Debra’s Excel News–January 2025

Pin your Excel files, make decisions with a spreadsheet, and more, in this month’s Excel news. Visit my Excel website for more tips, tutorials and videos, and check the index for past issues of this newsletter.

  • New on Contextures
  • Quick Tip: Pinned Files
  • Excel Quiz
  • Excel Stories
  • Monthly Photo – Best By

New on Contextures

1) New File – Perfect Square: Did you know that 2025 is a perfect square? It’s 45 x 45, so if you’re turning 45 this year, congratulations! To calculate a list of “square” years, go to my Sample Files page, and in the Functions section, look for FN0077 – 2025 Is Perfect Square

2) Excel Days: The year is filled with special days, from National Taco Day (March 31st) to Spreadsheet Day (Oct 17th). To start off 2025, I shared Excel links for 7 “Days of” that were celebrated last week, including Vision Board day.

You can get my Vision Board bingo card and customize it, to track your goals in Excel.

Celebrate Days of Excel - Week of Jan 5 2025
Celebrate Days of Excel

Quick Tip: Pinned Files

How many Excel files are in your “Pinned” list, where you can quickly open favourite files?

  • To see the list, click the File tab. At the right, there are two tabs, Recent, and Pinned.

I asked that question in a YouTube poll recently, and 70% had between 0 and 5 pinned files. My list was way too long (12), so I unpinned a few, to declutter the list..

Excel pinned files list
Excel pinned files list

Pin or Unpin Files

To pin the active workbook:

  • Click the File tab, and go to the Recent tab.
  • Point to the active workbook’s name in the list
  • When the Pin icon appears, click it

Unpin: To unpin a file, click on its Pin icon. You can do this in the Recent tab, or the Pinned list.

You’ll find many more tips on my Excel Workbook Tips page.

add or remove workbook pins
add or remove workbook pins

Quick Excel Quiz

Do you know the answers to these two quick Excel quizzes?

  1. How many temporary locations can you store in Excel’s Go To list (F5 key)?
    • a) 2, b) 3, c) 4, d) 5
  2. In which version was Clippy (Office Assistant) added to Excel?
    • a) Excel 95, b) Excel 97, c) Excel 2000, d) Excel 2002

The answers are below the monthly photo, and you can find more Excel quizzes and polls on my YouTube channel.

Excel Stories

Here are a couple of interesting spreadsheet articles that I read recently.

  • Subscription Tracker: It’s easy to sign up for online programs, apps, and services, and your total payments can add up quickly. See how to make a spreadsheet subscription tracker (MakeUseOf site), to keep track of dates and costs. The example uses Google Sheets, but you could use Excel instead.
  • Decision Making: Do you need to make tough decisions? To keep wedding costs down, a couple used a guest scoring spreadsheet (People site). Family and friends were scored (0 to 10) in four categories, then given a letter grade, based on their total score. (Use this technique for good, not evil!)

Photo: Best By

There’s usually something in our kitchen that’s past its “Best By” date. But I was shocked that the vanilla extract I bought last month was best by 1994! Vanilla is expensive!

Fortunately, after looking closely, I noticed the 07/17/26 date, at the top of that label. I have no idea what the 1994 means.

Pro Tip: If you’re adding labels in an Excel worksheet, be sure to position them carefully and clearly.

Best by date 1994
Best by date 1994?

Quiz Answers

  1. c) You can store up to 4 locations temporarily. There are written steps, and a video, on my Excel Workbook Tips page
  2. b) Excel 97 was the version in which Clippy was introduced (Wikipedia)

That’s it for this month! If you have any comments or questions, please let me know, in the comments below!

P.S. Visit my Contextures site for more Excel tips, tutorials and videos.

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Original source: https://contexturesblog.com/archives/2025/01/14/debras-excel-news-jan-2025/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=debras-excel-news-jan-2025

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