Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with excel2007

tips or tricks for organizing information using Windows XP

KokuRyu — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 17:15:03 -0800

Does anyone have any tips or tricks for organizing information using Windows XP and MS productivity software? Specifically, I'm wondering if there is a native "tags" function where you can tag specific documents so they can be easily retrieved.

When contracting, I relied on Gmail and the Google drive shell extension to easily store documents. In fact, I still use this system now for saving expense receipts for work: I email the receipts to a Gmail account and then search by keyword and date to find them.

However, I cannot use Gmail for work - it's against IT policy. I typically use Outlook 2007, Word 2007 and Excel 2007. The problem I have is that I often save multiple versions of files in multiple places.

I do have a filing system set up for email in Outlook 2007, but I often wish I could just bookmark an email, or bookmark and Excel spreadsheet.

Instead, I have to either save or file, and I much prefer Gmail's tagging system.

I am not considering moving to Gmail or whatever for my work-related productivity docs.

MS Desktop Search is enabled on my computer, but it's not quite as fast or efficient as the search function in Gmail.

So, once again, my question is:

Instead, does anyone have any tips or tricks for tagging items in Outlook 2007, or Word or Excel for easy retrieval? I'd love to hear your own unique solution using MS productivity software.

Note: my computer is locked down so I cannot easily install software.

I need help cleaning some dirty data

ashirys — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 11:34:54 -0800

Excel-filter: Mysterious single-quotes that precede the data in each cell. How do I get rid of them? I'm working with a spreadsheet that's several years old. I suspect that the spreadsheet was created from a CSV file initially, but it was done before my time so I don't know for sure. Every entry in the first two columns is preceded by a single-quote. I think this was originally to force the text into..well, text, format that is. However, this character is causing these entries to not match other entries with the same text, sans single quote, which is a big problem for me. Things I've tried to get rid of these annoying characters:

=Clean()
Text->Columns
Changing the format (text, number, etc)
=Right(A1, Len(A1)-1) //this one chops off the first real character and leaves the single quote
Find & Replace using a copy/pasted single quote from an afflicted cell

Example of afflicted data, copy/pasted right from the spreadsheet:
'10807268

Nothing has worked except manually editing the cell and removing the character. Since I'm dealing with upwards of 10k cells, I really don't want to do this manually. Haven't managed to come up with anything on Google either. I'm using Excel 2007, though the file is .xls (rather than 2k7's .xlsx).

I'm not very good with macros, but willing to try them if they'll help.

Excel 2007: Filter one sheet based on a range of cells in another sheet

syzygy — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 10:59:38 -0800

Excel 2007: How do I filter one worksheet based on values in a range of cells in a second worksheet. Example: ParentSheet has 50 rows.
ChildSheet has 36000 rows.

I want to filter ChildSheet to show only rows that have Column A = any of the values in ParentSheet, Column A.

I'd do this with a join or an In() in SQL, like: SELECT ChildSheet.* FROM ChildSheet WHERE ChidSheet.A = ParentSheet.A;

Is there an easy way to do this in Excel 2007?

Excel 2007 - Duplicate Data Removal Issue

Sandor Clegane — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 11:26:14 -0800

Excel 2007 - Is there a way to remove ONLY a duplicate row leaving the first unique entry? I have a list of sweepstakes entries that need to be pared down to only unique entries. When I attempt to remove duplicate data it usually removes both the duplicates AND the first entry. I need to find a simple way (without formulas, if possible) to separate the duplicates from the unique entries.

The data columns are as follows: Entry Date, First Name, Last Name, Email, Birthdate, Address, City, State, Zip, Sex, Phone Number, Opt In 1, Opt In 2.

I need to remove all duplicate email addresses from the list. There are a few issues with the way I currently do things. If I just highlight the email column and remove duplicate data it shifts all the unique addresses up so now the data is out of alignment. If I select the entire spreadsheet and remove duplicates it doesn't come up with the same number of duplicate entries as I get with just the email column. Finally, if I apply conditional formatting to the duplicate entries it highlights all versions of the same email address. Thus, I would be removing all entires for that person. I need to allow them one and remove the rest.

I realize there are ways to do this with formulas but I have to do this often and applying a formula to tens of thousands of rows is very, very cumbersome.

Oh Hive Mind, please help me!

How can I conditionally format an entire row in Excel based upon the data in one of the columns in that row?

ChasFile — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 17:33:34 -0800

How can I conditionally format an entire row in Excel 2007 based upon the contents of a particular column in that row? Say row 1 column J, row 4 column J, and row 19 column J all contain "Alice." I'd like rows 1, 4, and 19 all to appear with a red background. Say row 2 column J, row 44 column J, and row 45 column J all contain "Bob." I'd like for rows 2, 44, and 45 all to appear with a blue background. And so forth.

Basically, what I'm asking is how to make a relative column reference in a formula. I remember doing precisely this using VBScript for Excel years ago, but for the life of me can't locate that old code. Anyway, something along the lines of the following psuedo-code entered into the Conditional Formatting dialog box:

Apply "Format 1" according to the following formula [assuming (y,x) refers to (column y, row x)]:

=IF((J,ROW())="Alice")

It might also be nice to do this with a named range, so that if I apply the name "First_Name" to the entirety of row J, the formula is then a bit clearer:

=IF((First_Name,ROW())="Alice")

Total n00b0 question, I'm sure, but I don't spend much time in Excel, and am would very much appreciate the help. Thanks!

Names as data labels or markers in Excel 2007?

muhonnin — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 09:03:01 -0800

Excel 2007 charting: Can you tell me how to use the name of a point as the data marker or the data label in an X-Y scatter plot? I have about 75 - 80 points that I'd like to display in an X-Y scatterplot in Excel 2007. Each point has a name consisting of a letter and a number: point A1 is (3, 3), point A2 is (4,6), point B1 is (2,1), etc. My point names are in column A, my x values are in column B, and my y values are in column C. Ideally, instead of a lot of blue diamonds scattered across the chart, I'd like to be the markers to be the point names (A1, A2, etc.). If that's not possible, I'd settle for being able to use the point names as data labels next to the blue diamonds. The only options I seems to be able to access for the data label are the X value, the Y value, or the name of the whole series.

Apologies if I'm missing something obvious--an hour of exploring the help facility and Googling have not been very illuminating. I'd be happy to implement a simple VBA script or macro if that would help.