Highlight the active cell in Microsoft Excel(Excel XP, 2003, 2007, 2010)

              It is often difficult in large tables to find the active selected cell. You want to configure Excel in a way that this cell always and automatically stands out from the rest of the sheet.

              When working on large tables, it becomes difficult to find the active cell. To solve this problem you can download a free add-in named RowLiner, which can be downloaded from http://www.cpearson.com/excel/rowliner.htm. Double click on the file to install it. Once installed, it can be accessed form the “Add-ins” tab from the menu bar. Once activated, it will highlight your active cell. To change its settings, click “RowLiner” in the “Add-ins” tab and select the “RowLiner Setup”. Here you have different options for rows and columns, as to where these are shown and how they should appear. To the right, you can control the structure of the active cell. Then confirm the configuration with “OK”. However, the “Undo” function is not available in active RowLiner. In case of extensive entries, you should deactivate RowLiner temporarily. For that, click “RowLiner” in the “Add-Ins” tab and deactivate the “Draw Lines” option.

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Prevent undesired error messages in Excel 2007(Excel 2007 and 2010)

              You are searching for information in Excel from other table fields with Vlookup and want to adapt it. You often get error messages if the search term is not present. Here is an example for the functioning and advantages of “Vlookup”. For instance, you have a table that records names and telephone numbers. And if you include some of the names elsewhere in the sheet then you can enter the relevant number using the “Vlookup” function. “Vlookup” will search for the name accurately in the sheet. The formula used is as follows:
=VLOOKUP(H2, A1:B16, 2, FALSE) 
             Here H2 is the name, A1:B16 is the table field, 2 is the column that contains the numbers, whereas false will search for the exact corresponding name. In case of success the formula outputs the relevant number in I6 or else it will show “#N/A”. This is not an error, as it means that the name is not present in the list. If you wish to change this output to “Not Present!” for your convenience, then you can easily do so. Using “IfError”, you can change the output message to let’s say “not present!”, with the help of the following formula.
=IFERROR(VLOOKUP(H6, A1:B16, 2, FALSE), "Not Present!")

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Value-based shading(Excel 2007)

              Differentiate between data without sorting it with the help of Conditional Formatting.

              If you need to differentiate between data with out sorting it, you can do it with ease in Excel 2007. Using the Conditional Formatting rules in Excel 2007, you can easily segregate even numbers from the odd numbers in your data. First select the cells with the data values, then go to the ‘Home tab’. Here under the ‘Styles’ group, select ‘Conditional Formatting’. In the dropdown list click ‘Manage Rules’ and then select ‘New Rule’. You will be asked to ‘Select a Rule Type’, here choose the ‘Use a Formula to Determine Which Cells to Format’ option. In the ‘Format Values Where This Formula Is True’ textbox, enter the formula as "=MOD(A1,2)-1" and select ‘Format’. Then click on the ‘Fill’ tab in the ‘Format’ dialog box and select the color yellow, press ‘Ok’ to continue. Then go back to the ‘Conditional Formatting Rules Manager’ and select ‘New Rule’. In the ‘Format Values Where This Formula Is True’ textbox, enter the formula as "=MOD(A1,2)-0" and select ‘Format’. Then click on the ‘Fill’ tab in the ‘Format’ dialog box and select the color orange, press ‘Ok’ to continue. Click ‘OK’ to apply the conditional formatting to the selected cells.

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Remove duplicates quickly and easily(Excel 2007, 2010)

             You want to remove duplicate entries from a large table and are looking for a quick and easy solution without any filters or complicated formula.

             Use the mouse and select the cell area from which you want to remove duplicate entries. Then click the ‘Data’ tab and then the ‘Remove duplicate’ button in the multi-function tool bar.
             In the following dialog, you can define the columns of the area to be included in the comparison of individual rows. All cells of the two rows should thus not display the same content due to which the rows become duplicates of each other. In the ‘Columns’ field, remove the checkmark in front of the columns which you want to ignore during the comparison and then click ‘OK’.
NOTE: If you do not include all columns in the comparison (when there are obvious differences between the individual rows), Excel always retains the first (the topmost) row out of the rows that have been identified as duplicate. This is important when the previously excluded cells are required later.

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