Tanya Pemberton - Excel Consultant, Bespoke Trainer & Admin Support

14/11/2025

✨ Focus Cell ✨
Very helpful new feature in Excel - especially if you work with large spreadsheets!

I shared a post back in June with a video on how to use Conditional Formatting and a bit of code to make Excel highlight your active cell more clearly (since the default highlight is pretty subtle in recent versions).

💡Good news! Excel is always getting updated, and it now includes a built-in "Focus Cell" feature that highlights your active cell very clearly with just one click. This is available in both the Desktop and Online versions for Microsoft 365 users.

👉 To turn it on (or off), go to the "View" tab at the top, then select "Focus Cell".

This really will help to relieve the strain on your eyes (and your brain) when you work with large spreadsheets!

Let me know how you get on :)

21/10/2025

✨𝐄𝐱𝐜𝐞𝐥 𝐓𝐢𝐩: 𝐀𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰 𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐚 𝐢𝐧 𝐨𝐧𝐥𝐲 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐜𝐞𝐥𝐥 𝐩𝐞𝐫 𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐮𝐦𝐧 (or other range)

Just recently, I was helping someone build a 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐫 sheet where you can only pick one activity per time slot.

I found a formula you can add to the 𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐚 𝐕𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐓𝐨𝐨𝐥 which stops you from entering data in more than one cell in a selected range (which means you 𝐝𝐨𝐧’𝐭 𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐮𝐬𝐞 “𝐫𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐨 𝐛𝐮𝐭𝐭𝐨𝐧𝐬” 𝐨𝐫 𝐕𝐁𝐀 𝐜𝐨𝐝𝐞 to create this effect).

I also added a restriction so you can only enter “y” in each cell.
Here’s the formula:

=AND(OR(TRIM(B2)="", LOWER(TRIM(B2))="y"), COUNTIF(B$2:$B$20,"")

06/09/2025

😁

Here is a bar graph of how much door I’ve painted

26/06/2025

🔍 Excel Tip: Highlight the Whole Row You're Working On!

Tired of losing track of where you are in your spreadsheet? You can make the entire row light up when you click or edit a cell — this is like placing a highlighter or ruler across your data.
Super helpful for fast scanning and fewer mistakes! ✅

🎥 How to do it:
Click the link below to watch a 3 minute tutorial.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJiygLKrwBc

Leave a comment if you found this helpful, or need some help to make this work.

In this Microsoft Excel training tutorial, discover how to highlight the active row in your Excel spreadsheet.🌍 Get unlimited training with Simon Sez IT’s 2...

08/12/2024

I just received the perfect Secret Santa gift! Top work whoever got me this AND filled it with chocolate. ^_^ x

04/12/2024

Poet Brian Bilston - proving that Love and Excel are not mutually exclusive.

Today’s poem is called ‘Love Excels’.

16/02/2023

Is there a tool you use a lot in Excel that you wish had its own keyboard short cut? For example: "Freeze Panes".

Did you know that the commands on the Quick Access Toolbar (at the top left of Excel) automatically get their own keyboard shortcuts?

To access the first command in the list you use the shortcut "Alt + 1". To access the second, use "Alt + 2" etc.

Note, you can add any commands you like to the Quick Access Toolbar, and you can put them in any order you want.

For more details visit:

In Microsoft Excel training courses, we have students write own their own custom keyboard shortcuts in 2 ways - using the Macro Recorder which writes VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) code or by customizing the Quick Access Toolbar.

01/02/2023

Have you tried using the UNIQUE, SORT and FILTER functions?

This video will walk you through how they work, as well as including some great tips for using Tables and Lists.

Let me know how you get on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AdTlswARLi

Send a message to learn more

23/07/2022

VERY HANDY CUSTOM FORMATTING TIPS

I was recently helping one of my students to customise a Template Sheet to their liking(*) when I came across a column where any positive number would be automatically replaced by the word "Done".

I had to do a bit of investigating to find out how this worked so we could change it.

Turns our the following formula was in the Format Cells/ Number/ Custom section: "Done";"";""

By changing the formula in the following way we were able to remove the word "Done" whilst keeping the numbers hidden: "";"";""

I very much recommend watching the following short video to learn how this works:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68Tet_8BNB8

The video also has some other very useful ways of using this functionality, such as displaying text with a number in the same cell and still being able to include that cell in calculations.

Example: "500 Total".

All questions/ comments/ suggestions welcomed.

TP

*(BTW, customising Template Sheets is a great way of picking up new Excel skills)

Check the Excel Essentials Course: https://courses.xelplus.com/p/learn-excel-essentialsLearn the basics of Excel's custom number formatting and how you can u...