Typing a Schwa Character in Excel

How you add special characters to Excel can differ from how you add them in other Office programs, such as Word. This tip looks at one such difference and how you can handle it.

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(Thanks to Bob Beechey, Steve Aprahamian, Kathryn Brancato, Tommy Coil, Jos Graindor, Dennis Riddle, Ira Bernstein, Terry Holmes, Al Fernandes, Leonard Berkowitz, David de Jongh, Henry Noble, Janice Harris, Elliot Penna, Wayne Edmondson, Ryszard Raciborski, Dave Onorato, Colin McCart, Harold Druss, Alec Whatmough, Penny Edwards, Steve Viney, Dan McGovern, and Greg Renigar for contributing to this tip.)(Thanks to Bob Beechey, Steve Aprahamian, Kathryn Brancato, Tommy Coil, Jos Graindor, Dennis Riddle, Ira Bernstein, Terry Holmes, Al Fernandes, Leonard Berkowitz, David de Jongh, Henry Noble, Janice Harris, Elliot Penna, Wayne Edmondson, Ryszard Raciborski, Dave Onorato, Colin McCart, Harold Druss, Alec Whatmough, Penny Edwards, Steve Viney, Dan McGovern, and Greg Renigar for contributing to this tip.)

Multiple Print Areas on a Single Printed Page

Want to print small, non-contiguous areas of your worksheet all on a single page? You might think that defining a non-contiguous print area is the key to doing this. Excel has different ideas, however, about what should print.

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Macros! Macros! Get Your Macros Here!

Learn all the best methods for creating and using Excel macros. ExcelTips: The Macros is the best single source for learning about macros or improving your existing skills. Be the person everyone looks to when something needs to happen in Excel. Get yours today!

Conditionally Formatting Non-Integers

The conditional formatting capabilities of Excel are very helpful when you want to call attention to different values according to criteria you specify. The hardest part of using conditional formatting is identifying which condition should be used. This tip examines the different ways you can specify a condition that differentiates between an integer and non-integer in a cell.

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Using More CPU Power when Calculating

Today's PCs are more powerful than ever, but you can still have slowdowns when it comes to calculating large workbooks. Here's a high-level overview of how Excel uses the CPU in your system, and why the CPU's usage may not be at the level you desire.

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Measuring Efficiency of Formulas and Macros

As the limits on what you can store in Excel have increased, so has the need to consider how to make your workbooks and macros as efficient as possible. This tip examines some resources you can use to improve the performance of your formulas and macros.

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Jumping to a Specific Worksheet

Want to make fast work of moving from one worksheet to another? Here's how to do the task when you have a lot of worksheets in your workbook.

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This section is for those having problems making Excel behave. If Excel is giving you fits, feel free to submit your own Help Wanted question.

If you have a solution for the problems below, click the link after the problem to send us your answer. (All responses become the sole property of Sharon Parq Associates, Inc., and can be used in any way deemed appropriate.) If your response is used in a future issue, you will be credited for your contribution to the answer.

Changing How Excel Determines which Year to Use

I would like to enter a date by typing in just the month and day. Excel assumes the year to be the current year, but I would like to have the year to be the one for the next time that date occurs. For instance, if today is 6/1/18 and I type 7/1, Excel automatically assumes a year of 2018. If I type 5/1 on the same day, then Excel assumes a year of 2019. I know I can use a formula to have the date display in a different cell, but how can I get Excel to default to this approach as I am typing dates into cells?
—Brian Black (provide an answer for this Help Wanted question)