When Microsoft rolled out Office 2007, the company made some fundamental changes to its file formats, updating them from binary files to XML-based packages. The default format for Excel 2007 followed ...

Excel grays out menu commands for unavailable features or functions. To unlock the grayed-out menus, first review the most common causes, then take the steps necessary make the menu active. By default ...

Dennis O'Reilly began writing about workplace technology as an editor for Ziff-Davis' Computer Select, back when CDs were new-fangled, and IBM's PC XT was wowing the crowds at Comdex. He spent more ...

When you have a lot of data in an Excel worksheet it often becomes necessary to summarize the information to get to the crux of what it is telling you. There are a number of ways to do this in Excel, ...

Spreadsheets contain many tools for analyzing and manipulating data. The trouble is much of the data CPAs need to analyze resides in company databases or on the Internet. So, after finding the ...

Mastering Excel takes some experience and patience, but it’s easy to make mistakes even if you’ve been using it for a long time. Sometimes, choices seem like a brilliant idea–until they’re not, and ...

Many financial systems do a fine job of generating standard reports, but accountants often need more. In those cases, accountants can create custom solutions in Excel, but that approach has drawbacks.

An optimization problem is one where you have to make the best decision (choose the best investments, minimize your company’s costs, find the class schedule with the fewest morning classes, or so on).