Do you belong to LinkedIn? Did you know that LinkedIn has lots of Excel user groups where Excel trainers, developers, financial modelers, and even Excel blackbelts compete to out geek each other--or just share information?

Ever wanted to see just a part of your Excel worksheet that's way over on the right? You scroll over and find the information you're looking for, but your row or column headings-sometimes both-have disappeared. Or maybe you want to see data in one row that's at the bottom of your worksheet (which might contain hundreds or even thousands of rows). How can you go to that row and still see how its data has been categorized in the headings? By using the Freeze Panes commands on the View tab in Excel.

When we released Excel 2010, we published a workbook for you to download, which contains samples of conditional formatting rules. The samples are really helpful for learning how to track trends, check status, spot data, and find top values. Some samples are for busineses and some just for fun. You can find out how to compare bicycles by using a rating scale; calculate sales for a specific region and target; and more.

If you're collaborating or creating sensitive material in Excel, you probably need either a DRAFT or CONFIDENTIAL watermark. Excel doesn't come with a built-in way to add a watermark, but there's a pretty painless way to do so. We show you how and give you sample watermarks to get you started.

Some of the most frequently asked questions that we receive are about Excel's IF function. In this previously published Q&A, a writer on the Excel team answers some of the most common questions. 

Conditional formatting is a popular feature and is a great way to easily identify cells with a range that meet some criteria. However, users often want to create conditional formatting rules that go beyond comparing a cell’s value to a single value or a single cell reference - row or column comparisons are commonly requested operations. In this blog post, we will learn how to use relative references in conditional formatting rules to make such tasks easier.

Excel comes with lots of predefined chart types, including column, line, pie, and so on. However, many of you ask how to make other kinds of charts, such as floating column charts, Gantt charts, combination charts, org charts, flow charts, hierarchy charts, histograms, or Pareto charts.

Though these charts aren't available in the list of predefined chart types, don't worry. There are ways to create them in Excel.

Millions of people using Excel don't get why they see the "circular reference" error message right after they've entered a formula. The message means that your formula is trying to calculate its own cell--kind of like when a dog chases its own tail. Because so many of you (millions) searched on "circular reference" on Office.com, we thought we should very clearly explain how to remove or fix your formula.

We show you how we used an ActiveX list box control and some VBA code to allow our users to enter multiple choices in cells.

For those of us who crunch words instead of numbers, Excel can be intimidating. We don't know the difference between a workbook and a worksheet, and for sure don't know to ask about conditional formatting (a cool way to visually display data). Then one day your boss asks you to create a report--with numbers. Gulp.

In this video, the Office 911 emergency responders show a beginning Excel user how to add a table to a worksheet so she can better organize and view her data.