Excel Efficiency: Auditing Spreadsheets 2 CPE

Learn from Excel expert David Ringstrom, CPA, valuable techniques that can be used to verify the integrity of even the most complicated Excel spreadsheets. In this comprehensive course, David shows you how to use Excel’s formula auditing and error-checking tools, identify duplicates in a list, monitor the ramifications of even minor changes made to your workbooks, use the Evaluate Formula feature, and much more.

David demonstrates every technique at least twice: first, on a PowerPoint slide with numbered steps, and second, in Excel 2016. He draws your attention to any differences in Excel 2013, 2010, or 2007 during the presentation as well as in his detailed handouts. David also provides an Excel workbook that includes most of the examples he uses during the webcast.  

Topics Covered:

• Identifying duplicates in a list using Conditional Formatting.
• Selecting all formulas within a worksheet with just two mouse clicks.
• Adding a macro to Excel that adds the ability to display any formula in a cell comment.
• Exploring options for recovering lost passwords for Excel spreadsheets.
• Protecting sensitive information by marking key worksheets as VeryHidden.
• Transforming cell references into range names by way of the Apply Range Names to Formulas command.
• Differentiating between manual and automatic calculation modes in Excel, and when Excel may default into manual calculation mode.
• Understanding the purpose and nuances of Excel’s Personal Macro Workbook.
• Bringing Excel’s green error-checking prompts under control by managing the underlying rules.
• Learning the nuances of circular references in Excel.

Prerequisites

Program Prerequisites: Experience working with Excel spreadsheets

Advance Preparation: None

Learning Objective

• Discover the location of the menu command that allows you to determine categorically if a workbook contains links or not.
• Recognize how to transform cell references into range names.
• Identify the location of the Enable Iterative Calculations setting within the Excel Options dialog box.
• Explore how to implement the Watch Window to monitor the ramifications of even minor changes to your workbooks.

Last updated/reviewed: March 15, 2024