The Traveling Continues

This has to be the longest traveling streak I've been on in a long time. Last week I mentioned I was down in Texas, visiting with my father, aunt, and sister. Well, I was able to make it back home on Thursday, and then on the next day I flew out to Tennessee to visit for a couple of days with my youngest son and his family.

There I times I don't know whether I'm coming or going! The traveling will be drawing to a close in the near future, thank goodness. It will be nice to be able to stop and relax for a bit instead of always hurrying off somewhere.

In the meantime, don't forget that the doors to my PivotTables for the Faint of Heart course are currently open. That won't last long, however, as they will close this coming Thursday. Here is where you can find more information:

    https://usingoffice.com/pivottables/

This is the only time the course has been open this year, and it won't be open again until sometime well into 2026. If you want to discover how you can put PivotTables, PivotCharts, slicers, and timelines to work with your data, there is no better time than right now. (Don't let this slip away!)

I hope that your week has been good and that you enjoy the tips in this week's newsletter.

—Allen
     

ExcelTips (ribbon) for 13 September 2025
Cell formatting
Removing All Formatting in a Worksheet

Excel allows you to apply all sorts of formatting to the data in your worksheets. If you want to get rid of all that formatting, there are a couple of things you can try. This tip takes an in-depth look at the techniques you can use.

Read this tip »

(Thanks to Jos Graindor, Patrick Sedgwick, Steve Aprahamian, Dave Newcomer, Brian Dorey, Alan Cannon, Ryszard Raciborski, Alex Blakenburg, Andrija Vrcan, Stephen Farrell, Michael Avidan (MVP), Jean Allard, Jacques Raubenheimer, Brian Nowell, and Julie Faas for contributing to this tip.)

 
Printing
Flipping Landscape Orientation when Printing

When printing a worksheet, you may want to rotate the output on the page to fit a certain orientation. Excel doesn't allow you to do this, but there are workarounds available that may help.

Read this tip »

 
PivotTables Make You Feel Faint?

Do you get weak in the knees when asked to deal with huge amounts of data? Forget feeling faint ever again when you are asked to deal with PivotTables. Learn much more than the basics with PivotTables for the Faint of Heart, now available in three great versions.

 
Editing
Copying Subtotals

If you have added subtotals to your worksheet data, you might want to copy those subtotals somewhere else. This is easy to do using a special feature of the Go To command.

Read this tip »

 
Formulas
Extracting File Names from a Path

If you have a full path designation for the location of a file on your hard drive, you may want a way for Excel to pull just the file's name from that path. There are a number of ways you can accomplish this task, using both formulas and macros.

Read this tip »

(Thanks to Willy Vanhaelen for contributing to this tip.)

     

Help Wanted

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.

 
Highlighting an Unchanging Value

I have a worksheet used to accumulate data from some of our testing equipment. Readings from the equipment are added to the bottom of column A daily. In cell D4 I have a formula that calculates the average of the last 14 readings contained in column A. Is there a way to highlight cell D4 or flag the value it contains if the average hasn't changed over the past week?
—Bonnie Jewett (provide an answer for this Help Wanted question)

 
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