Disaster-Proofing Excel Spreadsheets

Author: David H. Ringstrom

It's always a sickening feeling when something goes awry in an Excel spreadsheet. In this presentation Excel expert David H. Ringstrom, CPA pulls together a number of techniques that you can use to give yourself fallback positions and insurance against things going awry with your spreadsheets. You'll see how you can improve the frequency of automatic back-ups that Excel creates, as well as establish individual back-ups for key documents. David will also look outside of Excel, comparing the capabilities that are available in the Windows 10 File History feature, Microsoft's OneDrive service, Google Drive, and Dropbox. You'll be empowered with numerous risk-management techniques to preserve your spreadsheets.

Publication Date: December 2021

Designed For
Practitioners seeking to use Microsoft Excel more effectively.

Topics Covered

• Enabling the File History feature in Windows 10 to afford an additional level of file versioning
• Using Excel's Scenario Manager feature to backup key inputs within a spreadsheet
• Exploring options for recovering lost passwords for Excel spreadsheets
• Improving the stability of Excel by deleting accumulations of temporary files in Windows
• Learning the mouse trick that lets you quickly make a copy of an existing worksheet
• Learning what steps to take if you can't open a damaged workbook
• Limiting access to sensitive workbooks by way of password protection
• Protecting a worksheet to ensure users are limited to changing only specific areas of a worksheet
• Protecting hidden sheets from within a workbook
• Protecting macros by assigning a password that prevents macros from being viewed
• Protecting sensitive information by marking key worksheets as VeryHidden
• Recovering previous copies of Excel files from Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, or Windows 10 File History

Learning Objectives

• Identify the button within the Scenario Manager dialog box that allows you to apply a given scenario
• Identify the command within the Tools menu within the Save As dialog box that enables you to password protect an Excel workbook from being opened or modified
• Recognize the section of the Excel Options dialog box where the AutoRecover setting resides that controls how often Excel creates a back-up copy of your workbooks
• Recognize which versions of Excel have the ability to recover unsaved workbooks
• Identify which aspects of Excel's Visual Basic Editor do you use to set the VeryHidden property
• Describe which button within the Scenario Manager dialog box allows you to create a new scenario
• Identify which ribbon tab the Scenario Manager found
• Describe what the Protext Sheet command does
• Recognize keyboard shortcuts undoes your last action in Excel

Level
Intermediate

Instructional Method
Self-Study

NASBA Field of Study
Computer Software & Applications (2 hours)

Program Prerequisites
Prior experience with Microsoft Excel.

Advance Preparation
None