Overview
Excel expert David Ringstrom, CPA, shows you how to implement internal control features within your Excel spreadsheets in this comprehensive webcast. Step-by-step, David explains how several Excel features—Data Validation, Conditional Formatting, and hide and protect features—can be implemented to control users’ actions and protect your worksheets and workbooks from unauthorized changes.
David demonstrates every technique at least twice: first, on a PowerPoint slide with numbered steps, and second, in the subscription-based Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) version of Excel. David draws your attention to any differences in the older versions of Excel (2021, 2019, 2016 and earlier) during the presentation as well as in his detailed handouts. David also provides an Excel workbook that includes most of the examples he uses during the webcast.
Microsoft 365 is a subscription-based product that provides new feature updates as often as monthly. Conversely, the perpetual licensed versions of Excel have feature sets that don't change. Perpetual licensed versions have year numbers, such as Excel 2021, Excel 2019, and so on.
Areas Covered
- Creating self-expanding drop-down lists with Excel’s Data Validation feature.
- Ensuring proper VLOOKUP integrity by using Data Validation to create an in-cell drop-down list.
- Future-proofing VLOOKUP by using Excel’s Table feature versus referencing static ranges.
- Identifying situations where VLOOKUP may return #N/A instead of a value.
- Improving the integrity of spreadsheets with Excel’s VLOOKUP function.
- Limiting users to entering whole numbers in a worksheet cell by way of Data Validation.
- Overcoming VLOOKUP’s quirks by using the SUMIF function to look up numeric values.
- Preserving key formulas using hide and protect features.
- Protecting hidden sheets from within a workbook.
- Protecting sensitive information by hiding formulas within an Excel workbook.
- Apply lookup formulas to look up data automatically from lists.
- Apply Excel’s Table feature to future-proof elements of your spreadsheet.
- Define how to use Excel’s Data Validation feature to restrict data entry to a list of permissible choices.
• Removing the Table feature from Excel spreadsheets once it’s no longer needed or simply erasing the alternate row shading.
• Toggling the locked status of a worksheet cell on or off by way of a custom shortcut.
