Microsoft Office Starter Edition Tips

Here are some tips for those who are playing around with MS Office Starter.


Microsoft Office Starter 2010 Tips and Tricks 6: Excel Starter, Beyond Basics

In this week’s Tips and Tricks article we are going to focus on three features in Excel Starter that allow for quite a bit of utility. When thinking about using Excel Starter to create a family budget, for instance, these features should help you go beyond the basics. Let’s get started.
Define Name

Define Name is a feature to name a cell or a series of cells to later be used in a formula. Not only does this allow you to reference a series of cells easily, it helps define them to make it easier to remember, understand, and reuse them.
Start by opening Excel Starter 2010. In our example we have created a list of Expenses. Select this table, then go to the Formulas tab and click Define Name.

Then type a name into the Name textbox that defines the list and click OK.
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Once you have done this you can use the Define Name in other formulas like this SUM formula.

Conditional Formatting

Conditional Formatting allows you to set Excel Starter to format particular cells based on the data that is present. There are a number of rules you can set. We’re going to start with an example table of the NFL standings.

Begin by highlighting the cells you are interested in, then, from the Home tab, select Conditional Formatting.

In this example we have selected the Percent column and indicated that we want them to be formatted with a Light Red Fill with Dark Red Text when the value is less than .5 or 50%. We finish by clicking OK.

Conditional Formatting is really great because not only are there a number of different rules that be applied to the formatting, but if those values in those cells change, the Conditional Formatting is still realized. In other words if suddenly a team below a 50% win ratio wins 2 games in a row and is now above a 50% ratio, the cell will no longer be formatted.
Custom Sort

Using the same table of NFL standings we’re going to explore Custom Sort. Start by highlighting an entire table and then from the Home tab, select Sort & Filter and then Custom Sort.

The dialog box shown below will pop up letting you decide how to sort the table. For instance this first sort is based on the Percent column and has sorted the team with the best win percentage to the top.


This custom sort below has sorted alphabetically based on the team name.



Wrap Up


We hope you have enjoyed this Office Starter 2010 Tips and Tricks. With these “beyond the basics” skills, you will have a much easier time keeping your information organized, color coded, and sorted. It is all built into Office Starter. Thanks for reading!

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