Password protecting your Excel Worksheet can prevent others open your works with your permission. To allow only authorized users to view or modify your data, you can help secure your entire workbook file with a password.

To do it, just follow below steps:-

• Open your Excel workbook, on the File menu, click Save As.

• On the Tools menu, click General Options.

• Do either or both of the following:

• If you want users to enter a password before they can view the workbook, type a password in the Password to open box, and then click OK.
• If you want users to enter a password before they can save changes to the workbook, type a password in the Password to modify box.

•  Click OK.
• When prompted, retype your passwords to confirm them.
• Click Save.
• If prompted, click Yes to replace the existing workbook.

If you have any other method to protect Excel Spreadsheet, please share with me.

I found a very useful feature in Excel that allows you to split your data in one column into multiple columns based on a simple condition. This useful feature is ‘text to columns’ which is a option under the Data menu that allows information in a cell or range of cells to be split into columns.

Below is a simple tutorial to show you how to use this useful Excel feature.

Example:

I have a product list that represents product model and serial number. How do I split the product number (Sample A) into two separate columns (Sample B) by using excel?

Sample A :

Sample B

To do that, just follow below steps:-

• Highlight the content that you want to split.

• Select “Data” at the menu bar and click on “Text to Columns”, tick on “Fixed width” to continue the conversion by clicking “Next” button.

• Create the line break at the desire position and click “Next”.

• Select the “Text” option and choose on cell that you want to location the data in “Destination” column.

• Click on the “Finish” button after selected the destination and you will see a message box appear as below. Click “OK” to proceed and you will obtain the same result as Sample B.

If you have any comment of this tutorial, please leave your comment here

In Excel, there are two method to round up the value into decimal point.

1st Method :

• Highlight the cell that you need to round up.
• Right click on the mouse and choose ‘Format Cells’.

• Select ‘Number’ category from the list.
• Select the decimal place, e.g: 2

• Choose ‘OK’ button after you have select the decimal place that you have entered.

2nd Method:

The second method is to enter the formula in the cell and to create the decimal place. The ROUNDUP function can be used to reduce a value by a specific number of decimal places.

The syntax for the RoundUp function is:

RoundUp( number, digits )

number is the number to round up.

Example

By using the ROUNDUP formula, you can copy the value to a blank sheet and enter the formula. It can make your job easier and neat.

How to create a formula to check whether a number is within the range and how to grade it into categories?

You may use IF function in the data. The If function returns one value if a specified condition evaluates to TRUE, or another value if it evaluates to FALSE.

The syntax for the If function is:

If( condition, value_if_true, value_if_false )

• condition is the value that you want to test.

• value_if_true is the value that is returned if condition evaluates to TRUE.

• value_if_false is the value that is return if condition evaluates to FALSE.

Let’s take a look at an example:

Example A

To segregate the marks into Grade A,B,C,D, and F by using the formula. Those mark above 80 will be categorised into Grade A, marks above 70 into Grade B, above 50 into Grade C, above 40 iton Grade D, and below 40 into Grade F.

Example B

To check whether the Sales target been achived. By comparing the total sales achieved of the month, the Sales Manager is able to measure the achievement in the overall Financial Year.

A dropdown list enable user to enter the data in more efficient way and standardized.

User is allowed to select the data from the list and to make the data easier to maintain.

To create the list for the drop down ,enter the data in a single column cells

• Select the cell where you want the drop-down list.

• On the Data tab, in the Data Tools group, click Data Validation

• In the Data Validation dialog box, click the Settings tab.
• Set the Validation criteria to Allow “List”

• In the “Source” text box, choose the data source from B4 to B8

• Click Ok

The dropdown list is created and you may click on the button at F3 to choose your favourite fruit.

It’s easy right?? Just leave your comment here if you have any others tricks to do it.

I got a ticket from my user said that she cannot open a file in .mdi format. I never see this kind of file format before. So, i just google it and i got the answer. An MDI file, which stands for Microsoft Document Imaging, is a file format of Microsoft for storing raster images of scanned documents together with optional annotations or metadata, and can only can only be opened or edited in Office Document Imaging.

In Microsoft Office 2003, you can open .mdi file by default. However, you cannot open .mdi file in .  The reason this happen is because by default Office 2007 does not install Microsoft Document ImaginMicrosoft Office 2007g. So if you want to open the MDI file in Office 2007, you have to install the feature manually.

To install MDI, just follow below steps:-

• Start->Control Panel->Add or Remove Programs or Uninstall a program if you are in Vista/7.
• Select Microsoft Office 2007 and click on Change

• Select Add or Remove Features, then click Continue

• Expand Office Tools section.

• Click on the drop down list for “Microsoft Office Document Imaging” and select “Run all from My Computer”.

• Click on Continue

• Click Close when installation done.
• Done, you can now open .mdi file by just double click on the file

If you have another tips to solve this problem, please share with via leaving your comment here.

My friend asked me a question on how to merge First Name and Last Name into a single column in Excel instead of copy and paste the content from Column A and Column B to Column C 1 by 1. To solve his problem, they is a simple way to do that by using Concatenate function in Excel.

In Excel, the Concatenate function allows you to join character strings from several cells together in another destination cell.

The syntax for the Concatenate function is:

Concatenate( text1, text2, … text_n )

n = Up to 255 text entries can be added and entry must be separated by a comma.

Applies To:

• Excel 2007, Excel 2003, Excel XP, Excel 2000, Excel 2008, Excel 2010, Excel 2011

Let’s take a look at an example:

This example i will concatenate first and last name. The result will appear in column D. The formula for the result in column D appears in column E below

Another Example: Join a range of Date

TEXT function will be in used to control the display of a date in a formula. Just view the following screen shoot to understand it:-

After i installed Office Mac 2004 on my new Snow Leopard Machine, i received an error message when i start Entourage 2004 for Mac, Excel 2004 for Mac, PowerPoint 2004 for Mac, or Word 2004 for Mac.

I tried to reinstall the Office Mac, but the problem still occurred. Besides, i was trying to perform Microsoft AutoUpdate, it fail to run the update.

Finally i found the solution on Microsoft Official Web site, just follow the following actions to solve this problem

• Restart the computer.
• Just Click HERE to Download the update for Office Mac 2004
• Install the updated Office 2004 for Mac.
• After installed the update, the error message will be not appear anymore

I just install Microsoft Office Home and Business 2010 trial in my new laptop. Now i want to enter my new Product key for my Microsoft Office Home and Business 2010, it take me few minute to find out where to enter the new license key. Below are these step to show you how to change the new product key in Microsoft Office Home and Student 2010, or Office Professional 2010.

• Start Word 2010/Excel 2010/ PowerPoint 2010 (Note: start either 1 of these program)
• Click the File tab.
• click on Help

• Under Trial Product, click Purchase Product
• Just click on Enter Product Key

• Just enter your new Product Key and click Continue to activate your product key
  

I just purchased Word 2011 for office used. When my user open some of the Word document, it keep on pop up the following warning message

Word cannot start the spelling checker.
The spelling checker files may be missing.
Make sure the spelling checker files are
installed or use the Microsoft Office Installer
to install the spelling checker.

Once the warning message pop up, you cannot access the document at all.  To solve this problem, just follow the following steps:-

• Open Word 2011

• Click on Tools > Auto Correct > Show All

• Open Spelling and Grammar

• Under Spelling, remove the tick from ‘Check Spelling as you type’

You should be able to open the older document now. You may save it in the new Word 2011 format and enable back the spellchecker.