook and big data solutions like Hadoop are now within the reach of any user.

The world of data continues to become bigger and more complex, with no plans to slow down. From April 10-12 in Chicago, data professionals and business analysts will gather at the PASS Business Analytics Conference to keep pace with the latest trends around big data, predictive analytics, data visualization, Hadoop, and even the new version of Excel. If you're a fan of Excel and are curious about how it fits within the Microsoft Business Analytics platform or you want to master how to use tools like PowerPivot or PowerView in Excel 2013, you may want to pack your bags for Chicago.

With the announcement of easier collaboration on SkyDrive, sharing files with friends, family and colleagues just got a whole lot easier! Now you can share a link to your Excel files with anyone and they can edit the workbooks without needing to sign in with a Microsoft account, even at the same time! Read on to find out how to put this functionality to work for you.

With the enhancements to Excel Services as part of the new Office, we now support query table refresh. Workbooks with query tables now can be seamlessly refreshed on the go from any browser! No need to convert your query table to a pivot table or download a workbook to desktop Excel client to refresh your query table. In other words, broad sharing of workbooks throughout an organization just got easier.