Limiting Options when Saving

Excel allows you to save your workbooks in many different places. By default, it helpfully provides all those places. You may simply want to save to your local system, however. This tip shows you how to bypass all hide all the options Excel wants to show you.

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(Thanks to Ryszard Raciborski, Chris van Zyl, Michael Avidan (MVP), Patrick Sedgwick, Donald Small, James Woolley, Andrija Vrcan, Michael Heavener, Ray Fernandez, and Bob Beechey for contributing to this tip.)

Making Ribbon Customizations Apply to All Workbooks

Excel allows you to easily make changes to the ribbon, as well as to the Quick Access Toolbar, which is near the ribbon. If you want your customizations to be available whenever you are using Excel (regardless of the workbook on which you are working), there are a couple of things you need to check when doing your customizations.

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Are You Foundering at Filtering?

We have all experienced the frustration inherent with using Excel filters. Stop foundering when filtering your data by getting your copy of ExcelTips: Filters and Filtering today. More info available online.

Pictures inside Shapes

Filling one of Excel's drawing shapes with a picture of your choosing is a neat trick. Here's how to do it.

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Counting Cells According to Case

Text placed in cells can either be lowercase, uppercase, or a mixture of the two. If you want to count the cells based upon the case of the text within those cells, you'll need to resort to one of the techniques in this tip.

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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.

Last Person to Save a Workbook

I need to investigate some changes that were made in a workbook. Key to starting this is to figure out who the last person was that saved the workbook. Is this information available in Excel? If so, is the information compromised if someone subsequently opens the workbook but doesn't save it?
—Bill Danielson (provide an answer for this Help Wanted question)